What Is Catholic Match?
Catholic singles may find that they struggle to find people who share their beliefs and values on mainstream dating sites. And that's where Catholic Match comes in. This is a site to help Catholic folks connect, chat, meet, and hopefully result in holy matrimony. Since it aims to connect people to fulfill the Sacrament of Marriage, it's best to join if you're ready to get married; it's not appropriate for anyone seeking something more casual.
It's a reasonably small site, but on the bright side, that may combat decision fatigue. You can use the site if you're divorced, but only for friendship. You need to apply for an annulment if you want to use it for romantic purposes.
This CatholicMatch review will cover the most important pros, cons, and security aspects of the site. It'll explain the login process and what steps are needed to have a fully completed profile. We'll let you know how high or low quality the other members of the site are and dig into the dating features available. Finally, we'll cover some frequently asked questions, how much Catholic Match costs to join, and give you a conclusion on whether it's worth it or not.
Pros
Catholic Match app available for iOS and Android.
Interesting profiles.
Forums and Plus+ have great information and allow you to connect to the community.
The largest, best-known, and longest-lasting Catholic dating site.
Very faith-focused, you can truly get a feel for your potential partner's Catholicism.
Cons
Registration takes long.
Small user base, not many users.
Can't chat without a subscription (or a 10-day waiting period to reply for free).
Many profiles are inactive.
Login Process
You'll find the Catholic Match com sign-in button on the top right corner of the homepage. Click it and then locate the "Sign Up" button at the bottom of the page. First, you'll be asked to enter an email address and create a password. These start with your first name, last name (which won't be visible to other members), location, and gender. That's followed by your marital status, birth date, Diocese, and how you heard about the site.
Next, you'll start completing your profile. This starts with your height, ethnicity, whether you drink alcohol, smoke, have any children, political views, education level, and line of work. You'll also need to indicate how often you practice your faith, how often you attend Mass, your preferred liturgical style, and whether you accept the Church's teachings on the Eucharist, contraception, the Sanctity of Life, premarital sex, and write an introduction about yourself.
You can then select some interests, which are categorized into activities, faith, foods, media, music, reading, sports, and travel. You then must add one photo or more. After you've left the site, you can access it again by clicking on the CatholicMatch login button and entering your email address and password.
Profile Completion
You'll find it's easy to fully complete your profile because you've done about half of it while creating your account. You're prompted to add more photos and to answer some short questions. These questions require you to type out an answer and include things like "Tell us about your faith?" and "Do you have any favorite saints or devotions?". This is your chance to let your personality, faith, and sense of humor shine.
Catholic Match also has a temperament test that you can take, and your results will be displayed on your profile. This shows your temperament based on how choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, or sanguine you are. Overall, it's a fun alternative personality test to the Myers Briggs that's popular on other dating sites and helps show people who you are on the inside.
Finally, you can complete some final sections about yourself to finish your profile. These include information about your body type, if you exercise, your ideal number of kids, and your stance on the Church's teachings on the Nicene Creed. This is a reasonably in-depth profile, with many opportunities to share relevant information about yourself. The Catholicism-centred questions are unique to the site but make sense with the site catering to Catholics.
User Account Quality
The accounts on Catholic Match look very legit. Profiles are usually at least 50% complete, which makes them very interesting to look through, and many people have added more information too. All profiles have at least 1 photo, which is a requirement when registering. Nonetheless, the member numbers are slightly lower, so you'll see the same faces regularly.
Finally, they've created a Matching algorithm based on Catholic marriages that work. You'll take the Match Portrait survey to start; set some time aside for it because it can take 15-30 minutes to complete. This has several questions regarding all kinds of topics, including your interests and hobbies, the frequency of engaging in them, your past experiences, and your communication style.
There are also some questions about your emotions and how they affect your mood, decisions, and finances. You're then asked some questions about your views on sexuality, and then about your values and personality traits, and how you view Catholicism and marriage. Finally, you're asked for your preferences in a partner, for example, about their neatness or sense of humor. Once finished, you'll be shown your matches.
You're shown your matches one at a time and can see their full profile as well as your match percentage. This is followed by which aspects you're most compatible with. You can either indicate that you're interested or that you're not interested before moving on to the next match. One small downside is that your matches can only be tested against other people who've taken the Match Survey. So, if they haven't taken it, they won't be a match.
