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Two people sit across a candlelit table after talking for only a few weeks. They are in love. They are sure of it. And of the one thing that matters most, they have never once spoken a serious word.

What is marriage? Not what it feels like, nor what the world says of it, but what it is. It is a question men think they have answered long before they ask it. They mistake their enthusiasm for wisdom and their hope for knowledge. Yet the question waits. It will be answered in the years that follow, whether it was answered before walking down the aisle or not.

There is something strange about how we live in society today. We treat trivial things with gravity and the most serious matters with a shrug. Simply put, we’re in an age of misplaced priorities. A man will study a contractual agreement for hours to understand every word before penning down his name to buy a house. He will weigh the purchase, compare a hundred small advantages, and guard his money as though it were his soul, to ensure he is getting good value for his money. However, when it comes to the union that will shape his whole life, and the lives of his children, and the temper of his old age, he enters upon it with a feeling, often without sufficient reason. He calls this romantic connection. I think it would be better named “neglect.”

For marriage, rightly understood, is no private arrangement struck for comfort. It is a vocation. It is a sacrament. It is a faithful, lifelong, and procreative union, and it asks of those who would enter it an honesty most couples never reach. The questions that decide a marriage are not the questions lovers delight to ask; not in today’s dating culture. They are harder. They are deep. They are intentional questions: How does this person stand toward their parents, toward siblings? What values have guided and shaped this person’s life? What does this person believe about God, about the faith, about children, about the small daily sacrifices that fill this temporal life?

These are not pleasant questions for courtship. They are avoided precisely because they are weighty. And they are weighty precisely because everything later turns upon them. The conflicts that break a home are seldom strangers. They were present at the beginning, unnamed and unasked, sitting quietly at that candlelit table.

Consider for a moment that courting someone is a kind of interview: One is interviewing another for the office of spouse. The phrase offends the ear of those who often say that going on a date should not feel like “attending an interview”. When a date feels like an interview, it reveals a lack of good social and communication skills, not that the questions are not important.  Yet it offends only because we have forgotten what is at stake. Every courtship ends in one of two ways: in marriage or in parting.

The virtue of prudence lies in discerning – with both intellect and reason – before feelings cloud the judgment. And here is a truth most overlook. A breakup, when it comes from honest discernment, is not a failure. It is a success. The failure is to marry without ever having asked the right questions.

It is this honest asking that Thomas L. McFadden, Jr. sets out to teach in A Catholic’s Guide to Finding the Perfect Spouse: With 101 Simple Questions. The book does not ride on mere sentiments. It offers a roadmap. It lays before the reader the very questions that need asking before one steps up to the altar, beginning with the foundation on which all the rest are built: what marriage is, and what its purpose is.

From that foundation, it moves outward, into faith and family, into habit and finances, into the openness to children that the Church names at the heart of the married vocation. These are the substantial, life-altering questions, as Patrick Madrid calls them in the foreword, the ones whose absence so many wedded people later mourn with the same quiet regret: if only we had spoken of these things before. McFadden has written the book so that fewer couples ever need to speak that sentence. What the questions are, how they search the heart, and what they reveal about a person before it is too late to learn, are generously treated in the book itself.

This is the very conviction on which we at the CatholicCourtship were built. We hold that a good marriage begins long before the wedding, and that it begins by beginning rightly. The world calls this dating, and it bids the young to follow their feelings and let reason trail behind. We do not. We are made for courtship, which is the slow and reverent work of two souls discerning together whether God has called them to marriage as a couple. Our matchmakers help our members be introduced to matches based on profound statements of values and a compatible outlook on faith and family life, so that the courtship process may be both joyful and intentional.

Marriage is sacred. It cannot be approached as a mood is approached. It asks not for sentiment but for honesty, and not for chemistry of feelings but for truth. And so, the art our members must learn is the art of asking the right questions during courtship, while there is still light enough to see by, and time enough to choose well.

For this reason, we have added McFadden’s book as a resource guide on our platform. We refer our members to it as help and a companion, so that the conversations by which they come to know one another might run deeper than the pleasant shallows where most courtships linger. A good question, asked early and answered truly, is worth more than a hundred easy evenings. We would have our members ask such questions, and ask them unafraid.

If you would prepare for marriage as seriously as marriage deserves, do not leave the great question unasked. Read A Catholic’s Guide to Finding the Perfect Spouse: With 101 Simple Questions, and learn the questions before love makes you afraid to ask them.

The post What Is Marriage? What Is It For? Asking the Right Questions During Courtship appeared first on CatholicCourtship Blog.

