A CATHOLIC GUY'S GUIDE TO DATING

(I wrote this as a tryout to be a humor essayist for MSN.com. They want me to take a different approach, so i'm working on that but figure why have this one go completely to waste? Hope you dig it...)

Dating is stressful enough for anyone searching for Mr. or Ms. Right. But it can be downright maddening when your parents throw the pressure of finding someone of the same religion into the mix.
In this largely secular age, most people don't have to sweat that part of the dating equation anymore. But if you're raised as a member of one of the Western world's two oldest religions - in Judaism or (like me) in Catholicism - the heat is often still on from parents (and even more so from grandparents!) to marry within your own faith and keep the family traditions alive. Thankfully, contrary to general media opinion, there are plenty of perfectly attractive and hip twenty- and thirtysomethings out there who still go to synagogues and church services.

It should be easy for Catholics to find each other. After all, according to the US Census, there's more than 60 million of us in America - making us one of the largest demographics in the nation. But just because you go to the same church as a potential love interest doesn't mean you'll have anything else in common.

That's why I'm here to help my fellow Catholics figure it all out, and maybe other churchgoers might pick up a few tips too.

First, it might seem the obvious thing to do is head to any church and take a look around for the cutest guy or gal. But you have to pick the parish that best suits your personality. I've noticed that there tend to be two distinctly different kinds of parishes.

One is what I call a "party parish," located smack in the middle of one of the hottest yuppie neighborhoods in the city. This church's members have money to burn and, as such, plan wild events like ten-bar pub crawls on Saturday nights that inevitably have participants holding their hair back and begging for God's mercy long before Sunday morning. Their young adults groups are sometimes the largest singles groups in the city, and as at least one buddy of mine noted, "At this church, you're not making an offering. You're paying cover." And receiving the Communion wine also serves as the pre-party beverage of the evening for these party veterans.

On the other extreme are churches run by priests who are so rigid the parish might as well have served as a convent and seminary recruitment station. Their young adult groups actually spent their Friday nights - well, some of them anyway - listening to lectures about the suffering of Christ on the cross and other such cheerful topics.

The strange thing, though, is that the rigid church managed to produce five times the marriages that the party parish did. Then again, they say misery loves company. Or maybe hearing so many discussions of Christ's sufferings actually prepared them for the horrors to come in parenthood and lifelong fidelity.

Either way, if you don't pick a parish that suits your personal style, you won't be able to find the person whio will either.

Of course, just as there are extremes to parishes as a whole, there are also extremes to the different kinds of men and women you'll come across. I have a friend who once was a successful, good-looking engineer who managed to be quite the playboy for years - until one day he felt the urge to become a priest. While some of my women friends swoon upon seeing him and jokingly call him "Father What-A-Waste," he found true fulfillment in giving up booty calls for a Higher Calling.

On the other hand, there's plenty of guys like my buddy "Tony," who treats the Catholic sacrament of Confession (in which any sin is forgiven and kept utterly secret by the priest) like it's a car wash of the soul. "Get out there and do what you want on Friday, hit Confession on Saturday, and you're good to go for church on Sunday," he says. I'm not sure that's really what the Lord intended.

You'll find all types of women as well, but two main types spring to mind in Catholic groups: the wild child former Catholic schoolgirls (who actually exist!) and might as well have stepped out of a Britney Spears video, and the die-hard, old-school types who are so uptight they might as well be wearing burqas. Again it's odd, but it's the burqa ladies who always manage to get married first.

The other big way to meet people is to search Catholic dating Web sites. Unlike EHarmony, which never warns potential users in any of their ads that you better not be gay or an atheist (or both!), Catholic dating sites make it pretty clear about what you're getting into. Aside from writing a description of yourself and mentioning your favorite movies or foods, you're also asked to name your favorite saints, specific favorite prayers, and other things like how often you go to Mass. It's in seeing these answers that you can distinguish between fanatics and people who integrate their faith with modern reality (if that seems like a dis, the fanatics don't want people like me either).

But at least one such site forces everyone who signs on to answer whether they agree or disagree with a list of 7 particular faith questions. These include dry philosophical concepts like papal infallibility (the doctrine that the Pope is never wrong on matters of faith and morals) and whether you believe the Lord is really present in Holy Communion, but more pertinent to those on the prowl are the two biggies: Do you agree or disagree with the church's teachings against premarital sex, and against contraception?

One can only imagine the mental hoops that many of us are put through in answering those questions. Answer one way and you sound like a candidate for sainthood but also a total bore; answer the other and get labeled a whore. I'm not kidding - check out the message boards and you will find some of the most judgmental people this side of the Republican National Committee. Inevitably, there's at least five balding guys named Larry or Bob lurking about on the threads who are 47 or 53 years old and wondering why they can't find a "pure enough" woman anymore.

But consider answers like that, and you'll find someone who will be your soulmate - whether you're pristine and on an express flight to Heaven, living in a grey area that'll find you doing time in Purgatory, or throwing caution to the wind on an elevator ride straight down to Hell.