Why I Killed My Catholic Dating and Marriage Pages
January 2, 2012

This posting smothers to death three others entitled The Gall of Ave Maria Singles (and roadtocana.com), Neal J. Conway's Tips for finding a Catholic Spouse and A So-So Little Book About Christian Courtship.

The tips page and criticism of on-line "Catholic" dating services were two of the most visited pages on nealjconway.com. Readers told me that the moderators of on-line dating services' discussion groups blocked members' references to these pages. That goes to show how right I was about such "Catholic" match services being for-profit rip-offs that neither care about Catholic marriage nor deliver for most of their members.

First of all, I took down the postings because I was appalled at the large numbers of visits that they were getting. Nealjconway.com is not for people who Google "How to find a Cathlick husbanned" or who join the Catholic Alumni Club and other social rackets and never get married. Or if they do marry, they marry Catholic Alumni Club types.

"You really don't like the Catholic Alumni Club!" you're laughing. And I don't. Having wasted several years in the CAC's Washington, DC soviet, I am the sworn enemy of that sorry and misnamed organization as I am the sworn enemy of any similar.

While I was a member, very few of the drab GS-10 females acknowledged my existence. They were the kind who sit in the corner with their girlfriends, behaving no differently than women one would "meet" in a bar. The few that I asked for dates responded by practically punching me through the wall, or after my invitation, they vanished never to be seen again.

CACers were the kind of people who, if we took kids in protective custody on an outing, would lose a kid in the crowd. The day that happened, I was the guy who looked until I found the kid who was, thankfully, safe in the hands of park police. Another thing that marred an outing was one CAC member buying one kid a toy and thus setting off a howling among the others. (1)

I could forgive Catholic Alumni Club enrollees for being dull, Super-Bowl-Party types, but these people had no sense, no social skills and an amazing knack for doing the wrong things and for making bad situations worse. Catholics who take their faith seriously would not behave as Catholic Alumni Club members do.

During my time in the Washington, DC club, the ruling clique was so concerned about image and growth that it acted like a tyrannical dictatorship, sweeping problems under the rug instead of dealing with them.

I was a board member, go figure (They still just stared through me). Once I suggested forming a committee to examine the Catholic identity of the club. I got the panel, but it was packed with others who had their knives out to maintain the status quo. After I quit the board in disgust, the club officers held a hearing that expelled a member for protesting the lack of Christian behavior. However little was done about keeping out another guy who occasionally groped women and once grabbed a female from behind. It wouldn't surprise me if that creep is still a member.

I wrote the preceding paragraphs, not only because it felt great to do so, but to make the point that all vehicles for introducing men and women to each other, including on-line dating services, are the same. They draw the same kind of people. The women may yack with their girlfriends about dating and finding Mr. Right, but they are incapable of doing the few simple things to connect with Mr. Right.

Few members ever find their mates through CAC's or cyber-CACs. The minority who actually do are like those who happened to make millions buying real estate with their credit cards. The testimony of such lottery winners is worthless.

"Tips For Finding A Catholic Spouse" Condensed

If you're a woman, all you have to do is leave your girlfriends in the corner, slay the demon of shyness, knock the chip off your shoulder, smile, say hello, engage in conversation, take a chance. If you're a man, don't waste your time on women who don't show interest in you and don't be a cheapass. This was the essence of the "Tips For Finding A Catholic Spouse" that I threw in the furnace, even though it had some great stuff.

I tossed it to the flames because it was an "If I have to explain it, there's no point in explaining it" thing. Catholic marriage will continue whether mousey office workers partake of it or not. Also I couldn't care less if mean people find love and happiness.

Speaking of mean people, I suspect that John Paul II Catholics born after the 1970s and in this time of renewal will have an easier time finding mates and have no need of CACs or on-line clip-joints. That is because they are more prayerful and thoughtful and therefore less likely to be filled with fear and hatred as are so many Baby Boomers.

Who Am I?

My next reason for killing three popular web pages has to do with the ad hominem aspect of those who dispense advice on dating and marriage.

I never expected my pages to be heavily trafficked. My creation of them was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The phenomenon of so much interest got me thinking, "While my advice is great and not to be had from any other source, am I really a credible transmitter of such wisdom?"

For one thing, I'm not married myself, so how can I believably advise others on something that has personally eluded me?

