No Catholic Street Cred Here

(From the files of Catholic Match)

Before joining Catholic Match, I wondered how the website's women would perceive me especially since I still embraced the Church's teachings on premarital sex after all these years. My optimistic side hoped they would find this continuing sacrifice to be admirable especially since we lived in such an oversexed culture.

Only a couple of profiles even mentioned the subject with one woman from Texas flat-out stating: “I am a virgin. You be one too, please.” Another female mentioned the shame and anguish abstaining from sex brought her. Other than that, most profiles avoided the subject altogether which is somewhat understandable given the need to avoid creepy guys.

My profile confronted the issue head-on and I clearly stated that I was looking for someone who shared the same sacrifice. Saving myself for marriage brought me loneliness, isolation, rejection and ridicule. Was it so wrong to want a woman who understood these bitter fruits all too well? It wasn't until I participated in the Catholic Match forums that I saw how controversial such an opinion really was.

One of the forum regulars named Jessica* talked about her disdain for the purity movement that had gained popularity in the 1990s. She felt placing such an emphasis on virginity only undermined the Church's teachings on chastity and forgiveness. For her, a person's past didn't matter as much as who they were in the present especially if they were sorry for their sins and now lived a chaste life. Catholic Match's co-founder echoed this sentiment by stating that life was messy and we shouldn't dismiss people based solely on their past.

I could see the point they were trying to make but for someone who had “walked the walk” when it came to this one particular but important Catholic value their statements bothered me. Why were we telling generations of young adults how wonderful it was to save themselves for marriage if people could get an automatic do-over when it came to sex? Doesn't a person's past carry some weight? A certain talk radio host liked to warn against defining deviancy down. Must we lower the bar so that the people who gave in to their carnal desires don't feel so bad?

I refuted a few of Jessica's points only to be shot down by forum users in ways I had never imagined. Jessica claimed virginity in and of itself wasn't a perfect indicator that someone had embraced the Church's values. According to her, a person could be such a dateless wonder, they never had the chance to lose their virginity in the first place. She asserted that chastity was a far more important value because that hypothetical virgin could have a porn addiction or masturbate frequently. Other forum users said there were also “technical virgins” out there meaning people who had engaged in everything BUT sexual intercourse.

I thought they were reaching and said, “If someone on Catholic Match is still a virgin it's probably because they took the notion of saving themselves for marriage pretty seriously.” I also thought they were going overboard with their definition of lust. So what if every now and then you had a sexual fantasy? In my opinion, this was focusing on a very small thing at the expense of a very significant Church teaching.

Catholic Match's co-founder chimed in again to say having a “virgin or bust” mentality bordered on the perverse.  Well, I posted a 2021 article from Catholic Match's own blog where it was stated that couples who waited until marriage to have sex:

“rated the quality of their martial sex 15% higher than people who had premarital sex”

“expressed 22% more stability in their marriages with a 20% higher satisfaction rate”

“are less likely to get divorced.”

Statistics like these were pitched to me in Catholic high school and Sunday school and they're a big reason why I hold the opinions I do. One 60-year old forum user named Pauline appreciated my perspective and wrote in my defense: “He has made a huge sacrifice, saving himself for marriage and, knowing the cost of this sacrifice, he wants a woman who has suffered and sacrificed as he has. Not because he is better, but because he wants to relate to another woman on this HUGE value for him. I get that. I respect that.”

Unfortunately, her comments failed to make an impression and one forum user named Max would later accuse me of being obsessed with wanting to deflower a virgin. It's sad when such an innocent perspective is maligned like that. Sadder still is when something so virtuous is seen as depraved...on a Catholic website no less. God help our religion.

* All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Forum Fallout

(From the files of Catholic Match)

If I thought sharing some of my hobbies, personality and humor in the Catholic Match forums might grab the attention of the woman of my dreams, it didn't take long for me to realize how sadly mistaken I was. Not only did I not get along with many of the regular contributors on the site, a great deal of my forum topics and posts caused a certain amount of acrimony among these people.