Dating Features
Search Filters
On the Search page, you can filter through matches based on the standard filters of age range and location, but you can also use height range, marital status, ethnicity, or body type. This is great if you've got a particular type of person that you're searching for.
There are also filters that you can only use if you have a premium subscription. The premium filters allow you to search based on smoking or drinking habits, whether the person has children, their education level, or political views. Finally, you can search for someone who accepts or rejects certain teachings of the church as answered during registration or based on their liturgical preference.
CatholicMatch Forums
CatholicMatch has great forums where you can start or participate in discussions about almost any topic, mostly related to Catholicism and dating. This is another way to educate yourself but also to connect with the community and get support if you need it. The forums are divided into Hot Topics, where you can see the discussions that are currently most active, My Topics, and Stream. The stream shows you the newest comments on the forum.
There are several different overarching subjects, and you can create discussions related to the subjects. Some of the subjects include Prayer & Support, Member Meet-Ups, Ages 45+, Widows & Widowers, and Men's Discussion. This is really the best way to find someone who knows what you're going through to get advice, support, or whatever you need. There's also an Entertainment and Humor section where members play word games and share jokes.
Plus+
This fun section of Catholic Match contains all sorts of Catholic content for when you're looking for something to read or do. There are articles written by Members of the site on topics such as "CatholicMatch Success Stories", "Prayer & Spirituality", "Online Dating Tips" and more. There are also videos available on similar topics if you like getting content in audio and visual format.
There are even a few courses you can take. There are courses under headings like "The Ultimate Guide to Purposeful Dating", "Date Smart", and "Lenten Bootcamp". These headings will have multiple courses within to help you master the subject. In other words, you can expand your knowledge and improve yourself to be a better Catholic and partner to your future match.
There's also a weekly Trivia competition, where you can answer 40 questions based on the Catholic Doctrine, encyclicals, and other Catholic materials. There's a weekly leaderboard, so you're competing against everyone who takes the quiz. This is a fun way to test yourself and see how you compare.
Messaging
An essential part of any dating site is the ability to communicate with potential matches. Many dating sites will attempt to force you to buy a subscription by completely restricting messaging to paying members. On CatholicMatch, you can chat even without a subscription, although there are some limits. One limit is that you can only freely message someone when you've mutually liked each other. So, you both need to 'like' each other's profile, to say hi.
If you want to read a message that's been sent to you by a premium member, you need to wait for the timer to elapse. The timer can be 7-10 days long. This is a very long time to wait to start a conversation with a potential match. The timer is a one-time thing, so once the time is over, you can start chatting. The chat platform is a standard instant messaging setup where you can send messages, including emojis and photos.
Catholic Match Mobile App
A great CatholicMatch app is available for iOS and Android users, which you can download and use while you're on the move. The app worked well when testing it and shares most of the same features as the website. One downside is that the forums and the Plus+ pages aren't available in-app; clicking on them opens the page on your mobile browser.
Some Catholic Match complaints cite that the app is buggy or clunky, and many think the premium is too expensive. But overall, the sentiment is that while the app could use some work, the site and users are worthwhile. And while the app is a little buggy, the CatholicMatch.com mobile site is the same experience but without the bugs.
Prices & Costs
CatholicMatch is monetized only through subscriptions. With a free account, you can like up to 3 accounts per day, and you have access to some messaging. If you've both liked each other, you can exchange messages. And if a premium account messages you, you can reply after a 7-10 day waiting period. Subscriptions are available for different periods and have slightly different perks.
1 Month Premium - $29.99
Getting one month of premium comes with:
Unlimited messaging
Seeing who likes your profile and which profiles you've liked
Accessing the advanced search filters.
You get priority support, if you need to contact the customer service team, and posting privileges in the forums.
You also get access to in-app video calls, which is a great way to verify that you're talking to a real person. The Catholic Match price for the subscription is $29.99 per month, and this will auto-renew at the end of the month, so keep that in mind. You can deactivate it in your profile settings.
6 Months Premium - $15 Per Month
The six months of premium has the same perks as the 1-month subscription, with the added advantage of read receipts. So, you can also see when the person you're messaging has read your message. You'll pay your subscription fee as a lump sum at the start of the period, so it'll be $89.99. Take note that this subscription also auto-renews, and you can disable it in your settings.
When you initially join the site, there's an incredible new member offer of 75% off the 6-month subscription. This reduces the cost of the 6-month subscription to $7.49 per month, which will cost $44.94 in total. This offer is only available for 1 hour after joining, so act quickly if you want to take advantage.
