"There's Always Catholic Match..."

That's what one reader jokingly wrote in the comments section of this blog in 2018.  Joining Catholic Match had been on my mind for quite some time back then, but I just didn't think my life was in a good enough place to start using that particular website.

I first heard about Catholic Match from a friend many years ago and decided to check it out shortly thereafter.  At the time, the website allowed people to preview a handful of profile photos if you checked a box that identified your gender.  If you wanted to see more photos beyond these or if you wanted to click on an individual profile, you needed to create an account.  I thought some of the women weren't bad looking and seeing these teaser profile photos only made me dwell on what possibilities were out there.

Every once in a great while, I'd see ads for Catholic Match in different church bulletins and that had me thinking about what I was missing by not joining.  The website seemed to take its mission of helping singles into the vocation of matrimony seriously and in a comparison of other dating websites, Catholic Match boasted their members were free to marry.  After a long stint of unemployment ended, I decided to finally purchase a six month membership.    

To say my expectations for this website were huge is an understatement but I would soon find out a lot of my preconceived notions about Catholic Match and online dating in general were inaccurate.  Where those free Catholic dating websites were filled with sloppy profiles and terrible photos, I thought the women of Catholic Match were in it to win it.  I expected to see tons of well thought out profiles with great photos.  This was not the case and those blurry, badly lit, sunglasses wearing images plagued this website too.  “How could people pay all that money and then not put in much of an effort?” I thought.  Only later did I realize Catholic Match offered free memberships in addition to paid subscriptions but users had no way of telling one from the other.

Before joining Catholic Match, I tried to imagine what kind of women would be on this website.  Maybe they were reasonably attractive and kindhearted but unsuccessful in love not because of some antisocial personality quirks but because they just couldn't find a guy to fall in love with.  Maybe some of them had gone to all-girls schools for many years and were a bit sheltered.  Maybe they held true to the Church's teachings on premarital sex and found themselves to be outcasts in a secular and sex-crazed world.

Well, despite the website saying its members were free to marry, I soon found out Catholic Match allowed divorced people to join the site...but they could only use it for fellowship and friendship, not dating.  That kind of defeats the purpose of a DATING WEBSITE, doesn't it?  So instead of finding lots of dateless wonders like me, I had to weed out a large number of women who couldn't even go on a date without it being a sin.
 
At the time, Catholic Match featured 7 faith questions about specific Church teachings and users had to answer whether or not they agreed with them.  A heck of a lot of people did not accept the Church's teaching on premarital sex so instead of finding that inexperienced woman of my dreams, I found plenty of ladies who had been around the block and were proud of it.
 
The website also had two useful features that were removed shortly after I joined.  One let people know when you logged in last and this helped to separate active profiles from inactive ones.  Unfortunately, some members were using this information to stalk other members so the feature was eliminated for safety reasons.  The other feature I liked allowed people to search profiles by interests and hobbies.  Catholic Match staff felt it limited members in their quest to find a spouse, however, so they got rid of it.  During my time using that specialized search feature, I found very few women who shared my passions.

Within a few hours of purchasing my subscription, I received a message from a 60+ year old woman from Mexico welcoming me to the website.  This was not a good sign.  Another curiosity about Catholic Match was the large number of women from foreign countries, particularity the Philippines.  Unfortunately, the amount of local women on the site left a lot to be desired.  With almost 2 million people in the Archdioceses of Boston alone, I wondered where the heck everyone was.
 
Still, I looked on the bright side of things and put my faith in God that “the right one” would eventually come long.  After all, there were so many Catholic Match success stories featured on the website with some accounts bordering on the miraculous. 

Well, the world's largest Catholic dating website may have worked out for some but it didn't work for me.  After 4 years and 6 months, I decided against renewing my paid subscription.  Being on the site was an interesting experience and one that I will probably blog about in the near future.  I certainly won't discourage anyone from joining Catholic Match because it really could be how you find your significant other.  Unfortunately for me, my time on the website seemed to be a big waste of time.

A Real Community of Faith

The one thing people usually say about St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly is how beautiful the church is.  There's no denying that.  It really is a magnificent house of worship to behold but one of the biggest complaints I had about the place was how impersonal it felt to me.  “Mass is like a roomful of strangers,” I jotted down in my journal back when I was in my mid-twenties.

