Ryan Wilson and Emily Piazza, both lifetime residents of Baltimore who met at University of Maryland Baltimore County, have not been a couple long enough to claim to be authorities on the nuances of Catholic dating. But they’re giving it a try.
Wilson, a parishioner of St. Agnes in Catonsville who graduated from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, is currently training to be an HVAC technician. Piazza, who was confirmed last Easter at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland, is a junior at UMBC majoring in chemical engineering.
Both 21, they’re now navigating the phase of young adult life when friendships, so easy to make in college, transition into work relationships and a small circle of friends who are marrying and starting families.
But the values that brought them together, Wilson says, are strong.
“It’s important we both have the same morals,” he told the Catholic Review. Dating non-Catholics, for him, “never really worked out.”
Piazza is now looking for a “deeper prayer life” as she grows in her faith.
Their advice for others?
“Find someone you can laugh with,” Wilson said. “Date someone you can be best friends with.”
Piazza added, “Make sure your goals are aligned.”
Young adult dating (sometimes still referred to as courtship) is an ongoing concern for the church. At a panel discussion during last summer’s National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, participants complained that the dating pool of committed Catholics is too small.
The trend lines support that. Data from 2023 gathered at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate recorded 111,245 Catholic marriages in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That’s down from 426,309 in 1970. Between 1969 and 2019, according to the center, Catholic marriages declined 69 percent even as the American Catholic population increased by nearly 20 million.
The church regards dating as a discernment period between a man and woman before they decide whether they are called to the vocation of marriage together.
“While that may be the main purpose, there is also so much fruit that can come of the dating process even if it doesn’t end in marriage,” said Faith Brake, director of retreat programming at the Monsignor O’Dwyer Retreat House in Sparks. “We were created for relationship and there’s so much that we can learn about our heavenly Father if we are receptive and open to new relationships of all kinds.”
It is “absolutely critical” that the person one ends up with shares values or is at the very least open to them, Brake said.
“Incorporating faith into dating could be as simple as saying a prayer before you meet up with someone, to involving topics revolving around the faith into conversation,” she explained.
Fundamental issues remain, particularly the ancient ones of how men and women meet, and, despite the explosion of technology, how to talk to one another face to face. Communication is not the same as conversation.
There is an abundance of dating sites aimed at Catholics and people of faith, though they can sometimes be targeted at isolated older adults.
Social media can result in a fall into instant gratification, according to Brian Rhude, campus minister at Towson University. He noted that there’s been an increase in the use of pornography by both sexes.
Men and women scarred by a parents’ divorce can be distrustful of intimate communication.
The advice Rhude usually gives: “What are you looking for, and what are you desiring?”
He’s found “there’s still a lack of clarity and understanding from both sides.” Dating “is a mystery to many young people. That’s the impression I get from my students.”
There’s also the matter of a shortage of men. Women outnumber men at Towson, Rhude said, although “females are more comfortable talking about their lives.”
Women, he’s found, “don’t want to make the first move,” and men “are bad at communicating.”
As a result, “the confusing part is the men themselves” trying to interpret what women want – the eternal conundrum.
For communication, “pretty much no one emails,” Rhude said he found. Students usually communicate by texting or through Snapchat, both “easier than talking on the phone.”
But electronic communication, he said, has hard limits. “A relationship requires a certain amount of intimacy that can’t advance if you’re only sitting behind your screen.”
Doug Payne, associate youth minister at the Pastorate of St. Louis in Clarksville and St. Francis of Assisi in Fulton, reinforced the communication issue.
“Men are not clear on what they want,” he said. And the confusion is often a part of any encounter. “Sometimes, guys think they’re on a date, and the women don’t think of it as a date.”
Secular values cloud the picture as well. “The culture is that marriage is not worthwhile enough, and sex should be available to men and women in dating relationships. I think it’s broken down our understanding of what it meant to date.”
He’s found that men often believe they have to commit to another person for a certain period of time, then build up the nerve to break up with them.
Courtship “is not emphasized enough. I think people want it, but they don’t know how to incorporate it.”
Secular culture also sometimes tells women they don’t need men or that men are bad, he said. The key, Payne has found, is relationship communication.
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