Manage Account

<div>Would God for some reason rescind a person’s salvation?</div><div>Not at all. St. Paul makes it clear that God&#8217;s choice of his elect is irrevocable. God does not take back his gifts. If anything is &#8220;rescinded,&#8221; it would mean simply that the creature, man or angel, refused God&#8217;s gift. That is why we can always return to God with repentance when we have sinned. He wants us to retain his blessings, not lose them.
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Salvation Cannot Be Rescinded

January 24 is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, a 16th&#8211; and 17th-century bishop. Looking at the Church’s liturgical calendar, somebody might ask, “Who cares about some guy that died 403 years ago? How does he matter to me?”
One reason Pope St. John Paul II canonized as many saints as he did was to provide people with more modern examples of holiness. But note the key point: the saints are examples, and holiness never goes out of style.
Holiness is not some ethereal quality, some optional je ne sais quoi. If you don’t end up holy, if you don’t end up a saint, your life was a failure. There are only two places to spend eternity: heaven and hell. And sanctity—holiness—is the admission ticket to the former.
That’s why St. Francis de Sales matters.
Francis came from a noble family of Savoy, a region that today would be the east of France bordering Switzerland, running down to the French coast around Nice, and then extending eastward into Italy around the Turin area. In the 1500s, it was on the frontlines of religious division: Geneva was just over the border, and that city was a Calvinist theocracy. Now, remember that Geneva and its environs are part of French-speaking Switzerland, which meant <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/advice-from-the-guy-who-makes-converts">there were still Catholics</a> left there. Francis was eventually sent to be their bishop. As a Catholic bishop, however, he was not going to get living space in Calvinist Geneva, so his episcopal see was in nearby Annecy, France.
Okay, you say, and so what? Why does a bishop from four centuries ago—even one with a tough assignment—matter to me today? Two reasons.
First, he was accessible. Though of noble birth and aware of the privileges of the episcopacy, Francis reduced himself to simplicity to hike the Alps to personally meet and tend to the spiritual needs of his flock scattered across the valleys. He met people where they were at. He realized that among the reasons the Reformation could spread was religious illiteracy: the debates were about refined theological distinctions, but many average people had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Faith, more the consequence of inheritance, social practice, and custom than explained teaching. Francis sought to remedy that.
He sought to remedy that because he himself, far better educated, had been caught up in it. As a nobleman, his family had big plans for him that included politics, not the priesthood. But at a certain point, Francis began seriously to worry about the question of his own salvation (the kind of anxiety that led a scrupulous Martin Luther into inventing a whole new theology). In the environs of Geneva, that anxiety was driven by the Protestant doctrine of predestination: that God had assigned some people (probably most) to damnation and there was nothing they could do about it, given that good works avail nothing to salvation. At a certain point, however, Francis became conscious of the fact that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and wants our salvation perhaps even more than we do. Buoyed by that trust, Francis shook off his anxieties and, with joy, embraced the priesthood.
Second, Francis countered the bleak hellfire and damnation of Calvinism with a focus on holiness. Holiness was not a rarefied virtue for some people: it was sine qua non for everybody. Holiness was not a clerical or religious preserve, while the laity mostly skated on the borderline between sin and grace. Everybody faces that borderline, but it is God’s will not that we simply squeeze under some minimal bar, but that we become holy. “Be ye perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is directed to everybody.
Nor did Francis approach holiness with glumness and depression, as if “I’ll have so much fun if I’m not holy.” No, Francis presented holiness as joy, as happiness. In our language today, he presented it as self-fulfillment. As Karol Wojtyła would write long before becoming pope, living the kind of life God wants us to live and a truly human life are in direct, not inverse proportion. To the degree human beings live the kind of life God wants, they also live a truly fulfilled human life. Holiness does not “alienate” us from our humanity (to riff on Immanuel Kant); it leads us to it.
Francis did not just talk. He wrote two wonderful books, directed to lay people. The <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/devout_life/devout_life">Introduction to the Devout Life</a> and the <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/love.all.html">Treatise on the Love of God</a> offered practical guidance in living a holy life. The Introduction was especially pathbreaking because Francis wrote it for ordinary lay people, not for religious, something quite unusual in his day.
The Second Vatican Council <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">reminded us</a> of the “universal call to holiness” (Lumen Gentium 39-42). In doing so, it reminded us of Our Lord’s call to perfection, something we may never obtain but for which we can and should always try. (After all, if your lover ever told you, “I think I love you enough,” would you take that as a sign that everything is wonderful or that something is awry? Love is dynamic: if you are not moving forward, you’re falling backward.) We should not forget, however, that in the Church’s history, all the saints remind us that holiness applies to everyone. Some of them—like St. Francis de Sales—even made the effort to present that teaching explicitly to others.
Space limits us from talking about how Francis collaborated with St. Jane Frances de Chantal to tailor that call to holiness to women. She was responsible for founding the Institute of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin for those women who felt called to religious life. Both saints remind us that holiness is everybody’s affair in every time and place.
And that’s why, four centuries later, Francis still matters.

Why Francis Will Be Relevant Forever

<div>Is the website BlessedIsShe.net in accordance with faithful Catholic teaching?</div><div>Frankly, I had not heard of this website before, but on examining it, it seems surely orthodox. The style of presentation is more media savvy than other more explicitly traditional websites, and so this may have struck you as unusual. But all in all, it looks fine to me!
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‘Blessed Is She’ Website

<div>What is a good Catholic reference for having the sex talk with a preteen/teen son or daughter?</div><div>We have a variety of resources online to aid you, including Jason Evert’s talk on <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/how-to-talk-to-your-teens-about-chastity-mp3/">“How to Talk to Teens About Chastity.”</a>
We have <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/search.php?search_query=chastity&amp;section=product">a good number of other helpful resources</a> for sale as well. If money is an issue, we also have <a href="https://www.catholic.com/search?q=chastity">other good resources</a> that can be viewed or listened to on our website.
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Good Chastity Resources

