Can't find a Good Catholic Date? This might be why.

"But how do we find a guy who is Catholic and has all those values," one of my female students asked.  It was a similar desire expressed by a couple of the ladies in the Dating Project documentary.  One of the ladies, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of my students have been in similar experiences, during the DP documentary shared a story about how she met a guy on a currently popular dating hook-up sex, I don't know, some app where people meet for things that pose for dates but aren't really dates.  I think the app began with a "T' and ended with an "inder". Anyway, she said how she went on a couple of real dates with this guy, then by about the third date she and her match talked about sex.  She told her match that she was waiting.  Well, the guy got out of dodge faster than a Usain Bolt winning a gold, and later he ghosted her.  The clip ended with her lamenting as to where are the guys who have values and standards and are Catholic.  It was the same question and concern my student had and probably still has.

It wasn't the first time she, or another female student, asked this questions.  These young ladies I have taught over the years desired something in a young man that is currently difficult to find in our culture.  It is harder for people to ask a person out for coffee than it is to swipe on an app and after a faux date have sex.  Men of integrity, virtue, and Catholicity are absent -- we can equally argue that women of the same caliber are MIA as well.

I gave her an answer that she wasn't expecting, but it tied into the first unit we covered this semester: New Evangelization.  I told the whole class, "If you want to find a person of character and virtue and religion, then consider the reality that you might have to evangelize the person you date and convince them that conversion is worth it. That they are worth it. That you are worth it. That God is worth it."  Such an idea isn't unheard of in the history of Christianity, it often occurred during the early days of Christianity, and since now we are surrounded by a new mass of neo-pagans, it isn't a far fetched idea, and one we might strongly consider resurrecting.

In the US there are about 327 million citizens.  Of those 327 million, according to the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study (which is where I will get most of my numbers from) about 20%-22% of the US population is Catholic, so that means there are about 70 million Catholic in the US.  Since my students are about 18 years old we will need to crunch some more numbers.  The RLS says of those Catholics 17% are between the ages of 18-29 -- prime marrying age, so a little math puts us in the ballpark of about 12 million Catholics in the prime age range for marriage.  My student doesn't just have a pick of 12 million Catholic. Forty-nine percent (5.88 million) are male, and 51% are female (6.12 million), which are slightly better odds for guys seeking wives than the other way around.

The story doesn't end there.  My student wants to marry a man who is Catholic and virtuous. Of those 5.88 million men from which she has to choose, who are the practicing Catholics?  We will use regular, weekly Mass attendance as the minimal litmus test, but I assure you there are other criteria that should be used. About 17% of people ages 18-29 attend weekly services, we will assume this is Sunday Mass. So that drops the number from 5.88 million men to 999,600 men in the dating and marrying age range.

If we pull a similar number game for the archdiocese in which I live, which is approaching 2 million (it is less than that, I am just tying to keep some sense of anonymity)  with a steady increase as the Latino population increases.  This means that there are about 24,074 guys in the dating and marrying age range. That doesn't seem too bad unless you consider the population of the Metro area in which I live, which is about 7 million people.  This means my student has to choose from about .0035% of the population in the metro area using a rather soft litmus test.  I'm sure if we added things like belief in the real presence and adoration and spirituality the numbers would be even smaller.  No wonder it is hard to find a date and a person to marry.

Keep in mind this thought experiment does not even begin to consider a person's must-have-non-negotiables, whatever those might be for a person.  But every criteria we put on the person we look to date and marry, we shrink our dating pool.  So, maybe we need to reconsider those non-negotiables. Is it so bad that a Catholic meets a non-Catholic and goes on a date with them? Of course not.  It just increases your dating pool.  However, keep in mind you will have to have that conversation about religion eventually especially if the relationship goes well, which is why it is important for us to consider how we live as examples to the world.  Because if we date someone who is not Catholic, I hope and pray that he or she would want to become Catholic not because of a rational argument but because he or she sees the truth and beauty of Catholicism lived out in life.  After all, they will know we a Christian by our love.