One of this blog's core beliefs is that the Church should be doing more to help its singles. I've spoken about this on Long Lost Black Sheep far too many times and have highlighted the reasons why I think this is true. My opinion was met with skepticism on the Catholic Match forums however, with some members saying it wasn't the Church's job to get people like me a date. They felt I was just making excuses for my own failures and thought it was ridiculous to place blame on the Church for my chronic singleness. I gave it right back to them and explained how the Catholic Church had far more resources than I did to bring people together. With access to facilities across the region, the Archdiocese could send out a clarion call for singles to meet up in low-cost venues. In some ways, the Church does this already with The National Catholic Singles Conference although that event isn't low-cost and often takes place in locations that are prohibitively far away. I also remarked that at the very least, our Church should be discussing the problem singles face and include us in their prayers. The regular forum users were not impressed although years later, one of my biggest critics admitted I had a point and stated the Church didn't care about single people. He did have to get a dig in against me by prefacing his opinion with the comment: ”Not to sound like someone who used to complain about this all the time....”

While lamenting the lack of Catholic Match women who were informed about world events, I remarked that everyone should have some knowledge of the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine...at least enough to hold up a conversation where you could justify one side or the other. This comment was met with disbelief by one woman who refused to broaden her horizons and thought my expectations were out in left field. Fast forward to the October 2023 attacks along the Gaza Strip, the subsequent response by Israel and the massive protests and divisions it caused in this country. I guess my forum comment wasn't so wacky after all.

A topic of discussion that was supposed to be on the lighter side of things was music. Forum users often shared favorite songs or posted tunes that pertained to certain categories. Years of listening to college and community radio had opened my world up to so many different genres and countless obscure songs so a good number of my musical selections took people off guard. I had more than one Catholic Match member warn me that my love of goth music was a slippery slope to satanism and suicide. Well, that's not what goth is about and I thought they were pretty ignorant to lump everyone together with the few bad apples that did exist in the genre. Also causing some friction was my utter disdain for hokey Christian rock which seemed to be very popular among Catholic Match members.

As discussed in a previous blog entry, I've had some wonderful opposite sex friendships over the years but for many forum users, such a thing was taboo. Naturally, this caused a fair amount of arguments and at times, it felt like I was talking to people from the 1950s. I placed such a high value on a person's individuality, it didn't matter to me what gender they were. Truth be told, I got along better with some of my female friends than I did some of my male friends because we shared more common interests and personality traits. According to the “trad Catholics” in the forums, having opposite sex friends was dangerous because sooner or later, temptation would set in. When I told one of my female friends about this, she replied, “Those people are idiots.”

In fact, by reading the Catholic Match forums I saw a strange level of discord and misunderstanding between the sexes that reminded me of some Muslim cultures. One regular in the forums who I sparred with all the time admitted that she really didn't understand men and figured things would work out between her future husband and herself once they got married. OH, YOU POOR FOOL!!!! I couldn't help but think how miserable the guy would be for having a wife that clueless.

Even though the Bible really doesn't give us a practical guide for dating and marriage, many forum users expected the men to be near-emotionless providers who were strong at all times while the women ran the households ideally as stay-at-home moms. I thought such notions were naive at best. When one forum member asked what the men of Catholic Match would do to protect their women, I joked, “Buy a rocket launcher.” My type of humor usually went over like a lead balloon.

Despite my bad reputation on the forum, people seemed to be interested in what I had to say. Some of the topics I started had huge numbers of views into the thousands as opposed to a few hundred which was the norm. A few men even sent me private messages of encouragement especially when I put annoying female forum users in their place. One gentleman who commiserated with me said, “I didn't know I was a bad Catholic until I joined Catholic Match.” I could definitely identify with that comment. I went to Mass every week, saved myself for marriage, tried to be a thoughtful person, prayed every day and yet it just wasn't good enough for some forum users.

