What it Means for me to be a Catholic Writer

Last updated on: January 15, 2015 at 10:35 am by Leah Libresco

What it Means for me to be a *Catholic* Writer 2015-01-15T10:35:17-05:00 Leah Libresco

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Yesterday, I wrote in praise of Dominicans, and today I have an interview to share with you that I did with a Jesuit. Sean Salai, S.J. sent me eleven questions about my conversion and my current spiritual life, and you can read my answers in America. Here’s a preview:

How does Catholicism influence your approach to being a writer?

It makes it a lot easier to resist weighing in on every hot button or controversial issue/news story to come along. I didn’t write anything on the Synod on the Family, for example. I feel freer to choose the topics I have actual expertise in and where I have genuine joy to share, because no one’s salvation will ever turn on what I write or don’t write.

If I am doing good, it’ll be mostly by getting out of the way of God, and letting him shine through me more clearly, so I try to focus on writing about whatever delights me most or whatever strikes me as beautiful (hence, a lot math and Sondheim).

My job isn’t to explain the whole church and every bit of its theology, or to trace out what Christianity says about every question that might come up (I’ll leave some of those to the Vatican astronomer!). A lot of what Ido try to do is give a sense of why I find the church beautiful and plausible enough to be worth asking questions about, and, once someone’s sold on that point, they can do what I did and find the people who are specialists on whatever troubles them.

What is your favorite scripture verse?

Ezekiel 36:26—“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

I tend to be pretty good at the intellectual/analytics and pretty terrible at kindness/empathy/agape/etc, so this promise is comforting to me. God didn’t come and adopt only the people who were already adept at all this; he has a plan for people like me, too.

Read more at America…

And just one more reminder: I’m sending my once-a-month book update this afternoon, so if you want to get my email about Amazon’s amusing attempts to figure out what books you might want to read while you’re waiting for mine, sign up here.

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