While many internet dating sites only allow the pubic to view a small sample of member profiles, this didn't seem to be the case with Ave Maria Singles. I was happy to see almost a hundred pages of eligible women listed but as I scrolled through all of the profiles, my curiosity turned to disappointment.
What appeared to be a large number of women really wasn't when you broke down those profiles geographically. Members of Ave Maria Singles not only included people from the United States and Canada but also from countries on other continents. My home state of Massachusetts had just two members and one of them lived very far away from me. “Would love to join you for coffee. Let me check my frequent flier miles.”
Some profiles had missing photos or introductions that read, “I will answer later.” Putting your best foot forward is crucial in the online dating scene and incomplete profiles project laziness. Of all the females on the site, less than a handful intrigued me. Saying, “I love God and going to Mass and I'm looking for a man who embraces Jesus as his Lord and Savior” really doesn't tell me much about the individual behind the profile.
A 6 month membership was $79 and a lifetime membership was $179. Basic memberships could be upgraded to a “premium membership” for an additional fee. If Ave Maria Singles was founded on such a noble intention...to bring Godly people together for the sacrament of marriage, then why must they nickle and dime us like that?
One reviewer on Yelp writes: “Imagine you are a Catholic single. Imagine you are having a hard time meeting people. Imagine a website that tries to take advantage of your insecurities and abuses the fact that you may be a little desperate. It lures you in with the promise of thousands of members and implies that they have a lot of active members. They had 6 active members. In all of Texas.” The reviewer then complains of the site's poor customer service when she asked for an immediate refund.
Another reviewer who met his wife on Ave Maria Singles in 2003 echoes these sentiments. Despite a lifetime membership, the first conversations he had with his wife on the site disappeared from his account after a long period of inactivity. The company agreed to restore them only if he provided an endorsement for the site's “success story” section. After continued discussion, Ave Maria Singles agreed to retrieve the messages for a fee. He remarks such treatment “...isn't much of a reflection of Christian charity, and certainly doesn't represent what Catholics should be seeking and practicing in marriage.”
This reviewer also says that out of curiosity, he decided to investigate the number of women ages 34 to 41 who were currently in the same state he had searched ten years ago. Only 8 hits appeared out of a state with a population of 6 million and he recognized a couple of those profiles from ten years ago! “They advertise that they have had over two thousand marriages take place among members, but that is for all fifty states plus foreign countries, over a period of fifteen years. From that perspective, two thousand isn't that high a number (if all occurred in the U.S., that would be fewer than three per state per year).”
All of this does not give me much faith in online dating and those negative reviews certainly strike a chord. There are people who have reported positive experiences with Ave Maria Singles. They say the website helped them find a spouse when nothing else seemed to work. According to the site's creator, finding your better half “takes God's time, not yours.” He advises staying with it even if five years pass.
Being glib about “God's plan” can be very hurtful to singles especially if you've been alone for such a long time. Charging a large fee just to join and then segregating memberships based on how much more someone pays doesn't seem very Christ-like. Neither does holding a member's cherished correspondence to his future wife hostage. I hope the people behind Ave Maria Singles remember the verse “whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
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