<div>When is drinking alcohol a mortal sin?
</div><div>Abusing intoxicating drink is a grave sin if it deprives the drinker of the use of reason. This means that the drinker no longer has the freedom necessary to deliberate responsibly about what he should do or not do. Of course, in order to be a grave sin the excessive drinking has to be deliberate, not simply a surprise based on lack of foresight. In this latter case the intoxication would be a venial sin.
It is important to remember that even if gravely wrong actions (fornication, violence, etc.) performed while intoxicated were not freely willed in themselves, they were willed in their cause—namely, deliberate drunkeness—and so the drinker is responsible for them as though he had chosen them deliberately.
There are other aspects of drinking that may be sinful; for example, its impact on the health of the body. For neglect of bodily health due to drinking there has to be a grave physical danger to which the drinker is knowingly exposing himself.
Further, there are the requirements of civil law. The blood alcohol limit established by law is much lower than actual gravely sinful intoxication, but it is the point at which some reflexes may be so impaired as to make driving unsafe. Ignoring these laws can easily be grave matter also, even if the driver is not strictly speaking drunk.
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When Is Drinking a Mortal Sin?

Late last year, the <a href="https://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk/mission/ambassadors-for-christ/">Archdiocese of Southwark</a> (pronounced SUTH-irk) in southern London announced the <a href="https://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk/mission/ambassadors-for-christ/">Ambassadors for Christ</a> apologetics program for 2026. Delighted to find a fellow laborer in the apologetics vineyard, Catholic Answers reached out with some questions, which the archbishop graciously agreed to answer.
Apologetics—explaining and defending the Catholic faith—succeeds best when clergy and laity bring their respective strengths to the endeavor. With gratitude to His Excellency for his time and his thoughtful answers, we provide our interview with Archbishop John Wilson below.

This Diocese Cracked the Code on Conversions

The Greek word that the Bible uses for baptism is &#8220;baptizo&#8221; (βαπτίζω), which means, “to immerse.” Does this mean that Catholic baptisms are invalid since priests pour water instead of immerse? Karlo Broussard gives the reason why the answer is no, and explains why pouring is a legitimate method to baptize.

Is Full-Immersion Baptism Necessary?

<div>At adoration, why would you pray the Rosary, since Christ is truly present right there infront of you?</div><div>Because properly understood, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-rosary">Rosary</a> is a Christ-centered prayer, and thus can and should aid our adoration of our <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/christ-in-the-eucharist">Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ</a>.
The Holy See in Rome has specifically addressed this issue. According to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Rosary may be prayed during Eucharistic adoration with exposition, provided that’s not the sole reason exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place:
<blockquote>One should not expose the Eucharist only to recite the rosary. However, among the prayers that are used during adoration, the recitation of the rosary may certainly be included, emphasizing the Christological aspects with biblical readings relating to the mysteries, and providing time for silent adoration and meditation on them (“Notes on the Recitation of the Rosary During Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament,” Notitiae (1998) XXXIV edition, 507-511).</blockquote>
This statement was reprinted in the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy’s Newsletter (Jan./Feb. 1999). That committee is now known as the <a href="http://www.usccb.org/about/divine-worship/index.cfm">Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship</a>.
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Why Pray Rosary During Eucharistic Adoration?

Can Christians have tattoos? Does the Bible forbid us from getting them? Are they a form of bodily mutilation? Jimmy Akin answers all these questions on Catholic Answers Live.

Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?

