Catholicism was central to Matthew’s life. The 26-year-old from Tennessee was the youngest of eight children in a Catholic military family and it was something he expected would be a part of his own future marriage. That didn’t happen without being tested.
“In my experience I’d had breakups or people who didn’t want to date because of religion,” Matthew told CatholicMatch. It wasn’t meeting people or even people he liked that was the problem for the medical student with ambitions of entering pediatrics. It was finding someone with what he termed “the right characteristics” that led him to online dating. And given that those characteristics were faith-based, he signed up with CatholicMatch.
It was the early part of last year that was able to make a connection with Christine. They shared a common bond in their chosen fields. While he is in his last year of pediatric residency, she is finishing her own studies to become a nurse practitioner for pediatrics. Given this, is it any wonder their first date came at a conference to discuss asthma?
After talking on the phone and video chatting, they knew they liked each other, so when the conference in Nashville, near Matthew’s home in Tennessee came up, it proved to be an ideal meeting ground two months after their first contact. “We were both so nervous!” Matthew admitted. They fortified themselves with morning Mass and then went out to spend time together.
“We were blessed to hit it off,” Matthew recalled. He met her family and requested Christine’s father’s permission to court his daughter. They spent time not just with each other, but with the other’s families, including visiting Christine’s sister in the convent.
