Singles weigh in on the success and challenges of using modern technology to find love and marry.
In his new biography of Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald relates how, long before the internet, Catholics found ways to enter into sacramental marriage and raise children with people who matched their interests but who were not already part of their established social lives. Indeed, the future pontiff’s mother and father met through the personal ads.
Seewald describes how a small-town Bavarian policeman named Joseph placed a notice in a popular Catholic weekly on July 11, 1920. It read, “Mid. Civ. Serv. Sgl. Cath. 43 y, clean past, from the country, seeks gd Cath. Pure girl, gd cook & all hswk, loc. Exper., with fur., to marry asap [translation: Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, clean past, from the country, seeks good Catholic, pure girl who is a good cook and does all household chores, experienced in homemaking, with a view to marriage as soon as possible].” Joseph had previously advertised unsuccessfully for a young woman with a dowry. On this occasion, Maria, age 36, became a successful match. The pair were married less than four months later. In time, their union would produce three children who distinguished themselves in the service of Christ and his Church. As a result of this union, on Holy Saturday in 1927, 43-year-old Mrs. Ratzinger gave birth to the future pope.
These numbers are a bit overwhelming, so it is helpful to go over sites that might be most useful to Catholics. There are two basic types: general dating sites that have large numbers of people and those that are specifically Catholic dating sites. General Dating Sites. Match.com typifies a general dating site. You begin by setting up a profile. CatholicMatch: Dating App for Catholics. You want to marry someone who shares your faith. But you’re not finding anyone. Helping single Catholics meet is the reason we exist. Over 1.5 million people have signed up for CatholicMatch, and they’re looking for sacramental marriage. Thanks to our focus on community and faith resources, not only.
Like Joseph and Maria Ratzinger, not everyone gets to marry their old high school sweethearts. And during these strange times, tools of the digital age, whether their users stick with them for long or not, may provide a sign of hope that young Catholics who believe they are called to marriage want to figure out how to fulfill their vocations, settle down and have traditional families, despite current events.
During the global pandemic, which has brought long periods of confinement at home for most people, Catholics have continued to meet people, date and marry over the last year.
Online Advantages
Mark DeYoung at the Catholic dating site Ave Maria Singles said via email that his company had seen a 30% increase in new sign-ups during the pandemic, as people turned to online dating “more deliberately during the COVID crisis.” He elaborated, explaining that “the quarantine has both increased people’s interest in finding a spouse and given them more online access to seek him or her.”
Chuck Gallucci, the owner and developer of Catholic Chemistry, a site founded in 2018, tells the same story. He explained via email, “I know many industries have unfortunately been negatively impacted in 2020, but we haven’t seen a negative hit in our service. Our site and app are set apart in that we believe we’re providing a more modern approach to dating for Catholics. A good example is that we’re the only Catholic dating site with video chat, which has many benefits, especially during the 2020 situation.”
There are more than half a dozen Catholic dating apps with tens of thousands of clients or more. Each has its own unique approach. Ave Maria Singles, for example, states on its website that the site is particularly for “devout” Catholics who are looking for “not just a dating site,” but “a marriage site.” Unlike other services, Ave Maria charges an unlimited lifetime membership fee to join. Catholic Chemistry claims it is particularly suited to what today’s singles are looking for, adding that “many Christian dating sites seem stuck in the ’90s.” They are endorsed by leading Catholic media influencers, including Matt Fradd and Tim Horn. Catholic Match claims to be “the largest Catholic dating site in the world” and is endorsed by Danielle Bean, Drew Mariani and other Catholic speakers and personalities. Catholic Match uses a questionnaire to ask about levels of agreement with Church teaching on various matters. Catholic Singles and Catholics Kiss are other faith-specific services; however, some Catholics find more general Christian sites or even secular sites to be just as useful for finding a faithful spouse.
Catholics A-Twitter
Some Catholics on Twitter shared stories about their use of dating apps, both before and during the pandemic, for this story. There were many agonies and ecstasies — and everything in between.
