First of all, I'm sorry that you are having a difficult time finding a ministry that serves Catholic singles. There are some really good ones out there. My diocese has a vibrant young adult ministry. While it is not strictly for singles and is mainly for those in their 20's and 30's, they do allow adults into their 40's attend their functions. Maybe your diocese has something.

Secondly, you seem passionate about having a ministry for singles. Start one! You don't have to wait for someone else to do it. That is the problem with many things in our churches (Catholic and otherwise). They want to be ministered to but are unwilling to take leadership roles in that ministry. The parish priests cannot do everything. They rely heavily on their parishioners to coordinate and lead the many ministries in their churches. Don't wait for someone else to start a singles ministry in your parish. Schedule an appointment with your pastor and talk to him about starting one yourself.

We need to encourage those called to married life to live it the best they can. Will that help vocations in the (very) long run? Sure, but that is not the reason to encourage faithfulness to one's vocation. We need to be faithful to our vocation because that is what God wants us to do. If society (or a majority of it) recommits itself to following God's will in marriage and all other endeavors, that would indeed be transformative in ways beyond just priestly vocations.

But this is not a one or the other thing – we need to get people paying attention to what God wants for them. That said, there is no dearth of people encouraging marriage, but I do see people discourage priestly vocations for their own children. They push doctor or lawyer and talk about grandchildren, but never discuss being a priest or nun. Or they say, "if they are called" when referring to religious life, but not for anything else. So vocations are de facto discouraged. Some families, including those that appear to be otherwise strong Catholic families, downright discourage vocations.

So while promoting good marriage is great, we do need to tackle vocations head on. In fact, both come under the larger heading of understand what God wants us to do. And the call to the priesthood or religious life requires extra attention because it is the vocation so easily drowned out by the cacophony of the modern world.

You see, you started with encouraging marriage and now you talk about encouraging strong family relationships, which I think, is a better approach. Marriage as such won't change anything if its meaning and implications are not fully understood.

The question that remains is how do we combat moral relativism and the pull of our culture? Being in youth ministry, and working with teens, I firmly believe that the best way to do that is to encourage strong family relationships. There is only so much I, or the pastors of the parishes I work for, can do to help youth to combat our society. We must, as a Church, encourage strong marriages and families. Doing so will help future generations overcome the crisis of faith we now face and lead to more vocations–to both marriage and the priesthood.

When I left the seminary and re-united with the beautiful woman who became my bride, a Phillipino friend said to her that it was a saying in his country that if a woman "took" a man from the priesthood, she had to "make up for it" by giving ten sons to the Church. (He was half-joking.)

We're three sons and a daughter on our way.

Most of the men I know who are currently in seminary or who are recently ordained come from — not surprisingly — homes where Mom and Dad are very happily married.

(I might add that just as often, it seems, the happy families they come from are, relatively speaking, "large" ones.)