How to start a family and the church's failure to create a welcoming place for singles

[MattTheCricketBat]

We all know those young women in church who seem to be a great catch but say things like they've never been asked out or feel that men are not "man" enough in their pursuit of a wife, etc. It's easy for me, a married man who met his wife on a Christian dating app, to look at relationships and just sort of skip over the dating/courting phase and get on my high horse about sexual abstinence, purity, etc but I feel like we as the body of Christ are failing a lot of singles in the church, who are at a loss even where to start and feel so much pressure to do it the correct way that they don't even bother trying. And often these topics get brushed under the rug, which makes it even worse.

Do you feel like the church does a good job in helping navigate singles through the muck and mire of dating and relationships? I've been reading some Christian dating blogs and there's so much information about how to prepare for marriage, yet not a lot about how to actually meet someone. What can we do to better serve single Christians and help them find their spouse?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

CatholicMatch is about as good as you are going to get, as far as bringing Catholic singles together. I wish they had been around when I was in 20s and 30s.

Keep in mind, though, that the Catholic concept of marriage is counter-cultural in today's world, and sets a higher bar than the secular idea of meeting someone, regardless of their religious convictions or lack thereof, cohabitating "to see if we are compatible", sex pretty much from the get-go, marrying when everything is "just so" --- a capstone achievement in one's life, so to speak --- contracepting until the time for having a child is "just right", one or the other spouses getting sterilized when "our family is complete", and having the escape hatch of divorce if things go sour (or when, as happens too often, one or both of the spouses meets someone they like better, the office environment can create a perfect storm for this). The Catholic concept of marriage is entirely different, and quite frankly, it's not for everyone. Add to that, both sexes often have unrealistic expectations, with women, those expectations tend to be financial, and with men, they tend to be aesthetic.