The relationship between <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/state-and-church">Church and State</a> is thorny. What form of allegiance do citizens owe to their religion? What do they owe to their country? When is it moral to resist state actions—and in what way?
Our ability to pose the questions is part of the heritage of the Christian faith—and not simply because of the word Church.
Every culture in history has had some kind of religion and some kind of government, so “church” and “state” have always existed. And they have always had a relationship, as religion binds people together and promotes the stability of society. The state thus needs to deal with it.
Except even that way of framing the issue is modern. It presupposes that church and state are two different things, and in many cultures, they weren’t.
<h2>Through ancient eyes</h2>
If you lived in a particular culture, you were usually expected to hold to the state religion and worship whatever God or gods it upheld. Thus, in Athens, one of the charges leading to Socrates’s execution was the allegation he did not believe in “the gods of the state” (Plato, Apology).
But that could be the case even if church and state were distinct, and in many cultures, they weren’t. The political leaders were the religious leaders.
In Egypt, Pharaoh was a god—the “living Horus” or human manifestation of the falcon-headed sky god. He was also high priest as well as political ruler. Pharaoh may have had two sets of duties—religious and governmental—but at the highest level, church and state were one.
The same was true in Rome. The priests (pontifices and flamines) were drawn from the political class, and the emperor was high priest (pontifex maximus). Some emperors were declared gods, either after their deaths (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Claudius) or worshiped in Rome during their lifetimes (Caligula, Nero).
<h2>Joined at the hip</h2>
A tight union between Church and State could support the stability of both, but it also made it difficult to change either. The two were joined at the hip and had a natural interest in supporting each other.
If a foreign traveler was willing to worship the local gods, well and good. He would not disrupt the social order. A state might even tolerate minority religions—especially among foreigners.
But if the minority religion started making converts, local religious officials would be alarmed. And if sizeable numbers began adopting a new faith, it would be perceived as a threat to the state. Thus, Christianity was persecuted as it expanded into new lands and began making converts.
Refusing to participate in the state’s prescribed religious rites was seen as an act of disloyalty and thus as treason. This is why such rites were used as a test in the trials of martyrs.
In some places, religious tests still are used. In the United Kingdom, under the Accession Declaration Act of 1910, the British monarch (and head of the Church of England) <a href="https://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/local-news/2022/09/08/formal-steps-after-instant-shift-from-uk-queen-to-king/">is required</a> to profess the Protestant faith as a condition of office.
This isn’t the case in America. The U.S. Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust” (6:3), though this doesn’t mean you’ll be elected or confirmed if your religion is out of favor.
Despite the historically close association of church and state, Christians have seen a sharper distinction between the two than other cultures—a distinction rooted in the history of the Faith.
<h2>Different from the beginning</h2>
Abraham came from a pagan family that worshiped Mesopotamian gods (Josh. 24:2), but Yahweh spoke to him and called him out of his native land.
In the age of the patriarchs, God’s people were governed along family lines, with the head of the household (or later, tribe) exercising ruling authority. The patriarchs also functioned as priests, building altars to God and offering sacrifices (Gen. 12:7-8, 26:25, 33:20, etc.).
This changed when the tribe of Levi was assigned the Israelite priesthood. That separated it from the governing authorities, in stark contrast from other nations.
When the Israelites first came into the Promised Land, they were governed by Joshua, who belonged to the tribe of Ephraim and thus was not a priest. Afterward, each tribe was ruled by its elders, along patriarchal lines.
There also were a series of “judges” (Hebrew, shopetim), though this translation can be misleading, as their principal function wasn’t hearing legal cases. They led battles against the enemies who often oppressed Israel. The term might be translated “chieftain” or even “warlord.” These leaders could be drawn from any tribe.
The era of judges ended with Samuel. He happened to be a Levite and a priest, but this was unusual. When he was old, he appointed his sons judges, but they were corrupt and took bribes, leading the people to demand a king, like in other nations (1 Sam. 8:1-5).
Until then, Israel was a loosely governed tribal confederacy, with God regarded as its overall monarch. Thus, when the demand for a king arose, “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them’” (1 Sam. 8:7).
The first king chosen was Saul, who was of the tribe of Benjamin. Later kings, such as David, came from the tribe of Judah. Because the religious and governing authorities were separate, the distinction between church and state was in the consciousness of Israel, even if the institutions supported each other.
The line of kings ended with the Babylonian Exile, but when the people returned, the pattern remained the same. The priesthood stayed in Levite hands, and individuals such as Zerubbabel of Judah were appointed political governors, though ultimate power lay with the Persians.
Judea had only limited autonomy in this period, as various foreign powers sparred for control of the territory.
Around 167 B.C., the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes issued a decree compelling Jews to abandon their religion. This prompted a priest named Mattathias to begin a rebellion. It was ultimately carried through by his sons, especially Judah “the Hammer” Maccabee, which is why his family—the Hasmoneans—came to be called the Maccabees.
The Hasmoneans assumed the high priesthood and became the effective local rulers. In 104 B.C., one of them, Aristobulus I, assumed the title “king.” This was an unusual situation, not seen since the days of Samuel, when the political and religious leaders were the same.
Intrigues among the Hasmoneans led to their downfall. After political control passed to the Romans, the conniving Antipater the Idumean was given political control of Judea. He was Jewish by religion but an Edomite by nationality, and his son Herod the Great was appointed king by the Roman Senate.
When Herod died, his kingdom was divided among his sons, but the one appointed to rule Judea—Archelaus—proved so bad that he was replaced by a Roman governor, which is why Pontius Pilate was in charge during the ministry of Christ.
Through all this, the priesthood remained in Levite hands. There were dramatic changes in how God’s people were governed politically—by patriarchal elders, judges, kings, governors, and other officials—but the fact that church and state were separate helped the religion continue.
<h2>“Render unto Caesar”</h2>
During Christ’s ministry, the Romans held ultimate authority, but they often used client rulers—such as Herod’s sons Antipas and Philip, who had the title “tetrarch” (ruler of a quarter)—while Judea itself was under the Roman governor.
There also was a Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, that had limited authority, principally for judging matters under Jewish law. The high priest sat on the Sanhedrin, as did many priests. They were joined by religious leaders such as the Pharisees as well as members of the secular Jewish aristocracy.
The complex relationship between religious and civil leaders is seen when the Jewish authorities determine to put Jesus to death. They had to get the consent of the Roman governor because they were forbidden to impose the death penalty (John 18:31).
The division between religious and political authorities, as well as the many forms the latter had taken, is part of the background to Jesus’ statement about paying taxes: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25).
His opponents, who tried to trap him into making either a seditious or impious statement, were amazed, and “marveling at his answer they were silent” (v. 26).
