One thing there will not be at Croke Park at the end of the month is drunken disorderly behaviour. About 43,000 people will be there to celebrate. They will have come from Australia, North America, Africa and across Europe. Their mood will be jubilant, but not a drop of champagne will be spilt. Father Cullen would have been proud.
The centenary of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association - a venture embarked upon by Father James Cullen in a church in Dublin's inner city in 1898 - will be marked by an open-air Mass on Trinity Sunday, May 30th, at GAA headquarters.
By the time of Cullen's death in 1921 the movement had over 260,000 members. Today it numbers half a million. The anniversary Mass will be led by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell.
The crowd will not match the 100,000 who converged on Croke Park for the movement's Diamond Jubilee in 1959, nor even the 60,000 who took part in the 75th anniversary pilgrimage to Knock in 1974 - but, in an era when figures of devotion are more likely to be the pop stars All Saints than saints, this year's expected audience of 43,000 for the Pioneers' Croke Park gig must be regarded as a good crowd.
And they won't all be middle-aged, elderly or even particularly pious. Greg Mulvey, 18, joined the association when he was in his second year at Synge Street boys' school in Dublin. "I thought it made sense," he says. "I liked the idea of an organisation to promote not drinking."
He didn't like the taste of alcohol, he says, and his friends did not give him a hard time about his choice. "Why should they? Now, if my friends go to the pub, I go too. I just have a Coke."
Thomas Doyle, also 18, joined when he was in first year. At first he just took the pledge at his Confirmation. He works in a pub and says that seeing the effect alcohol has on people turns him off it.
Shane Cusack, 17, like his contemporary Young Pioneers, sees the movement in a practical light. "It makes sense" to him at the moment to belong to an association which makes a virtue of his choice not to drink. Most of his friends, he says, "would never join", but they respect his decision.
Crucially, the three do not see abstaining from alcohol as a sacrifice - "at the moment". They can opt out of the Young Pioneers if and when it suits them. It's this which perhaps marks most pointedly how the organisation has had to change to survive.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, a movement which made a virtue of sobriety fitted neatly into the recasting of the Irish self-image as an athletic, Catholic and virtuous people, but its relevance in latter years has waned.
Father Cullen's mission was to promote the "sacrifice" of sobriety. His movement was specifically religious, seeking to strengthen the spirit of the individual through daily prayer and denial of even the most innocent use of alcohol.
Today its remit is far more practical. It will even countenance the "moderate" use of alcohol as "lawful".
The biggest growth in membership is in developing countries, especially Africa. Joining Shane, Thomas and Greg on the stroll to Hill 16 on May 30th will be Pioneers from Zambia, Nigeria and Kenya. They'll be praying for a dry day.
Tickets for the Mass are £5 each and can be obtained from the Pioneers at (01) 874 9464
