Somehow, I ended up being the one who was too religious.
Which is a little funny to me because I'm still learning how to be Catholic.
I pray. I go to Mass. I pray the rosary with friends.
I try to understand what I'm reading and actually practice it, which is harder than just agreeing that something sounds good. There are still so many things I don't know.
So when someone thinks I'm too religious, I wonder what I'm supposed to do with that. Pray less? Avoid mentioning church? How much of this can I leave out before I'm pretending to be someone else?
I don't expect everyone to believe what I believe. I've never wanted to drag a boyfriend into a religion lesson or make him my conversion project.
That sounds exhausting for both of us.
But I think I underestimated how much I wanted to share my faith with someone.
To talk about it without having to explain why it matters every time. To go to Mass together. To be able to say, “Can we pray?” and feel comfortable asking.
Being an atheist doesn't make someone a bad person. And I wasn't wrong for wanting those things.
Still, when you like someone, it's easy to think you'll work it out later.
I'm starting to pay more attention to what “later” is being asked to do.
The math
Anyway, this got me wondering about finding a Catholic man in Indonesia. And because apparently I cannot leave a question alone, I looked up the population.
| Indonesia, second half of 2025 | Number |
|---|---|
| Total population | Around 288.3 million |
| Catholics | 8,861,999 |
| Catholic share | About 3.07% |
| Catholic males, if we assume a 50/50 split | About 4.43 million |
8,861,999 × 50% ≈ 4.43 million.
The 50% is my assumption, not an official Catholic gender breakdown.[1]
Four million sounds encouraging.
Until you remember that this includes children, married men, and men who could be your grandfather. Also, Indonesia is enormous. A population total is doing a lot of work here for someone who would quite like to meet for coffee.
Then there are priests, frater, and religious brothers. They have their own vocation, so of course I'm leaving them out of this.
For anyone else who now wants the numbers, here's a separate Vatican snapshot from the end of 2022:[2]
For the numbers people: the Vatican snapshot
| Category | Number in Indonesia | Share of all Catholics in the same dataset |
|---|---|---|
| Priests | 5,903 | About 0.071% |
| Major seminarians, preparing for priesthood | 4,024 | About 0.048% |
| Male religious other than priests | 1,801 | About 0.022% |
Calculation: category count ÷ 8,297,000 Catholics × 100. These are population shares, not the likelihood of a man becoming a priest. “Frater” isn't a separate category in this source. Categories may overlap, and the two sources use different years, so these figures can't simply be subtracted to calculate a dating pool.
After all that, I still don't have a useful answer. I haven't even reached age, location, being single, or whether we'd actually like each other.
What I'm actually looking for
And Catholic is only the beginning of what I'm looking for.
I want someone I can have an uncomfortable conversation with. If I've upset him, tell me. If I need to bring something up, I'd like us to talk about it without feeling as though asking the question might end whatever we have. We can take a break and calm down. I just want us to come back to the conversation.
I want someone stable and grounded. Someone who knows what he wants well enough to tell me honestly. I don't need his entire future mapped out, but I'd like to know whether a relationship is something he actually wants.
I want us to respect each other's time and boundaries. To make plans and follow through. To apologise when we get something wrong, then try to do it differently. I need to offer those things too.
And I am tired of situationships. I enjoy getting to know someone slowly. I don't enjoy becoming attached while still having to guess whether we're together.
I've stayed in that uncertainty before. I've hoped someone would become clearer, or more available, if I gave it a little longer.
I can admit that I wanted things to work and sometimes kept trying past the point where I felt comfortable.
That part is mine to learn from. I don't need to turn anyone into a terrible person to admit I was unhappy.
I still want to meet someone. Being disappointed hasn't changed that, although it has made me less willing to keep guessing.
So yes, I'd like to date a Catholic man. I'd like to share that part of my life with him and find out whether we get along in all the ordinary ways too. Whether we make each other laugh. Whether we can disagree and still be kind. Whether we both want to keep showing up.
I don't know what the odds are. Almost nine million Catholics, and I've somehow ended up here, writing about population statistics.
If you know someone, you can just introduce us.
We don't need another table.
Sources and calculation notes
1. Katadata Databoks, Indonesian residents by religion, second half of 2025, reporting Dukcapil figures. Population and Catholic share are rounded in the article.
2. Holy See Press Office, statistics for the 2024 apostolic journey, published 30 August 2024, with the population, priest, religious, and seminarian figures used here referring to 31 December 2022. The two sources use different years and collection systems; they are shown separately rather than combined into an exact dating-pool estimate. The male share is an explicit illustration, and no numerical values are assigned to the remaining dating filters.