This was a marvelous answer, one that would have been unthinkable in Egypt or Rome, where religious and political leaders were one and the same. In such nations, there could be no division between religious duties and civic ones, no separate spheres appropriate to church and state.
But drawing on the complex history of Israel and the undeniable situation of Judea at the time, Jesus acknowledged the legitimacy of the two realms.
<h2>“Obey God rather than men”</h2>
This didn’t mean one sphere wouldn’t encroach on the other, so Christians have had to face dilemmas.
When the Sanhedrin arrested the apostles, the high priest informed them, “We strictly charged you not to teach in [Jesus’] name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28).
He may have been concerned that the apostles’ preaching would lead to a popular uprising against the council, or at least a wave of public disrespect eroding its authority.
“Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men’” (Acts 5:29). They thus acknowledged that obligations to God take priority when in conflict with orders from a human authority (either religious or secular, as the Sanhedrin had both).
This principle doesn’t settle all questions about how apparent conflicts are to be resolved. Sometimes people think they have an absolute divine mandate when they don’t (cf. John 16). Or there may be ways to square two seemingly contrary things.
St. Thomas More would have been willing at the time to support the 1534 Act of Succession if it had been worded differently and required him only to acknowledge Anne Boleyn as queen and her children as in the line of succession for the English throne. These were matters of civil law he could accept, though he disapproved of Henry VIII’s marital situation. However, the requirement of repudiating the pope violated his obligations to God.
<h2>“No authority except from God”</h2>
The biblical authors recognized that God is in control of history. He at least allows every event to occur, for with omnipotence he could always stop it.
They also saw God’s providence including plans for running human society, and we have a responsibility to cooperate with these plans. St. Paul says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).
This is striking, because most governing authorities were pagan, yet Paul sees them as instituted by God. It’s especially striking that he wrote this to the Church in Rome, which was the seat of the empire. He expects readers to understand that even the pagan Roman Empire is, in some sense, instituted by God as a governing authority and owed obedience.
He underlines this: “Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (v. 2). And he explains that the ruler “is God’s servant for your good” by punishing wrongdoers on God’s behalf (vv. 3-5).
St. Peter says the same: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right” (1 Peter 2:13-14).
This is striking, because the emperor at the time was Nero. Though he hadn’t yet begun persecuting Christians, he had shown himself a dangerous, vain, unstable ruler who killed his mother and had delusions of godhood.
Nero also came to office because of a murderous power play. His mother, Agrippina the Younger, married the emperor Claudius, got him to adopt Nero, and then poisoned him so Nero could replace him. Next, Claudius’s biological son, Britannicus, was poisoned to eliminate him as a rival.
Despite all this, Peter and Paul saw Nero as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/civil-allegiance">an instrument of God</a> owed respect and obedience—so long as it didn’t require disobedience to God.
No doubt, they weren’t expressing their full views of the emperor in these passages, which are meant to encourage Christians to be peaceable toward the state—something that would protect Christians and further the cause of evangelization. But Peter and Paul wouldn’t have taught obedience toward rulers if they didn’t believe in it.
<h2>Diversity of regimes</h2>
Historically, Christian thinkers have been open to monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies—as well as combinations of them (Aquinas, ST I-II:105:1).
<blockquote>If authority belongs to the order established by God, the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens. The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1901).</blockquote>
But what if you’re dealing with a bad regime?
The New Testament doesn’t go into when it is legitimate to change a regime. Christians were a tiny minority and had no need to deal with such questions.
However, the Romans had to face them. Repeatedly. Rome had been governed by kings, but they grew sick of them. The last, Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquin the Proud”), was dethroned by a popular uprising around 509 B.C., after which Rome was a republic.
This lasted until the first century B.C., when a series of civil wars occurred. Among the key players were two groups of three men, known as the First Triumvirate (which included Julius Caesar) and the Second Triumvirate (which included Augustus). The triumvirates proved unstable, and when the dust settled, Augustus was declared Rome’s first emperor.
He had a reputation as a good (if ruthless) ruler, but not all his successors did. The mad emperor Caligula (r. A.D. 37-41) was so awful that his own guards killed him. Nero (r. A.D. 54-68) proved so bad that the Senate declared him a public enemy, and he was forced to commit suicide. That touched off the disastrous “Year of Four Emperors” (A.D. 69), which was wracked by civil wars as emperors rapidly succeeded one another.
Jews and Christians lived through these events, but they held no political power and did not have to weigh in on the legitimacy of these actions.
<h2>Tyrannicide?</h2>
That would change when the empire became Christian. Once responsible for public welfare, they had to face what to do about problematic regimes.
The principle that the authorities are owed obedience, however they got into power, meant that in most situations, one needed to tolerate a difficult situation. If a ruler issued orders directly contrary to Christian teaching, they could be ignored, but otherwise one needed to obey.
But what if one was confronted with a regime doing grave harm—with a tyrant such as Caligula or Nero?
Historically, the only reliable way to remove a tyrant was to kill him, lest he try to get his throne back and cause more bloodshed. This raised the issue of tyrannicide, or when it’s okay to kill a tyrant.
Given that the authorities govern on God’s behalf, and the need for social stability, Christian thinkers were reluctant to endorse tyrannicide. They could appeal to the fact that, even when Saul was trying to kill David, he refused to raise his hand against “the Lord’s anointed” (1 Sam. 26:9-11).
But many were prepared to endorse killing a particular kind of tyrant: a tyrant by usurpation, or one who seized power when he didn’t have a legitimate claim to it.
They could appeal to the Jewish queen Athaliah, who seized the throne for six years after attempting to kill the entire royal family. There was one survivor, who was anointed as the legitimate king, upon which Athaliah was killed (2 Kings 11:1-20).
Aquinas held, “He who kills a tyrant [by usurpation] to free his country is praised and rewarded” (2 Sentences 44:2:2).
But there was another kind of tyrant: a tyrant by oppression, one who gravely misused his authority. Catholic authors debated under what conditions such an individual could be killed, but in general there was a negative attitude toward this possibility.
<h2>The state of the question</h2>
The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-much-authority-does-the-catechism-of-the-catholic-church-carry">Catechism</a> doesn’t deal with tyrannicide, but it lays out principles for dealing with problematic regimes.
Christians should be subject to those in authority, but they have “the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms” for the good of the community (2238). They also need to lead an active political life (2239-40). When civil authorities issue immoral commands, Christians are to refuse to obey them (2242).
But armed resistance is not authorized unless
<blockquote>(1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights,
(2) all other means of redress have been exhausted,
(3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders,
(4) there is well-founded hope of success, and
(5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution (2243).</blockquote>
The Catechism thus envisions progressively greater interventions to address problems, from criticism to protest to armed resistance—the latter being permitted only in the gravest cases and under specific conditions.