This wasn't to say the church lacked a faith community.  Rather, the faith community that existed at St. Mary's seemed very cliquey.  For a time, the parish published a newsletter with a section that profiled certain parishioners but my takeaway was only people who were part of the pastor's circle of friends would ever be featured.
 
I now attend a smaller church with my mother that's mostly made up of elderly parishioners.  Each week we see “the regulars” meaning certain people who almost always go to the same Mass and sit in the same pews.  At first, these worshipers were just faces in a crowd, but after a while, my mother and I would wave hello, smile or nod.  Eventually, we'd actually start talking to them.  Sometimes we'd even exchange personal details about our lives including our hardships and struggles to the point where they were no longer strangers.  For one group of regulars, getting to know them was as simple as me asking, “I see you here at Mass all the time.  What are your names?”     

A few of these regulars learned about my struggles as a single and vowed to keep me in their prayers.  When I started dating a woman from Catholic Match this year, she insisted our third date include a visit to my parish for Mass.  I cautioned her that the sight of me with a female who isn't my mother might actually give some parishioners heart attacks...or at the very least, they'd faint.  Indeed, our third date did raise a few eyebrows among the regulars.  Even my priests wanted to know who this woman was and they hoped to see her again at many more Masses.

Everyone in my life was extremely happy for me and they noticed a certain spring in my step.  Gone was the hopelessness that had plagued my life for such a long time.  Even though she wasn't my girlfriend yet, I could actually start to see myself build a future with her.

For our fourth date, I traveled over a hundred miles to visit her church and the same thing happened with her parish's regulars.  Almost immediately, we got singled out to bring the gifts up to the altar and that made this already shy woman a bit flustered.  Others wanted to know who I was and if I'd be coming back to Mass in the upcoming weeks.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be and after our fifth date, she no longer wanted to see me.  When the regulars at my church asked for their weekly update about my relationship, I had to break the bad news to them.  Two regulars who my mother and I knew for a long while now handed me a card after the following week's Mass.  Per their wishes, I opened it later on.  The card featured a cartoon lion holding an umbrella that had rain pouring out of it.  The caption read, “When life just doesn't seem to make sense...”  Inside the card the caption continued, “...trust God to carry you through the storm.”  At the bottom was a passage from Hebrews 11:1.  They signed the card with their names and added, “Your church buddies.”
 
I was greatly moved by this thoughtful gesture because it showed me that someone out there cared.  This is what a real community of faith looks like.  Simple acts like that don't contain a solution to a problem but they don't have to.  The fact that someone went out of their way to acknowledge my troubles gave me a sense of comfort.  In that moment, I definitely felt less alone and more connected to the parish.

Let this be a lesson to us all.  A church shouldn't be so big that some parishioners get lost in the crowd.  Perhaps there are people at Mass that you see all the time but you don't even know their names.  Make 2023 the year you say hi and introduce yourself...even if it's just to finally find out what their names are.  Such gestures could sow the seeds of a real community of faith.

No Followers No Problem

After reading the last blog entry, I think it's safe to say I have a tendency to not get along with other Catholics.  When I started this blog back in February of 2016, I really didn't know what to expect.  Before this journey into the blogosphere began, I had spent quite a lot of time reading articles and blogs about Catholic singles and the one thing that made a huge impression on me was the comments section.  A heck of a lot of people were hurting, lonely and miserable.  They were not only questioning their faith but how the Church treated singles.  I thought starting a blog would add useful perspectives to the conversation and the closet optimist in me hoped other like-minded singles would become fans of this site.  Perhaps a future spouse would identify with what I had to say and reach out too.

The eternal pessimist in me thought otherwise and even after all these years this blog still doesn't have a single follower...but that's okay.  I write to get things off my chest and while trying to jot down my thoughts into something mildly coherent is incredibly challenging, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders once a blog entry is posted.

Some of the Catholic blogs I routinely check out enjoy a good number of followers but they usually tow the party line when it comes to the Church.  That's not this blog and as the title states, I am quite the black sheep.  I don't put on airs and tend to see right through people who do.  It's no coincidence that I've glimpsed the not-so-nice side of individuals who seem to be universally respected.  It could be a popular politician who campaigns on a platform of transparency and inclusion but holds secret meetings to quash different perspectives.  It could be a beloved pastor who says he looks after his congregation but then coldly ignores the singles in his midst.  And as we saw in early 2020, it could even be Cardinal Sean O'Malley who was clueless about the struggles many Catholic singles face on a daily basis.