I even had one of the regular female forum users issue what I considered to be a threat by saying I was hurting my chances at dating since many of the women on Catholic Match read what I posted and often discussed it among themselves. Well, I was only being honest and if these women found fault with my opinions, then I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

This same regular female forum user posted a topic that caused a firestorm: Chastity vs. Purity. I will discuss this controversy in the next blog entry.

Forum Frustrations

(From the files of Catholic Match)

When I first joined Catholic Match, there seemed to be a few interesting souls on the forums who could also be categorized as “black sheep” since they didn't fit into the (trad)itional Catholic mould. One man in particular came from a very dark background and admitted to having friends in the porn industry even though he did not embrace their lifestyle. Other black sheep were women who considered themselves to be feminists in addition to being Catholic. I thought it was beautiful that despite their very unconventional perspectives, there was something about Catholicism that still attracted them to the faith. Unfortunately, these members seemed to disappear after only a short while and the forums became overrun with users who were somewhat close-minded.

Many long-time Catholic Match members lamented how fun the forums used to be at one time. They could discuss just about any topic in an adult manner without it being banned by moderators. Some felt the forums now suffered from far too many trivial topics because serious and / or controversial subjects weren't encouraged. It's typical of me to show up late to the party so-to-speak and I wonder how things would have gone if I had joined Catholic Match several years earlier.

The website's co-founder Brian grew increasingly frustrated with the negativity on the forums and threatened several times to shut it down completely. He also minimized anything we had to say about the website by making the claim forum users only represented a very tiny portion of the total Catholic Match membership. I proposed the theory that all this negativity was a result of the Church's decline coinciding with the emergence of the first few generations of Catholics who were no longer able to find a potential spouse.

Of course we were frustrated, angry and depressed because we couldn't rely on the traditional methods of courtship that had once helped so many before us enter into the bonds of Holy Matrimony. A look at the obituaries of old-timers usually reveals how they met their spouses and for a lot of Catholics of a certain age, there were dances and other social activities that our generation lacks. If my parish tired to put on a dance, it would be populated by nothing but old people...if anyone bothered to show up at all.

Unfortunately, the “new rules” of online dating leave much to be desired and for a great number of us, they just aren't practical. Some Catholic Match members have commitments that prevent them from pursuing long-distance relationships. Others do not want to date foreigners who cannot speak English very well. Some are unwilling to date people who don't take care of themselves. More often than not, Brian seemed to scold us for our many deal-breakers. According to him, dating has changed for the average Catholic and we need to change our long-held expectations or risk being alone for the rest of our lives. He also claimed some of the obstacles we faced while trying to find a spouse were self-imposed and we should be more flexible.

Well, there are some things I just won't compromise on. Should a gourmet chef who is passionate about his vocation date a woman who only loves junk food? Should a fitness guru date a slob who won't get off the couch? Some of us don't have time to learn a new language and culture just to go on a date. Is that our fault? Even in the world of Catholic dating, attraction plays a role. Should I date a person who is totally unattractive to me? I suppose any couple could have a successful marriage if they had zero expectations but that's not reality.

With no women on Catholic Match to date, I kept coming back to the forums time and time again. In just four short years, I managed to rack up over a million and a half posts. I even saw a few regular forum users pass away without ever finding a spouse. What does all that say about the effectiveness of online dating for Catholics?

All Dead Ends Lead to the Forum

(From the files of Catholic Match)

After a couple of weeks into my Catholic Match membership, the selection of eligible singles who lived in the area was pretty much exhausted.  Branching out to include all of New England and parts of New York also revealed dismal results.  Even searching for women by typing in certain hobbies and music yielded very little for me.  I was starting to get discouraged and had an uneasy feeling about my first foray into the world of online dating.