Rendering to Caesar . . . and to God

<div>What is liturgical prayer?</div><div><blockquote>The word &#8220;liturgy&#8221; originally meant a &#8220;public work&#8221; or a &#8220;service in the name of/on behalf of the people.&#8221; In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in &#8220;the work of God.&#8221; Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. (Catechism, 1069)</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/liturgy">Liturgy</a> is the public prayer and worship of the Church.  Liturgical prayers are prayers set by the Church for a particular liturgy (e.g. Mass, confession, baptism, the Divine Office, etc).  They differ from private prayers in that they are not the intention of any one person or group but are the prayers of the Church as a whole.  As such they should not be altered by the presider since they do not belong to him.
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What Is Liturgical Prayer?

A man from Turkey, raised Muslim, calls in to Catholic Answers Live to ask how he can become Catholic and practice the Catholic faith without putting himself in danger. Karlo Broussard and Jimmy Akin explain how he can be a faithful, practicing Catholic in a dangerously anti-Catholic environment.

Muslim Risks Everything to Become Christian

Atheists often point to science—especially evolution—as a way to explain the world without needing God. One famous voice to make this case is Christopher Hitchens. In his 2009 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tYm41hb48o">debate</a> with William Lane Craig, Hitchens opined,
<blockquote>It&#8217;s not very much contested any more that we are not designed as creatures, but that we evolved by a rather laborious combination of random mutation and natural selection into the species that we are today.</blockquote>
Later in the debate, Hitchens would reaffirm, “I don’t believe that we are here as the result of a design.” Both statements were ordered in the debate to block any appeal to design as evidence for a Creative Designer.
But why? Because evolution, as Hitchens sees it, is driven by “random mutation”—that’s to say chance. If things happen by chance, so Hitchens’s argument implies, then they’re not designed—and if there’s no design, then why assume there’s a designer, like God?
But not so fast. Philosophers have pushed back on this idea by challenging the assumption that chance and design are somehow at odds.
In fact, going all the way back to Aristotle, many philosophers have pointed out that chance isn’t a thing that does stuff. It’s not an existing thing out there bringing about effects all on its own. Instead, chance happens when there’s some effect that results from different causes coming together in a way that none of those causes specifically intended.
Let me give you a down-to-earth example.
Let’s say I head to the grocery store to grab some milk so my kids can eat cereal in the morning. At the same time, Joe Heschmeyer goes to the same store to pick up bread for his kids’ toast. We run into each other, and—of course—we start nerding out about philosophy in the cereal aisle.
Now, that meeting was by chance. But notice: I had a goal, Joe had a goal, and both of us were acting intentionally. The “chance” meeting happened because of our purposeful or designed actions. In other words, it was a byproduct of two things that were already aimed at something—what you might call “design.”
Here’s another classic example. Imagine someone digging a grave and stumbling upon buried treasure. The person digging had one goal—to make a hole. The person who buried the treasure had another—to hide something valuable. The discovery wasn’t part of either person’s plan, but it came about as a result of two separate, directed actions crossing paths.
The key point here is that chance doesn’t stand on its own. It’s not something basic or fundamental. It makes sense only within a world where things are already moving toward goals—that is, where there’s already design or order at play.
And guess what! The same idea applies to evolution.
Sure, genetic mutations might be random. But randomness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For mutations to occur, there must be living organisms already striving to survive and reproduce. Mutations don’t just pop out of nowhere—they depend on a whole framework of life, biology, and physical laws that are already in motion with design.
Also, mutations follow tendencies. A dinosaur might evolve into a bird under the right conditions, but it’s not going to turn into a daisy. There’s a certain directionality built into the process.
And when one thing acts on another—like a chemical or a gene—it produces a specific kind of result. Philosophers would say that’s because each thing has built-in tendencies toward certain effects. An acorn, for instance, doesn’t randomly sprout into just anything—it grows into an oak tree, not a banana tree. That kind of directed behavior is what we mean by “order” or “design.”
The bottom line is this: chance doesn’t cancel out design. In fact, you can’t even have chance without design already in place.
If that’s true, and design points to a supreme designer (as theists argue), then the random aspects of evolution don’t actually eliminate the need for God. They just happen within a system that’s already designed.
So the first objection—that evolution removes the need for an intelligent Creator—doesn’t hold up.
Let’s look at a second objection. Some people argue that if new creatures emerge through chance, then there must be parts of the universe that are outside of God’s control—things that weren’t part of the plan.
Philosophers who believe in God usually respond by going back to what we already said: chance happens when causes come together to bring about some effect in a way that neither cause intended directly. But in the traditional theistic view, those causes themselves exist and operate because of God. Their activity—the very reason they act at all—traces back to God’s divine power.
St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way in his Summa Contra Gentiles:
<blockquote>All power of any agent whatsoever is from God, as from the first principle of all perfection. Therefore since all operation is consequent to some power, it follows that God is the cause of every operation.</blockquote>
In other words, God isn’t in competition with the causes he created. It’s not an either/or situation. Created causes are real and meaningful because of the divine cause.
This understanding of divine causality led Aquinas to explain two things that make up what we generally call God’s “providence,” which is helpful for us here (see Summa Theologiae I:22:3). First, there’s the plan—the order of all things foreordained toward an end. God holds this in his mind, right down to the smallest detail. This is technically called “providence.” Second, there’s the execution of that plan—how things actually play out, which often happens through a chain of created things causing other things. This part, Aquinas calls “government.”
So if God is the ultimate source of every cause and effect, then he will also know—and include in his plan—the convergences of causes that we call “chance.” Even in evolution, what we see as randomness still fits within both parts of God’s providential plan: his providence and governance.
This leads to one more helpful point: what chance is in relation to causes that converge in their actions is not chance in relation to God.
Aquinas talks about this, too. He says,
<blockquote>It happens sometimes that something is lucky or chance-like, as compared to inferior causes, which, if compared to some higher cause is directly intended (ST I:116:1).</blockquote>
Let’s go back to that buried treasure example. Suppose the person digging the grave is a poor laborer hired by a wealthy man. And suppose the wealthy man buried the treasure himself years ago, then hired the laborer on purpose, hoping he’d find it—but without telling him.
From the laborer’s point of view, finding the treasure was a total fluke. But from the employer’s point of view, it was fully intentional. The chance occurrence, therefore, ultimately reduces to the directing activity of the employer—the intelligent cause.
Same goes for the world. We might experience some event as a lucky break or a random occurrence, but from God’s vantage point—the ultimate perspective—it was part of the plan all along.
Even things like genetic mutations that help species evolve—like dinosaurs developing feathers, or fish adapting to breathe air—might be beyond what the causes themselves “expect” to do, but they’re not beyond what God intends through them, since he’s their ultimate directing cause in the first place.
So the idea that something “escaped” God’s plan because it happened by chance doesn’t really work, either.
In the end, there’s no need for a believer to feel threatened by evolution. The presence of chance in the process doesn’t rule out God. In fact, without design, there wouldn’t even be chance. And since design points us to God, it follows that chance doesn’t eliminate God—it actually depends on him.