Some people equate negativity with always being wrong and positivity with always being right so when an inconvenient  truth emerges, they run and hide...and remain silent.  These are the same people who never question the Church or their faith.  Instead, they find comfort in the logic, “If the Church says so, it must be true.”  That's not this blog and perhaps this is one of the reasons why Long Lost Black Sheep doesn't have any followers.

Going along with crowd is much easier than listening to the little voice inside your head that wants to speak out against an injustice or call out what you know to be a lie.  When someone tries to sell me a line, my mind is always testing...always challenging...always looking for consistency or inconsistency.  Sad to say, I've seen a whole lot of inconsistency from my fellow Catholics and it's just not in my nature to look the other way.

I also can't deny the things I've seen with my own eyes.  While some Catholics minimize the struggles of singles, I keep going back to those heartbreaking reader comments from other blogs.  Each remark represents a real person who is enduring real pain.  Shouldn't we be doing more as a faith community to help?  No doubt some think I should just shut up but that's not this blog.

Chatting with other singles on one particular online forum has only reinforced the misgivings I had about my fellow Catholics.  When discussing loneliness, one user accused me of “making the vagina into an idol.”  (His words.)  Other users hold very outdated views on masculinity, femininity, chivalry, and who should and should not be the provider for a family.  One online forum member cautioned everyone against bringing a date into your bedroom because the temptation to have sex would be too strong.  Others spoke out against pre-martial kissing and they considered all forms of attraction that led to arousal to be sinful...including those puppy love crushes most of us had as teenagers.  Needless to say, I've gotten into my fair share of online flame wars with these people.

As someone with a creative side, I find a lot of Catholics to be boring and unimaginative.  While trying my hand at online dating, it became clear that I couldn't share certain music, TV shows or movies with my fellow Catholics because they seemed too close-minded.  No wonder why I tend to get along better with my secular friends and acquaintances.  Unfortunately, they don't share many of the Catholic values I hold so dear and that leaves this black sheep straddling both worlds without ever finding a place to call my own.  But that's okay too.

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!

Another Dead End

We left off with one of my parish priests deciding to play match maker when a woman around my age approached him after a prayer group meeting and complained about being single.  My similar gripes popped into his mind and he thought it might be a good idea if we met.  When he discussed this with me after Mass, I wound up giving him my contact information so he could pass it along to this mystery woman.

I tired to be hopeful but any feelings of excitement were tempered by my dismal track record with the opposite sex.  Sure enough, the week passed by and I didn't receive a single phone call from any desperate Catholic females in their early 40s.  I wanted to follow up with my priest about this but as (bad) luck would have it, he didn't say Mass that week.

As (worse) luck would have it, I soon found out he wasn't even in the country since he was on a month-long mission to Europe.  This was frustrating to say the least because even though he had gone out of his way to keep my interests in mind, he failed to follow through by passing along my contact information.  Now a whole month that could have been spent going out on dates was lost.  When my priest finally returned to the parish, I wanted to see if he would say something to me about this woman without me having to remind him about it.  After Mass, he talked to my mother about her many aches and pains but he didn't say one word to me about this potential girlfriend.  So the struggles that were foremost on my mind for such a long time didn't seem to be that memorable to him.

At the end of another Mass, I decided to suck up my pride and just ask him about this woman.  He looked surprised and said, “She was here at this Mass.”  I thought to myself, “Gee, that's great.  And you said nothing to her about me?”  As a long-suffering single, I usually scan the pews just to see if (by some small miracle) an attractive woman decides to visit our church.  Perhaps my view of her had been blocked by other people or maybe she sat next to a support column?  Either way, I didn't notice any woman in her 40s among the sea of elderly parishioners.  My priest took out his phone and started texting her to let her know that the single Catholic guy he told her about (me!) was here.  She texted back within a few seconds but said she had already left.  My priest expressed his regrets and hoped we would meet up sometime in the near future.
 
I started to have doubts about this woman right then and there.  How serious could she be about finding a date if she wasn't willing to stop dead in her tracks and walk right back into the church to meet me?  Mass only ended a few minutes ago and I certainly would have done as much if the situation had been reversed.

