Swimming with Scapulars

An interview graciously given to us by  Matthew Lickona, the author of the fine Swimming with Scapulars, about which I had written some nice stuff, but which got lost, somehow. I'll write more when I return from Joseph's swimming lesson, but for now, enjoy.

And check out Matthew's blog

Who are you?  What's your religious background?  Why didn't you reject
the faith?

I'm the spiritual offspring of Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor - or,
more accurately, I'd like to be.  For now, I'm just a young(ish) guy
who has had a gradually deepening appreciation of his Catholic faith,
and of the profound difference that faith makes.  It began, as I
imagine it begins for many cradle Catholics, as a set of rules and
requirements and teachings, handed down by Mom and Dad, to be accepted
on their authority.  "We go to Mass on Sunday," "Jesus is God," etc. 
Happily, it didn't stay that way.  My father is a developmental
psychologist; he specializes in the moral development of children.  A
big part of that involves developing a child's powers of moral
reasoning, making the child a conscious participant in his own moral
life.  That element of my formation probably accounts, at least in
part, for my failure to rebel outright during adolescence.  (That I was
absolutely convinced of my parents' love for me also played a part, as
did the guidance of my older brother Mark.)

Religion received much the same treatment.  Dad took my questions about
the faith seriously, even when I was very young and terrified of
eternity.  When my faith in Christ wavered shortly before my
confirmation, he took that seriously as well, and joined me in an
investigation of the matter.  He helped me make the faith my own, and
not simply what was passed down to me.

My Jesuit confessor in college once said, "Most converts are won
through the heart, but Christianity is essentially an intellectual
religion."  I go back and forth on that, but it's certainly true that
the intellectual aspect of the faith has been an anchor for me.  I
place a high value on obedience - what we owe to our Creator and our
Redeemer.  But even if obedience without understanding has its own
perfection - casting ourselves upon the Lord - I am grateful for the
Church's interest in engaging the intellect as well as the will. 
There's a human perfection in understanding, and experience has led me
to believe that the Church in on the side  of what is truly human.  (I
get frustrated at some reports I read about the late John Paul II's
"convictions" with regard to certain issues - as if they were simply a
set of inherited dictums that he held onto like some papal pit bull. 
"Wow - a death grip on contraception, even as the whole world pulled
against him.  What a fighter!"  The man made arguments.  His
encyclicals were not simply proclamations.  Go ahead and examine them,
even disagree with them, but don't ignore them.)

I attended Thomas Aquinas College, more for the intellectual challenge
of it than the religious atmosphere.  (Students at other colleges I
visited had referred to it as "too hard," or "too brainy.")  But the
religious atmosphere was astonishing to a public-school kid raised in a
post-Vatican II climate.  So much old stuff, and so much of it so
appealing, even beautiful.  Icons.  Latin in the liturgy - though we
used the Novus Ordo.  Chant and sacred polyphony.  The bells rung three
times each day for the Angelus.  Devotions such as the veneration of
relics, First Friday observances, scapulars.  And most importantly for
me, Eucharistic Adoration.  (Over time, the Eucharist has become the
center of my faith.)  I had never encountered any of this, and I found
it wonderful in the true sense.  I wondered where it had been all my
life.

It wasn't all aesthetics and devotions.  I read Aquinas at Thomas
Aquinas College - and the Bible, Augustine, Anselm, and Athanasius. 
And I started thinking more about sin, sin as the reason for the
Incarnation and the Resurrection.  Sin had not been a big part of my
religious education.  I had never heard of mortal sin, had never
considered the possibility of hell, and had not been to confession in
six years.  The discovery of my sin - or the naming of it, anyway - was
refreshing.  Here was a clear obstacle on the path to sanctity,
something I could name and engage.  And here was a sacrament -
confession -  to aid me in the struggle.

I graduated from TAC ten years ago, got married a year later, and now
live just outside San Diego with my wife Deirdre and our four children.
  The years since college have served to further my appreciation of the
faith, the way it can shape both understanding and imagination and
provide a unique (I would say uniquely accurate) understanding of the
world and my place in it.

Why did you write SWIMMING WITH SCAPULARS?  What was the process?

I wrote a fair chunk of it because I was asked to.  Jim Holman, my
editor at the weekly newspaper The San Diego Reader, also publishes
several Catholic newspapers, one of them here in San Diego.  Six years
ago, he asked me to write a monthly column about my spiritual life.  I
tried not to laugh at the thought  (January:  I sinned.  I repented.  I
confessed.  February:  I sinned.  I repented.  I confessed...) and got
to work.  Every month, I went digging around in my messy interior for
something worth writing about.  Sometimes, it was my interior life. 
Sometimes, it was the life of the Church.  Sometimes, it was popular
culture.  I wrote under a pseudonym, so I was comfortable laying out my
failings.  But when it turned into the story of my (young) life, I had
to drop the pseudonym.  "My sin is ever before me" - now, it's before
everyone else as well.