Why Chance Can’t Eliminate God

Protestants, many of us Catholic apologists argue, effectively act as their own popes. The reason why, we allege, is that every Protestant is ultimately accountable to his personal interpretation of divine revelation, which for Protestants is solely the sixty-six-book Protestant Bible. Every Protestant, we posit, acts as his own magisterial authority, both in interpreting the Bible and even in deciding what constitutes the Bible, given their rejection of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-defend-the-deuterocanonicals">deuterocanon</a>.
But not so, declare our Protestant counterparts! They, like us Catholics, have confessions and creeds to which they submit. Carl R. Trueman, one of the most brilliant and interesting intellects in modern Protestantism, last year <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/11/protestants-need-to-go-back-to-basics">urged</a> his fellow Protestants to return to “orthodox Christian doctrines as set forth by the creeds, the Great Tradition of theology exemplified by the ancient ecumenical councils, and traditional Protestant confessions such as the Westminster Confession.” Kim Riddlebarger, a co-host of the popular White Horse Inn podcast, <a href="https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/about-the-author">declares</a>, “If you were to ask, ‘what is it that defines Christianity?’, my answer now would be ‘the definition of Christianity is given us in the Creed.’”
Recently, a friend sent me a video of Methodist lay apologist Joshua Pearsall, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjbNPvzH8QI&amp;t=105s">makes a similar argument</a> in reference to my book, <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/product/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity/?srsltid=AfmBOor7SNuNT5o002l6Y6MiuN14F4UagxCOJWCBmGhv1rN3cnnkD79G">The Obscurity of Scripture</a>. Citing confessional standards of such denominations as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and his own Methodist tradition, Pearsall asserts, “You literally can’t be your own pope. You are accountable to the standards of your tradition and of course the Scriptures on top of that.” Others, such as <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/10/01/the-reformation-as-renewal-is-an-exemplar-of-special-pleading/">Reformed scholar Matthew Barrett</a> in his recent work The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, claims much the same.
I can appreciate the thinking behind this Protestant line of argumentation. Indeed, I would have mouthed similar things fifteen years ago when I was a Presbyterian seminary student. Of course I wasn’t like those ignorant, low-church evangelicals with no knowledge of church history, no knowledge of Nicaea or Chalcedon, no knowledge even of their own Protestant theological ancestry. I eagerly submitted to the Westminster Standards, believing them to be an accurate interpretation of biblical truth.
But that, I eventually realized, was exactly the problem. I adhered to Reformed confessional documents based on their conformity to Holy Scripture—but whose interpretation of it? My own, ultimately. Nor was this my own novel understanding of how things are supposed to work within the Protestant paradigm. This is precisely the way they are supposed to work.
Why, for example, was I a Presbyterian rather than an Anglican, Lutheran, or Methodist? Why was I submitting to the Westminster Confession of Faith rather than the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, or the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith? Because I, as a conscientious, “Bible-believing” Christian, had determined that the particular confessional documents of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) were sufficiently biblical to merit my allegiance. My own pastors and professors told me that if I believed another Protestant denomination was more biblically faithful, I should follow my conscience and go there instead.
Who is in the interpretative drivers’ seat in such a scenario? The individual Christian, naturally. If Carl Trueman, Kim Riddlebarger, Matthew Barrett, or any other Protestant Christian read his Bible and came to believe that his particular Protestant tradition and its confessional documents are erroneous, it would be his prerogative to either protest those errors within his own denomination or, if he viewed them as sufficiently egregious, to join a different ecclesial community. He might even feel compelled to establish his own.
And that explains not only five hundred years of fissiparous Protestant history, but the remarkable explosion of non-denominational, Bible-based, evangelical churches in the last few generations. All of them purport to be simply returning to the fundamentals of Scripture, and all of them cannot help but offer their own bespoke takes on Christian doctrine and praxis.
Granted, I presume that many if not most Protestants do not intend this. They do not want to be postmodern individualists determining reality for themselves. They want to be embedded in the history and traditions of Christianity. That’s why they constantly cite not only Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Turretin, Cranmer, and Owen, but also Church Fathers such as Irenaeus, Jerome, and Augustine. What Catholics and traditionally minded Protestants share is a desire to be united to something greater than themselves, a proclivity for the ancient and venerable. We all want to believe that our faith was not born yesterday, but descends from the apostles.
The question is whether the Protestant paradigm, in any of its manifold manifestations, is actually capable of coherently doing so. What I came to realize almost fifteen years ago is no, it cannot. Even Pearsall in his YouTube videos attempting to refute my book cannot help but undermine his position, acknowledging that many Protestants are failing to honor their own confessional standards . . . and then immediately admitting that confessional standards are not infallible and “can be corrected down the line if they need to be.” Corrected according to what standard? The standard of the individual’s interpretation of Scripture.
In other words, Protestant creeds and confessional standards have only as much authority as Protestants are willing to grant them. If a Protestant comes to assess them as inadequate, on whatever grounds related to his conscience, he may edit or even dispense with them. And this applies not only to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant creeds, but the ecumenical councils of the ancient Church. This is why Protestants <a href="https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/ask-ligonier/what-does-it-mean-that-the-first-seven-church-councils-were-ecumenical">pick and choose which ecumenical councils they accept</a>. Indeed, many Protestants even argue that <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/confess-jesus-descended-into-hell/">parts of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed</a> are unbiblical and need not be accepted. And why not?
Catholics do not inhabit the same paradigmatic position. We do not pick and choose which councils or creeds to which we submit. We accept the authority of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church en totale, because we recognize that it has been granted that authority by Christ himself, preserved by the Holy Spirit. Such a recognition requires an act of faith, but it is based on evidence and reason, pre-eminently the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/my-church-is-more-credible-than-yours">motives of credibility</a>. And, unlike Protestants, whose interpretive authority of divine revelation rests in the conscience of each individual Christian, Catholics acknowledge a living Magisterium, whose voice is manifested not only through ecumenical councils, but, in certain narrow circumstances, through the living pope.
Creeds can’t save Protestantism from its inevitable descent into an individualism that equates to every individual Christian acting as his own pope. Only the Catholic Church with its internally coherent and historically verifiable magisterial authority can resolve the Protestant’s dilemma and give him the certitude that he is indeed following Christ and the fullness of his teaching, rather than the (often well-meaning) whims of his own conscience.

