Finding Your Future Spouse Using the Internet
by Father John McCloskey
What advice would you give for someone struggling to determine if they are called to marriage and how to act on this call once discerned?
Well, that is a backward question, in my experience at least. I think the great majority of people naturally assume that they have a vocation to marriage. Usually not much discernment is necessary since God created men and women for various reasons on a natural level, primary of which, after giving glory to God, is to "grow and multiply" by procreating through marriage. I think if we look at the world around us, we see clearly that the overwhelming majority of the world population are either married or have been married or are looking forward to marriage. As the Irving Berlin song goes "Doing what comes naturally." Many people who come to me for counseling or spiritual direction are struggling with the opposite question–do I have a vocation to apostolic celibacy? Once you have discerned that God has called you to form a family–analogous on several levels to the Holy Trinity, and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph–then prayerfully and patiently, using the proper means, you should begin to search for the future spouse with whom you can grow in holiness and who would be a good parent for your children, should children be a part of God's plan for you.
Knowing that the Internet is a somewhat atypical means of meeting someone, what advice, suggestions or encouraging words would you have for the men and women who participate in a service like Ave Maria Single Catholics Online (Ave Maria SCOL)?
Well, as you know, I am a big advocate of Ave Maria Single Catholics Online as six women to whom I have recommended it in the last two years are now either married or engaged. Their fortunate husbands, future and present, owe me a debt of gratitude because in a few cases gentle arm-twisting was necessary! The most important advice is to try it. Then, as you would with any product, follow the instructions. Realize you are just looking for that ONE special "significant other" with whom you will spend the rest of your life. Be patient. Good things take time. You may have to spend many months or more and have more than several Internet "relationships" before you get to the more serious point of meeting your "mouse pal" (I just coined that, I don't think it will go too far). And even then, nothing may happen. So what?
What is important in today's culture of death is that you not remain passive and that you use every legitimate means to find a spouse who shares totally your Catholic faith, particularly in all that relates to the Church's teaching on marriage and family. God may throw some person in your path unexpectedly, not through Ave Maria SCOL, because He sees you are serious about getting married and using all the means possible. Remember the nostrum of St. Augustine: Work as if everything depended upon man, and pray as if everything depended upon God!
Many people are skeptical about long distance relationships. Can they work and, if so, how?
Of course they can. They have for centuries. Obviously the couple will have to move near one another if not before then certainly after the wedding. But the beauty of Ave Maria SCOL or for that matter old-fashioned letter writing with paper and ink (remember that?) is that it allows the "dating" couple to really explore what matters by exchanging many, many messages over a period of time. This truly allows the "inner you" to be revealed until the moment comes for the face-to-face meeting. All of this is certainly much less expensive, and takes up a lot less time, than traditional courtship. Or, put in sales terms (sorry, I am an old Wall Street stockbroker), it allows you to "qualify" the prospect before beginning to "close" the sale! Physical attraction, of course, has its proper role as is only natural, but there are great advantages to waiting to see if the "chemistry" is there only after having engaged in many long-distance conversations. As many of the people reading this interview can testify, in our culture of "image," working mostly or purely on a physical attraction as a basis for marriage often can lead to moral, psychological, and even physical disaster. Need I say more?
The notion of using an online service to meet your future spouse prompts giggles and scoffs. Those who meet online are even inhibited about admitting they have. What is your explanation for this?
A lot of it is the novelty of the thing. In a decade or two it will be commonly accepted when there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of prospective persons using it as means to meet their future spouses and when there are tens of thousands who first met their spouses via this medium. Actually, I think people should be more embarrassed to say they met their spouses at a bar. My opinion is that there will be a much higher rate of long-lasting marriages through Ave Maria SCOL than through marriages that had their start on a Saturday night at some bar! Time will tell but why should any person limit their search for a spouse to a few hundred people of the opposite sex whom they might encounter during their eligible years when there are millions of single Catholics in our country alone with whom they could make a match?
Ave Maria SCOL has already proven itself in a short time in that regard. Finding a spouse is a serious and beautiful business and one must be both professional and have an entrepreneurial spirit in order to reach the goal. If some people worked as hard to find a spouse as they did to get their first job or to get into that selective college or graduate school, they would naturally use Ave Maria SCOL as one among several means to achieve their goal. One of the beauties of the service, as I mentioned above briefly earlier, particularly for today's hard working professional men and women is that it takes a lot less time and money and, perhaps, a lot fewer busted serious relationships before finding "the One"!
There are so many over 35+ single Catholics out there eligible for sacramental marriage. Do you see hope for them on a service like Ave Maria SCOL?
I would go further and say it is for many their best hope to get married to compatible, faithful Catholics. The difference here is that you know that with very few exceptions all of the people registered for Ave Maria SCOL are serious about getting married. Otherwise, they would not spend the time or money to belong. There are also many safeguards in place to assure that you will be generally dealing with a "quality" person online. Predators are not welcome and in any case are discovered easily. No one should ever consider himself or herself "hopeless." Everyone is a child of God and if it is God's will that they marry, Ave Maria SCOL may provide a means to seriously explore that possibility. I have known several men and women in their late thirties or early forties who were close to despair about their marriage possibilities but are now married or engaged through Ave Maria SCOL.
Why do you recommend Ave Maria SCOL to the single men and women you know? What benefits do you think such a service provides? Conversely, why do you think such a service might be a better idea than trying to meet people in more conventional ways?
As Rodgers and Hammerstein put it, "Getting to Know You" is the key. You cannot even begin to know another person unless there is "communication," which as many married couples will testify is the key to a successful marriage. This communication develops in several ways in marriage but a great beginning and "jump start" can be made through written correspondence. Ave Maria SCOL is a high-tech form of written communication. After all, before Alexander Graham Bell, how do you think courting couples communicated when they were away from one another, which was often most of the time? They wrote to one another! Read your Jane Austen for some fictional nineteenth century examples. What could be more romantic?
What advice would you give to people who are just patently uncomfortable with the idea of meeting a total stranger on the Internet?
Quite simply, they should just logon and read the dozens of testimonials of people who, in many cases, were just like them but were willing to dive off the high board head first into the sea of Ave Maria SCOL members. In many cases members found their spouses or, at the very least, made long-lasting friendships. After all, few of our friends were not total strangers to us at one time. Either we were introduced or we stuck out our hand and introduced ourselves and a relationship began. What could be more natural than that? What's more, on Ave Maria SCOL, if you do not wish to continue a conversation, you simply say so and it is over.
What books, source materials, prayers or practices would you recommend to people currently seeking the spouse whom God has prepared for them, and for people who are currently preparing for the sacrament of Matrimony?
For starters, I would recommend Covenanted Happiness by Msgr. Cormac Burke and Three to Get Married by Archbishop Fulton Sheen (both from Scepter Publishers). Also three Papal encyclicals: On Christian Marriage by Pope Pius XII, On Human Life by Pope Paul VI, and Familiaris Consortio by Pope John Paul II to get some of the Church's basic teaching. These books should be read by the single person interested in marriage and read jointly by engaged couples. There are many more but these are a good beginning. Another good practice would be to talk to clearly happy and generous married couples who can speak from experience about what it takes to have a unitive and procreative Catholic marriage.
First appeared in Single Catholics Magazine in Spring, 2001.
