I attended an awesome book signing this weekend with Julia Duin of the Washington Times. She just released a new book,
Despite the provocative title, Julia reveals herself to be someone who is always sincere in her quest for God and also an intellectual powerhouse who supports her statements with an impressive collection of factoids and statistics. She is familiar with many Christian denominations and movements, including Catholicism. Her commentary makes readers knowledgeable about national trends that include all Christians.
Julia says our churches are losing parishioners. Like many other churchgoers, she says that church homilies aren’t always relevant to our lives. Priests and ministers may not be on fire for Christ or His message. While churches may spend lots of resources on getting people to join the parish or come back, they don’t put a lot of thought into keeping people from leaving in the first place. As a convert, I can attest to the fact that Catholic parishes do not always get to know their parishioners, meaning that it is easy for people to slip out and stop going to Mass unnoticed.
This book sensitizes people to the problem of the flock leaving the pews, but also to the over 35 crowd and baby boomers. While the heart of churches used to be the older crowd, our baby boomers are among the most professional of the generations. Many of them are retiring, only to start an “encore” career. They are busy, and they don’t have patience for a priest or minister who is not showing the same level of dedication to their ministry as they do to their jobs. In other words, they would be let go for the same lack of commitment to their office, and can’t relate to the mediocrity they find in churches.
Chapter 5, “The Loneliest Number,” focuses on the singles! Julia started out as a vanguard, writing about Purity and giving talks on the singles circuit (even EWTN). She talks about singles as young as 27 feeling discouraged about marriage by church leaders. They may say to a lonely single, “Well, maybe God isn’t calling you to marriage at all…and you know, that means that you should embrace your single status with open arms and serve!”
Julia reminds us of other cultures that assume that everyone is to be married except for the few who are called to religious life. The Jews, for example, use some human intervention, such as matchmaking, to help pair off their singles. It’s a different mindset and removes the shame from trying to find a spouse. Also, we have many older singles who simply do not feel called to life-long celibacy and really want to be married. They should not be told, “Over 40? Forget marriage.”
Julia shows readers that the singles population is enormous, giving them a right to demand more. My feelings are: singles must respect themselves and God’s wishes for them. If your church isn’t meeting your needs, strive to find a parish that does. Despite the Catholic tradition of going to your neighborhood parish, I did not find that it was always worth it for me. As a single, I couldn’t disregard a good program just because it was in a parish that was 10 minutes away rather than 5 minutes away. Also, consider building small prayer groups, bookclubs, and communities at the homes of neighbors to fill voids. A few people met their spouses at a bookclub I helped with at the
Also, consider venturing outside of the Church community to find a spouse. This worked for me – I met my Catholic husband outside of the Catholic scene – and it worked for another woman at the booksigning. It also worked for another author featured in the book, Debbie Maken. Debbie Maken ended up writing a book too, author of Getting Serious About Getting Married. I’ll review it when I get it!
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