12 Months Premium - $10 Per Month
The one-year premium subscription has the same perks as the 1 and 6-month subscriptions, including the read receipts. This will also be paid in one full payment upfront of $119.99. The subscription will auto-renew at the end of the year unless you deactivate it.
If you've got a CatholicMatch coupon code, you can use it at checkout to get a discount on any premium subscription period. The coupon will not apply when your subscription auto-renews, however. If you're hoping to get a CatholicMatch free trial, they exist, but they're rare. Keep an eye on their social media pages to be able to take advantage of them when they're posted.
How Safe Is Catholic Match?
Terms of Use & Privacy Policy
The Privacy Policy is fairly good, providing fair reasons for collecting your information and protecting your personal data adequately. The only clause that's concerning is that should another company purchase CatholicMatch, the new company's privacy policy will overrun the current one, and they can do what they choose with your information. However, you'll be informed by email and can delete your information or account if this happens.
The Terms of Use are also comprehensive and contain no cause for alarm. The contents are the same as most other dating site Terms of Use, indicating, among other things, that you should not use the site to spam other people, limits the company's liability, and that it's your responsibility to keep your Catholic Match login details secure.
Security Settings
Catholic Match has some unique security settings that merit an honorable mention. Under your profile, you'll find a setting called Security, and here you can enable two-factor authentication. This means that when you log in, you'll need to enter both your password and a code that'll be emailed or texted to you. An effective way of stopping someone from accessing your account from a different device, protecting you from scammers.
This page also shows where you're logged in and will specify how many devices are logged into your account, the location of those devices, and the time and date they signed in. There's also the option to log out of those devices if you choose to. Finally, you can change your password here if you need a stronger one.
Report and Block
Sometimes, with online dating, you'll encounter someone who sets off alarm bells for one reason or another. If you think they're using a fake name or photo, or they've got inappropriate content in their profile, you can click on the 3-dot menu, then "Report", and give a reason. The moderation team will investigate, and if they've been found to have acted wrongly, they may have their profile edited or suspended.
You may also have someone who makes you uncomfortable while chatting or who is abusive. In this case, you can block them. This makes it so that they cannot contact you anymore, and neither of you will be able to find or see each other's profiles. This feature helps you stay safe while dating online as you can remove yourself from distressing situations. You can only use this 5 times per month, though.
Final Thoughts
Catholic Match aims to unite Catholic singles for faith-based friendships and marriages. The site is simple to use and is reasonably small, but it has some interesting profiles that are focused on helping you find someone who is equally yoked. The temperament test is a fascinating alternative to other personality tests. Once you've investigated what the results mean, it can be a good insight into the other person and how they handle challenges or conflict.
There's a detailed Matching algorithm that's based on successful Catholic marriages to help you find someone you'll truly get along with and who shares your beliefs. This is a great feature, although with such a small user base, it doesn't yield as many options as one would hope. Premium is slightly pricy, but the new user offer of 75% off the 6-month subscription is a great one.
The Forums and Plus+ features are fun ways to get involved with the community, make friends, or learn from one another. The small user base is the biggest downside due to the users already being limited, and some profiles are also inactive, so it's even more limited. For these reasons, we'd recommend joining with a free profile to see who's out there, but only purchase premium if you find someone you're interested in.
FAQ
How Does CatholicMatch Work?
You can browse through profiles on the search tab, liking profiles you're interested in and sending messages (if you have premium or like each other). After striking up a conversation, you can get to know each other better, possibly meet in real life, and see where the romance leads.
Is Catholic Match Free?
It's free to create an account on the site and to send a limited number of likes and messages. However, if you want to use the site properly, you'll need to buy a subscription.
How Much Is Catholic Match?
Catholic Match costs $10-30 per month, depending on the length of subscription that you buy. The longer you commit to, the cheaper it is per month.
How To Cancel CatholicMatch Subscription?
If you want your subscription to stop renewing, you need to click on your profile picture. Make your way to the Subscription section and click 'Cancel Premium'. You'll need to confirm your choice, then it'll show the end date of your subscription, and you'll confirm again. You'll still have your Premium features until the end of the period when you'll change to a free profile.
How To Delete CatholicMatch Account?
Click on your profile picture, then on Settings in the menu bar on the left. Scroll to the bottom and click 'Remove Account'. You'll need to give a reason and then enter your password, and your account will be deleted. If you meet someone on the site, let them know your story, and you'll get a gift.
