A new study shows that long-term loneliness can shave years off a person’s life expectancy by wreaking havoc with his or her immune system. UCLA researchers looked at the DNA of socially isolated people and found that those who described themselves as chronically lonely had distinct patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it negatively affecting the body’s response to tissue damage. Given the skyrocketing number of “live-alones” today — the 2000 Census showed that single-person households now outnumber addresses housing nuclear families — it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to say that the Church saw this problem coming, and suggested a remedy to it, a long time ago. Drawing from St. Paul’s thought in 1 Corinthians 12:26, the Second Vatican Council taught, in Lumen Gentium: “If one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with him, and if one member is honored, all the members together rejoice.”