REGINA: Yes, it’s a famous church.
CYNTHIA: Marble was everything I wanted. It was liberal, yet with a Christian flavor. The church was starting to move away from a New-Agey to a more definitive, yet still liberal, Christian church under its new pastor. The liturgy was traditional (like a Presbyterian liturgy) and yet there was a gospel choir. The people were nice and supportive, but open to everything. I was at Marble for six years and during that time I was completely happy – or at least I thought I was. But God knows how to shake things up.
REGINA: Yes, He does.
CYNTHIA: During my time at Marble, I had been doing everything I wanted, including keeping my Goth lifestyle. However, I was becoming progressively more Christian again and I wondered if Goth culture was consistent with Christianity.
So one day, I searched on Google, “Can you be a Christian and a goth”?
I landed on Catholic Answers.
REGINA: Stunning.
CYNTHIA: The Catholic Answers forums was amazing. For the first time, I found Catholics who were discussing their faith. I learned about the Church fathers, our Lady, Catholic theology and something called “traditional Catholicism”. This was in March 2011. Before a month had passed, I knew I wanted to become a Catholic.
There is a lot more I can go into, but let me just summarize by saying, I attended the Latin Mass and was blown away by the reverence. God knows me and knows I would not be impressed by bland liturgy. The mystery of the Latin Mass, spoke to me and resonated in that part of me that craved ritual.
REGINA: So, how did you two meet?
JOE: Someone added me to her Soldiers of the Church Militant Facebook group... started noticing her and thought to see if she was listed as available on Catholic match and another dating site. She was and so I sent her a few messages. They went unanswered and so I thought she wasn’t interested. So I started to devise a long-term plan of posting and doing things to make myself look more like a traditional Catholic and try to change her opinion of me. It turns out she didn’t intentionally ignore me—she was just too busy to check for messages. So little messages and interactions on Facebook threads slowly progressed towards subtle flirting and then less-subtle things and then finally we started directly messaging and things took off from there.
CYNTHIA: Joe likes to joke around and his jokes are either so funny your stomach hurts or so corny that all you can do is shake your head in amazement. The first time he messaged me, it was a joke that I not only found corny, but offensive. Needless to say, we started out on the wrong foot.
REGINA | 16