A few more weeks passed by without hearing a thing from this woman despite that fact that I was pretty easy to find.  She knew which parish I belonged to and what Mass I usually attended.  She knew that I always sat with my mother.  She knew my first and last name which meant she could easily track me down on the internet.  When I followed up with my priest about this for a second time, he said he would reach out to her again.   More time passed and still there was no word.
 
I wound up having to approach my priest for a third time.  With regret in his voice, he said that he did talk to her about me but unfortunately, she was having second thoughts about the vocation of marriage and family life so she really didn't want to see anyone right now.  All that time wasted!

My mind sought to make sense of the utter stupidity of the situation.  This woman was so frustrated with being single that she was willing to complain about it to her priest but she was unwilling to do anything to change her situation.  It also surprised me that a Catholic single was willing to write off the one and only vocation that would lead to sacramental love and a family.  Maybe she was fine being a dateless wonder or maybe she was already playing the field like so many of my secular friends had done.

Of course, there was another possibility.  Maybe she did look into who I was but didn't find me to be a great catch.  Her first name was the same as a reasonably attractive 40 something woman I had once chatted with on a Catholic dating website.  After sending her only a few innocuous messages, she flaked out and disappeared.  Perhaps this woman and my priest's mystery date were one and the same.  Who knows? 
 
One thing is for sure, it strikes me as odd that so many Catholic women think they have all the time in the world to find the perfect prince charming while they let “Mr. Goodenough” slip right through their hands.

An Unexpected Invitation

I think it's safe to say that over the years, I've tried to make my plight as a Catholic single known to many of my parish priests.  Most of them have stood there like a deer caught in the headlights because they probably couldn't identify with my struggles.  I'm sure a few of them wondered why I was pestering them because they probably felt there really wasn't anything they could do to help.  This blog has tried to make the case that it's very important for the Church and our parish clergy in particular to actively assist their hapless singles.

Related to this is one piece of advice that I've regularly seen on Catholic dating chat rooms:  Singles should make their situation known because you never know what could happen when you make meaningful connections with others.  They often use the following as an example.  “If your Church is filled with elderly parishioners, talk to them anyway because one of these old people might have a grandchild who is single, lonely and looking for a spouse too.”  If you can land a great job through networking, it might also work when it comes to finding a mate.  Of course, the odds of this happening are probably quite low.  For many years now, a few old folks at Mass have prayed for me to find a spouse to no avail.  I can tell you that none of them have introduced me to their granddaughters either.  

I suppose the success rate of this strategy is slightly below the dismal world of internet dating.  It's been said that only a small percentage of people who date online will meet their future spouse.  Some people even refer to it as “hitting the lottery.”  None of this gives me much confidence as a single and for a long while, I thought I'd never meet anyone.
 
Then after one particular Mass, one of my priests pulled me aside to talk.  He had remembered my complaints about being single and said a woman in his bible study group recently came up to him and started talking about how difficult it was to find a good Catholic man.  He added that this woman was in her early 40s and was very attractive.  Then he wanted to know if I would be interested in meeting her.  With no other prospects on the horizon I said yes.  He entered my name and number into his smart phone and said he would talk to her later on and see if she wanted to go out with me.
 
I was excited but also leery.  He didn't have a photo of this woman to show me so I'd be trusting the judgment of a priest that she was attractive.  Also, any optimism I had was tempered by the reality of the situation.  Sure, I was Catholic but I did question my faith at times and some of my hobbies could be off-putting to someone who was incredibly devout.  What where the odds that we would hit it off sight unseen?  Still, I was willing to try just about anything short of a mail order bride from the Philippines.  Having a date who lived within driving distance was a plus too given my responsibilities as a caregiver for my mother.  To his credit, my priest did say that he wasn't sure how our religious beliefs would line up but he thought a first date would be a step in the right direction.
 
So with that, he said he would get back to me about this.  I was happy someone had finally taken my complaints about being single to heart and kept my interests in mind when an opportunity presented itself.  Now I had to wait and see what would become of all this.  So many thoughts swirled around in my mind as I left the church.  Could this be how I find my future wife?  Time would tell.