Creeds Can’t Save Protestantism

The Church teaches that anyone can baptize in extraordinary circumstances (CCC 1256). Thus, grandparents often find themselves wondering if they are permitted to baptize their grandchild when his parent doesn’t want him baptized. And not just grandparents, but also other caring individuals. I’ve had folks ask me this question countless times.
The Church is clear that we can’t baptize a child in secret, contrary to his parents’ wishes. For more details on that, and some recommendations for a grandparent or loved one who feels helpless in this kind of situation, check out Joe Heschmeyer’s article “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-i-secretly-baptize-my-grandchildren">Can I Secretly Baptize My Grandchildren?</a>”
Now, naturally, the question becomes, “Why?” Why does the Church forbid baptisms of children under the age of reason against the will of the parents? As I point out in <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/baptism-now-saves-you/?searchid=10866197&amp;search_query=baptism+now">my new book</a> Baptism Now Saves You: How Water and Spirit Give Eternal Life, there are several reasons.
First, it is contrary to natural justice. Determination of what a child under the age of reason does and receives is naturally due to the parents. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches as much:
<blockquote>Those who do not yet have the use of free-will (a child under the age of reason), according to the natural law they are under the care of their parents as long as they cannot look after themselves (Summa Theologiae III:68:10).</blockquote>
To baptize a child under the age of reason against the will of his parents, therefore, would be to deprive the parents of what is naturally due to them. And to deprive parents of what is naturally due to them is an injustice. Such an act would be just as much a violation of natural justice as it would be to baptize a person having the use of reason against his will (see ibid).
Aquinas gives another reason behind the Church’s prohibition of baptizing children against the will of their parents: it makes the child liable to unbelief. He writes,
<blockquote>Moreover under the circumstances it would be dangerous to baptize the children of unbelievers; for they would be liable to lapse into unbelief, by reason of their natural affection for their parents. Therefore it is not the custom of the Church to baptize the children of unbelievers against their parents’ will.</blockquote>
One last reason that we’ll give here, inspired by Joe’s thoughts in the previously mentioned article, is that to baptize against the parents’ will is to thwart an aspect of the directionality or goal-directedness of the gift of faith. The Catechism teaches that baptism is a “sacrament of faith,” and the faith that is given in baptism is “called to develop” and “needs the community of believers” (1253).
To baptize a child knowing that the gift of faith imparted to him would not be nourished and developed by a community of believers would be to thwart the very natural directionality of the gift itself, kind of like when people thwart the directionality of the sexual act in the use of contraception, or the directionality of the act of eating by intentionally vomiting the food, or the directionality of the communicative act of assertion by lying.
Now, I sympathize with the person who says, “But this is urgent and serious. Wouldn’t you rescue a child from the danger of physical death? Why wouldn’t you do the same in the case of spiritual death?”
Aquinas also deals with this sort of objection and provides an insightful answer (Summa Theologiae III:68:10 ad 1). He starts with a principle that I think most would agree upon—namely, we can’t go and rescue someone from physical death against the order of civil law. For example, if a judge condemns a man to death on account of a proportionate crime, we wouldn’t be morally permitted to use force to rescue the man from death. The reason is that such a judgment is issued by legitimate authority, and it’s immoral for us to act against such authority.
Similarly, as Aquinas teaches, we shouldn’t try to rescue a child from spiritual death against the will of the parents, lest we infringe the order of the natural law. The order of the natural law dictates that parents have the natural right to determine the actions of their children under the age of reason. And to baptize a child against his parent’s will would violate such an order.
But someone might still counter, “Don’t we belong more to God than to man? It’s God who gave us our soul, the primary principle within us. Only our bodies, which are lower in the hierarchy of being, have been given to us by our parents. Thus, it would seem it’s not unjust for a child to be baptized against his parents’ will.”
Again, here we appeal to the natural order articulated above. The actions of a child under the age of reason are subject to being determined by the parents. Here’s how Aquinas answers this sort of objection:
<blockquote>Man is ordained unto God through his reason, by which he can know God. Wherefore a child, before it has the use of reason, is ordained to God, by a natural order, through the reason of its parents, under whose care it naturally lies, and it is according to their ordering that things pertaining to God are to be done in respect of the child (ibid., ad 3).</blockquote>
The bottom line is that although we belong to God more than to man, it’s God who willed the natural order. Therefore, to act against this natural order by baptizing a child under the age of reason against his parents’ will would be to act against God himself. And that’s something we ought always to avoid.

Mission Impossible: Baptism

<div>Why do I need Jesus to have a relationship with God? Isn’t it possible to have a relationship with God prior to coming to know about Jesus? </div><div>It’s true that one can have a relationship with God before knowledge of Jesus. The reason for this is that it’s possible to arrive at some degree of knowledge of God without divine revelation. But such a relationship is going to be strained for several reasons.
First, the knowledge that we can have of God by the natural light of reason is very limited. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, there are certain things about God that surpass the grasp of our reason. And if God is our ultimate end, and we need to know our ultimate end in order to direct our thoughts and actions to him, then it’s necessary for our salvation that God tell us those things about himself that exceed human reason (see Summa Theologiae, I:1:1).
Second, when left to ourselves, we often have erroneous views about God. Of course, it’s possible to know certain truths about God by reason alone. But it’s often the result of long and hard work and is mixed with error.
Being in relationship with Jesus allows for us to know these truths with ease and to know them without error. As Aquinas says, this brings about our salvation “more fitly and more surely” (ST, I:1:1). With greater knowledge about the one we love comes greater love, especially when the one we love is absolute perfection and goodness itself.
A third reason why our relationship with God would be strained without Jesus is the presence of sin. Without Jesus, we would be left in our sin, which always impedes intimacy with God.
Fourth, we would be left in the dark on how to appropriately worship God and foster our relationship with him. With the advent of Jesus, and the revelation of the sacrifice of the Mass that he gives at the Last Supper, we know how to worship God in a way that is pleasing to him.
Finally, our relationship with Jesus can only enhance our relationship with God because Jesus is God. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Through him, we have access to the inner Trinitarian life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. St. Peter sums it up:
<blockquote>His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:3-4).</blockquote>
</div>

Why Do I Need Jesus?

Can we trust the historical accuracy of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/gospel-and-gospels">Gospels</a> if they were written decades after Jesus? Doesn&#8217;t that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/are-the-gospels-myth">make them unreliable</a>? Trent Horn answers this common challenge from atheists on Catholic Answers Live.

Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?

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Mary shows us the RIGHT WAY to read Scripture.

What happened to St Joseph?

Did Catholics win the internet in 2025?

