What's not to love about a man who's not only a Catholic Techie and avid reader, but also sports a cool hat in a teacup?

catholic techie-will duquette.jpg

Meet Will Duquette, who, in response to my request for a picture to go with this interview, sent me this picture.

He not only loves his tech, folks, but also his books and, yes, his family. Of course, I'm operating on the assumption that he didn't just choose to sit in a pink teacup by choice. I could be wrong.

You know Will already: he's been teaching us about the pillars of Dominican life for the last few months in his column here at CatholicMom.com. He's also a blogger at Cry "Woof"!, and you'll find that a delightful stop and a place for wisdom and chuckles and goodness.

Will's a guy who I wished lived down the street from me. (As it is, he's across the country.) I've had the chance to actually hear him converse in person and...it's wonderful. He makes you feel singularly smarter and more curious and he makes points that stretch your mind. Having met Will and spent a weekend at a conference with him makes me want to meet his wife and his kids, because surely they must be as interesting as him.

Will is a storyteller, though I'm not sure he knows it. He's also, as you can tell from the picture above, a reader. He's done some reading on the Forgotten Classics podcast that have transformed my reading. No, really.

Today, I'm interviewing will as a Catholic Techie. He's Catholic in the literal, Eucharist-lovin sense and techie in the tangible, knows-how-to-code sense. But he's also catholic in the universal, wide-ranging expertise sense and techie in the can-discuss-anything-and-cook-too sense.

Tell us about yourself in five words or less.

Catholic, husband, father, software engineer.

Of your pursuits, what's your favorite?

I really get a kick out of writing software. It's like taking pure thought and putting it into a structure so that it can do work while I'm not watching. What I do is the closest you can get to being a wizard without invoking dark powers.

When you think of the New Evangelization from your approach as a "Catholic Techie," what excites you? What makes you want to continue?

My work as a software engineer plays into the New Evangelization only very indirectly: I got started writing on the web back in the 1990's because I wanted to play with HTML.

My return to the Catholic Church in 2007 has led me to spend more time reflecting on my faith; and as a Lay Dominican I can't help wanting to share my reflections on the Gospel with others. As a result I went from being mostly a book blogger to being mostly a Catholic blogger.

But there's another connection that surprises me. I've often described what I do as "building castles in the air," erecting massive structures of abstract thought. Turns out that theology is also a massive structure of abstract thought, and it seems to me that my software skills have led directly to my appreciation for theology.

What's the most rewarding aspect of your work?

Finishing up a complicated design and watching it just work. As I say, it's like magic.

In your spare time, what are we likely to find you doing? Do you have a gadget in hand or do you go native and screenless?

I'm probably reading something on my iPad, quite possibly to my kids.

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Copyright 2014 Sarah Reinhard