The Engine Behind the Ministry
ThinkTank, GROW, Sunday Group Date, and How Two People Power a Nationwide Catholic Dating Movement
Part 3: Blog Series
Building Game of Love — An AI-Powered Catholic Dating & Marriage Discernment Platform
A 3-part series by Michael Palitto, CTO & Co-Founder, Finding Adam Finding Eve Ministry
Here’s something people don’t think about when they see a Catholic ministry with a polished app, an active blog, regular workshops, and events in 358 cities: someone has to build all of that. And keep it running. And create fresh content. And respond to users. And manage the tech. And market it.
For most ministries, that means either a team they can’t afford or burnout they can’t sustain. We chose a third option: we built an AI-powered engine that multiplies everything we do, and we designed a platform that bridges the online tools people use at 11 PM with the physical community they need on Sunday morning.
The Philosophy: Online to In-Person
Let’s start with the big idea, because it shapes everything.
Game of Love is not an app. It’s not a website. It’s a next-generation remote marriage preparation platform that exists to move people from screen to sacrament.
The online tools — assessments, AI coaching, learning quizzes, dating discernment — meet people where they are: on their phones, late at night, between appointments, during lunch breaks. They provide formation, self-knowledge, and accompaniment at scale.
But the mystery of love unfolds in person. In a parish. Across a table. In the presence of another human being who sees you and chooses you. Our platform is designed with that truth at its center.
That’s why every tool in Game of Love points toward physical encounter:
GIFT generates a PDF workbook designed to be brought to a real priest or mentor couple or a dating coach
READY’s growth guidance recommends real spiritual directors and counselors
Katie AI’s coaching consistently points users toward booking a session with the real Katie
And Sunday Group Date puts a real parish in your city on the first Sunday of every month
The technology is the on-ramp. The encounter is the destination.
Sunday Group Date: 358 Parishes, One Simple Idea
This might be the simplest and most powerful feature in the entire platform.
Catholic singles struggle to meet each other. Parish communities skew older. Young adult groups are hit-or-miss. Dating apps feel antithetical to what they’re looking for. And there’s a fundamental problem no one talks about: if you’re a faithful Catholic in, say, Topeka, Kansas — where do you even go to meet other faithful Catholic singles?
Sunday Group Date answers that question for 358 metropolitan areas across the United States.
Here’s how it works: Enter your zip code. The system finds your nearest metro area and shows you one featured Catholic parish — carefully selected for young adult friendliness — with Mass times and a meetup time. Show up on the first Sunday of the month. Go to Mass. Meet people afterward. That’s it.
The parish selection isn’t random. We built a scoring algorithm that analyzes census demographics (young adult population, education levels), prioritizes parishes in city centers over suburbs, gives bonus weight to Newman Centers and campus ministries (14 metros feature Newman Centers as the primary parish), and prefers late-morning Mass times that are social-friendly. The result: every metro has a thoughtfully chosen gathering point.
We cover 358 of 377 US metropolitan statistical areas — that’s 98% of the urban population. From New York to rural Kansas. Each with a featured parish, Mass time, and RSVP system.
No algorithm. No swiping. No profile photos. Just Mass, and the people who show up.
ThinkTank: The Brain Behind the Content
Now let’s talk about how two people keep the content engine running.
ThinkTank started as a simple idea: what if the same Catholic knowledge base that powers Katie AI could also help us create content?
Our FAFE-RAG system already held nearly 12,000 chunks of indexed Catholic teaching — from the Catechism to papal encyclicals to the CCMMP chapters to Katie’s own coaching insights. That knowledge base wasn’t just useful for answering user questions in real time. It was a goldmine for content creation.
ThinkTank connects to our RAG system via a secure service-to-service API. When Katie identifies a pattern in her coaching — “I keep seeing couples who can’t talk about money” — ThinkTank queries the knowledge base for relevant theological foundations. What does the Catechism say about material goods and marriage? What did John Paul II write about shared responsibility in Familiaris Consortio? What does the CCMMP say about the volitional dimension and financial decision-making? What has Katie written about this before?
The workflow creates a virtuous cycle:
Katie identifies a topic from her coaching sessions — a pattern, a recurring question
ThinkTank searches across our indexed Catholic sources for relevant teaching
We draft content that weaves Katie’s practical coaching wisdom with the theological foundations ThinkTank surfaces
The finished content gets published on blog.gameof.love
Published content gets ingested back into the RAG system — parsed into sections, chunked, embedded, tagged with topic labels from 17+ categories
Katie AI becomes smarter for the next user who asks about that topic
Ministry experience generates content. Content feeds the knowledge base. The knowledge base improves AI coaching. Better coaching generates more insight. More insight generates more content.
This same engine powers our workshops. When Katie builds a workshop on attachment wounds through the lens of the Theology of the Body, ThinkTank pulls every relevant indexed passage — TOB audiences on self-gift, Catechism paragraphs on the person-as-made-for-relationship, CCMMP chapters on interpersonal relationality, Katie’s blog content on attachment in Catholic dating. The workshop material then gets documented and ingested back into the RAG system. Another turn of the cycle.
Our blog at blog.gameof.love isn’t a side project. It’s a living extension of the knowledge base — every article enriching the AI that coaches users who might never read the blog itself.
GROW: Formation Through Play
If ThinkTank is how we create content, GROW is how we deliver formation directly to users — and it might be the most quietly revolutionary feature in the platform.
GROW is an AI-powered Catholic learning system spanning 11 categories: Scripture, Theology, Sacraments, Moral Life & Virtue, Prayer & Spiritual Life, Church History, Social Teaching, Saints & Holy People, Liturgy & Worship, Marriage & Family, and Evangelization & Mission.
