Wisdom and Folly: An interview with Author Rob Marco

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. James 1:5

Over the years I have had the privilege of reading the writings of my friend and fellow Catholic, Rob Marco.  He is one of the few I read regularly for his deep insight and male perspective on the things of faith and reason.  In the divisive times in our church I have found Rob one of the few voices that cuts through the rhetoric to what is good, true, and beautiful. He makes me think, “now there is a true disciple of Jesus Christ.” I am overjoyed that Rob has published his first book, Wisdom and Folly, Essays on Life, Faith and Everything In Between.  I am honored to be able to interview him about his first book and to share his insights with you the reader.

Rob, I know you have led a very interesting life and are a convert to the Catholic Faith. For those reading this who don’t know you, can you give a brief background about yourself?

It’s funny…the other night we were at a party with a bunch of Catholic friends and the host of the party gave me a poster with a quote by Jack Kerouac, who she knew was a huge literary influence in my life when I started writing thirty years ago: 

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or a saw a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

Kerouac was a Catholic, but during the post-war fifties and sixties, it was a crazy time and like many writers and artists of that time, got really taken up with Buddhism and Eastern spirituality. Maybe some of that rubbed off on me, since I didn’t have an explicit Christian upbringing and only one of my parents (my dad) is Catholic, and my brothers and I were never raised in any kind of faith. I started reading the Dhammapada and other Buddhist texts and teachings in high school, and practiced meditation. But I also had a series of influences at that time that kind of rubbed off on me as well–my best friend was a Christian, I hiked the Appalachian Trail with a guy whose mother was a faithful Catholic (and who I am convinced prayed me into the Church), I went to a Christian hardcore show in high school where the pastor of the church got up on stage and prayed for the Holy Spirit to touch those in the crowd and convicted me, and I had a personal encounter with the Lord whose Name I didn’t know when I lost my map on a solo backpacking trip in the wilderness when I was 17. I was looking for Truth, had a feeling I was a sinner in need of a Savior as I was unable to save myself, and was touched by the Lord who took my hand and gently guided me to the doors of the Catholic Church at the age of 18. I detail all this in my written testimony for the Coming Home Network here for anyone who would want to read it.
25 years after my conversion and becoming Catholic, I can say the Lord was patient with me and never left my side, even though my walk of faith has never been a straight line. What I love about that Kerouac quote is that it still holds true for me today, but in a different light: the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. These are the saints, the fools for Christ both living and those who have gone to their blessed repose. They are not looking for self-indulgent “kicks” but to give themselves fully to the work of discipleship, what I like to call “full-throated Catholicism.” I don’t have a lot of tolerance for lukewarm anything, but especially not lukewarm Catholicism. Nothing could be more offensive to the Lord, and so I try to live my life as a Catholic and a disciple of Jesus Christ in emulation of those holy fools, men and women of integrity, discipline, and hope mostly because anything else in the life of faith is just not worth living for.  

Realizing that God’s timing is everything, what made you finally decide to finally write a book now?

Well, I’ve essentially been writing this book for the past ten years or so, but it was only by happenstance that I was approached by a publisher who was familiar with my blog and articles who asked if he could compile them in book form for publication. My wife has been gently nagging me to have a kind of legacy-project to pass on to our three kids that tangible and wasn’t online, though other friends and readers have been saying the same. I kept kicking the can down the road, not feeling for years like anything I had written was worthy of publication. So this was serendipitous, since I had almost eight hundred essays written to date. Now she can die happy, haha. 
I realized also, though, that this may be a timely contribution to other new or seasoned Catholics (and even non-believers or non-Catholic Christians) who may be trying to figure out how to live a Catholic life in the midst of all the chaos–both in the world and in the Church–when there doesn’t seem to be a blueprint for doing so. I don’t have it all figured out, nor do I have to, and I’m in good company I think. But I know where I’ve found bread in my poverty.
Although the book is almost 400 pages, it is arranged topically by themes I think every Catholic can relate to: friendship, family, marriage, manhood, prayer, faith, discipleship, the Church, etc. So, there are ten or so short essays on each of these topics…you can pick it up and put it down and nibble away at it easily and non-sequentially.  There’s a lot packed into each essay, good food for thought, and a lot of them are reflections from my own life but can easily apply to all of our lives. Not many of us can sit down and read War and Peace these days with our short attention spans hijacked by social media, podcasts, and smartphones. I’m no exception. So, I wrote this book in physical form to show the other beggars where the bread is in a way in a way that is accessible and easily digestible and tangible but pushes them to be one of those mad ones, a saint living outside the boxes prescribed for us that we are “supposed” to fit into–to be truly and authentically Catholic.

Do you have a favorite essay in the book? 

I did three phases of edits of the final manuscript, which was about 1,200 pages or so in totality. Near the end I thought I would get physically ill, like a man who couldn’t eat one more sushi roll at a Chinese buffet, I was so tired of editing and tediously combing for typos. But it never crossed my mind that “this is crap, all of this is crap,” and I stand behind all of it, because I felt more like the reluctant Jonah or Jeremiah when it came to writing it. When I sit down to write, I just try to be a pencil in the hand of God to say what He wants said. 
What’s funny is some of my favorite essays (and the ones that got the most traction among readers) were the ones that I banged out in like half an hour before breakfast or late a night without thinking much of them. Essays like “The Church Will Hurt You,” “The Time for Teaching and Preaching Are Over,” “Getting On Base,” are challenging and unorthodox, and all the essays on Marriage and Family I like because they are more self-reflective. I love “It’s Been God All Along” about my high school friend K and her coming back to Confession after thirty years on account of reading some things from my blog (as well as other graces she experienced); it makes me teary-eyed every time I read it to be reminded how good God is. There is really something for everyone, which I think is what is so great about the book. 

