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| To veil or not to veil? |
1) Eucharist 2) Contraception 3) Sanctity of Life 4) Papal Infallibility 5) Premarital Sex 6) Immaculate Conception 7) Holy Orders
Ave Maria Singles has similar "profile-building" questions to weed out non-Catholics or those unfaithful to Church teaching according to the site's founder, Anthony Bouno. Many have suggested the real meaning of "5/7" is that you agree with the Church on all of those things except for 2) Contraception and 5) Premarital Sex.
Leila Miller, author of the blog Little Catholic Bubble places the onus on men. In her post entitled A Disappointing Eureka, she couldn't understand how a guy could accept some of the trickier concepts of the Church while at the same time rejecting two other teachings that seem pretty straightforward. She suspected it had something to do with these men wanting to have lots of sex but her husband explained it boiled down to personal sacrifice. These 5/7 men were fine with dogma as long as they didn't have to give something up. Of course, it's naive to think the 5/7 phenomenon is exclusive to one gender. During my years at a Catholic high school, most of my female friends refused to make those particular personal sacrifices.
How many times have we seen Catholics water down the faith when things hit too close to home? Marriage goes from being a life-long commitment to something that just runs its course when someone new to lust after appears. Missing weekly Mass is no longer a grave sin because you really wanted to sleep in. The Church's teachings turn into suggestions and the Bible is reduced to two words: Don't judge. As long as you are still a "good person" then nothing much should be expected from you.
For these reasons, I think it's good that dating websites have filters so people can find a spouse who meets certain expectations. However, the 7 questions these sites ask can have other consequences as one reviewer of CatholicMatch.com points out.
This person says the answers to these questions are rarely so black-and-white. Forcing people to divulge how they stand can lead to serious problems with the way certain members are perceived especially on the forums. 5/7 could mean they disagree with the Church's stance on not allowing priests to marry or papal infallibility.
The reviewer brings up a great point. Sometimes being excessively obedient is actually the morally wrong thing to do. During the priest sex abuse scandal, there were people who could have exposed this great evil early on but instead they followed orders and kept things quiet for decades. Am I against papal infallibility? When it comes to shielding the priests who covered up heinous crimes, you bet!
Therein lies the conundrum with these questions. Many of the "7/7" Catholics I've met over the years tend to be aloof. Instead of trying to get more young people to attend Mass, they prefer to discuss their favorite Cardinal Virtue or whether or not to use a chin paten during Mass. They feel the Latin Mass is somehow a step above Mass in the vernacular. Wearing a chapel veil is also important because in their minds, Vatican II ruined the Catholic Church. No mention of the sex scandal or corrupt clergy, though. A priest is to be respected and obeyed without question no matter how arrogant or unchristian he acts. Well, this isn't the Middle Ages.
I'm not sure I could date any Catholic who was afraid to embrace critical thought from time to time. A morally healthy Church demands we become something more than mindless zombies who do nothing in the face of injustice. Perhaps these dating websites should allow their members to answer the 7 questions in degrees rather than Yes or No. It would reveal more of what's inside a person's heart.
Mrs. Miller lives in my diocese, and was part the group that advised our bishop to write an "exhortation to men" awhile back that included nasty stuff like "if you are not a father (in either the actual biological sense, or in the spiritual sense such as a priest is), then you have merely lived a half-life". She thinks that single practicing Catholic women are hanging from the trees ripe for the picking, and a single man can easily find them.
ReplyDeleteBut she proudly touts Catholic Match because she steered her own children into it, which seems to be a giant contradiction. Anyone who's done online dating knows the many ways that it's impractical for most people. Screening someone simply on the basis of "7/7" is a ridiculous idea. As you note, none of them are simple yes/no matters.
I've tried to engage Mrs. Miller in discussion, but she is a very difficult person. She knows what she knows, and is not really open to other points of view. Especially that of a single man her own age who simply didn't hit the "dating lottery" in his twenties like she did.
I actually found your back and forth discussion in one of her articles. My impression was she didn't fully understand but its easy for married Catholics (with kids no less) to comment on things only singles could truly understand. When you're not feeling lonely and hopeless, it's so easy to tell someone who is: "Don't feel bad. God has a plan for you."
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