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2006 ARCHIVE
December
Big Words, Cybergeeks, and Singlehood
November
St. Joseph, Unofficial Patron of the Dream Date
Part 2 of 2 parts
October
St. Joseph, Unofficial Patron of the Dream Date
Part 1 of 2 parts
September
Semper Fi, "Always Faithful" - Mary, the Marines, and Dating - Part 2 of 2 parts
August
Semper Fi, "Always Faithful" - Mary, the Marines, and Dating - Part 1 of 2 parts
July
What Is The Church's Moral Teaching on Chastity?
(Excerpted from Chapter III. A Major Challenge: A Chaste, Christian Courtship)
(Part 3)
June
Love and Affection
(Excerpted from Chapter IV, "Understanding Love")
(Part 2)
May
Excerpted from Christian Courtship in
An Oversexed World.
(Part 1)
April
Confessions of an Undercover Virgin
March
Renewing Singles Ministry
February
Body Language: Commentary on the Intersection of Faith, Sex & Culture
January
SINGLES MINISTRY IS VOCATION FORMATION
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| DECEMBER 2006: |
Big Words, Cybergeeks, and Singlehood
Written by Thomas P. Schmierer
November 27, 2006 |
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 New Evangelization
As someone who feels called to evangelize, I find the new Yahoo!® Answers website to be inextricably attractive. It is there that I have found an abundance of atheists who are looking for answers about the meaning of life. As Catholic singles guided by Christ, we already know the meaning of life! It is to love! It is to give a "disinterested gift of self"!
I find little else to be as exciting as providing gospel answers to existential questions as taught by the writings of our late great pontiff, Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body. Pope John Paul II's phenomenological perspective on the gospel message of Christ provides a fresh outlook on news that was already good!
In addition, Pope John Paul II's teachings encourage Christians to utilize media as part of what he termed the New Evangelization. Catholics are called to spread the growth of the Church with at least as much zeal as our Evangelical Protestant brothers and sisters. Catholic evangelization is not a new calling as can be seen in Pope Paul VI's 1964 encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam:
"We shall therefore resist this growing evil [atheism] with all our strength, spurred on by our great zeal for safeguarding the truth, inspired by our social duty of loyally professing Christ and His gospel, and driven on by a burning, unquenchable love, which makes man's good our constant concern."
If you are hesitant to initiate the use of Catholic apologetics against an atheist's attacks, perhaps you would prefer to begin with one of the Catholic singles found on CatholicSingles.com who may be in slight error regarding one of the Church's dogmatic teachings. The CS site has a fully-featured online chatroom full of Catholic singles waiting to discuss faith and morals. If you choose this method, please remember to relay your opinions compassionately and sensitively.
"Best Version of Yourself"
Catholic single author and evangelist, Matthew Kelly, asks us to "become the best version of ourselves." Similarly, the New Evangelization calls Catholic singles like myself to "become the best version of a cybergeek." Through Theology of the Body we can truly become the nerds that Christ is calling us to be by learning words like the ones found in this article — existential, phenomenological, ontological, and eschatological. Arguably, Theology of the Body has made it trendy to be a theological cybergeek, which is a good thing for me, since it is a personal mandate from Christ that I evangelize the good news to the world through the web.
Not only has Theology of the Body taught me to look at the gospel in a whole new manner, it seems that an ontological change has occurred within me. It is as if every event in my life has become a gospel revelation. As you will see in my article entitled Angels, Demons, and Dating, once a Catholic single begins to listen to God and cultivates an interpersonal relationship with Him, he/she will receive spiritual insights that directly apply to his/her current state of life.
Since this is one of my first articles on the CS website and you may be unfamiliar with my writing style, I want to give you the relief of knowing that my future articles will not be heavily loaded with complex theological terms. This article has been loaded with multi-syllabic words merely as a means to display that once you accept the gifts that the Holy Spirit has specifically given to you, even being a nerd can be hip in God's eyes!
Evangelizing Your Way into a Date
Since all Catholics are called to defend the Christian faith, it is our inherent duty to continue our education as adults. Pope John Paul II's exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, states, "In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized."
Catholic singles who have been called to a marital vocation have more time with which to more fully participate in the New Evangelization than our married brothers and sisters. It makes sense to begin evangelizing now in order to properly prepare for our evangelical calling in marriage. As a bonus, once we learn to draw the connections between theology, cyberskills, and singlehood, we can often drum up a few more quality dates than previously possible as can be seen by the ensuing story about my study group partner.
A few weeks ago, a study group I had been facilitating listened to the final CD of a 10-CD course on Theology of the Body. After that session, I hung out for fellowship with one of the study group members. The man told me that he had begun visiting theological blogs and would often add entries to threads that were of interest to him. Over time, he has developed some new friendships with those few bloggers with whom he shares similar faith and morals.
Were some of these bloggers women? That's none of my business, but they might have been. Dating opportunities begin by being brothers and sisters in Christ; therefore, helping each other stay on track through our major theological dilemmas is a beautiful way to begin a relationship of any type.
If you are called to the vocation of married life, then the marital vocation is your personal path to Heaven. A primary intention of the married life is for you and your spouse to help each other reach Heaven so that you will both reap the eschatological rewards (I wasn't done with the big words yet). If you meet someone through a blog with whom you disagree on matters of faith and morals, and eventually you lead each other closer to the teachings of the Church, then you have begun a pattern of leading each other towards Heaven – a pattern worth maintaining if you someday marry.
The best case scenario would be to use a blog to meet someone of the opposite sex who has similar faith and morals and avoid the dangers of missionary dating. When this happens, your chance of obtaining marital success is high. For one example in support of this claim, click here.
If you are a Catholic single who feels called to marriage, which inherently means you are also called to evangelize, then what are you waiting for? Go to CS.com, click on Chat on the left vertical menu bar and get into some theological discussion. As I am writing this, there is a heated debate going on in the chatroom on whether God is male or female. The person who knows the most about Theology of the Body wins that debate... and possibly a date. So get out there you theological cybergeeks! Get online and secure your eschatological destiny!
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