A biographer for an addition account newspaper, blur addict and music fan, 30-year-old Matthew Lickona may complete like addition Gen-Xer alive on his hipster credentials. Or, as a wine connoisseur, foodie and accepted coveter of “stuff,” he ability be taken for an ambitious yuppie. Lickona, however, is one of the “New Faithful” a allotment of his generation, committed to acceptable Catholicism. In his book Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic (Loyola Press, $19.95), he describes a acceptance that transcends the times.
(Vocus/PRWEB ) March 24, 2009 -- A biographer for an addition account newspaper, blur addict and music fan, 30-year-old Matthew Lickona may complete like addition Gen-Xer alive on his hipster credentials. Or, as a wine connoisseur, foodie and accepted coveter of “stuff,” he ability be taken for an ambitious yuppie. Lickona, however, is one of the “New Faithful” a allotment of his generation, committed to acceptable Catholicism. In his book Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic (Loyola Press, $19.95), he describes a acceptance that transcends the times.
Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic
More kids runs adverse to the band of cool Who can be air-conditioned if alteration a diaper? If you ask me why I am a Catholic, my aboriginal acknowledgment is the Eucharist I ambition that accord with God. I charge it. I can accept aberrant flesh but if the acknowledgment from the pastors of that beef gives the consequence of one Episcopal eye accepting casting against the courtroom, I accept a harder time forgiving. God, the devil, heaven and hell, Jesus and Mary, sin and salvation the redemptive and admirable adversity of Jesus Christ. Eating Jesus? Home-schooling families with ten kids? Lighting candles in foreground of statues, confessing sins to a priest in a box? Fanatics. the bulletin of God’s adulation will achieve some of its admirable outrageousness: ‘Listen, I accept a secret. I eat God, and I accept His activity in me. It’s the best affair in the world; it leads to abiding life. But first, you accept to die to yourself. Being Catholic agency accepting “Other” in added abstruse means than angle on Fridays. It’s not simple to access by the article of the church, Lickona acknowledges. His alertness to let sex be consistently accessible to life, as the abbey instructs, is allotment of the acumen that afore he was 30, he and his wife had four children. “More kids runs adverse to the band of cool,” he says. “Who can be air-conditioned if alteration a diaper?”
His acceptance is a antecedent of abundant joy, however, decidedly accord with God through the sacraments. “If you ask me why I am a Catholic, my aboriginal acknowledgment is the Eucharist,” he says. “I ambition that accord with God. I charge it.”
It’s a acceptance that not even the priest sex bribery aspersion can cloud, admitting he endured an appointment with a priest whose boundless displays of admiration beyond the line. He can aggregation benevolence for the priest, but his acrimony is aloof for the hierarchy’s arresting reaction. “I can accept aberrant flesh,” Lickona says, “but if the acknowledgment from the pastors of that beef gives the consequence of one Episcopal eye accepting casting against the courtroom, I accept a harder time forgiving.”
A cradle Catholic, his acceptance is both allowance and habit, he says, and these “true confessions” are an attack to clean abroad the befoul brought on by familiarity, acceptance a bright attending at what and why he believes. Lifelong acquaintance with “God, the devil, heaven and hell, Jesus and Mary, sin and salvation” may action a activity of security, but it can brand complacency, too. He tells of his not-always-successful appetite to abide alert to what lies at the amount of his faith: “the redemptive and admirable adversity of Jesus Christ.”
Chronicling his activity as a Catholic, Lickona tells of how he has been abiding by the able-bodied bookish attitude of the church, but aswell by ancient sacramentals like the scapular and statues of the saints; his acknowledgment of his parents’ abysmal faith—even while sometimes abrading at his mother’s piety; his embarrassment if asked to explain his beliefs; and his grappling with claimed sin and moral issues from acrimony to almsgiving.
He says he knows there are those will anticipate he is a loon. “Eating Jesus? Home-schooling families with ten kids? Lighting candles in foreground of statues, confessing sins to a priest in a box? Fanatics.” But conceivably advancing from a fanatic, he muses, “the bulletin of God’s adulation will achieve some of its admirable outrageousness: ‘Listen, I accept a secret. I eat God, and I accept His activity in me. It’s the best affair in the world; it leads to abiding life. But first, you accept to die to yourself.”
Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic
by Matthew Lickona
Loyola Press
ISBN: 978-0-8294-2471-3, $19.95 Hardcover
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