Often, meeting people in person can be a daunting task. From living in a small town with little or no eligible singles to being engulfed in a parish community saturated with married couples to not having enough sample of singles who share their values and goals, young single Catholics continue to face myriads of courtship challenges. The social fabric of our lives is increasingly becoming less communal and more individualistic owing to the rise in the use of technology for human connections.

For Catholics, living in the modern world means learning to adapt to it without losing the chief values that define us. It’s about prioritizing our faith and the Church’s teachings in our daily life undertakings, and we can do this even in the digital age. We’re not entirely immune to the influences of technology, especially as a tool for facilitating human connections. Still, we can choose how we respond to them, always keeping our faith and values at the forefront. 

As single Catholics, we must understand that while meeting potential spouses in person seems ideal and desirable, many successful Catholic families began their initial acquaintance-making journey from online platforms. This couple, who met on our matchmaking platform, is a few weeks away from being joined together in Holy Matrimony. 

In this short series of guides, we’ll offer concise insights into how you can make connections online for the purposes of courtship without incurring the headache of “online dating fatigue.”

What exactly is courtship, and how does it differ from dating? In one of our previous articles, we explored the topic of courtship and the different stages. Before we begin, we must refresh our minds on how courtship differs from modern dating. Firstly, courtship has a specific destination in mind: a sacramental marriage. Whereas dating can lead to undefined, ongoing relationships, courtship is an intentional process by which two people who both know their destination discover whether they will become partners in the journey.

Courtship moves through 4 distinct stages:

Friendship: At this stage, you’ll get to know multiple potential partners and interact with them in a friendly, casual manner. This stage aims to build a foundation upon which to grow if you should enter into an exclusive relationship. Significant questions to consider here include:

• Is this person committed to the Catholic faith?
• Do we have things in common besides our faith?
• Am I physically attracted to this person?
• Does this person have the zeal for a virtuous life?
• Do I enjoy spending time with this person?
• Do I want to spend more time together?

Courtship/Exclusive Relationship: Once you’ve identified the person you’re most interested in and most compatible with, you will enter into an exclusive relationship in which you both suspend your online accounts and spend time together in person, meeting both families and discussing a possible future.

Betrothal/Engagement: If you discern and decide to commit your lives to each other, you’ll enter into the engagement phase, in which you’ll spend more time preparing for marriage through a preparatory course and discussing the practical details of your upcoming marriage.

Marriage: Having reached your destination, you’ll settle into your married life and come to know each other more deeply as you build a shared life together.

Because your time on The CatholicCourtship platform (or any matchmaking app) focuses primarily on meeting and getting to know new people, this guide will focus most of its attention on the nuances of the Friendship stage.

Pre-Courtship

Before entering the journey of courtship, it is crucial to assess your current state to determine whether you’re ready to enter into a sacramental marriage. Before signing up, consider these questions:

For Women:

• Am I ready to make a lifelong commitment to someone, or does that feel like a faraway reality?
• Have I healed from any prior negative relationships or experiences? Can I consider potential partners as they are without superimposing other peoples’ behavior onto them?
• Do I have the proper motivation for courting? Am I looking for a God-centered relationship with a unique and unrepeatable individual, or do I want to be married for the sake of marriage?
• Am I ready to become a mother and embrace the children God may gift to me and my spouse? Would I be willing to stay home with my children if need be?
• Am I comfortable deferring to my future husband regarding faith and finance?
• Am I committed to Christ and His Church? Do I love God and desire to reflect His love through marriage?

For Men:

• Am I ready to commit my life to someone and devote my time and energy to her alone?
• Do I have realistic expectations about my partner? Can I approach a woman as she is without comparing her to friends, family, or others I have courted in the past?
• Do I have the proper motivation for courting? Am I looking for a God-centered relationship with a unique and unrepeatable individual, or do I want to be married for the sake of marriage?
• Am I financially secure and able to provide for my future wife and children? Am I willing to take on multiple jobs if necessary?
• Am I emotionally mature and able to understand my partner’s viewpoint without taking offense? Can I empathize? Am I willing to cooperate and consider my partner’s concerns when making decisions that affect our family?
• Am I strong and rooted in my faith, comfortable with being the spiritual head of my future family? Do I have faithful friends and mentors to guide me along the way?

You’re ready to begin your courtship journey if you’ve answered yes to most or all of these questions. If not, don’t be discouraged. Taking the time to address whatever might stand in the way of a successful courtship is as important as the courtship itself.

The following article in this series is on Joining A Virtual Platform and Making Connections during the first week.

The post Making Connections Online for Courtship: A Step-by-step Guide appeared first on CatholicCourtship Blog.