Then I noticed in the upper corner of my profile page a heading entitled "Forums" and after clicking on it, the website took me to Catholic Match's online community.  Topics of discussion were divided by category and they included: Prayers & Support, Dating & Single Life, Member Meet-ups, Divorced Catholics, Community Help, Saint Peter's Square, Single Parenting, Wedding and Marriage Prep, Ages 45+, Ages Under 45, Widows and Widowers, Understanding the Faith, Sports & Games, Eastern Rites, Entertainment & Humor, and Men's and Women's Discussions.  Saint Peter's Square was for subjects that really didn't fit those other categories.  Community Help was a place to discuss technical issues with the website.  The individual Men's and Women's groups were gender specific and men couldn't see or read what the women were talking about and vice versa (...unless they made a fake account).

There were many rules in the forums.  Everything from banning the use of profane language to demanding topics be meaningful and not trivial.  They listed  "Coke or Pepsi?" as a topic that was too trivial and I found that to be odd since many of the more lighthearted subjects discussed in the forums were actually like that.    

The forums had three volunteer moderators who were also Catholic Match members looking for love.  They had the power to lock a post down if a discussion got out of hand.  Two of the moderators were close to 50 years old and one was close to 60.  This was not a good sign and I wondered how effective Catholic Match was if even the moderators languished on this website year after year after year.

The website's co-creator, who was married with kids, also trolled the forums and sometimes fights broke out with members who were critical of the website.  He too had the power to lock down discussions or simply make them disappear altogether.

I've heard it said that some people fail at online dating because they just can't seem to engage with others based solely on a profile since it reveals no social cues.  Some singles hit it off by reading body language and hearing tones and inflections.  I figured the forums would be a way for me to bring some of my hobbies, personality and humor to the table through the written word and perhaps this might grab the attention of the woman of my dreams.  After all, for each forum participant, there were plenty of "lurkers" who chose to read the forums but either decided not comment or couldn't comment because they had a free membership.

Well, my first post didn't go so well.  I lamented that after two weeks on the site, I felt alone because there weren't any singles who seemed to have much in common with me.  Moderator Jerry, who refused to use a profile photo, remarked that if I was feeling alone, I must be the one with the problem.  That was my first introduction to something that was quite common on Catholic Match: Victim Blaming.

This website made some pretty great claims about finding love and with success stories that bordered on the miraculous, I had high expectations for Catholic Match.  What better way to deflect criticism of this site than to shift blame on individual members.  "Your expectations are too high."  "You're trying to date out of your league."  "You have too many deal-breakers."  "You're being too unrealistic."  "You're not contacting enough women."  (Maybe the website didn't have enough members of the opposite sex who were attractive, witty or moral.  Ever think of that?!)

With dating no longer a realistic possibility, I spent more time in the forums despite my initial disagreement with moderator Jerry.  There were many other members here who had reached dead ends long ago and were now marooned on Catholic Match...not just for years but for decades.  Some were women who had wanted families but were now beyond the age of fertility.  How sad.  If the website's success rate was better, perhaps this would not be the case.

Unfortunately, the Covid lock-downs of 2020 would put an end to all dating in general for quite some time and the forums allowed people to kill time, gain a sliver of human interaction and vent frustrations.  Some Catholic Match members even found a real sense of fellowship here but my interactions with this virtual community usually led to arguments and misunderstanding.

The Cure for Starvation is Food

It amazes me how little support Catholic singles get from not only the Church but from other Catholic singles.  Loneliness is not a good thing.  In fact, it can be quite hazardous to your health and study after study shows when people lack meaningful connections with others, they tend not to live as long.  It's even been said that loneliness is worse for your long-term health than smoking or obesity.  Then there's the oft quoted factoid that on average married people live longer than their unattached counterparts.  So why do a lot of my fellow singles think being alone is no big deal?