Almost Thirty Years Later...Part 2

“We'll have to go there someday” is such a dangerous statement.  On the surface, it implies a serious commitment but far too often it's a shallow promise made in passing.  During my travels with friends, there have been many interesting places that we've wanted to check out but despite saying those famous last words, we never managed to get there.

For a time in the 1990s, one of my best friends lived in the city of Salem with his wife on a side street that was just a few blocks away from the iconic Salem Diner.  The building's futuristic design had always caught my attention so I suggested we all go there for dinner one day.  They were receptive to the idea but married life kept them busy.  When I asked again a few months later, they said the diner had strange hours because whenever they drove by the place, it was closed.  We never did wind up going because my friend and his wife decided to beat the high cost of living in Massachusetts by moving to Arizona.  Salem State University eventually bought the Salem Diner and ran it for a little while before it closed for good in 2019.  The school plans to develop the entire block and they want the historic eatery to be removed from the property.  One proposal had the Salem Diner being hoisted to the top of an apartment building for a rooftop restaurant but as of this writing, it remains in the same spot vacant and forlorn.

Another “well have to go there someday” place that comes to mind was the Warwick Cinemas in the town of Marblehead.  The old movie house was built in 1919 and I must have driven by it with two different sets of friends back in the 1990s.  The theater closed in 1999 and was eventually demolished by a developer in 2011 with a replica of the facade and marquee gracing the front of the new complex.

It's no coincidence that most of these “someday” places have been restaurants because the industry's turnover rate is so high.  Thankfully, one friend who shares my love of foreign foods and adventurous dining experiences helped me cross a few of these now defunct restaurants off my bucket list but for every Elephant Walk, Addis Red Sea, Sabur, and Russian Village there were places that escaped me like Cafe Budapest, West Street Grille, Lala Rokh, and that little Somali restaurant on Green St. with a name I can't recall.  (Some of these establishments have also made it onto my lengthier “great places I would have taken a date” list.)

During my college years, I spotted a cute Middle Eastern restaurant in my travels that looked interesting.  Unfortunately, the stars never aligned with any of my friends and since I didn't want to eat alone, the place remained out of reach for almost 30 years.  In early 2022, a project for work would take me very close to this restaurant so I thought about going there after all this time.  A quick internet search revealed the place was still in business but when I reached out to a few friends to see if they wanted to tag along, everyone had prior commitments.  So I'd be going by myself after all.

As a chronic single, most trips to someplace new have me wondering if I'll meet the woman of my dreams there and this restaurant was no exception.  Due to some delays at work, I entered the establishment around 2 PM.  The young waitress at the door was just okay-looking and a bit dismissive since she was very involved in a conversation with her coworker.  The place wasn't busy but there were a few other customers finishing their meals.  Since I promised my mother we'd go out to dinner later that evening, I didn't want to fill up too much.  Instead of trying one of the restaurant's signature entrees, I opted for an appetizer which was pretty big anyway.

Eventually, all but one group of remaining customers left so I found myself eating in a near-empty dinning room which only made my feelings of isolation worse.  To top it all off, the waitress's attentive service got lax and at one point I had to get up from my table and call her over for the bill.  So after almost 30 years, I finally crossed this place off my bucket list but my time here could have been so much more memorable had I only come here with friends a few decades earlier.

While sitting in the plexiglass-lined booth, I thought about how certain experiences seem to have a “freshness date” because if you wait too long to try something, it won't have as much meaning.  My thoughts then turned to dating and marriage.  Since I've been lonely for so long, would I even know how to have a long-term relationship?  Would love and romance now have the same significance as it might have had in my 20s or 30s?  Have all those years of bitter isolation left me too jaded?  Does sex lose its meaning as we get older?  Would the act itself bring a touch of resentment if the woman always longed for kids but was now infertile?

Then of course, as people get older, they tend to let themselves go.  To be frank, the dating scene at my age isn't a pretty sight.  That married friend from Salem tells me when you're with someone for many years, you tend to overlook those changes.  Some people call this having wife goggles.  This friend also admits that if he met his wife for the first time as she looked today, he wouldn't find her to be attractive but because of the shared history between them, he loves her regardless of those extra pounds.

I think my dining experience underscores the need for an increased sense of urgency from the Church when it comes to helping singles who want to get married.  Contrary to what some of my priests have said, young people don't have all the time in the world.  Before you know it, thirty years have slipped by and “someday” is looking more and more like an impossibility.