Dappled Things, a new Catholic journal, debuted online at dappledthings.org last December.

Offering a mix of short fiction, poetry, drama, essays, book and film reviews, interviews, analyses, artwork and photography, the magazine signals its hoped-for contributors and readership in its tagline: “The Catholic literary magazine for young scholars and the young at heart.”

Mary Angelita Ruiz, editor-in-chief, spoke with Register correspondent Joy Wambeke.

How did Dappled Things come to be?

It was the brainchild of Bernardo Aparicio, president of Dappled Things. The story goes like this: Last summer Bernardo and I were on a fellowship for Compass, a Regnum Christi apostolate that brings together groups of young Catholic college students who are leaders. We had both just graduated from universities where we were delighted to find many other young devout Catholics — he from the University of Pennsylvania and I from Columbia University.

At Compass, where we met, we were excited to find more great friends. There were about 30 of us and every one was just bright and lovely and intelligent and so devout. We were excited and encouraged at the numbers of young Catholics who wanted to live fully Catholic lives.

Bernardo was looking for publications for young Catholics and realized that one of the things that’s lacking in the new young Catholic culture is a literary magazine. We e-mailed back and forth, and came up with ideas. He and his friends at the University of Pennsylvania wrote up three or four drafts of a constitution for us and it all fell into place. It happened almost without our realizing what was going on. The first e-mail was sent out in July of 2005, and so this has all happened in the last half-year or so.

Tell me about your staff.

First and foremost, everyone on staff loves the Catholic faith. Not each member has formal training in literature, but these are also people who are intellectually curious and have all manner of interests. They are informed about all manner of things, and they know good work when they see it.

We also have Rev. Mr. Pang Joseph Suiu Tcheou, who is in his last year of study before ordination this coming June. Then we will have a priest on staff, which we are so blessed for.

I notice that you don’t accept manuscripts from writers over 35. Why impose an age restriction?

This is really important to us because we wanted a place where young people could come together, explore their faith, practice their talent and build a community. Even with the community of the “blogosphere,” you still want a place where young people who find themselves alone can share with others all of the poetry that they’ve worked so hard on, or a place where they can share with like-minded Catholics their story on a Christian theme. It can really boost confidence. This was Bernardo’s experience at the University of Pennsylvania and my experience at Columbia University.

Do you see Dappled Things competing in the secular arena?

Bernardo and I would really like the magazine to outlive us. We don’t want it to die within the time of this group of people. We would like it to have a lifetime of decades. We aren’t aiming to get it into secular arenas. We think it’s more important to reach young Catholics to get them more excited about their faith.

And to help them launch writing and arts careers?

In the beginning at least, it’s going to be for Catholics who are already tapped into various networks through which we hear about it, like through bloggers. We’re hoping that if someone is published in this journal, they will find the confidence and inspiration to keep writing, working, refining and hopefully publishing with us. And then to publish elsewhere, like in a secular journal — or to write novels, short stories, non-fiction books. We’re hoping to be more of an inspiration for young Catholics to start and then to go out and evangelize the culture

Well, that takes care of the contributors. What makes you so sure Dappled Things will find a readership?

I’m continually amazed at how many young people I run across who are of really extraordinary faith and are looking for a journal [to read] such as this.

How do you see the role of literature in Catholic life?

When the board of Dappled Things were all introducing ourselves via e-mail, we were all sharing our favorite authors. Nearly everyone mentioned at least one of the usual modern Catholic writers or writers with Christian sympathies: Dostoevsky, Tolkien, Tolstoy, Flannery O’Connor, Jane Austen and, especially, G.K. Chesterton. And to answer your question, I’m going to shamelessly steal an idea from G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy.

Chesterton writes about fairy tales and about “the romance of orthodoxy,” meaning that just as in a fairy tale the natural condition of the characters is one of wonder and amazement and simultaneously of struggle. There is something infinitely wonderful but also mystifying and difficult to accept about the great sweep and scope of the Christian story and the Christian life. Sometimes the fate of a character in the Christian story hangs on a great battle, a great sacrifice, a great journey. But sometimes, as Chesterton writes, the fate of a Christian depends on what he does on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.

We as Christians need to be able to keep both in mind at once, the whole picture and the little details. Literature pays attention to both these extremes and to everything in between. Stories recount great feats of valor remembered for all human history, and stories recount those unseen internal battles that are so often 20 times more difficult than picking up a weapon and having it out. Poetry often touches on things great and small at once. Homeric poetry, for example is epic: huge in scope and extremely long, and at the same time individual images are perfectly crafted, often like little mirrors reflecting and illuminating the themes of the whole. Or a sonnet by Shakespeare — while concise and metrical, it manages to touch on the great mysteries of life and death.

Something I always like to keep in mind is that Jesus told stories. When he came to minister, he didn’t gather people around himself and hand out lists of rules. Of course he preached and prophesied, but he also told stories to convey to us what is true and real, who he is, how he cares for us, how we ought to live our lives.

There must be something perfect about the medium of storytelling if that is one way that God himself wants us to learn about him and our relationship with him.

Joy Wambeke writes from

St. Paul, Minnesota.