A Marriage Made in Cyberspace

MARRIAGE MADE IN CYBERSPACE (By Kate Ernsting, Credo, June 12, 1999, Volume 5, No. 23, Reprinted with permission of Credo)
As Jim and Kate Blaney of Ypsilanti, Michigan, prepare to have their first child, they often hear people say their marriage was made in heaven. The Blaneys smile and nod, knowing that it was also made in cyberspace.
They credit Ave Maria Single Catholics Online, a new Catholic Internet service, with facilitating their meeting and getting to know each other while living in different states.
After years of seeking, they were surprised that something so simple -- it could be operated with a few clicks of the mouse -- could help them find their mates and their calling from God.
"When I was single, the thing that frustrated me the most was feeling I had no vocation in my life," said Kate. "For a woman, that's to be a wife/mother -- even if it's to be a spiritual mother of some sort -- or to be a consecrated celibate. But just being single and wandering, not being either, I felt I was wasting my life."
Despite a successful job with a local computing firm and years spent serving others through her parish, Christ the King in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kate said she told herself repeatedly, "A job is not worth spending my life on."
Her husband Jim said he also felt he should be doing something that had a more eternal impact. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, he was working in the Washington, D.C. area as a computer specialist for a company that designed health care systems for hospitals.
"I worked on computers all day, and when I came home at night, it was kind of a hobby. It was the main thing I did, frankly," he said.
He even wrote books about computers, but he said he began to realize that something had to change. "About two years ago I let my (publishing) agent know that I had to take a break to get married," he laughed.
The oldest of five, Jim by then lived away from his family in Madison. Still, he said a lot of his college friends from Christendom College in Virginia had moved to the D.C. area. He was also very active in his parish and in the Legion of Mary, a lay Catholic movement that promotes evangelism and devotion to the Blessed Virgin.
"I was getting myself involved in something several nights a week. I would do door-to-door evangelism, and I was involved in the youth group in my parish. I had a long list of things I was doing that might be called social."
Kate felt that she had a wealth of contacts as well. Most of her three sisters and six brothers settled nearby; her family still lived in Birmingham, Michigan. She followed some of her siblings to U-M, the "family school," and into membership in the Word of God charismatic community. "I always had the desire to get married and have a family, and I felt I was in the right place to pursue that vocation."
But, although both Jim and Kate found some chances to meet eligible, devout Catholics, they remained single.
"It wasn't just that all my friends were getting married," said Kate. "I was at the point now where all my friends had four kids."
Although both Jim and Kate worked in the computer industry, they said going online to find a date was the last thing they thought of trying. Both avoided traditional dating services as well.
"I had been getting those advertisements in the junk mail for years and throwing them away. I was very skeptical, because they required going on video and were very expensive," Jim said. And he was reluctant to try online services because "it seemed like I was advertising myself, like an object."
Kate had the same reluctance to publish her picture and personal information on the Internet. "You hear about all those stories. When I first got Jim's e-mails, I teased him, "You're not an ax murderer, are you?'"
Jim initially teased the friend who told him about Single Catholic Online, too. "I never let on I was the slighted bit interested."
Kate tried one method to realize her vocation that proved very effective in the end: storming Heaven.
"I just experience being pushed up against a wall. It was like, "Lord, what are you pushing me for? Tell me what to do!'" she said.
She decided to offer up sacrifices with her prayers. "In February of "98, I decided to give up chocolate. Then another series of events happened, and I really felt called to fast. I expected to offer these sacrifices for about two weeks until my prayer for direction was answered. I wasn't even praying to get married or engaged, it was much simpler. But this stage ended up going seven months."
Finally, she felt the Lord was calling her to be ready to sacrifice more: if necessary, she would give up proximity to her family, her 10 years of music service to her parish, even her parish itself.
"I was quite involved in Christ the King, but felt that if I wanted to meet single people, it was no longer the place for me. At the time, new people joining the parish were mostly families," she said.
Jim was experiencing a similar process of divestiture. "A lot of my friends were moving away from Washington, D.C., and I was becoming less and less attached to that area."
Finally, in late September of 1998, Jim decided to act on an advertisement for Ave Maria Single Catholics Online (AveMariaSCOL) he saw in a Catholic newspaper, "I decided, what the heck? So I sat down, logged onto the website and did the application. A few hours later I could do searches, and very definitely, the first person I was interested in was Katie."
As for Kate, "When I got the e-mail from Jim, I remember reading his profile and saying, 'This is the exact kind of person I'm looking for.'"
She had a lot of praise for the AveMariaSCOL profile, which she said took her "days" to fill out, "because the questions they asked were very thought-provoking. It was not just your favorite song, but your favorite Bible verse, your favorite title of Our Lord and Our Lady. It was, you know, what do you think of papal authority?"
She added, "It was an excellent screening tool. I felt very safe."
The e-mails the two sent to each other were being directed through the AveMariaSCOL website. "It doesn't work like normal e-mail. When you send a message to someone, you don't know their last name or any other contact information," explained Jim.
The two started corresponding regularly, almost daily. "The e-mails got so long, we had to exchange our personal e-mail fairly soon. We started sending Word documents as attachments," said Kate.
"Soon we were inserting editorial comments in each other's attachments in different colors!" quipped Jim.
The e-mails began to go deeply into each of their family backgrounds, beliefs, dreams and hopes, Kate said. "Before we met, we had already discussed things like family dynamics, how many children we hoped to have, even men's and women's roles in the family," said Kate.
They discovered that Jim's favorite movie, Henry V, was high up on Kate's list. Kate's favorite hymn was "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," and Jim's, "All Creatures of Our God and King" -- the same tune with different words!
The two met when Jim flew up to Detroit in early November 1998, about a month after their first e-mail contact. Kate arranged for Jim to stay with a male neighbor. She was amazed to discover Jim had already reserved plane tickets for both of them to fly to Madison a few weeks later to see his family for Thanksgiving. "I was already very interested. I thought I would just take a little risk," he said.
So the Blaneys met Kate at Thanksgiving, and the Nelsons -- Kate's family -- met Jim at Christmas. Both were received warmly and enthusiastically.
"We got engaged March 19, St. Joseph's Day, and got married Sept. 25, of 1999. So you could say, it was about a year after we met online," said Jim.
Although both had decided to be open to moving after signing up with AveMariaSCOL, Jim said it made more sense for him to come to Ann Arbor. "All of Kate's family lives around her here. I was less attached to Washington, D.C. And it's a lot closer to Madison here," he said.
Jim found a job working for Kate's company. They were married at St. Regis Parish in Birmingham where Kate grew up, and the couple now attends Christ the King.
And while they don't send multi-paged, multicolored e-mail attachments anymore, they are still discovering new things about each other as they prepare to start their family.
Kate is discovering that Jim can carry the melody while she improvises the harmony to a new song. Jim, a philosophy major, has learned his wife likes late-night theological and philosophical discussions.
Both have obviously sworn off their skepticism about on-line courtship. "I always said Catholics need to use technology for good," said Jim.