The Working Catholic: Loneliness Part II by Bill Droel

 

A major cause of our loneliness epidemic is the 50-year deterioration of intermediate-sized groups—ethnic clubs, lodges, parishes, neighborhood associations, precincts, young adult clubs and even families. The extended family no longer lives within walking distance. Seniors relocate among strangers; their children often live in other towns.

A person who uses a social media platform has, on average, about 150 “friends.” Several surveys reveal that if friendship implies steady, close and dependable, the actual number is less than five. The Gallup Poll reports a steady decline in friendship. The small friendship circle is further restricted because it increasingly contains only siblings and first cousins. A recent Cornell University survey defined friend as “someone with whom you discuss important matters.” The average number of such friends is two. The saddest in this survey were those who say they have no important thoughts or feelings to discuss.

OnePoll, a survey company, broke down friendship into levels. The number of close friends with whom you share important thoughts and feelings is three. Those three, by the way, are people from high school and/or college days or siblings. The survey says that most people make no new friends after their early 20s. According to this survey, a person has five more friends that they “like” and on occasion “meet one-on-one.” Finally, that person refers to eight other friends, but does not seek them out or spend time with them. This understanding of friendship without contact is baffling.

Let’s use parishes and young adults as an example to further this topic of intermediate groups and aloneness; the phenomenon of hanging out but not joining. Of course, one blog column will not make for a mutual, solid attraction between young adults and a parish. And, any parish that reverts to 1950s-style will—despite good intentions—quickly squander any sustainable attraction for young adults. It is also inaccurate to say that “young adults are leaving churches in droves.” Or put it this way: A change in Roman Catholic gender exclusion in its ordained priesthood will not suddenly bring hundreds of young adults through the church door. To be accurate, let’s note that a fair number of young adults do worship regularly, but not at the pre-1970 rate.

Parishes and congregations are still the main entity for social capital, details Timothy Carney in Alienated America (Harper Collins, 2019). Not only do people make connections through church, those churchgoers are more likely to belong to other groups than non-churchgoers. Those other intermediate groups do not have to be sponsored by the parish. For example, a young adult who volunteers in a tutoring program for immigrants or for high school students is likely to also be a church member. Yes, some non-religious people are involved in circles of friendship and in volunteering, particularly with other college grads. But “the best predictor of civic virtues is regular attendance at church,” Carney writes in his important study.

Further, young adult churchgoers in general have better employment opportunity, stability in marriage, less drug use, less resentment and more frequent use of libraries, parks and museums. No, this doesn’t apply only to the upper-class. Immigrants who attend church or mosque or synagogue are upwardly mobile. Nowadays it is primarily working-class whites who do not attend church. These young adults hang out but don’t connect. Their conversations are superficial; their use of TV and mobile devices is often excessive.

Surprisingly, those people who are most likely to say that religion is very important are the least likely to attend church, Carney finds. They are not searching for a vibrant expression of their faith. They are stuck and largely disconnected. This is a sizable and growing number.

What will happen? To be continued…

The Working Catholic: Lonely in Crowds By Bill Droel

 

 I’m against social distancing. I’m into physical distancing instead. There is already too much social distance in our country.

Covid-19 is accompanied by a dramatic increase in the amount of time people spend alone. “People last year spent far less waking time—an hour and a half less [per day], on average—with people outside their own household,” write Ben Casselman and Ella Koeze in N.Y. Times (7/29/21), summarizing a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov). Time spent all alone increased by about one hour per day. Of course, Covid-19 restrictions on visitors increased the loneliness of those in nursing homes. In general, seniors spent the most time alone,” says N.Y. Times. But teenagers too were alone: One and a half hours more each day than before Covid-19.

Covid-19 is not the cause of aloneness; it only accelerated a 50-year societal trend. Robert Putnam of Harvard University tracks the loss of social capital, of togetherness. His 2000 book, Bowling Alone (Simon & Schuster) exhaustively crunches all the numbers to conclusively prove the steady depletion of community life in our society since about 1970. His latest report with Shaylyn Romney Garrett is titled The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020). The two discover that our current separateness is not brand new, yet isolation has not always been so. In a parallel to today, our society was individualistic from the late 1800s into the early 20^th century (the Gilded Age). Inequality was extreme; culture was polarized. However, our society gradually became more cooperative as the 20^th century evolved. Bowling leagues, clubs, denominations, veterans groups, civic endeavors, associations, school boards, neighborhood organizations and like attracted members and enriched society. But then, starting in about 1970, there was a major relapse.

Sustained isolation harms individuals. We become pessimistic. We are prone to scammers—those soliciting over the phone and those peddling conspiracies on cable TV. It is worth recognizing that loneliness and isolation can just as readily occur in big cities with crowded events as it can in rural towns.

Sustained isolation harms society. A sense of victimhood can overwhelm any impulse for the improvement of institutions, neighborhoods and culture at large. Collective virtue, which is acquired and practiced in social interaction, gives way to collective apathy or at times to narrow, one-off outbursts of fragmented dissatisfaction. A healthy give-and-take over differences is replaced by uncivil culture wars over abortion, same-gender unions, a woman’s place in society, the status of science and other issues. In fact, as the affliction of loneliness grows, individuals grasp for identity in an affiliation with extreme factions.

This analysis is totally wrong, some say. The boring social groups of the past are replaced by lively social media. That’s where today’s young adults meet and interact.

Facebook, which owns the other major social platforms, pitches community in all of its reports, its publicity and its Congressional testimony. Nonsense, writes John Miller in America magazine (8/21). Facebook is selling community but it can’t really build it. Some of its executives and engineers have so little experience of real community that they half-believe the company’s line. Other Facebook leaders are fully aware that the “company’s business model relies on making money by selling advertising to companies based on information it has gathered about its users.”

The presumption that healthy connectivity is aided by computers is backward. Computer-aided connections are a symptom of the loneliness epidemic. By design, they turn up the volume of disagreement and accentuate slights. They add to the widening polarization of isolated factions from the common square of democratic conversation. Technology, by nature, individuates. Policing the content of Facebook and other sites is not the remedy.

What can be done? To be continued…

Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

WHY CATHOLICISM IS NEEDED IN THE SOCIAL JUSTICE DEBATE

 

(From the left bank of Underwood Creek, Wauwatosa, WI)

Matthew Walter, editor of the Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing editor of the American Conservative, wrote an essay entitled, This is Why America Needs Catholicism.  Walter is concerned about ‘the soulless tyranny of secular liberalism.’  Wait a minute!  Lincoln did not need Pius IX to dictate to him the Gettysburg address, especially since the Roman Catholic Church has a history of supporting slavery.  But social justice is a political issue and support is needed from all including the institutional Catholic Church.  Aquinas writes, ‘Every truth without exception and whoever may utter it is from the Holy Spirit.’

Advice from the Faith Community is essential.  Let’s look at some examples: 

The Warrior Prophet:  In his Commentary on Jeremiah, Thomas Aquinas explains, ‘A prophet has been consecrated to overturn, root up, destroy, and again to build and renew.’  

The Mystic:  A seer who focuses on the path of justice, respects science and becomes aware without the restrictions of place, space and time.  Sharing of revelation can be through music - a mode of expressing truth.

(Caution: Aquinas was condemned by the Church as a materialist in 1277; He was later canonized by Avignon Pope John XXII in 1323.)