Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Denver Post looks at a growing trend: Catholics seeking Catholics for romance and, just maybe, marriage.

A snip:

Wanted: “Someone close to my age, fairly good looking and Catholic.”

Christina Newman says her short list of requirements for a prospective suitor sounds shallow to her now.

But one word — “Catholic” — spoke volumes.

She knew that someone who cared about her faith would share her values and outlook.

At age 25, Newman signed up for the online dating service CatholicMatch.com, the largest online dating pool of single adult Catholics. In 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated there were 22.6 million single Catholics in the U.S.

Singlehood has become a more attractive and feasible lifestyle in recent decades, yet many singles, especially those who are religious, would like to couple. A boom in online dating attests to that.

Marriage, however, is bucking some tough trends.

In the past five decades, the percentage of married persons ages 35 to 44 has fallen to 69 percent of men in 2007 from 88 percent in 1960, according the U.S. Census Bureau. For women, it has fallen to 72 percent from 87 percent.

Newman is one of the success stories. In 2008, she married Ernesto Monne of Los Angeles, after an engagement of almost three years.

“I was a single mom. I had married at 19. That didn’t work out,” Newman says. “I converted to the Catholic Church in 2000, and I was having a really hard time finding a young Catholic man who was willing to go to Mass with me and practice the faith.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reports that, in recent years, almost half of Catholic weddings unite a Catholic to a non-Catholic. This is new.

As of 2008, the Pew Forum reports, 78 percent of married Catholics were married to other Catholics. The only religious affiliations more likely to foster same-faith unions were Hindus, 90 percent, and Mormons, 83 percent.

“I think because of the high divorce rate and number of broken families, there is a resurgence in people looking carefully at what makes a successful marriage. They are turning back to their faith,” says Brian Barcaro, founder of Pittsburgh-based CatholicMatch.com.

Check out the rest at the Denver Post link.