Katelyn Greenlee from Vancouver, Washington, is a committed Catholic who was looking to meet a Catholic husband. Now age 32, she met Kevin, 33, on OkCupid. She explained, “I wanted a serious Catholic who had similar interests and seemed ‘normal’ to me.” She did not make any strong connections with Catholic men on the site, so she started to consider Protestants. Then she encountered Kevin, who “was already 9/10ths of the way toward becoming Catholic when I met him, but I didn’t know that initially.” She related that many of the men who touted their Catholicism in their profiles either seemed to “lack the confidence or go too far … which is a huge turnoff.” She credits the secular dating site for giving her “a wider pool to pull from,” but concluded that her successful match with Kevin “was clearly grace.” The couple married in the Catholic Church in 2018, and they now have a son together — a success story on God’s terms, with the help of modern technology.
Dawn Wyant, 36, from Nashville, Tennessee, met William during the pandemic on Catholic Match. She liked the “sort” feature that allowed her to look at potential matches in relation to specific Church teachings. She explained, “By the time I sent William our first message, I already felt like we had the most important things in life in common.” Being confined at home in different states provided ample opportunity for the couple to spend time together online, and they moved quickly to discussions of marriage and family. Wyant described her experiences of COVID quarantine as “actually delightful” because she was so focused on her online relationship. Dawn and William soon met in person, but William changed his mind. “Instead of following through with our betrothal and engagement plans,” Wyant said, “he ended our relationship.”
What seemed like a Godsend quickly turned into a nightmare scenario. Wyant lays some of the blame at the feet of the same technology that made the match so easy in the first place: “I do think that the marketplace mindset of online-dating sites gives people an easy out. He didn’t have to stay committed to me or fulfill any of his promises because he knew that there were dozens of other women waiting in the wings all available at his fingertips.” She now says that she no longer participates in online dating, desiring instead for “someone to value me for more than my best selfie and how I answer a bunch of form questions.”
Francisco Videla is an Argentinian who says he “dabbled” in secular sites “during quarantine,” but he found his experiences “dehumanizing and demoralizing.” Having struggled with pornography addiction in the past, Videla said flipping through “really provocative” pictures proved to be “anxiety-producing.” After a date with a Christian woman that turned into a friendship rather than romance, he decided to “stick to in-person meetings,” or to try to meet a future spouse “through mutual acquaintance.”
Real Time
Michelle McDaniel from Texas is a self-described “Gen Z” who no longer uses Catholic or secular dating apps after a range of experiences on a few different sites. She says she “could never get vibes from peoples’ profile pictures or texts, and it always seemed like someone would be great and then be completely different in person.” During the pandemic, McDaniel began dating a man she has known in person for some time. She said, “I didn’t feel like a product, but our friendship grew until it was natural for us to start a romantic relationship.”
Traditional Catholic Dating Site
Chris Allen from Texas met his future wife on Catholic Singles, which he describes as a “middle way” between different services that match people according to beliefs. As Allen said, “I didn’t have much experience on other sites because I was a convert. Catholic Match seemed to have too many cafeteria Catholics” who cherry-picked which Church teachings they would embrace. He says that he found Catholic Singles to have more people than other sites and found that “people were more interested in practicing their faith” there. The Allens now have one child and are expecting a second in September 2021.
Andrew Petiprin is fellow of popular culture at Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Institute.
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Related Topics: Dating, Dating & Engaged, Online Dating
The United States has over 40 million people registered on over 1,500 online dating sites. These numbers are a bit overwhelming, so it is helpful to go over sites that might be most useful to Catholics. There are two basic types: general dating sites that have large numbers of people and those that are specifically Catholic dating sites.
General Dating Sites
Match.com typifies a general dating site. You begin by setting up a profile. Match.com asks a series of questions about you, your interests, lifestyle and background and values. At the end of the questions, Match.com encourages you to post a picture of yourself to generate greater interest in your profile. Once your profile is set up, you can search by age, interests, zip code, gender, or even key words. This searching ability is necessary as Match.com has more than 20 million users. (Its already high number of users was increased in 2010 when it absorbed Yahoo! Personals.)
