49 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Worthy Book!, March 28, 2005
Swimming with Scapulars-True Confessions of a Young Catholic is not a perfect book, but it is a worthy book. A story that needed to be told amidst all the spectacular conversions of our times: a thirtysomething Catholic who never left the Church, but who has struggled in his relationship with God and Catholicism.
Swimming with Scapulars, despite its humorous title and cover, is not a funny book, but it has its hilarious moments-a sort of divine comedy at times. What does "swimming with scapulars" mean? My Catholic friends-to whom I rave about this book-get it right away: "Ha ha! You keep your scapular on in the water because you might drown!" (The promise Our Lady made to St. Simon Stock regarding the scapular involved eternal salvation-assistance.) Unfortunately, the author leads with this image-story in the opening pages. I don't say unfortunately because it gives away a punch-line, but because it dredges up (in the non-Catholic or no-frills Catholic mind) what is deemed to be superstition in Catholic tradition before we even get to know Matthew Lickona. He even appears to be a scrupulous, fearful believer; but hold on, Matthew explains all on page 81, even his own initial misgivings about the sacramental. Actually, that's what's needed with this gem of a book: holding on.
Swimming with Scapulars can easily be put down for the first thirty pages, but after that, fugghedaboutit. The random reminiscences up to this point-even a candid tale of an encounter with an abusive priest-don't seem to coagulate, but then the author hits his stride.
Swimming with Scapulars is not about an extraordinary life. The author's life is a little droll even, except for his interior life. What goes on in the mind, heart and conscience of a young, believing, practicing Catholic in this postmodern world? You will be given a no-holds, no-doubts, no-sins, no-triumphs barred "admit one." I might even go so far as to say that Lickona's interior dialogue-trust me, it's not boring!-is Augustinesque. We need more Catholics like Lickona: he's a 2000-year-old Catholic. That is, he's an inclusive Catholic: he ingests all 2000 years, he loves all 2000 years. Much like a World Youth Day celebration, this book will scream out to young Catholics of Lickona's ilk: You are not alone!
He pops in and out of his inscape to share marvelously-detailed accounts of his childhood, college years and now family life. The reader is given a spiritual geography of his hometown: Cortland, NY, and his new home: San Diego. Lickona names names. So daringly that one wonders if he has changed any of them. (I hope he has, because this book should go far and wide.) But the strength of Scapulars is the author's towering ability to know himself. The morally uninitiated could learn volumes in moral reasoning from these pages. It gives the morally initiated pause: Gosh! Do I care that much?
Swimming with Scapulars is a book about caring. Caring very much, about everything, but not in a tortured, morbid way. Lickona is someone you'd like to have frequent conversations with, because he cares. He gets chatty about sacred and secular literature, classic and contemporary films, so much so that this book-for its "current media" value
--will be dated in ten years. Scapulars is definitely time-capsule fodder.
Swimming with Scapulars commits the mortal sin of our age: it is an earnest book. Lickona has touched beauty and has neither the time nor the capacity for irony. This I believe, above all, would make him Catholic even if he wasn't. Lickona wants to share beauty with us, but, by his own admission, is a lousy, retiring evangelist-thank God he can write! Heaping iniquity on iniquity, Lickona frequently refers to his-gasp!-functional family, and quotes for us his parents' trusty maxims. His is a refreshing, marginalized confession: the "good boy" who wanted to be even better. Lest we think he's completely otherworldly, we are treated to his adventures with Wild Turkey and the porcelain god. He may not be just like everybody else, but he's close enough. Lickona's third transgression, this time against the pious, is his frank talk of sex. Can orthodox Catholic sex be sexy? Yes, if you're living the Creation and the Incarnation.
Swimming with Scapulars is an eloquent book. Who says we're a post-literate culture? Lickona's delightfully nuanced, colorful, at-times-almost-archaic-Back-East-speak brought a smile to my face.
Kudos to Loyola Press for taking on this project. Publishing for the diverse and fragmented young adult Catholic market must be a risky endeavor-surely the money lies elsewhere. But the elder Church also needs to hear the voices of the young Church--her present and future, the "children of winter" as this generation is often called--and the young Church needs to hear itself. Matthew Lickona is just one voice--opinionated at times--but he is a hope-inducing, elegant spokesperson.
(Swimming with Scapulars presumes little prior knowledge of Catholicism, and is thus accessible to all.)
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprised by swimming, April 26, 2005
This wonderful book brought me closer to my faith. Matthew Lickona writes a very personal and very contemporary set of reflections on his own struggles to live out in his moral life the commitments his faith demands of him.
Nothing I have read since Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man so captures the interior life of a practicing Catholic as this.
Lickona is not afraid to grow and change before our eyes during this book. It is as rigorous and self-examining as a good confession.
Sure it lacks a tight narrative structure and you'll tear through it a couple of days. Think of it as an epistle.
People who are close to a Catholic who they don't really understand would also benefit from reading this book. It might all make a little more sense after reading this.
Thanks, Matthew.
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Straightforward and straitlaced; a wonderful testimonial to being young and Catholic!, July 16, 2005
Mr. Lickona is the paradigm of the growing but almost always ignored population of young men and women in the United States who harbor a deep devotion to the orthodox Roman Catholic Faith and all that she teaches. I consider myself a member of this "sub-set", being a year younger than the author, faithful to attendance at Holy Mass, and a staunch supporter of the Magesterium's teachings (all of them).
"Swimming With Scapulars" should be made required reading for every person who treats obedient followers of Rome with suspicion, contempt, or condemnation when informed that, indeed, young Catholics are out there who live according to even the least popular dictates of our Faith.
While St. Thomas Aquinas or C.S. Lewis would be far better "legitimate" apologists, replete with all magnificent theological thought that the faithful treasure as part of our spiritual heritage, Lickona is a living, breathing, "REAL" American human being. He is more educated, theologically speaking, than the average Catholic of any age, much less a 30-something [his alma mater is a small, traditional Catholic college actually named for Aquinas].
However, his academic background in the faith does not make him any less down-to-earth. If anything, he seems to make a real effort to take the tenets of Catholicism and put them to practice in everyday life. This memoir is really about that; the Little Flower is likely beaming on him, so good an example is he setting for believers and detractors alike with his own personal "Little Way".
Our society needs more witnesses to Rome such as the author to take up the pen and compose what I call the "layman's apologetics" -- it transmits the glorious Truth of Roman Catholicism in a simple yet deeply meaningful way. And to
Mr. Lickona -- ad multos annos!
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