Samsara Lind
How to navigate Catholic dating apps for a Liberal Catholic.
After hearing enough horror stories from my Muslim friend about religious dating apps, I wasn’t exactly optimistic. But 2026 was around the corner and I had been single for nearly a year, so I decided to give it a go.
Signing up to Catholic Match quickly revealed that, as a woman in her late 30s (apparently well past the prime age for producing 5+ children—yes, that was literally a profile filter), my chances were pretty slim. Once my profile was live and I started browsing, cautious hope gave way to the realisation that this was less a path to romance and more an accidental field study—perhaps source material for a future Bad Apple article?
I’m a cradle Catholic who grew up attending Catholic school in Asia and had a generally positive experience of the faith, staying involved during University through a vibrant chaplaincy community. But after graduating into “real parish life” while simultaneously working intense hours, my Mass attendance gradually declined. A relationship with an Anglican priest sparked a kind of faith revival, as Anglicanism seemed to offer familiar liturgy with a more progressive outlook, but his abusive behaviour and the breakdown of that relationship left me disillusioned with religious institutions altogether. After a period of soul-searching, especially while walking the Camino de Santiago, I came to realise that faith is not only personal but something to be lived in community, which led me back to Roman Catholicism.
Today, I feel most at home with a group of religious sisters who follow the Ignatian spirituality, living out their faiths in action. I am active in an inner-city parish with a strong outreach ministry, while also occasionally attending Latin Mass elsewhere for practical reasons of proximity, where I have come to appreciate the serenity and deep reverence of Eucharistic adoration. Perhaps this unusual combination reflects the contradictions and complexities of my own faith journey.
How about men on Catholic dating apps?
Many profiles carried an unmistakable air of loneliness and desperation, often paired with signs of a heavy diet of ‘masculine’ life coaches, online influencers, or Catholic men’s groups. Some selectively quoted teachings often found on these profiles:
—that women must obey their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24),
—women must be silent in church (1 Cor 14:34-35),
—women may not preach (1 Timothy 2:12),
—that men can correct their wives by words and blows (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Q62, 13th century),
—that wives should remain at home, and never leave home without her husband’s consent (Catechism of the Council of Trent, 16th century, note: the Catechism of the Catholic Church has had many revisions since then)
Are there really no Liberal Catholic men out there?
Like finding a needle in a hay stack, I occasionally came across a profile that felt uncannily familiar, as if I could have written it myself. Unfortunately, in this case, the promising profile quickly unravelled into someone so profoundly lacking in basic social skills… a clusterfuck who used ChatGPT to write his messages but forgot to remove the prompts and copied/pasted everything. More than once.
I was talking to another Cradle Catholic. We bonded over our dogs and he received brownie points for adopting the puppy from Benedictine nuns who were fundraising to repair their convent. He was good at asking me very deep questions but was very evasive when I asked him the same thing back. For a while I could not make out, which flavour of Catholic is he? Like a vegetarian who isn’t sure if this burger is veggie or meat. When he decided to ghost me (so much for Catholics being nice), I braced myself before I googled his name. Turned out in his previous life he studied theology and ferociously wrote for various traditional Catholic publications. Including about feminism (TL/DR. feminism = bad).
I also found an Anglican there infiltrating our Catholic space. When I gently turned him down because “we don’t vibe”, he went a little bit nuts (like my priest ex). When Archbishop Sarah Mullally announced a pilgrimage to Canterbury, he wrote that he hoped she would reflect on 1 Timothy 2:12 while on the pilgrimage.
What about meeting people IRL?
The Protestants think Catholics are heathens, the activists are atheists, anarchists, or both (I’m too conservative for them), the outdoorsy folks are at best agnostics or humanists. They might be open to letting me practice my faith, donate to charitable causes like SVP (Society of St Vincent de Paul) but would eschew going to church. From admin/legal POV this could be problematic in the future.
Why are young men now so traditional?
It seems we are going backwards by 80 years/pre-Vatican II?
A recent Guardian article described a global survey which found that Gen Z men are twice as likely as Boomers to believe wives should obey husbands, a trend not limited to religion. Experts suggest this may be linked to shifting gender roles, with some men struggling to define masculinity beyond being the provider and protector.
A similar pattern appears in Catholic circles. From a survey of US clergy, younger priests (ordained after 2000) are the cohort most concerned with access to Latin Mass and eucharistic devotion. Priests ordained before 1980, could not care less (11%) and are more focused on poverty (98%), social justice (94%), immigration/refugee assistance (93%), and racism (92%).
Whenever I attend justice & peace events, the majority of attendees are boomers, and this can feel culturally out of sync with younger generations, e.g. some still don’t use smartphones, their social media of preference is Facebook, meanwhile Millenials use Instagram and Gen Zs use TikTok. Pope Francis introduced us to the art of accompaniment and one aspect of that is gradualness. Maybe organise a eucharistic adoration/rosary night with ecological reflections to celebrate Earth Day?
As for me, I have neither the time nor the missionary zeal to rehabilitate bigoted trad men, perhaps I should discern the single vocation? ▪️
Bad Apple Magazine 