Ask Michele: National Singles Week
If you didn’t already know, this week is National Singles Week. The Buckeye Singles Council started “National Singles Week” in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed. If you are single and/or unmarried, then you are part of a growing part of society.
44.1% of all U.S. residents 18 and older are unmarried. Of those, 62% have never been married. 46% of households nationwide are maintained by unmarried men and women. 33 million people lived alone in 2012. The statistics show that being single, and living alone, is part of the American lifestyle. This also means the needs of singles are being more important, and more apparent, in our culture. The aim of National Singles week is to bring those needs into our awareness in an effort to obtain equality in government benefits (such as Family Medical Leave Act) and protections. (see https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb13-ff21.html for references)
So that’s good and important for the democratic society we live in, but what about the church? Is the church equally responsible for identifying and meeting the needs of single and unmarried Catholics? Do you feel welcomed and embraced by your parish?
What I learned while working at a large American Diocese as the Director of Young Adult Ministry (a term I always felt was a euphuism for single, with an age-limit), “the church” means me and it means you. As Catholics, we rarely have the luxury of professional ministry (hired help) outside of the youth pastor or the director of religious education. If your parish has a non-volunteer young adult or singles minister, you are very blessed. If your parish does not have a young adult or singles minister, then it’s simply up to you to do something about it.
We are the church. Catholics embrace the full meaning of the Body of Christ. We serve at liturgy, we sing in the choir or band, we volunteer to teach children’s ministry, we lead the divorce care groups, we lead the Social justice ministries. You name it, lay volunteers are doing it at the church. We even sit on the financial and planning committees. So that means, if you’d like to see ministry specifically for singles and unmarried Catholics (bible studies, fellowship events, speakers, outdoor or sporting events, special masses, mission trips, etc.), then you’re going to have to start one yourself. It’s how you live out your vocation, bestowed at Baptism and strengthened at Confirmation. It’s how you grow deeper not only in your relationship with Christ, but also with His Body. It’s how you meet other singles, and journey together to support each other in living a life that is counter-cultural, a life dedicated to more then the worship of the self.
And why do I think I have the right to herald a call for action? Because it’s exactly what I did. After participating in a young adult ministry in a large city, but holding no leadership positions, I moved to a smaller city and found myself at a parish with no singles or young adult group. How was I supposed to get connected in my new town? So I approached the pastor and started one. And others who wanted to help showed up. And hundreds signed up. I didn’t quit my professional sales job, I didn’t become a religious zealot, I was simply a Catholic living out my vocation. And it changed my life. I grew spiritually, personally, emotionally .. really in every way possible. I gained much more then I ever gave.
So I hope to instill in you a sense of duty, and a desire to see more from your Church, by challenging you to see more of yourself in singles ministry.
