CATHOLIC DATING AND LOVE & RESPONSIBILITY | KAIROS GLOBAL | JANUARY 2024

Author: Nicholas Koeppel

Intro: Nicholas Koeppel reflects on St John Paul II’s book Love and Responsibility in this article on Catholic dating.

What is Catholic dating? First of all, two people ‘date’ by spending time together, setting a ‘date’ to get to know each other better. They get to know each other through talking and communication, and through sharing experiences together. In today’s world, many young people are communicating a lot through text messages, and this should be supplemented with communicating in person as well. It is easy to hide behind a screen when a relationship is only texting, but truly getting to know another person means being in their presence, bodily. It means sharing experiences together and getting to know one another’s families. 

Why date? Well the ultimate purpose is to grow in intimacy and the ‘union of persons’ in a spiritual way, that eventually leads to the total gift of self in marriage. Rather than only being about ‘fun’, dating has the deeper purpose of preparing for marriage, of discerning with the other person if the two of you are being called by God to make a total gift of yourself to each other, for the rest of your life. This process of dating takes time in order to make a mature choice. The choice of who to marry is a very serious one, because it is a choice for the rest of one’s life, the two become one flesh. 

This is why a couple should take their time when dating, to pray about the decision a lot, to truly get to know the other person, and sometimes it takes a lot of time to really get to know another. Of course, even throughout an entire marriage and life together, a couple is always learning more about each other. But while dating, a couple should get to know each other enough in order to have a firm decision that this is the one I want to grow old with. 

As a couple gets to know each other, there is always the question of physical intimacy in a relationship. Many ask, how far is too far? How far can we go? St John Paul II described the way a couple expresses love and communicate to each other through the body as the ‘language of the body’. Just as we are called to speak the truth with our words, so we are called to speak the truth with our bodies. Our bodily actions mean something. A thumbs up, a high five, a hug, a kiss, and the sexual embrace all carry an inherent meaning. A kiss can mean ‘I love you’, but a kiss can also be ‘spoken’ as a lie (example, Judas kissing Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane). The bodily gift of sex is speaking through the body ‘I give myself totally to you and I am open to having children with you’. This act is only speaking the truth within a marriage, not outside it. Only after a couple has come to the point of making their vows to each other at the altar, only after they have truly given themselves to each other through their words on their wedding day, can their bodily gift of self to each other in sexual intimacy truly become authentic and truthful. This is why dating couples should save sex for marriage. 

Chastity is such an important part of dating, but it is also important for the entirety of marriage and it is an important virtue for every vocation. For a dating couple, chastity means not going so far as to become aroused (Do not stir up love until it’s time - Song of Songs 8:4). The purpose of arousal is to lead to the total gift of sex in marriage, and so it is better not to start and then stop the process. By living in chastity, which is really living the truth of love, a couple has the wonderful opportunity to get to know each other while dating. Their love has the opportunity to grow and develop in a truly personal way. If their relationship is too much based on their physical intimacy, it can blind them from truly seeing and getting to know the other as they truly are. When a couple chooses to live chastely, they can grow in spiritual intimacy and the union of persons in a full and complete way, leading up to their marriage, when they can express this love physically through their bodies with a truthful sign. 

In Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla (who would later become Pope Saint John Paul II) wrote about the ‘raw materials of love’. These raw materials are physical attraction and emotion. By calling them raw materials, Wojtyla is saying that love is made up of these things, that they are a part of love, but that love is more than only these raw materials. Only physical attraction and positive emotions do not yet mean love is present there. Love is something more, something deeper. Love wills the good of the other. Love sacrifices for the other. Love is the union of ‘persons’. Love sees the ‘person’ of the other, not just a body that is physically attractive. Wojtyla says that physical attractions should be ‘sublimated’ to the value of the person. This is because the value of the person is the highest value one has and is. All the characteristics a person has – their talents, their appearance, their skills – all of these good things are sublimated under the highest value of their dignity as a ‘person’ – that they are unique and unrepeatable, a person chosen by God who is love. We can try to ensure that love is always present in our hearts by seeking to acknowledge, value, and treat others with the dignity of the person, especially our girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse. This will ensure that a couple does not use each other as objects. Love is the opposite of use. A person is one who can never be treated as an object of use, Wojtyla teaches. 

Dating can be an exciting time. It is the time of searching for and finding the other person who you will spend the rest of your life with. Pray that God leads you to the right person and that you have the courage to say ‘yes’ with the gift of your total self to the other. For by giving ourselves away, this is when we truly find ourselves.

Nicholas Koeppel grew up in southeast Missouri, USA. After attending seminary for 4 years, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, discerned out of seminary and went to study a Masters of Marriage and Family studies in Austria at the International Theological Institute. He worked for 4 years in the Youth Ministry at parishes in Missouri. Currently he lives in Indiana working for the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana as the Manager of the Family Life Office. Since 2020, he has served on the leadership team for Theology of the Body Educators seeking to teach and share Theology of the Body all over the world through online and in person opportunities.