What Scripture Actually Says About Love
Catholic Wisdom Series
The Catholic Wisdom — What Scripture Actually Says About Love
A lot of people come to me with one verse lodged in their head — usually Ephesians 5:25 or the reading from 1 Corinthians they heard at someone’s wedding. That’s not nothing. But if Scripture is your only reference point for love, you’re working from a fragment.
The full picture is much richer, and a little more demanding.
What Is the Catholic Public Domain Version?
The Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) is a complete translation of all 73 books of the Catholic Bible — 46 Old Testament, 27 New Testament — translated by Ronald L. Conte Jr. between 2009 and 2010. It includes the deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Maccabees, and others) that Protestant editions omit, covering 1,181 chapters and 30,985 verses. Because it’s public domain, it’s freely available to anyone — which is why we use it throughout our coaching tools and content.
Why It Matters for Dating and Marriage
Scripture isn’t a collection of wedding readings. It’s a covenantal narrative — creation, fall, redemption — running from Genesis to Revelation. Love is the thread holding every part of that story together. When a young woman asks me why she keeps choosing men who can’t commit, we often end up in Proverbs before we end up anywhere else. The wounds shaping our choices didn’t show up out of nowhere. Neither did the path toward healing.
One Teaching We Use Every Day
Proverbs 4:23 — “Guard your heart with all care, because from it proceeds life” — shows up in almost every coaching conversation I have. Not as a warning to close off, but as a formation principle: your heart has a real capacity for deep love, and that capacity is worth protecting while it’s still being formed. It’s one of the first things I ask a client to sit with before they start dating again.
How We Apply It
In True Love (Young Adults 20-39): Scripture references ground the Game of Love assessments and feed directly into our RAG-powered coaching tool, so that when someone asks about attachment patterns or readiness for marriage, the answer is rooted in covenantal language, not self-help frameworks.
In Before Forever (High School 14-19): Each module opens with Scripture as a framing prayer, and the virtue teachings draw on Wisdom literature — Sirach especially — to help students understand that love is something you grow into, not something that just happens to you.
FAQ
Q: Does the Catholic Bible say anything different about love and marriage than other Christian Bibles? A: The Catholic Bible includes books like Tobit and Sirach that aren’t in Protestant editions. Tobit’s account of a marriage built on prayer and covenant fidelity, and Sirach’s practical wisdom on character and relationships, fill out the picture in ways that matter. They’re not minor additions.
Q: How do I use Scripture for dating discernment without it feeling like I’m proof-texting? A: Read it as story before you read it as instruction. The whole arc — created for union, wounded by sin, restored through love — gives you context. A single verse rarely tells you what to do; the full narrative tells you who you are and what you’re being formed toward.
This article is part of The Catholic Wisdom Behind Our Coaching series. Next: St. Thomas Aquinas on Why Love Is a Choice.
In Him,
Katie
Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.