The other Catholic relationship gurus that I've seen out there are certainly not better positioned. One is an old maid whose pensees on dating seem to betray an animus against all mating whatsoever. Then there are the Catholic priests who advise singles and in some cases serve as chaplains for social clubs.

I am not one of those who thinks that celibacy precludes a priest from being knowledgeable about love and marriage. After all, Pope John Paul II wrote some of the greatest thoughts on the subject. However, John Paul II was truly an expert. He became so by spending lots of time, years in fact, going on camping trips with young men and women and discussing relationships with them.

How did these other guys get in the act? They're well-known and people assume they know everything and priests are supposed to know about marriage. Or these priests are the ones who assume that they know everything and insert themselves. Or an EWTN green-room pitchman asked them to endorse an on-line "Catholic" dating racket and they endorsed it.

The fact that these fathers advocate rather than condemn "Catholic" on-line dating services is the first indicator of how little observation or thought they really have given to the matter of meeting/marrying.

How can any Catholic clergyman endorse a meat-market approach to to finding a mate? With an on-line service, your desire to meet someone is formed by looking at a picture, not by encountering them in person where you are able to observe more than simply how they appear.

And imagine taking your car to a mechanic, paying for a $150 repair job only to have the mechanic return the car to you unrepaired, untouched and then blaming you, or luck, or God's plan for you, for the car not being serviced and you not being satisfied with the service. On top of that, the mechanic never even had the parts in stock! This is exactly what Catholic on-line dating services do when they rip you off of a $150.

A droll anecdote that I think is worth inserting. We need a laugh break anyway. A woman who was a member of one of those outfits that sets up lunch dates for "busy" professionals specifically asked that she not be paired with a Catholic or a conservative. Yet a Catholic and conservative is exactly what the service sent on her date. Funny, huh? Imagaine what you'll get if you're a Catholic and a conservative!

John Paul II got his input on relationships from normal men and women. If you're a chaplain chatting with members of social clubs, you're conversing with people who have difficulty interacting with the opposite sex because they're afraid of the opposite sex, afraid of their feelings. That's why they're in the social club, why they didn't find mates at school, at work or in pursuit of common interests. Their opinions about finding partners are likely be distorted to say the least.

I read and reviewed one Catholic priest's thoughts on Christian courtship, this evaluation being the third page that I deleted. A lady reader asked what I thought of another father's volume. She suspected that the book was misleading. I trudged through a few chapters, getting far enough to see that the lady's suspicions were founded. Then I heaved the opus at the wall with "I don't have time to read crap like this!"

Neither book offered a truly Catholic vision of meeting and dating. One was a heist of Men Are From Mars etc. Both upheld the popular dichotomy: women good; men bad.

Who is it that reads books etc, on dating, marriage, the sexes? Answer: women, women who, moreover, as Dr. Laura Schlessinger said, think that men are "the evil empire," or women who think that men are stupid. Women are the market for such stuff and in order to keep their interest, the marketers must keep repeating material that affirms the readers' prejudices. There is nothing Catholic or even Christian in these prejudices. That Catholic priests regurgitate them in their books is a sign of their incompetence to comment on such matters.

One of the main points of my deleted pages was that there is a Catholic way for men and women to meet and date. One's sexuality does not exempt one from treating others with respect and dignity. I've never heard of a priest expert taking about the Catholic way. If he did, he probably got it from me.

So who, then, does Neal Conway think, would be most credible in talking about Catholic courtship? I think that the ideal would be a married couple, a man and a woman who have succeeded. They would, please, not be a pair who set themselves up as a celebrity, perfect Catholic couple with a web-cam only to get divorced a few years later. We've already seen that.

This man and wife would be like a younger Bill and Monica Dodds who discuss acquiring a Catholic family rather than being in one. They would be sensitive to the challenges facing the unmarried in the 2010s, the atmosphere poisoned by sexual promiscuity, the reality that not everyone is connected to a community by such things as coming from a big family. They would have none of the sexuality-based moral relativism of self-help and popular culture. They would emphasize the Catholic way of respect for others.

And the wife would wax often on how great it is to be loved by a good Catholic man. :)

(1) It should be noted that the Washington DC Catholic Alumni Club no longer takes protective-custody kids on diversions. Good, because anybody, Catholic, even nominally Catholic or not, could just walk into that joint and be accepted as a member.