Life expectancy is rising in many places across the U.S. There are some places where lifespans are getting shorter and geographical inequalities are becoming more pronounced, a new study suggests.
Nationwide in 2014, the average life expectancy was about 79.1 years, up 5.3 years from 1980, the study found. For men, life expectancy climbed from 70 years to 76.7 years, while for women it increased from 77.5 years to 81.5 years.
For some reason, the men seem to have outpaced the women in the number of increased years of life expectancy.
To examine changes in life expectancy over time, researchers looked at death certificates from each county in the country. One limitation of the study is that there might be errors in county death records, the authors note. Researchers also lacked data to explore how much the findings might be explained by migration of certain types of people to certain communities.
It seems that little, if any, attention is being paid to this phenomenon by either the Church itself or any of the social agencies the Church helps to support directly or indirectly.
With an aging population comes greater demands upon the Church for the spiritual care of elderly and infirm faithful.
At present, older Catholics become increasingly marginalized from the life of the Church due to physical infirmity and illness. As the number of Priests in active ministry continues to shrink, the availability of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick will be severely curtailed.
Elderly Catholics are prone to believe that the Church has forgotten them and their many years of their fidelity in practicing the Faith. Permanent Deacons and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist have proven themselves to be great blessing and resource to Pastors in the care of the ill and homebound elderly in their parishes. But, Permanent Deacons and Extraordinary Ministers are limited in the Sacramental services they can provide.
As life expectancy continues to rise, the Church will need to address the manner in which it will provide for the Sacramental care of aged members of the faithful.
Certainly, one response would be to provide the opportunity for married men of proven virtue (presumably our present Permanent Deacons) to be ordained Priests who would be capable of providing the full range of Sacramental and spiritual care to the aged. And yet, the official Church continues to drag its heels in even addressing such a possibility.
God’s People deserve the nourishment and refreshment that comes to them through the Sacramental life of the Church. Depriving them of these graces in order to uphold a canonical discipline (celibacy) is no virtue.
We can only hope that the Holy Spirit will move the hearts and minds of the Bishops and the Holy Father to insure that, when the Sacraments are most important in the lives of the faithful, that is, in their twilight years, there will be Priests to provide that care that will help usher these good and faithful servants into Eternal Life.
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