Three years ago, I wrote a piece called “Dating Outside the Church.” To this day, the piece seems to inspire comments. Looking back on the piece, I see three things I would change about the piece and three things I wouldn’t. Regarding the changes, I think the piece doesn’t talk enough about the potential positives of dating non-Catholics. I’m also not sure I still agree with the point I made about having friends outside the Church. Additionally, I’d qualify my statements about non-Catholics having a hard time understanding Catholic culture.
What I still agree with, first, is that dating outside the Church is playing with fire. Second. one is often not the best judge of how a dating relationship is going. Third, even though I do think we can and should associate with non-Catholics, I do think I was right about the dangers. Okay, let’s dive in.
What My Critics Got Right
My piece was mainly focused on what could go wrong when dating outside the Church. The two main positives I see to dating outside the Church are that you could grow as a person and that you could have more people to date. The comments somewhat rightfully criticized the piece for not bringing up things like a cultural exchange between non-Catholic and Catholics. For instance, you could learn something about your own faith from someone else’s. A more obvious benefit of dating outside the Church is of having a lot more people to date. Most people date outside the Church for this reason. They want to find someone and think they need to expand beyond Catholic dating sites and meetups. This point of view makes sense. We shouldn’t close the door on this possibility for life. It’s unchristian to do so, and it’s against our best interests.
I do think that having friends outside the Church is good because doing so strengthens your faith and is commanded by the Church. People that associate with As some of the comments on my previous article suggested, your faith is probably not very strong if you can’t handle being around people who don’t believe in the same things you do. Being around non-Catholics is good because it makes us ask hard questions about our faith. It also is a way to evangelize and share about our faith.
Though it may seem very hard to share one’s culture with a non-Catholic, we shouldn’t give up. It’s all too easy to have a defeatist attitude about other people. It’s easy to think they might never be able to “get” your commitment to Sunday Mass. Going back to the idea of cultural exchanges, we as Catholics shouldn’t be afraid to share our own culture and traditions. We shouldn’t be afraid to evangelize by talking about Mary or the saints. However, when doing this, we shouldn’t make our faith just seem like a quaint and irrelevant set of things we used to do as children.
What My Critics May Have Gotten Wrong
However, my critics aren’t all right. First, dating outside the Church is risky. You shouldn’t go into marriage or prolong dating with someone before checking off a few things this blog mentions. These include how the person feels about the Church, what kind of morality they have, and how they feel about raising a Catholic family. So, dating a non-Catholic still remains risky because you may find yourself quite in love with someone who doesn’t have the same moral code about sex, doesn’t want to raise Catholic children, etc. It’s funny how some of the comments suggest that my point of view is invalid because some Catholic marriages don’t last. Even if this is the case – though statistically, it’s not a majority – it doesn’t invalidate the prudence of being on the same page with someone before tying the knot.
Second, I was at least a little bit right about having friends outside the Church. As one commenter noted, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to having friends outside the Church. It could be a very good thing to have friends outside the Church and a good test of faith. But, it could also be a problem and a temptation. Indeed, it seems in my own life that sharing about my faith eventually becomes necessary. The reactions of my friends are often a predictor of whether the friendship will last. Again, I go back to the above blog. Is this person at least open to your morality? At least willing to talk about it?
As C.S. Lewis notes in The Four Loves, the advantage of friendship is that it is not so insular. “Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.” Thus, you could have friends of all different persuasions and just have a lively conversation. A persistently negative response to faith from a friend does not have to end the relationship, but it may be hard in romantic attachment.
Finally, a note about culture. Catholicism does have its own culture. We celebrate certain events together, and we get used to Rosary processions. It’s probably hard for a hardcore Protestant, for instance, to get used to our devotion to Mary, but It is not impossible. An atheist may struggle with prayer, but he or she can come to love being Catholic. An Adventist may at first think Catholic Mass is too quiet. However, these things can change. I’m using culture in a very loose sense. All I mean is that it is good to marry someone who can love Catholicism the way you do. Someone who can appreciate its rich beauty and culture. This may not happen in one day, but I think it should happen before dating becomes a marriage.
Still, when my critics suggest that it’s a positive good to be married to someone who is practicing another faith, I have to object. I just can’t see how it would help me or my potential offspring to have the confusion of two faiths in the house. If there is really one truth, why do I need to expand my mind by allowing the possibility of another in my house?
Conclusion
Again, one size does not fit all. It is awfully hard to predict the success of a marriage. Even when everything seems right on paper, the true depth of the relationship might not exist. Catholics may have different ideas about what is and what isn’t Catholic culture. Some may say being Catholic just means going to Mass on Christmas Eve. These people will be hardly better suited to marry someone who goes to Mass on Sundays than a non-believer. Many of my critics found fault with my piece by telling me stories of their broken marriages or those of their friends. These are sad events indeed.
However, anecdotes don’t invalidate the commonsense position of dating someone who believes what you believe or at least respects your beliefs and is willing to make sacrifices to uphold them when the time is right. Anecdotes don’t disprove that it’s better to have standards in dating that you expect of yourself and others. Yes, there can be happy marriages between believers and nonbelievers, but I myself wouldn’t start down a path that I know will have problems. And, yes, no marriage is without problems. I just wouldn’t want to invite them. Most of us will know with time whether the non-Catholic we are dating is going to invite these problems or help us solve them.
5 thoughts on “Revisiting My Post About Dating Outside the Church”
Point of marriage includes helping your spouse get to Heaven.
Given that, it’s no surprise that dating someone outside Catholicism is not recommended. I will not consider a girl a woman worth pursuing unless she 100% follows Jesus on all matters; she must be striving to be like Mary, our Mother of Perpetual Sorrows, in all things. Anything less is not acceptable.
Sure, go missionary and try catching a spouse who is on path towards Catholic Church, if feel called to: just take every precaution to be compassionate and firm. The Catholic culture, founded by Jesus, is superior to all other cultures founded by humans, and as such, it is the only acceptable culture.
The author’s previous article has had exactly two comments in the last 2.5 years. Not exactly “continuing to inspire comments”. But whatever. I see that I made comments on the article, and others that he wrote. But he never replies to me. Perhaps he’s writing on another site and Catholic Stand pulls them in, so the author is not really here. Again, whatever.
As Joe T. writes, there are no events to bring Catholics together. And not just the ones who are “available”. In the last generation or two, parishes abandoned their social role – a role which had many benefits, one being that singles could become known in the Catholic community and perhaps nudged together. The collapse of our parishes and the fall-off in Catholic weddings to near zero, is easy evidence of the damage that has been done.
I sure would like to know if Kniaz has any Catholic friends, or has dated any Catholic women. If he’s a typical single Catholic man like me, the answers are “no” and “no”. And it’s not because of any fault of his. It’s because parishes just don’t care.
If I didn’t have non-Catholic or ex-Catholic friends, then I wouldn’t have any friends at all. So this article, and the article before it, don’t really make sense.
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As you put very well in your last paragraph: “anecdotes don’t invalidate the commonsense position of dating someone who believes what you believe or at least respects your beliefs and is willing to make sacrifices to uphold them when the time is right. Anecdotes don’t disprove that it’s better to have standards in dating that you expect of yourself and others.”
Speaking as a 62 year old living in the Northeast, I hear of all too few (if any) Catholic events designed to bring Catholics together who are validly available for courting. Yet, we frequently hear about a “vocation crisis” just applied to Holy Orders and the religious life. Catholic marriages/families are going to be the best soil for all vocations.
We have a “vocation crisis” about marriage/family! I believe that it was in Familiaris Consortia that St JP II said, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”
That was some examination of conscience.