Catholic Catch, an event for young adult Catholics who want to date other Catholics, included 14 rounds of trivia, with teams changing in every round to help people mix. (Photos by Clare Sheaf)
When 130 single young adult Catholics gather to look for a potential husband or wife, the mood could be a little awkward at first.
But Mass, pizza, beverages and rotating trivia teams helped break the ice.
“The fact that they put themselves out there, I give them so much credit. They took the first step of being there and they were all nervous. I would have been if I were in their shoes,” said Sarah Briggs, who helped plan the Catholic Catch event held last month at her parish, St. John Vianney, Brookfield.
“By the end of the evening, they were coming up to us and thanking us for this night. My husband couldn’t get over the amount of thank-you’s. Everyone was coming up to us — ‘Thank you for doing this.’”
The 130 young adults came from 50 parishes and included groups from the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Madison.
“Everyone who’s coming is deeply invested in their faith,” Briggs said. “We knew this was a great opportunity that kind of takes away that initial, ‘Are you Catholic? Are you not?’”
The idea for the event came from Fr. John LoCoco, the parish’s pastor of 18 months, who has done similar nights at other parishes in the past. He saw a need for an authentic in-person first contact between Catholics who are interested in dating other Catholics, instead of digitally connecting first.
“I think they actually had five couples that got married from the last event that was put on similar to this,” said Monica O’Brien, another St. John Vianney parishioner who helped plan the event. That was about two years ago.
The Dec. 12 evening at St. John Vianney started with a 6 p.m. Mass, followed by pizza, appetizers and a night of trivia that built chances for conversation between women and men looking to connect.
“It was a great opportunity to be able to bring all these wonderful people together and try to help people, whether they ended with a date or not. I think a lot of friendships were made,” said Briggs.
The trivia part of the night included 14 tables and 14 rounds with social breaks so each young man and woman could get to know a lot of people easily.
“It was a whole night of having them rotate around and being able to get to meet, make some eye contact and talk to every single person there,” added O’Brien.
“(Fr. LoCoco) said it’s so important that you make that personal connection and then can grow from that. That was a huge reason why we had everybody rotate — so they actually see the person, talk to the person, interact with the person.”
The night ended with dates for at least 28 of the 130 people, O’Brien said.
“We had gift cards for anyone that decided on a date, and they had to come up in front of everybody, which I was amazed about. They had to go up in front of 130 people there and all the parents that were volunteering and go right up to Fr. LoCoco and say, ‘Hey, we set a date,’ and Father made a big deal about it, everyone clapping and cheering,” said O’Brien.
“They also got a little sheet of paper that had information for St. John Vianney, where they could take a selfie on their date and submit it to our parish. We’ve already gotten a few selfies back.”
“My heart was just bursting at the end,” said Briggs.
“By the end of the evening, people didn’t want to leave. These people just knew, we’re in this together. There’s a group of us. Whether we leave with a date, we have a new friendship. Now there’s new faces that I can say hi to at Mass. I can think about those people. I can pray for these people.”
Briggs and O’Brien said another one of these Catholic Catch nights is in the works, with no date set yet.
“We just knew there’s a need for this age group,” Briggs said, “to help people connect.”
