Catholic or not, the consensus remains: Dating is hard. But with a combination of tenacity, creativity and vulnerability, some Catholics are finding ways to work around common obstacles and make connections happen.

And while speed-dating in a parish hall or finding your spouse on a viral social-media post may seem untraditional, those involved think these strategies shouldn’t be dismissed. After all — “What do you have to lose?”

That’s the question Emily Wilson posed when talking to the Register about her Instagram “matchmaking posts,” invitations for single Catholics to introduce themselves in a few lines, which have resulted in multiple engagements and marriages. 

Wilson made her first matchmaking post in August 2023. As a Catholic author and speaker heavily involved in women’s ministry, she knew “the dating landscape in the Catholic world is very bleak.” 

Her instinct to serve the needs of the Church — in this case, singles longing for a Catholic marriage — led to what she initially thought was “a silly idea” until she felt that God was prompting her to follow through.

So she put up a simple, one-sentence post on her Instagram account, which currently has more than 118,000 followers. “This is a matchmaking post,” the wedding-themed graphic stated. 

In the description, Wilson urged commenters to share about themselves. “Have fun with it! Write as much as you want! Be yourself!” 

 

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With nearly 7,000 comments on her first post alone, it was clear Wilson had piqued much interest. Most of the comments were from hopeful singles, men and women alike, around the world. The overall vibe was earnest, good-natured, encouraging and sprinkled with phrases like “God is good!” and “Let’s pray for each other” — in other words, not your typical comment thread. Others posted on behalf of a friend or family member.

It was the second type of comment that caught Sequoia Sierra’s eye. Under Wilson’s first matchmaking post, a woman had shared about her male friend, an Army veteran and teacher.

“Oh, he’s cute,” Sequoia remembers thinking. She was in her mid-30s and felt resigned to moving on from exclusively dating Catholics. She had tried a Catholic dating website but felt she’d exhausted her Southern California options and told her spiritual director, “I’m going to be alone” if she only dated within Catholic circles. “But something [in the photo] caught my attention, just from his eyes, and I thought, ‘What the heck — why not?’” 

So, she privately replied, asking the friend to forward her contact information. Across the country in New Hampshire, Rob Curran took it from there. Rob, now 36, preferred to meet people in person. But he was striking out locally in Catholic circles where, as he put it, an intense focus on marriage placed high stakes on simple invitations to go out. “It was very difficult to get that first date out of anyone,” he said. 

With a similar “Why not?” attitude as his now wife’s, he said “Yes” to his friend’s offer to post about him — and, suddenly, he found himself talking to a Catholic fashion designer from Los Angeles. 

Their first conversation was an hour and a half long, hitting “all the nonnegotiables,” Sequoia said. Both she and Rob appreciate that Wilson’s matchmaking posts encouraged that kind of intentionality by urging people to “just talk right away and see how it goes.” 

A few weeks after that first call, Rob flew to Los Angeles to meet Sequoia. 

They were engaged a month later — and married on June 13, 2024. Recalling the lead up to the trip, Rob remembered thinking, “I hope there’s somebody there for me at the airport.” He laughed. “But she was real.” 

 

Church Plays Cupid

Wilson told the Register she knows of at least three marriages, 12 engagements “and hundreds of couples and countless dates” that have resulted from her matchmaking posts. Her most recent one, posted Aug. 30, 2024, was a collaboration with Father David Michael Moses of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, who reshared it on his own Instagram account.

“We need holy families! Let’s go!” Father David Michael wrote in one of the first comments. Wilson said the priest — who’s nearing 1 million followers on Instagram — approached her about the partnership, hoping to drive even more participation from men.

It’s not new for the Church to facilitate connections among young adults, such as sponsoring retreats for singles and Theology on Tap-type events. But in recent years, Catholics have been getting far more intentional about helping couples meet. 

In a blast from the past, some parishes have started hosting swing-dance sessions. Professional Catholic matchmaking services are even starting to emerge, while at least one Catholic couple in the Washington, D.C., area had a long-standing practice of hosting singles for no-strings-attached dinner parties, trusting that nature would take its course.

