Checking to see if Mr Right’s in site

Sydney
27 July 2003

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New bishops at cutting edge of Church

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Neocatechumenate priest for Redfern

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Honours to chapel couple

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Four-day visit to Slovakia

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Pope gives $10m aid

Unusable gifts cost Vinnies $½m a year

Specs to aid St Lucy’s

Finnish choir at St Francis

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Checking to see if Mr Right’s in site

Mary MacKillop focus of digital learning aid

Franciscan’s journey in a new era of pilgrimage

World Youth Day on web

Blessing at the centre of it all

Checking to see if Mr Right’s in site

St Raphael (“interceding for single Catholics”) website

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Gone are the days when Catholics’ social lives would revolve around the parish community and the Catholic Youth Organisation.

In a largely secular society, committed young Catholics can find they have no other practising Catholic peers in their circle of friends or work colleagues, while older singles can have limited social opportunities for many reasons.

This doesn’t stop plenty of people placing religion as essential or high on their list of priorities when looking for a life partner.

And it doesn’t stop them looking outside their workplace or parish or listing their priorities on, say, a website poster board or in a magazine or newspaper singles column.

Just how widespread this is may be hard to ascertain, but among the world’s 50 most visited Catholic websites there are at least three singles websites in the top 30.

And one of them is in the top 10.

The most popular Catholic website is, of course, the Holy See (vatican.va), followed by New Advent (based in the US), EWTN (US television network), Catholic Online (US), ACI Digital (in Spanish) and Encuentra.com (Mexico).

Then comes the first of the sites for singles - St Raphael Singles - ahead of five other US sites, including the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (www.usccb.org).

The two other singles sites in the top 30 are Catholic Singles and Ave Maria.

And, like St Raphael Singles, they are being used by a range of people from teenagers to octogenarians.

Ave Maria asks subscribers to fill in a form that gives their opinions on the Church’s teaching on contraception and abortion, along with the standard items of hobbies, marital status, occupation and ethnic background.

The sites are based in the US, as are most subscribers.

As one Australian member of the Ave Maria ‘web community’ says, $4000 for an airfare to the US is a lot to pay to meet someone for coffee.

So, apart from the immediate parish community, where do Sydney Catholics meet other Catholics these days?

One place is the international World Youth Days.

Selina Hasham, national co-ordinator for World Youth Day pilgrimages, says many friendships have grown among pilgrims to the international youth festivals. And she knows of at least one of these that has resulted in marriage.

She says a lot of couples meet in Catholic lay communities or working in outreaches such as the National Evangelisation Teams, the Disciples of Jesus Youth Ministry team or Vinnies.

“I think there are a lot of cases like that, where people are drawn together doing that kind of thing, or at least make really good friends,” she says.

“Things like that meet a common human need to have a sense of connection, a sense of community.

“Although it’s harder in today’s world, when people often don’t stay in one place for any great length of time to create a sense of community. We are all a bit disconnected.”

Mark and Leanne Mordini, who are in their late 20s, met when working on a Disciples of Jesus youth mission team in Melbourne during 1988.

They were bound by a rule that team members stay unattached for the year they have committed to the team, but when the year ended they discussed their feelings and decided to start dating.

Now married, and with a daughter, Chiara, they believe that their shared Catholic faith is vital to their marriage.

Leanne, a teacher, says that it was a dream come true to marry a man who was as committed to the Catholic faith as she was. “I didn’t think that it would necessarily happen, although I hoped it would, especially once I began to get involved with the Disciples community and my faith became the most important thing,” she says.

“We have friends who are dating lovely people who don’t share the same faith, but I think that a marriage is hard enough even for people who have the same faith background.

“For example, I don’t know how people deal with issues of how to raise their children in the faith (when one spouse is not Catholic), although I’m sure they do, but I think it would be a lot harder.”

Peter Dobbie, 36, a web developer, says that his busy social life revolves in part around his interest in his faith.

“I have never met anyone in a pub or on the internet,” he says.

Instead, he meets plenty of people through the Branches courses and the Young Discalced Carmelite group.

He sought them out with the purpose of developing his spiritual life, but says they also bring opportunities for developing good friendships with like-minded people.

Peter doesn’t rule out dating a woman with a different faith background but would prefer to be with another Catholic.

“That’s because I am more likely to find attractive someone who believes in marriage as a commitment,” he says.

“I think Catholic girls are more likely to understand or, at least, are exposed to the idea that marriage is a life commitment.” And it would be “nice, though not essential, to be able to go to Mass with your partner”.

Peter would probably not consider using a singles column or the internet because, he says, he has enough social opportunities. And he prefers to meet people face-to-face.

The Australian Catholics magazine devotes two pages in each issue to the Meeting Place for singles.

The column began in response to a light-hearted suggestion and snowballed from there, says co-ordinator Geraldine Bathersby.

It has been the catalyst for at least one marriage, and possibly up to five.

Geraldine says that many people who advertise in the Meeting Place would never dream of doing so elsewhere.

“The kind of people who write to Australian Catholics, the last thing on earth they would do is write to a major newspaper or anywhere else.”

Finding someone of the same faith background is the primary reason they contact the magazine.

The average age of advertisers is 42 and many of them are women “who would not go into the whole scene of pubs and things like that”, she says.