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BOOK EXCERPT

From the Introduction to Pretty Good Catholic

Something is wrong with Catholic dating culture. Maybe you’re experiencing it yourself: you ache to be married, but it seems like there just aren’t enough good Catholics out there to marry. 

My female friends say that all the men they meet are either religious and chaste, or interesting and attractive, but not both. They find an appealing Hinge profile that says “Catholic,” but learn on the first date that he hasn’t been to Mass in years. Meanwhile, the men at their parishes every Sunday seem awkward and unwilling to pursue them. 

But men say nearly the same thing: that it’s hard to find a woman who’s serious about her faith and fun to be around. One man said, “I find a lot of women don’t know how to have fun because almost everything is a sin. And that’s depressing.” Another shared on Reddit that he was ready to “give up on trying to find a woman”—at age twenty-four.

These anecdotes are backed up by marriage statistics. The number of Catholic weddings per year plummeted 77% from 1970 to 2021, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate—a sharper decline than that of priestly ordinations. Obviously there’s a problem with secular culture. But there’s also a problem with how practicing Catholics date and look for spouses.

A few years ago, observing this decline and feeling frustration with my own prolonged singleness, I began to try to answer this question. I conducted surveys and consulted experts. The top complaints boils down to this: “I haven’t found the right person.”

But if thousands of Catholics of both sexes are saying they can’t find good spouses, why aren’t they finding each other? If you’re on a college campus with a vibrant Newman center, or in a city with social opportunities for Catholic young adults, it should be easy to meet someone in person, right? 

The explosion of dating apps and websites, including several that are specifically for Catholics, should, in theory, make it easier than ever to meet a good Catholic spouse. Just create your profile, add a few filters, and wait for the matches to roll in.

Of course, if you’ve done anything to find a date, online or offline, you’re already laughing (or crying). It’s not quite that easy. It’s harder than it sounds to meet people, and when you do, it’s hard to get from meeting to a date. And when you do get to a date, it’s very hard to get all the way through a relationship to the altar. 

As I’ve gone through nearly a decade of dating myself and talked to many others who are on the same journey, I’ve discovered that there are countless problems with the Catholic dating scene, all layered one on top of the other. . . . 

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And that’s what Pretty Good Catholic is all about. How do you navigate all the complex problems of modern dating and find an attractive, faithful spouse? I think you’ll be encouraged that there are actually very good answers to this question–not just theories, but practical, realistic ways to meet people, date well, and find true love.

Rachel