Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic

“A delightfully high-spirited and candid account of living Catholicism as though it were true, scapulars included.�

Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

t r u e c o n f e s s i o n s o f a y o u n g c at h ol i c

contents

Acknowledgments xi Preface xiii

pa rt I: Fo r mat i o n The Janitor Prophet 3 Are You Still Having Sex? 12 Too Much Kissing with Father Dave 24 The Poisonous Tentacles of Anti-Abortion Zealots 31 My Dad and The Plague 39 Begging the Sun to Dance 46 Et in Arcadia Ego 54 Triddywackers, Tinkerers, and the Roar of the Crowd 62

cont e nts

Lent and Its Discontents 71 Swimming with Scapulars 80

pa rt I I: At H o m e Deirdre 93 Do You Need to Be a Paterfamilias? 106 Sex and the Outrageous Principle 116 Why So Many? 125 The Roach and the Woman 134 Not Home Until We Die 143 Boy Meets God 151

pa rt I I I: W is e a s Ser pen t s Alms for a Drink 165 Pop Goes the Hymnal 170 In Which We Go Parish Hopping 175 Hand Holding and Other Distractions 188 The World, . . . 195 . . . the Flesh, and the Devil 209 Dredging My Soul for Sin 218

cont e nts xi

The Moviegoer (Plus a Trip to the Theater) 225 Flannery O’Connor and the Two-by-Four 239 The Light under the Bushel 250 The Best Thing in the World 268

preface

found me just off the coast of Florida, getting pounded silly by the early morning waves. I was nineteen, and I enjoyed throwing myself against the six-footers as they broke. I enjoyed the roaring violence of it: the way my body’s motion was suddenly halted and reversed; the way I was thrown down by the surrounding water, spun around, and held under so that I lost my sense of direction; the way I had to fight my way back above water, sometimes against a sucking riptide. But after one particularly disorienting collision, and a riptide that gripped me long enough to engender that moment of thrilling terror—will I make it up? —I gained the surface and found I had lost my scapular.

“Whosoever dies wearing this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.” Tradition holds this to be the promise given by the Blessed Virgin Mary upon the garment’s presentation to the c h r i s t m a s E v e o f 19 92

xv

xvi p r e fac e

Carmelite Prior St.‑Simon Stock in 1251. Though I had been enrolled in the scapular—two small squares of brown wool connected by strings and worn around the neck—for the ­better part of a year, I ­didn’t understand how it “worked.” Surely an article of clothing could not guarantee salvation? The promise sounded almost dangerous, a temptation to presume upon God’s mercy.

But then, I supposed, if you were not one of the elect, then God would see to it that you were not wearing your scapular at the time of your death. I imagined an adulterous husband, rushing home from an illicit interlude and losing control of his car on a rain-slick road. He slams into a tree, and as he sails through the windshield and heads for the pavement at seventy miles an hour, the last thing he sees is his scapular, dangling from a shard of broken glass. God is not mocked.

As I felt the bare patch of skin on my chest where the wool square used to be, I thought of my own soul, itself weighted with sin. Was God finished being merciful with me? Was He preparing to take my life and subject me to judgment, now that I was out from under Our Lady’s promise? I panicked, and thrashed my way to shore.

What was I thinking, fighting riptides with serious sin— and the consequent threat of hell—on my soul? I once heard it said that if Christians really believed that Christ was in the

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taber­nacle, they would never leave the church. Similarly, if I really believed my eternal fate was in jeopardy, why wasn’t I curled up on a priest’s doorstep, begging him to hear my confession?

I don’t really have an answer, except to say that growing up with God and the devil, heaven and hell, Jesus and Mary, sin and salvation, and all the rest of it had made them familiar to me, perhaps too familiar. It was easy to overlook their significance, easy to ignore the urgency and import of their existence.

At nineteen, death and what came after felt very far away. That last riptide, combined with my lost scapular, brought them a ­little bit nearer.

The years since then have served to wipe away still more of the tarnish brought on by familiarity, to allow me a clearer look at the tradition I have inherited. And even by Christmas of 1992, I was taking my spiri­tual life more seriously than I had just a few years before. Already, I had begun poking around amid the more ancient treasures of the faith, full of wonder (if not perfect understanding) at what I beheld.

Already, I had become one of those ­people who go swimming with scapulars.

Spiritual Memoir

$12.95 U.S.

He plays alternative rock.

He draws offbeat cartoons.

He writes about wine.

He wears a scapular.

Meet Matthew Lickona, a thirtysomething wine columnist, occasional cartoonist, avid moviegoer, fan of alternative rock . . . and devout Catholic who wears a scapular, a small woolen garment traditionally worn by monks and said to protect the wearer from harm. Lickona is a unique and singular voice of a new generation of believers who combine a premodern faith with a postmodern sensibility. His spiritual coming-of-age story reveals him to be a prodigiously talented writer who embraces much of modern culture yet finds consuming joy in celebrating “the ancient treasures of the faith.”

“Readers will find themselves captivated by this winsome story of a soul.”

—Publishers Weekly “A chronicle of both the questions he has had about his faith and the joy and sustenance he derives from it.” —U.S. News & World Report “Lickona writes in precise, sometimes rollicking language that is charged with a taut energy.” —Image

Matthew Lickona is a staff writer for the San Diego Reader. He lives with his wife and five children in La Mesa, California. Visit his Web site at www.matthewlickona.com.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8294-2471-3 ISBN-10: 0-8294-2471-7

“A delightfully high-spirited and candid account of living Catholicism as though it were true, scapulars included.”

Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

t r u e c o n f e s s i o n s o f a you n g c at h ol i c