The Story of One Soul…So Far… Author Interview with Matthew
Lickona, Swimming With Scapulars: True Confessions Of A Young
Catholic by Lisa M. Hendey
O.K., I’ll admit it…he had me with title. Before I even cracked
the cover of Matthew Lickona’s new book Swimming With Scapulars:
True Confessions Of A Young Catholic (Loyola Press, April 2005,
hardcover, 278 pages), I found myself intrigued. Gratefully,
having now read and re-read the book in its entirety, I’ll say I
was not disappointed. As a matter of fact, this book is among my
favorites for the year - not because I agree 100% with
everything Lickona writes in this memoir, but because of his
stunningly gifted delivery and the honesty with which he shares
his soul.
Swimming With Scapulars is the story of one young man’s journey
of faith. The faith involved happens to be Catholicism, but the
appeal of this book is not found in its theology, but rather in
the glimpse it gives us into the development of spirituality in
this young man. Lest you think that Matthew is out to paint
himself a saint, he’s not - he shares his shortcomings, the
temptations he faces, and his sins with a forthrightness that
leaves you feeling like you really know him by the book’s end.
Many of my favorite passages in the book deal with Matthew’s
relationships with family - his parents, his brother, and now
his wife and children. Treat yourself to the experience of
reading Swimming With Scapulars - you will find yourself
entertained, enlightened, and perhaps even inspired to examine
the development of your own “soul story”.
Matthew Lickona shared the following on publishing his first
book, family, and his take on the future of the Church.
Q: Matthew, I know that you’ve been writing professionally since
1995, but what prompted you to write this book and has it met
your intended goals?
A: To some extent, I was carried along, so much so that a person
might be tempted to call it providence. My boss at the San Diego
Reader, Jim Holman, also publishes four Catholic newspapers,
among them the San Diego News Notes. The book began when he
asked me to write a column for the News Notes about my spiritual
life. I wasn’t sure how much I’d have to offer - I’m hardly a
spiritual giant - but I started digging around my interior and
writing about what I found there. I was also allowed to comment
on my experience of religion, the Church and the culture at
large, from books to Satan to Mass to movies. After about five
years, my wife Deirdre (among others) started urging me to
consider making a book out of columns. Eventually, I came around
to the idea; I thought the columns provided an interesting
portrait of a member of an interesting subculture: the young
Catholic struggling to embrace the faith in its fullness. After
Loyola Press bought the book, I reworked it into something of a
memoir - the story of my soul so far. As far as goals, I’d like
to see the book give pleasure and find a wide audience, of
course, and maybe spark some interest in and conversation about
the faith as I’ve experienced it.
Q: How would you describe Swimming with Scapulars to someone who
hasn’t yet read it? Who is your intended audience?
A: I would describe the book as the story of a young man’s
gradual immersion in the Catholic faith. There’s no slam-bang
moment of conversion or repentance, but there is a growing
understanding, acceptance, and even love of the mysteries, the
richness, and the demands of that faith. Along the way, I try to
give an honest account of my interior life, to show that the
Church is full of sinners (me), even as those sinners try to
advance in holiness. And I think I give some idea of how the
world looks through my eyes. I don’t know if I have an intended
audience; I’d like to see it read by believers and unbelievers,
Catholics and non-Catholics, Catholics who agreed with me and
those who don’t. I suppose I’d especially like to see younger
people read it and get a sense that living the faith is
possible, even in the midst of failure and sin. And more than
possible - worthwhile, supremely so.
Q: In the book, you eloquently describe the influence of your
parents and your brother, Mark on your own faith formation. What
important lessons have you learned from your parents and from
Mark about living the Faith?
A: This is an enormous question; I’ll just take a few things
from the top of my head. From my parents, certainly the absolute
necessity and primacy of prayer. They both start each day with
it, and it makes a tremendous difference. From my father, the
importance of witnessing in the face of hostility and turning
the other cheek. He fights the good fight at work - he’s a
professor at a state university - and in the Church, but he does
not give in to acrimony. Often, he is silent in the face of
criticism, even when it gets outrageous. From my mother, the
importance of acceptance. My brother was more of a model to me
of how a young Christian lived and thought, deeply in the world
but not so deep as to lose perspective.