I noticed you opened with a prayer from Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, are there many particular Saints who you feel walk with you in life and in your writing?

When I was reviewing the final manuscript I asked my editor/publisher, “Where did this come from? Did I add this or did you?” I couldn’t remember, and neither could he. I mean I love St. Pio, but I can’t recall for the life of me if and when I added that quote at the beginning of the book. So maybe it was St. Pio himself or the Holy Spirit inserting something that I couldn’t explain otherwise. Kevin Wells in the foreword highlighted my affinity for St. Philip Neri, who I would consider a kind of patron and spiritual brother. He didn’t take himself too seriously and loved jokes and laughing, but also had a serious and fervent love of God so much that he felt his heart would explode at times. I think he’s a great saint for our age, and one I especially identify with. 
I’ve also grown to love St. Therese the Little Flower, though like many people I couldn’t stomach her initially. I talked about her in the essays “When You Can’t Take the Stairs” and “Trad Piety Vs. An Abasement of Trust.” As a more traditional-leaning Catholic, that danger of pride and neo-Jansenism is always kind of hiding around the corner so St. Therese is my bleed-valve when those things start crowding in my spiritual life. I really want to see a kind of “third-way” that synthesizes the best of Tradition and Charity, holy Fear of God and child-like Trust, love of the traditional liturgy and a love of the poor. I don’t think these things are at odds, but kind of a “complete protein” for living a fervent and balanced Catholic life that doesn’t degenerate into tribalism or ghettos. We can’t be strictly social workers and we can’t wall up in our parishes praying the rosary to protect ourselves from the world either. We need to radically live out the works of mercy in Matthew 25 while being stepped and fortified in personal and communal prayer. Call me crazy, but I have great hope for renewal with this vision of a “third way.”

You do not shy away from hard topics in this book, your section on the church hits on many of the wounds Catholics are struggling with currently.  You even include a letter to your Bishop regarding politicians and communion.  Do you find it difficult to write about such things and if so, how do you prepare interiorly to tackle these topics? 

That’s a great question, and one I hadn’t really thought about much since writing for me is as much a compulsion for me as it is a craft and an art–try as I might to hang it up for good, I keep coming back to the keyboard. You know the way Samuel goes back to Eli three times saying “you called me?”. I feel like Eli a lot of times on that third visit, saying, “ah, maybe the Holy Spirit really does want this thing said after all.”

I am not a super disciplined or structured person by nature, so that’s a struggle and probably why I tend to write shorter pieces at all hours of the day and night that have some meat, rather than any kind of lengthy or heavily researched academic pieces. There’s enough of those out there, as well as fluffier feel-good devotional things. So, I try to work in various disciplines to keep pins in my faith life–11pm holy hour every Tuesday, First Friday and First Saturday devotions, daily rosary and mental prayer, short ejaculatory prayer throughout the day, and of course Sunday Mass and monthly Confession. But I’m also not wedded to the Church, in the sense that I have a normal secular day job, I don’t work for the diocese or Church, and I don’t pay my mortgage or bills with writing. I have never monetized my blog. I even donated the royalties for this book, because for me I never wrote for money but because I have a debt to pay–the debt of my ransoming from sin and death in Christ. 

So, I feel a sense of freedom to write about things that maybe other Catholic writers, authors, and pundits won’t touch for fear of alienating their base or jeopardizing their careers, but that are also things that should or need to be said–because many people are thinking them. So, I think when the Spirit of God is with you, hopefully, you have the spirit of David before Goliath–a kind of holy and zealous naivety that lets those things happen because you are a “dodo” as Mother Angelica used to say. God needs more dodos who count the cost as it says in Scripture, but have the boldness to do (or write) the hard thing anyway. Business-as-usual or status quo thinking will not get us very far in the Church or in our lives of discipleship in these times–we need holy fools and radical disciples willing to do difficult things, because these are hard times. But as it says in scripture, “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom should I fear?”   

What is your hope for people who will read this book?

I have said previously that if I can lead one person to Christ for the salvation of their souls, I can die happy. I don’t know if I’ve done that, but my hope is that the book will strengthen both lukewarm and seasoned Catholics and get them to grow in, live out, and take risks for their faith; that non-Catholics will find that their preconceptions of Catholics may be off-base; and that non-believers will after reading the book have a hound from heaven chasing them down until they arrive at the doors of the Church. There was a time earlier on when I was trying to make a name for myself, but fortunately that impetus withered on the vine with the praying of the Litany of Humility, and I think the motivations are more pure: to be all things to all men, so that by all possible means some may be saved (1 Cor 9:22).

Thanks Rob for such a great interview and congratulations on your first book. 

To all my readers out there, I really do hope you take time to purchase Rob’s book, here.

You can also follow his blog, here.