When I first announced my relationship with my now-fiancé to my parents, the first thing my dad said was, “Really? The least Catholic person you know?”
This was rich coming from a man who was not Catholic when he married my very Catholic mother and then converted 25 years later when he had truly and personally come to the faith (this was the crux of my rebuttal to his comment). In truth, his comment was the response I knew many of our friends and family shared but didn’t have the courage to say.
From the start, my boyfriend and I were drawn to each other because of our shared passion for leadership, learning, and serving others. We have always had fantastic conversations at the intersections of our scientific and theological studies. As we got to know each other more deeply, we discovered shared difficulties in our family lives growing up, a shared desire for self-improvement, and shared political beliefs.
Over the course of four years of friendship and dating other people, we discovered the uniqueness of our trust and honesty with each other, and attraction naturally grew. We have learned how to communicate effectively through three years of long distance dating and, through personal tragedy, we have come together to mourn and ask big questions about what “beyond” looks like. It seems to me that, if you removed the outside personas of “church girl” and “agnostic scientist,” our inner selves would look pretty darn similar.
We also still share many essential beliefs: that the ordering of the natural world implies the existence of an all-knowing, first-motion Creator; that there are mysteries that science cannot explain; that miracles happen; that we are both soul and body; and that service to the poor is the crux of the Gospel.
This is not to say that there have not been important conversations surrounding topics like marriage, sex, and children. It is with these subjects that most Catholics begin and end the conversation about dating a non-Catholic…
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*When I originally wrote this article, FemCatholic was a free publication. As of October 2021, FemCatholic is now behind a paywall. In the spirit of access, I believe it is important for my writing to remain free-to-read. FemCatholic is an incredible space, and I am thrilled every time I have the chance to write for them! If you have the means to do so, I encourage you to subscribe to one of their passes ($5-$10/month.) Their collection of writers, videos, and events are creating much-needed space for Catholic women to come as they are. However, all of my writing for FemCatholic will always be free to read here on TheologyForEveryBody.com