I made it into a memoir after several people I respected told me I
should try to make a book out of the columns.  I had fought the idea -
I wanted to be a novelist, and didn't want to give too much away.  (In
his memoir Experience, Martin Amis writes, "I am a novelist, trained to
use experience for other ends" besides the telling of a life story.) 
But eventually, this seemed to be the work in front of me that could be
done, and I decided to do it.  An agent expressed some interest, but
ultimately declined to take it on.  So I sent the columns here and
there myself, garnering some very kind rejections from some fine
editors in the secular publishing world.  (I didn't try Catholic
publishers for a number of reasons, most of them foolish.  An example: 
I was bent on selling myself as a member of a bizarro subculture even
among Catholics:  young, halfway literate, and willing to obey Church
teaching while engaging secular culture.)  One of those editors, Paul
Elie at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was kind enough to mention me to Jim
Manney and Joe Durepos, two editors from Loyola Press who came to him
looking for writers.  They liked the manuscript, but told me that it
had to be memoirized - made into one story, my story.  I sat down with
the columns, tore them apart, and used them as the foundation for the
book.

Do you think it will annoy anyone?

I imagine any book is capable of annoying *somebody*, particularly when
it involves matters of how people live and what they believe about God.
  I admit to a contrarian streak in my soul, but I didn't write the
book
to attack anybody, or even to defend myself.  I wrote it to give an
account of my life as a Catholic.  Naturally, that account will involve
claims about the nature of things, and those claims will invite
disagreement.  But the book is meant to paint a picture, not make an
argument.  I admit to hoping that the picture will have some compelling
elements, but it's not making the case for my Catholicism.

Who do you want to read it, and why?

At first, I wanted it to go to a secular audience.  "Well looky here;
here's a Catholic who doesn't strap on the condom!  And get this - he
mortifies his flesh!"  Sort of show that people like me didn't go out
with the Dodo, and that we're not simply superstitious peasants.  "Good
gravy - this one reads Roth, Amis, and Camus!  And he gets all thoughty
about his nutball religion!"

Now, my hope is more modest.  I want the book to go wherever it will
bring pleasure or do good.  The people I hope will read it?  People who
think you can't live in the modern world and still follow Church
teaching.  People who imagine the faithful as monolithic, unthinking
followers who suppress every doubt and question in their need to be
right.  People who can't bring themselves to believe the fantastic
promises of the faith - being united to Jesus by eating Him, the
communion of saints, and all the rest of it.  Oh heck, I want everybody
to read it - I'm hoping that it's an interesting presentation of a
decently examined life.

What do you write about in your day job?

My weekly column is about wine.  It's interview-driven - my editor
doesn't think much of winespeak - and it covers the entire industry,
from vineyard management to production to sales to stemware.  I also
write features in which I go to people's homes for dinner and document
their domestic order - I've done slackers, rastafarians, widows, single
dads, lesbians, authors, military families, young marrieds, mixed
families, and a bunch of others.  I've written cover stories on natural
childbirth, architecture, Porsche owners... I've done all sorts of
stuff.  The Reader is a great place to work; if you can keep a story
interesting, you can really stretch out and go into detail.  I wrote a
14,000 word profile of a guy who had developed an elaborate code of
restaurant etiquette between waiter and diner. My wife wrote 17,000
words about our family's involvement with a homeless couple.

Who's your patron saint?  Or saints?

I took John the Baptist for my confirmation saint.  I admired his zeal
and the purity of his life, two things I could use more of.  I am a
great admirer of St. Therese of Lisieux - the Little Way seems to me
the only way I'll get to heaven, and she seems a saint with whom it's
easy to be on intimate terms.  I named my second son Isaac after the
Jesuit missionary St. Isaac Jogues, who  was to me a model of Christian
courage.  He escaped his torturers and made it back to Rome, then got a
dispensation to say Mass with his mangled hands and returned to the
very place where he had suffered so terribly.  For his trouble, he got
a hatchet in the head.  But as a husband and father, I'd probably say
my patron was Saint Joseph, before whom I "place all my worldly cares"
each Sunday after Mass.

What are your thoughts on the pope's death?

I find myself tempted to take on his critics.  "He didn't follow John
XXIII's example of bringing the Church into contact with the twentieth
century."  What about his willingness to engage the media?  His
emphasis on human fulfillment?  "He micromanaged diocesan life from
Rome."  How often did you hear him - or anything he had written -
mentioned from the pulpit?  How many actual changes in diocesan life
over the past thirty years did you see that you could attribute to him?
  "He appointed ultra-conservative bishops."  Mahony?  Bernardin? 
Ultra-conservative?  "He sought to undo Vatican II."  That one's a
little more involved, but I would argue he sought to fulfill Vatican II
- to throw open the doors of the Church so that the Church could go out
and teach the world.

But I can't take them all on.  I'm not informed enough to answer all
the charges, even if all the charges could be answered. And I don't
know how much the critics would listen.  I would only like to say here
that to me, he was not a strange mix of contradictions - defender of
political freedom on one hand, oppressor of sexual freedom on the
other.  To me, he was a supremely integrated man - all his policies,
popular and unpopular, proceeded from a single vision of human dignity
and a love for Jesus Christ.  He did some things that I didn't
understand, and that sometimes left me frustrated.  But I loved and
admired him.