Q: As a father yourself, how do you strive to share your faith
with your own children? What do you hope for the future of the
Church they will grow up in?
A: I think that for children, an important part of faith
formation is the establishment of habits. The habit of attending
Sunday Mass. The habit of prayer before meals and bedtime. When
they get old enough, the habit of confession and reception of
the Eucharist. Habits carry you when the will is weak, and they
are most easily established in youth, I think. That’s the
groundwork. On top of that, there is answering the barrage of
questions that children have, and even some preaching. It’s
taken years, but I’ve finally started to convince my eldest that
things won’t ever satisfy him. I try to make conversation about
religious matters an ordinary, everyday event; that’s how it was
for me when I was growing up. That way, I’m hoping, the faith
will start to work its way into everyday corners of their souls,
and not be reserved for “religious occasions.” And because I am
an authority, I model God for them in some way, so it’s crucial
that I teach by example. It’s harder to imagine them believing
in a loving God if they don’t have a loving father on earth.
They learn about love from the way I treat them, and from the
way I relate to my wife. What do I hope for the future of the
Church? That it will more perfectly carry out its mission to
bring souls to Christ, and that it will be a vibrant Church,
fully engaged with the world and sure of its own foundations.
Q: Tell us a bit about your time at Thomas Aquinas College and
how you met Dierdre. I know that you contemplated a vocation to
the priesthood - have you ever regretted not following that
path? What have you learned from your wife about the vocation to
Catholic family life and parenthood?
A: Thomas Aquinas College was where the I started to discover
the richness of the faith: its intellectual tradition (we read a
great deal of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas), its
devotional tradition (Eucharistic Adoration, the scapular,
prayer to the saints, etc.), and its doctrinal tradition. I
didn’t make it an explicit goal, but while I was there, I began
to reconnect with the tradition of the Church, to see it as a
guide and an inheritance. It’s worth noting that while TAC is a
Catholic college, and believes that the fullness of truth is
found in the Catholic Church, the Church does not enter
classroom discussion. It’s not a theological college; it’s a
liberal arts college. We read the Great Books of the Western
canon and we discuss them. You can’t shoot down the empiricists
by saying that the Church teaches otherwise. Outside of class,
in the general culture of the school, is where I made all these
discoveries about the faith. It wasn’t perfect; there was sin
there like anywhere else. But I loved it; it was a sort of
four-year retreat from the world for the sake of intellectual
formation. I should have been a better student, but I still
reaped many benefits.
I met Deirdre soon after arriving at the school. Though she was
older, we were both freshmen; everybody starts as a freshman at
the college and progresses through the same program. Each year
builds on what came before. When we met, she was dating a friend
of mine whose - but I knew his heart belonged to someone else.
We both worked on campus the following summer, and became great
friends. She had such a wit, but she didn’t use it as a shield;
she was comfortable with sincerity, the intimacy of genuine
friendship I think that’s also when I discovered what a
fantastic cook she was. I ate many dinners on the porch of her
dorm - no boys were allowed inside - and I was astonished at
what she could turn out with little more than a hotplate and a
microwave. And she drank bourbon. We fell in love about halfway
through Junior year. By then, all thoughts of the priesthood had
vanished. In fact, they vanished soon after I arrived at the
college. I think maybe some of my initial leanings were due to
my situation in high school. There, I was the odd man out - the
celibate, the guy willing to argue against abortion, the guy who
was serious about his Catholicism. Not to say I was alone in
this, but it certainly wasn’t the norm. Perhaps some of my
leanings toward the priesthood came from feeling of haven taken
a somewhat different path than many of my peers. At college, I
was just another Catholic. The attention I paid to religion
wasn’t something that set me apart. I’ve never regretted not
pursuing a priestly vocation. Sometimes, I feel a little guilty
- we need priests so badly, and here I am, happily married,
enjoying all sorts of natural blessings. But it’s not like
signing up for the military, where you can go if you think
you’re needed. You have to be called.
