Dating, Cringe, and St. Thomas Aquinas

Given the natural and supernatural motivations to marry, one would think that young Catholics would be flocking to the altars. But they are not. Catholic marriages in the United States are down 71% from 1975, whereas priestly ordinations are only down 45%—and the number of Catholics in the U.S. has actually grown since 1975. The decline in Catholic marriages has sundry causes, but there is one overlooked obstacle that hinders Catholics from marrying, insofar as it hinders them from even dating. I am talking about cringe.

What is cringe? Cringe entails embarrassment by association, but also more. To cringe at something is to cast an instinctual negative judgment—“This is bad. I do not want to be associated with this. I want to leave.” Sadly, cringe is all too common in the Catholic young adult social world. As a result, making friends is not straightforward, which means dating is not straightforward, which means marrying is not straightforward. Not ideal.

As a young Catholic (24) myself, I want to articulate a way toward a solution. I will take St. Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor, as a guide (yes, really). Aquinas does not directly write about dating—or cringe for that matter—but he does articulate incisive principles that can help us with the problem at hand.

Aquinas was a man eminently interested in the truth. He taught that when our minds correspond to reality, we have the truth. What is the truth that can help us see clearly about cringe and dating? For starters, let us recognize what we are. Aquinas, following Aristotle, teaches that all human beings have the same human nature: a human is a rational animal. A rational animal lives and moves as a biological being in the material world, but he also knows and loves immaterial realities like mathematics, justice, and God. Human nature is what makes us us.

Due to our complex nature, we are perfected by goods of all different values—truth, food, laughter, marriage, justice, beauty, etc. It is the vocation of the human person to rightly order his pursuit of these goods according to their proper value. The virtuous human person habitually completes his actions—eating and drinking, working and serving the community, marrying and having sex—at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reason.

An orderly pursuit of goods is what our God-given nature commands of us. And our pursuit of such goods does not happen in isolation. Aquinas, again following Aristotle, teaches that friendship is commanded by our nature; a good life is practically impossible without it. Moreover, friendliness, or affability, is its own virtue for Aquinas, and lack of mirth is its own vice.

Friendship entails more than friendliness, however; friendship entails a joint pursuit of a good. Animated by a love of soccer, architecture, or virtue itself, men and women form friendships naturally. The more noble the good that unites the friends, the more noble the friendship.

The realities I have articulated so far belong to the order of nature. Nature, to reiterate, is good. God Himself is the author of human nature. He is also the Author of grace. And grace does not destroy nature, Aquinas teaches, but rather presupposes, perfects, and elevates it. Thus the natural goods of this world should not be entirely neglected, but rightly ordered to our supernatural calling—eternal life with the Trinity.

From this basic (Aristotelian-)Thomistic foundation of the human person, we can start to glean insights into why certain parts of the Catholic young adult (“CYA”) world are cringe, forming an obstacle for dating and marriage.

First, the CYA sphere seems to overlook the importance of material beauty, thereby neglecting our nature as rational animals. The CYA “vibe” can be relatively juvenile, unattractive, and not very ennobling. How many CYA events take place in a dull and sterile parish hall? Too many, surely. As rational animals, we are affected by our environment; aesthetic failure is therefore no small hindrance for creating a non-cringe culture.

To be blunt, you reap what you sow. Aesthetic failure is part of the reason why the CYA sphere holds a disproportionate number of relatively immature and socially awkward individuals. To be less cringe, CYA culture needs to attract Catholic young men and women of competence, maturity, and affability. And to draw men and women of such caliber it needs to prioritize excellence and beauty, both in the material and spiritual order. More young Catholics of poise attending CYA events will lead to less cringe, more dating, and more marriages. (To state the obvious, we ought to love and respect all people regardless of social skill; I aim here merely to note that the prevalence of social ineptitude creates an impediment for Catholic friendship, dating, and marriage.)

Jesus, as the Author of nature and grace, understood the importance of material beauty for the human person. According to Aquinas, Jesus was not ugly, but rather had “the highest beauty of body which was appropriate to his state and awe and graciousness in aspect.” Moreover, the Church, the bride of Christ, has again and again borne testimony to the importance of material beauty by erecting magnificent cathedrals that still draw thousands of people to this day. The CYA sphere must be made (more) beautiful if it is to avoid cringe.

Second, the CYA sphere seems to misunderstand the nature of human friendship. I would like to recount an anecdote: I have been playing pickup soccer at public parks for years. Whichever group I play with, I find people who are, or become, friendly with each other—like second nature—despite their differences of race, religion, and age. Almost everyone blends right into the group. These friendships are not the deepest, but they are straightforward and delightful.

I do not find this type of connaturality (second-natured-ness) as readily in the CYA sphere as I do at public parks. Why? Partly because CYA events bring all Catholics together, and as a result the requisite specificity to form complete friendships is lacking. Said plainly, just because two people are Catholic does not mean they will become friends. Whereas at the park, a love for soccer easily unites all those involved—albeit in a superficial way—it is not clear that a shared faith does so for Catholic young adults. More is needed.

I think an emphasis on Catholic service projects, instead of vague social events, is a great way for the CYA world to go. Sports, hikes, and museum visits are too. When a Catholic attends an activity-specific event, he reveals that he is the type of person who thinks that this event is meaningful in itself. Such self-disclosure can be the start of real friendship, and a great way to “meet someone.”

Now onto dating itself. Dating should not be the predominant intention of the CYA sphere. When CYA events function as a thinly veiled singles club, it ironically militates against dating, creating pressure, confusion, and self-evaluation. The predominant intention of CYA needs to be holistic and genuine Christ-centered friendship—romance will follow naturally from such a culture.

A friendship-focused culture actually creates the levity and space for the possibility of dating. Dating as a Catholic should feel natural, because it is natural. As one writer put it:

A date should not feel like a job interview for the vocation of motherhood. It should not feel like a performance review for masculine provision. It should not feel like a theological debate, a therapy intake, or an audition for an Instagram version of Catholic family life. It should feel like two people getting to know each other.

Everyone knows the CYA ambience needs to change: my friend Jarod once told me that at certain CYA events he feels like a mere means to create enough bodies so that others can find their spouse; Sophie related that she and her friends feel drawn to “meet people” but repulsed by the atmosphere of CYA events; David, who is engaged, feels no draw to be a part of his young adult community as it suffers from the singles club air.

If we can build a culture of genuine friendships centered around a sincere and orderly pursuit of goods, then the naturalness of dating should follow. The connection between friendship and dating is well founded precisely because dating is ordered to marriage, and marriage just is a type of friendship (albeit a covenantal, reproductive type of friendship). In fact, according to Aquinas, marriage is friendship of the highest order: “between husband and wife, it seems, there exists the greatest of friendship.”

There are already many tragedies that directly or indirectly hamper Catholic male-female relations—divorce, pornography, contraception, sexually explicit movies—we do not need cringe to be another one. Promulgating a beautiful aesthetic, hosting activity-specific events, and prioritizing friendship should help on this front. St. Thomas Aquinas—pray for us.