If you worry about being able to sort through these numbers yourself, you can use the Match.com sister site, Chemistry.com. Chemistry.com has you take a personality test and then uses this information to suggest people who would be a good match, ideally for long term relationships.
eHarmony is another large dating site, also around 20 million users, and focuses on people who are interested in marital relationships. To set up a profile on eHarmony, you take a personality questionnaire consisting of over 400 questions. Your answers are analyzed by eHarmony’s “patented Compatibility Matching System” that uses personality traits to match individuals. This process eliminates those interested in casual dating and attracts those who are looking for serious relationships. Some believe that this is the reason eHarmony is one of the few online dating sites that has more women than men. eHarmony’s uniqueness and popularity are reflected in its approximately $50 a month cost.
While there are other general dating sites, Match.com and eHarmony are the most prominent. Other general sites operate in a similar manner but typically have some features that distinguish them from these two goliaths. The best examples include Coffee Meets Bagel, which uses your Facebook profile to find matches and allows women to contact men who have already expressed interest in them. Zoosk also works through Facebook and other social networking sites. These sites have around 10 million users each.
These sites can be useful for Catholic for a number of reasons. First, they provide a large pool of potential matches and they all have a large number of Catholics present on them. Second, they all have ways of indicating how important your faith is to you and matching you with people based on this characteristic. The limitation is that it’s up to you to indicate how important your faith is and what values you hold most important. You must take the initiative in attending to those whose faith and morals seem compatible. In short, these sites have lots of people and many useful tools for matching, but it’s your responsibility to make your faith a key component of these matches.
Catholic Dating Sites
Catholic dating sites have opposite strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, they make faith and morals central to the process of matching. They facilitate both talking and learning about the faith. Their weakness is that they have smaller numbers of users.
Catholic dating sites all function similarly to the general dating sites with profiles, search options, and messaging systems. They supplement helping people find matches by providing articles and advice columns about the Catholic faith. Finally, they all charge around $20 a month, lower if you sign up for six months. CatholicMatch and CatholicSingles are two of the more prominent sites.
Catholic Dating Sites Names
CatholicMatch is run by Acolyte, LLC (whose founder is a Catholic) and is one of the largest dating site specifically for Catholics. Its perspective is expressed through its seven “Do you agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching on…” questions that everyone must answer when they set up their profile. (These questions focus on the Eucharist, premarital sex, contraception, life issues, papal infallibility, Mary, and Holy Orders.) These questions can be answered by agreeing, slightly agreeing, or not agreeing, and the answers are used to find matches. CatholicMatch also runs the CatholicMatch Institute, which features success stories from CatholicMatch couples as well as dating and marriage advice.
CatholicSingles, another large dating site, aims to connect faithful Catholics by focusing on their activities and interests, rather than pictures. Users are asked to provide information on their personality, family background, spending habits, and how often they pray and go to mass. In addition to answering classic prompts such as “My ideal first date might be,” users on CatholicSingles can add responses to “How religion plays a role in my daily life” and “What being Catholic means to me” to their profiles. Singles can filter for potential matches by age and location. Unlike CatholicMatch, they do not ask questions on whether you agree with Church teachings or not.
A third Catholic dating site launched in 2018. CatholicChemistry promises both a fresh approach to dating and a streamlined interface. Founder Chuck Gallucci says, “We want CatholicChemistry to be more than a meeting-place for Catholic singles. Every aspect of the user experience is designed to lead people towards deeper fidelity and appreciation of their faith.” Like CatholicMatch, the site also asks users’ opinions on Church teaching, but allows users to select if they’re unsure, but open to learning more. Once you’ve created a profile, you can filter potential matches by age, location, mass attendance, liturgy preferences, and answers to faith related questions.
The one site that is slightly different is AveMariaSingles. It focuses on a very specific Catholic audience. The website “pledges to offer a service solely dedicated to helping faithful, practicing Catholics find their future spouse and help them become a better follower of Christ.” The site is for Catholics who are able to marry in the Church and opposed to using contraception. Members have discerned a vocation to sacramental marriage but have not yet found the right person. AveMariaSingles offers a slightly different payment plan: a one time fee of over $150 that allows permanent access to the site. The result of this approach is a highly active membership that is just over 10,000 people.
While this list of sites is not exhaustive, it should give you a sense of the kind of sites that are available as well as their popularity and usefulness.
For Further Reading
- Catholics Are Meeting Their Spouses Online – a PDF from CatholicMatch
Best Catholic Dating Website
Related Topics: Dating, Dating & Engaged, Online Dating