Catholic Dating: Let’s try this again…

A long, long time ago I announced that I was writing a series of posts which would attempt to respond to a question which I have heard asked in frustration by many of my female Catholic friends concerning my brothers in the Faith: “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”

Despite having received a lively response to my original blog entry, it is well over a year later and I have posted nothing further on the subject 🙁

Now, I did begin sketching out a few initial articles, but unfortunately I soon began to feel rather nervous, unsure as to how such posts would be received, particularly by those within my immediate Church family. So, to cut a long story short, I chickened out. I stopped working on them and didn’t publish anything further on the subject.

And in case you were wondering, no, the irony of this was not lost on me…

I had originally planned to take my time and move slowly and methodically through my response to this question. However, given my current rate of progress (or lack thereof), I concluded that if I tried to do that I’d probably never finish! So instead I’ve decided to do just a handful of posts, raising some of the issues which I think are worth considering on this subject.

As I reflect upon the community in San Diego, I do recognize that there has been a significant shift since I first began to draft these posts. However, I still think they are worth publishing.

The Mandatory Disclaimer

I suppose I should start off by saying that there isn’t just one simple answer to the question “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”. Each guy is different, each situation is different and there can be a lot of competing and complicating factors involved. However, I hope that what I have to say in these posts will shed a little bit of light on the subject and prompt some much needed open discussion within the Catholic community. I’d love to see lots of discussion in the Comments section, even if people don’t use their real names. These discussions may well give rise to more articles at a later date.

In my original post I said that the explanations offered here would come from a variety of sources:

(a) My own experience
(b) What I’ve heard other guys say
(c) What I’ve observed while living among different faith communities, both here in the USA and UK

As I said before, not all of these reasons will necessarily be good reasons! Some of them will be pretty legitimate, but some will be a bit lame and others will be downright dysfunctional! Some of the problems I’ll raise will be more readily resolved by the gentleman, others more easily alleviated by the ladies, and still others by the culture at large. I’m going to try and be even-handed here and, if I’m not, I’m sure you’ll let me know in the Comments!

Finally, I don’t present myself as an expert, I simply offer my own perspective on a sensitive subject. I don’t have a wedding ring on my finger, I just have a lot of mistakes to share… 😉

Blah, blah, blah…get on with it!

You know what? This post is already quite long. I think I’ll put up another after lunch and pick things up from there. Sorry! See you in a few hours…

The article Catholic Dating: Let’s try this again… first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net