Except it always was. We belong to a very close knit catholic parish, and it takes constant effort to keep it up. I'm a part of the men's club, and we're always doing work -- like actual work -- to make sure the social aspects of the parish work and people can meet friends. We work to encourage friend making, dating, etc. For example, the men regularly wake up before the first mass (so we're talking before 7 AM) to get breakfast ready. That's work. It means getting up early on a saturday morning to foster the kind of social environment we want.

This is not a new thing. In fact, it was more prominent in the past. Knights of Columbus councils like the one i'm in are smaller than ever. Growing up, our knights of columbus was huge, and the guys there again did actual work to keep the community going.

That's group friendship. My parents kept a few friends individually and again... this is also work. My mother would regularly cook large elaborate meals for the sole purpose of having people over... even friends she didn't like. She'd complain about her friend for hours and hours and hours (mainly about political differences) but still invite them over, because to her it's better to have friends than to cut someone out, and anyway... she could barely cut out her friends from her life, much less her family. These days, people cut people off because they aren't on the same page politically, don't have the same taste, etc. Some people literally won't meet up with friends because they have a better thing to do... it's so individualistic as to be toxic.

This is not to say my mother was a pushover by any means. My parents did cut out people from their lives, including family, but it had to be for egregious reasons. For example, my dad's sister and her husband were cut out because they enslaved my parents, but unless someone's going to go to that level of depravity, I don't think my parents could cut someone out of their life.