Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
September 11, 2002
Dioceses work to reach out to, involve seniors in Church's life
From spiritual to corporal works of mercy, seniors continue to serve Church
By Julie Asher
(CNS) — For Bette Gunnerson, membership in a Catholic senior club in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston is about more than just socializing.
She enjoys playing canasta with her friends and likes the parties they have and the day trips they take. But the club is also an opportunity to gather with her peers and talk about issues they are facing in their own lives and in their communities.
"We enjoy one another's company and we pray for one another,'' she said. "We visit the sick, bury the dead. It helps you to prepare for your afterlife, helps you prepare for where you are going."
Gunnerson is a resident at St. Dominic Village in Houston, a complex that includes independent-living quarters, where she lives, as well as an assisted-living facility, a nursing home, a chapel and a wellness center, and is involved in the senior club there. Before she moved in the late 1990s, she was a member of St. Cyril Parish and an active member of its senior club.
Gunnerson said the St. Dominic club is a place to "share all of your needs and all of your wants.'' Her involvement also has earned her a spot on a local civic committee looking into affordable housing for seniors.
"I think if you're a senior who stays home and doesn't get involved, you're not really living," she added.
The existence of so many parish senior clubs in the Texas diocese is not just a happy accident but one way the Church there is reaching out to older Catholics.
Katherine Bingham, director of the diocesan Office of Aging Ministry, said that among the more than 150 parishes in the 10-county, 10,000-square-mile diocese, there currently are about 100 active senior clubs. She said some parishes might have two groups: one for the "younger old," ages 55-65, and a second one for those over 65 years of age. She noted that seniors in both the urban and rural areas of the diocese are active in the clubs.
"It's really our charge here to really bring forth the special gifts, as well as the needs, of older adults, not only into diocesan-supported activities but to raise the awareness of that within the parish," Bingham said.
Seniors enjoy the social activities of the clubs, but they are also very involved in their parishes, helping out with everything from church bazaars to parish directories, according to Bingham.
Her office, which was established in 1974, does workshops and training, leadership support, caregiver support and looks at different opportunities for seniors for faith formation, spiritual development and education.
"It may be our own denial of aging that we forget that older adults not only have a tremendous amount of wisdom and gifts to offer back to the community, but that their faith is developing as well," Bingham said. "It doesn't stop growing once the children leave the house, and I think we need to make a special effort to reach out to older adults to make sure they are fully integrated within the whole Church."
She added that seniors also "can be asked to help in the formation of younger adults."
A recent education program, sponsored by Bingham's office with a correctional-ministries volunteer, focused on crimes and the elderly to raise awareness about family violence, violence directed at older adults and scams aimed at older adults and how to avoid them.
Bingham said a number of seniors were looking into a way to offer support to seminarians, so her office was pairing seminarians with individual senior groups. Each group will pray for its seminarian, communicate with him and maybe even send him small personal items. Another project seniors want to pursue, she said, is voter education to help older voters understand a new electronic voting method Texas plans to implement.
"Senior citizens make up the biggest volunteer base in so many parishes," said Ginny Knight-Simon, who is coordinator of the Office of Wisdom in the Diocese of Owensboro, Ky. The office oversees parish outreach to seniors.
"They help each other, they volunteer to make quilts, they phone St. Vincent de Paul, Red Cross, you name it. They, I think, show exactly what the Church is built on," she added.
Knight-Simon encourages the 78 parishes in the 32-county, 12,500-square-mile diocese to organize senior groups for a monthly activity, which often includes a meal, games and a speaker addressing a topic older Catholics want to be informed about.
Her office also sponsors an annual Day of Wisdom at the pastoral center for senior adults that they help plan. And for the last three years, a Sophia Award has been given to an outstanding senior citizen in the diocese, with the winner chosen from parish nominations.
"I always try to have an uplifting day (for the award presentation) because age seems like in this country is treated as an illness or a disease and it is not," Knight-Simon said. "I want people to realize that just because you are certain age doesn't mean that you're no longer useful. You're very useful and all life is a gift from God — and should be treated that way."
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