Multiple dioceses have even sponsored speed-dating events (as did this year’s SEEK conference), in which men and women shuffle through short, timed conversations before moving on to a new partner. The logistics vary, but attendees discreetly record who they’d like to see again, and matches are notified.

Michigan’s Diocese of Lansing has hosted three speed-dating nights since 2022, with the fourth scheduled this Valentine’s Day weekend. According to their organizer, the nights average 75 to 90 attendees, with a mostly even split between men and women. (One event, which combined speed-dating with ballroom-dance lessons, had notably more men). Dawn Hausmann, the diocese’s coordinator of young-adult ministry and director of consecrated vocations, said she “love[s] helping people in their journey of getting to their vocation.”

But especially post-COVID, Hausmann thinks there’s a “real lack” of opportunities for Catholic young adults to meet organically, even as she sees their hunger for community and relationships. 

On the dating front, Hausmann — a consecrated virgin — knows many are turning online. And while meeting naturally through mutual connections or parish life would be ideal, she acknowledged, “I don’t think that’s very reflective” of the reality of most Catholic young adults’ lives. 

So if the Church wants to assist them in their practical needs, she said, “Why not help them meet in person versus this online reality?”

 

Shaking Things Up

Enter Michael and Jenny Koval, a couple in their 20s who met at the first Diocese of Lansing speed-dating event in the fall of 2022.

While still single, Jenny and her friends had attended Catholic speed-dating events hosted in the Archdiocese of Detroit, an hour away. They approached Hausmann and offered to help organize similar events in their home diocese.

“You’re going to help me? We’re gonna do it,” Hausmann remembered thinking.

That evening, Jenny was helping set up when Michael and his housemates came a little early — “wanting to get the lay of the land,” he joked. 

He and Jenny immediately struck up a conversation before the night officially began.

Finding each other later at an after-party at a nearby bar, they talked some more. (Jenny, who works in event planning, thinks these informal, post-event mixers are crucial to a good speed-dating night, as they give people a chance to either mingle freely or immediately follow up with someone they clicked with.)

By the time Jenny — still in organizing mode a week later and with access to the speed-dating results — was emailing attendees about who they matched with, she and Michael had already gone on another date. They got married this past September, two years after meeting at that speed-dating night in a parish gym.

Before they met, Michael and Jenny had each tried online dating, through both Catholic and secular platforms. They were also both involved in Lansing’s Catholic community, but not finding traction when it came to dating. 

The straight-forward purpose of speed-dating shook things up, they said. “It supports getting rid of the games,” Michael explained. 

“It adds some pressure, but takes some pressure away. You’re in a room with 50 women who are all there to meet someone. … It’s not like going to a young-adult prayer meeting or social event.”

At the same time, Jenny said, speed-dating’s format can alleviate some of the typical dating anxiety, with a literal timer that puts an end to an awkward conversation and allows you to move on.

The speed-dating initiative may have started with Jenny and her friends, but the Kovals believe the Church’s support is “vital” to its success. Hosting speed-dating at parishes and publicizing it on the diocese’s social media help normalize the events, they explain — it communicates that this isn’t just a night for “desperate” people, but a valid opportunity for mature, marriage-minded Catholics to meet each other.

 

Opening Up Avenues

As newlyweds, Michael and Jenny know how any encouragement they might offer sounds to singles struggling to date. But they urge their peers to hold on to hope and persevere through the exhaustion. “It’s objectively very, very difficult putting yourself out there,” Michael said, “but the chances of it just falling in your lap are not what you want to put your hopes into.”

Sequoia Curran compared trying to date with purpose and perseverance to having “a part-time job” — not exactly a fairy tale, but it made the peace she finally found with Rob all the more sweet. 

It was a “deep knowing,” she said, that gave her the certainty to say, “We choose to end the dating game now, and we choose each other.” 

That’s the kind of boldness and intentionality Emily Wilson loves to see amid her matchmaking efforts. “My prayer is it gives hope,” she said. “So many young Catholics feel hopeless they’ll ever have a good, holy Catholic marriage, and we’re doing what we can to give them avenues.”