Each category has five difficulty tiers designed using Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning:
Seeker — Recall and recognition
Student — Understanding and explanation
Disciple — Application to real life situations
Teacher — Analysis and synthesis across sources
Master — Evaluation, creation, and integrated theological reasoning
The questions are generated by AI grounded in RAG context from our Catholic knowledge base. Each question gets four options with carefully crafted distractors — wrong answers plausible enough to require real understanding, not just elimination. Users earn XP (10-50 points depending on difficulty), score 70%+ to unlock the next tier, and progress through 30+ badges themed around Catholic virtues.
But the genius of GROW isn’t the quizzes. It’s the formation architecture underneath.
Gamification That Forms
We didn’t gamify a quiz app. We designed a digital rule of life:
Daily goals: Three GROW questions and a Scripture reading — a digital “plan of life” central to Catholic spiritual formation
Weekly virtue challenges: 52 rotating challenges aligned with virtues — Faith Formation Week, Charity Week, Hope & Trust Week. Each focuses on targeted GROW content
Streak system with a grace mechanic: Miss a day? If you’ve been active 6 of the last 7 days, your streak survives. Mercy is part of the design.
Badge names that teach: “Crown of Charity” (all assessments completed), “Eternal Flame” (365-day streak), “Guardian of Virtue” (MATRIX completed). Every badge name is drawn from Catholic tradition.
Milestone bonuses: Recognition at 3, 7, 14, 21, 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days — because formation is measured in faithfulness, not intensity
The whole system drives users toward the same outcome as everything else in the platform: deeper knowledge of self, deeper knowledge of the faith, and deeper capacity for authentic love.
The Coaching Bridge: Where Digital Meets Human
Here’s where everything converges.
A user takes the KNOW assessment and discovers they have an anxious attachment style with low fortitude. Katie AI provides a comprehensive Catholic Relationship Profile and recommends growth areas. The user starts working through GROW quizzes on virtue and spiritual life. They join their local Sunday Group Date and start meeting people. They go on a few dates and use the Post-Date Assessment to reflect with Katie AI’s help. Things get serious. They move to My Date for ongoing relationship check-ins.
At any point in that journey — and users are explicitly encouraged to do this — they can book a session with the real Katie. A complimentary 30-minute initial consultation. Dating coaching, life coaching, couples coaching, or a deep-dive session on their assessment results. In person in Kansas City or virtual nationally.
Katie — the real Katie — then has context. She can see the user’s assessment results, their growth areas, their learning progress. The platform didn’t replace the coaching relationship. It prepared for it. It made the first real conversation deeper, more focused, and more productive than it could have been if the user had walked in cold.
This is what we mean when we say Game of Love is a next-generation remote marriage preparation platform. It’s not remote instead of in-person. It’s remote leading to in-person. The AI coaching, the assessments, the learning platform — they’re all building toward the moment when two human beings sit across from each other, fully known and freely choosing.
The Numbers Behind the Mission
What two people and an AI have built:
11,918 chunks of indexed Catholic teaching across 10+ source categories including the CCMMP
500+ quiz questions across 11 knowledge categories and 5 Bloom’s taxonomy difficulty tiers
410+ assessment questions across KNOW, READY, GIFT, MATRIX, and PDA
5 comprehensive AI-powered assessments each grounded in the CCMMP framework
2 active dating discernment tools (PDA + My Date) with cross-date pattern detection
358 metro areas with featured Catholic parishes for Sunday Group Date
30+ gamification badges with complete XP, leveling, and streak systems
52 weekly virtue challenges rotating through the year
A full content pipeline from coaching insight to blog publication to RAG ingestion
ThinkTank powering workshops, blog content, and the knowledge feedback loop
24/7 AI coaching backed by the largest Catholic relationship knowledge base we’re aware of
Live coaching access — any user can book a session with a real certified Catholic dating coach
Subscription tiers from free access through premium, with Stripe integration
All of this — the platform, the content engine, the knowledge base, the AI coaching, the parish network, the live coaching practice — is managed by me on the technical side and Katie on the content and coaching side. Two people. One mission.
What This Means for the Church
We’re not sharing this to showcase technology. We’re sharing it because we believe this model — AI extending the reach of real pastoral wisdom, digital tools bridging to physical community, formation at scale leading to encounter in person — is the future of Catholic ministry.
The Church is full of brilliant pastoral minds like Katie. People with deep formation, years of experience, and genuine charisms. What they don’t have is a way to scale their reach beyond their personal calendar.
AI doesn’t replace the human encounter. Katie will always meet with people one-on-one. The sacraments can’t be automated. Discernment requires real relationship. The grace that heals attachment wounds flows through the Eucharist, through Confession, through the presence of another person who sees you as God sees you.
But the space between appointments? The Tuesday night panic? The couple who needs to have the hard conversations but can’t afford a marriage prep program? The 22-year-old who wants to understand her faith but doesn’t know where to start? The single Catholic in Topeka who has no idea where to find community?
That’s where the platform meets them. And then it walks them — through assessments, through learning, through coaching, through a parish door on Sunday morning — toward the encounter that changes everything.
That’s what Game of Love is. That’s what two people with a kitchen table, a mission, and an AI built together.
Part 1: From Kitchen Table Ministry to Agentic AI-Powered Platform
Part 2: Teaching AI to Think Like a Catholic
Come find us at gameof.love Katie — both of her — will be waiting.
In Service,
Mike Palitto, CTO
Finding Adam Finding Eve
Developer of the Game of Love App