On one particular Catholic dating chat room, I earned a “Gloomy Gus” reputation because I dared to say that being single was miserable.  Despite all the talk of brotherhood and fraternity, there wasn't much sympathy to be found from the Catholic men on the site.  Instead I was told to suck it up.  One chat room member even went so far as to question my mental health because he did things by himself all the time and it didn't bother him.  He said he could travel, take in a concert, go to a restaurant and do many other activities without having to dwell on being alone.  Well, I've done many of those things to death by myself and I just get tired of never having anyone to share those experiences with.

I guess a lot of Catholic men (and many women) think the only emotions the male gender of the species are entitled to fall somewhere between stoic and angry.  In their eyes, to complain about loneliness is to show weakness and that isn't tolerated.  Sometimes I'm reminded of a public service announcement on the radio that starts with someone saying, “It's only cancer.  Get over it.”  Then the point is raised, “If we wouldn't say that to someone with cancer then why do we say that to someone with depression?”  Then it's explained how serious a mental health problem depression is with thousands of people taking their lives each year.  I guess for many Catholics, there's no legitimate reason to be sad about being single.  These folks often quip, “Others have it worse than you.” or “God loves us and that's all we should need.”  Maybe they'll say we should be patient because God has a plan for us.  Despite their good intentions this advice isn't very helpful and sometimes, it's actually hurtful because it trivializes those deep feelings of isolation that can't be shaken off so easily.

Some Catholics in this chat room have said we need to view being single as an opportunity to better ourselves.  A few of my fellow brothers in Christ suggested taking up weightlifting and eating healthier so that when a woman does enter our lives, we'll be on our A-game.  Well, this assumes we'll actually meet an eligible member of the opposite sex at some point.  Then there's the Law of Diminishing Returns.  Self-improvement only goes so far and it's a pretty useless thing if you never actually find anyone to date.  Besides, I know plenty of people in successful marriages who tied the knot when they weren't in the best of shape or when they didn't have ideal jobs.

Then there are the numerous articles put out by Catholic dating websites and bloggers alike that seek to put a Band-aid on a gaping wound with titles similar to: “Being Single Doesn't Mean You Have To Feel Alone” or “A Survival Guide For Catholic Singles During The Holidays” or “How To Be A Happy Single.”  I think articles like these can be helpful in the short-term but they are ultimately useless to chronic singles who have seen decades slip by without a significant other.
 
When someone is starving we don't send them articles like: “Ten Things To Take Your Mind Off Eating” or “You Can Be Happy and Hungry.”  We give them food.  Sure, we want to comfort singles when they feel despair but anything short of helping them find a spouse fails to address the root cause of their problem.

After so many years of being alone, I finally met someone through a dating website this year.  She found my profile photo to be attractive and decided to reach out to me.  We chatted for a few weeks via the online messenger and then met in real life at a restaurant of my choosing.  The date went very well so we continued to see each other.  In that time, it felt so good to be with someone.  All my years of loneliness and isolation (and the anxiety that came with it) just melted away.  I was no longer that strange loner sitting by himself.  I was part of an “us” whether we were going for a walk on a rail trail or just innocently cuddling on the couch.  Unfortunately, she didn't think we were compatible enough and decided to dump me after our fifth date but for one brief shining moment, I got a taste of what had been missing in my life for so long.  It turned out, I didn't need psychotherapy.  I didn't need to lift weights, to eat healthier, to take up wood carving or to read more.  No, I needed a girlfriend.  It's time my fellow Catholic singles and the websites that cater to them realized this!

A House Divided

I ended the last blog entry by mentioning how a refusal to take communion in the hand during the pandemic could be an indication of a much bigger problem facing the Catholic Church.  We are a divided faith.
 
So you have two Catholics who both attend Mass every week.  Both are in agreement on the Church's major hot button issues like abortion, pre-marital sex and gay marriage.  Both have noticed the Church's decline over the years with low Mass attendance and the graying out of parishes.  So you'd think these two people would naturally find a sense of kinship, right?  Wrong.