I’ve learned a great deal from my wife. She’s far more selfless
than I am, and she works a lot harder. Yet she complains less.
She is deeply devoted to my happiness and the happiness of our
children. I don’t think I’m a total flop as a spouse, but she is
to me a model of self-emptying love. Our marriage has been a
happy one, and I like to think I’ve grown as the job of being
husband and father demanded it. You start to get used to giving
over, you develop a feeling of never having done enough.
Hopefully, it inspires you to try a little harder. Christian
marriage is a vocation; it’s not simply what people do. It’s our
particular path to heaven, our best means of learning to love.
Q: You really lay your soul open in this book…how have you
dealt with readers’ reactions to the book, including those
closest to you and some who may be critical of your work?
A: Actually, reader response has been mostly positive, some of
it amazingly so. I like to think that has something to do with
the degree of honesty in the book, which is something I sought
after. I didn’t want a memoir that sailed off into happy
platitudes or airy abstractions. I wanted something grounded in
experience, and that will mean, among other things, sin. I tried
to make it clear that I wasn’t holier-than-thou, just interested
in being holier than I am. Those closest to me have been very
kind. There was one person who really hammered the book, first
on Amy Welborn’s blog and then on Amazon.com, and that did get
me upset, because I didn’t think she read the book carefully.
But my father has always said “it is a luxury to be understood.”
I’ve tried not to get upset. I posted a response on the blog,
but I mainly tried to correct the record, not argue with her
impressions.
Q: This year has been an historic one for our Catholic Church.
As a young Catholic, how have you responded to the passing of
Pope John Paul II and to the election of Pope Benedict XVI? What
role will your generation play in the Church of the new
millennium?
A: I’m almost 32; that puts me on the older edge of what people
are calling Generation John Paul II. He is the only pope I can
remember having prior to Benedict XVI, and I had (have) great
reverence and admiration for him. But I was not a disciple, not
the way, say, my sister-in-law Lisa was (is). I didn’t read the
encyclicals. I didn’t attend World Youth Day. I didn’t get
involved in discussions of his philosophy. My loyalty was to the
Church - which is not to say that I thought the Pope was somehow
opposed to that. I just didn’t focus on him, for good or ill.
Nor have I read much of what Benedict wrote when he was still
Cardinal Ratzinger, though I hope to at least partially remedy
that. From what I have seen so far, I like him very much.
As for what role my generation will play, please don’t make me
say that “I believe the children are our future.” Instead, let
me quote from my father’s book Character Matters, in which he
quotes Abraham Lincoln. “A child is a person who is going to
carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are
sitting, and, when you are gone, attend to those things which
you think are important…He is going to move in and take over
your churches…The fate of humanity is in his hands.”
I think it’s safe to say that the Church, at least in this
country, has been going through a rough patch of late. If the
“New Faithful” find what they’re looking for - and I hope they
will - then I think it bodes well for the Church. We’re short on
priests; a faith worth dying for is a faith worth giving up the
blessings of married life for. We need to re-evangelize the
West; a faith worth living for is a faith worth telling somebody
about, and actually living for it will be a powerful first step
in evangelization. I don’t want to get all pie-in-the-sky; I
don’t imagine that all the Church’s problems are about to
vanish. But I think the “New Faithful,” sound a hopeful note.
For more information on Swimming With Scapulars: True
Confessions Of A Young Catholic visit
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/082942072X/catholicmomcom
Lisa M. Hendey is a mother of two sons, webmaster of numerous
web sites, including http://www.catholicmom.com and
http://www.christiancoloring.com, and an avid reader of Catholic
literature. Visit her at http://www.lisahendey.com for more
information.