Instead, very big disagreements erupt about the smallest of things and nowhere is this more prevalent than on the variety of Catholic blogs, websites and online forums.  For all the theories on where the Church went wrong, a good number of traditionalists place the blame squarely on Vatican II.  In their minds, the Church was once a very strong institution with no major problems whatsoever until 1965...

...the year the Church embraced liberalism, houses of worship were gutted, and the Mass lost its reverence causing attendance to sharply decline and making religion less important in people's lives.  Some forum users espousing this claim tend to be older so they are obviously drawing on childhood memories to back up their opinions.  But as the saying goes, correlation isn't necessarily causation and while some studies say Vatican II absolutely damaged the Church, other studies indicate a decline well before the early 1960s.  Rising skepticism, materialism, the sexual revolution, television, and other factors have certainly taken their toll on Christianity in America.  It's very convenient for traditionalists to blame just one thing instead of taking a comprehensive look at history and even if Vatican II never happened, it's likely the shocking discovery of the priest sex abuse scandal would have lead many to question the Church and their faith.
 
Younger Catholic keyboard warriors who never lived through the changes created by Vatican II use an array of articles, charts and graphs to form and defend their viewpoints but such information is rarely objective.  I think what these young people are really looking for is a comforting spiritual home full of absolutes amid the secular relativism that's wreaked havoc among their peers.

Opinions on Vatican II's impact are all over the map with some saying its intentions might have been good but its implementation was a disaster.  Whatever the case may be, we now have a community of online “trad” Catholics who regularly pick fights with anyone who might disagree with them.  If you think you're 100% Catholic, they think they're 150% Catholic.  Pope Francis is suspect, feminism made women too uppity and oh, and it's not the Church's job to help Catholic singles.  One forum user I encountered was an older gentleman who lamented the day his parish introduced “hippie music” into the Mass.  By that he meant singers who played guitars and tambourines.  So where was it ever stated in the Bible that Jesus preferred the pipe organ?

In fact, one of my fondest memories from St. John the Evangelist in Beverly was when a father and his very attractive teen-aged daughter became cantors.  He played an electric acoustic guitar and they both sang very passionately.  I was an impressionable altar boy at that time and in addition to their beautiful music, I loved the daughter's two-handed handshakes during the sign of peace.

This forum user then went on to complain about all the choices Catholics had when it came to their faith.  I challenged him by asking, “How sustainable would our religion be if it relied solely on rote learning and fear?”  A nun with a ruler who routinely whacked her students probably drove more people away from the Church than a singer with a tambourine.

Then there's the Latin Mass.  Some feel this is the only legitimate Catholic Mass and during online discussions the phrase novus ordo (new order) is tossed around like a derogatory term.  One young trad posting to a forum expressed exasperation with his fellow novus ordo Catholics by saying, "If I had a dime every time someone said the Latin Mass was boring..."  I remarked, "If I had a dime every time someone said the sky was blue..."  My mother, who was born about 30 years before Vatican II is no fan of the Latin Mass because she felt it created a wall between the clergy and their flock.  During the early 2000s, the pastor of my church was a young but traditional priest named Fr. David Barnes and he sometimes injected a little bit of Latin into the Mass.  I didn't like it at all and was thankful to have grown up with Masses in the vernacular.  Was I less Catholic for feeling that way?

Fr. Barnes was also a proponent of communion on the tongue, making the case that it should be the preferred way of receiving the Holy Eucharist.  Other trads believe this too sometimes saying it's a form of submission that feels like you are being fed by the Lord.  I contrast these opinions with that of Fr. Herbert Jones who was once pastor of the Carmelite Chapel at the Northshore Mall.  During a sermon, the elderly priest told us he was resistant to communion on the hand at first but grew to love it because he felt closer to his parishioners.  So we have two devout priests with two very different viewpoints.  Which one is correct?  Perhaps what's most important is that people are going to Mass in the first place...not out of fear or blind obedience but because they want to.