Matt Fradd joining Daily Wire

Growth of Church in USA

The Flannel Panel looks back on 2025 with a lively year-in-review, asking whether Catholics truly “won the internet,” examining the significance of Matt Fradd joining The Daily Wire, and reflecting on the continued growth of the Catholic Church in the United States. The discussion highlights how Catholic voices are shaping online culture, media, and evangelization in a rapidly changing digital and religious landscape.
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Matt Fradd Joins DailyWire and the Internet in 2025 | Flannel Panel

<div>What is considered praying a rosary; is it once around the beads (five decades) or fifteen times around the beads?</div><div>Praying the rosary normally means praying all five decades of one of the four sets of mysteries: the joyful, luminous, sorrowful or glorious mysteries. So that would be five decades or “once around the beads.” Of course, one could simply pray a decade or two, or, time permitting, all four sets of the rosary mysteries comprising twenty decades.
</div>

What Constitutes Praying a Rosary?

Pope Francis on Female Deacons: Why So Misunderstood?

“Why did they put that road there?” “Who thought this development was a good idea?” “Why don’t we have more nice restaurants in my area?”
These are probably questions we’ve all thought at some point or another. City planning affects all of us, and oftentimes its consequences last generations. It’s important, then, to understand what bearing our Catholic faith has on the matter. It may also be helpful to consider in particular how one Catholic—Charles “Chuck” Marohn, the founder and president of an organization called Strong Towns—has drawn upon his faith in approaching the issue.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church doesn’t have a lot to say explicitly about city-building. What it does lay down, however, is principles that can be applied. These include, among <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html">other things</a>, the need to consider solidarity (194-195), stability (482), and justice (201) in how we organize human community.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the most applicable principle is one you’ve probably heard of: subsidiarity (419-420). The Catechism defines subsidiarity as the idea that “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good” (1883). We can reasonably conclude from this that city planning should be an intimately local process.
That brings us to Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns. Strong Towns <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/about">defines itself</a> as an organization seeking to analyze “the failures of the post-war North American development pattern while giving citizens the knowledge and tools to start making our places better today.” With that comes a clear four-step process:
<ol>
<li>Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.</li>
<li>Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?</li>
<li>Do that thing. Do it right now.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/9/23/the-strong-towns-approach-to-public-investment-satbook">Repeat.</a></li>
</ol>
There are some profound implications that flow from this simple process.
One is that, since embarking on what Marohn calls “the Suburban Experiment,” we’ve been going about city-building all wrong in North America. Instead of incremental little “bets” (local investments) by many actors, we have increasingly <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/14/the-end-of-incrementalism">consolidated</a> all development decisions into the hands of massive corporate players who build all at once, “to a finished state.” These artificial environments are then “<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/1/18/what-would-mass-upzoning-actually-do-to-property-values">frozen in amber</a>,” so to speak, by zoning law, thus ensuring that they have very little potential to grow or change over time. It’s not hard to see <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/5/28/how-affordable-housing-distracts-people-from-housing-affordability">why we have a housing shortage</a> in this country.
The Suburban Experiment leads in the commercial sphere to that ubiquitous feature of our current landscape, the “stroad” (a word coined by Marohn). A stroad is a street-road hybrid that does justice to neither. Consider: a street is a human-scaled, active platform for living, working, worshiping, shopping, and dining. In other words, it’s a place for living. Think Main Street. A road is a high-speed connection between places. Think an interstate highway. Stroads, with their numerous curb cuts, parking lots, businesses, drive-throughs, and deadly high speeds, <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter">try to do</a> the functions of both, but they result instead in crippling traffic (and traffic accidents); wasteful sprawl; and unimaginative, alienating places. And to top it all off, this development pattern <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/8/25/if-strong-towns-is-right-and-cities-are-insolvent-why-do-so-many-seem-to-be-doing-so-well">doesn’t even generate</a> enough tax flow to <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizing-suburban-development-charge-it-what-it-costs">sustain itself</a>!
The message of Strong Towns dovetails with Catholic social teaching in some important ways. Most obvious is the promotion of subsidiarity, which Marohn talks about <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/strong-towns-a-bottom-up-revolution-to-rebuild-american-prosperity/24200257/item/34585705/?mkwid=%7cdc&amp;pcrid=76828539257984&amp;pkw=&amp;pmt=be&amp;slid=&amp;product=34585705&amp;plc=&amp;pgrid=1229254253723540&amp;ptaid=pla-4580428017120331&amp;utm_source=bing&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=Shopping+%7c+NEW+condition+books&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c76828539257984%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c34585705%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c1229254253723540%7cptaid%7cpla-4580428017120331%7c&amp;msclkid=a9cf92c3b85f114420bef5935de6cd20#idiq=34585705&amp;edition=21873596">explicitly</a> (195-198). Everything in our national politics and economic system is trending toward larger picture, top-down control. Strong Towns is therefore a pointed wake-up call to Catholics to take our own tradition seriously and challenge this divisive trend. You should be more concerned about the state of your town’s sidewalks than the latest outrage-grabber in the national headlines. You should be more familiar with your local councilman’s legislative initiatives than with the president’s. I’m not saying these bigger things don’t matter—just that subsidiarity should cause our deepest emotional investment to be closer to home.
One potential source of friction, especially in these uncertain times, is the temptation to adopt a “head for the hills” mindset. It’s tempting to believe that a stockpile of imperishable food and ammunition in some remote location is the ultimate safeguard against disaster. If you live in an established neighborhood, perhaps you’re anxiously looking forward to the day when you can escape to some isolated rural area. Strong Towns offers a different perspective: in a time of societal breakdown, it will probably be strong communities and social bonds that will allow you to <a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/9/21/in-praise-of-neighbors">weather the storm</a>. Unless you live on a truly self-sufficient farm, your best bet lies in the skill and resource sharing that only physically proximate communities can provide.
Strong Towns is one of the few bright spots in our current fraught political landscape. Marohn is a self-described conservative, but his movement is made up of people from across the political spectrum (maybe a majority of them progressives). Strong Towns steadfastly refuses to be pigeonholed into any of the current culture war “camps” on offer today. Catholics can (and probably should) be Strong Towns advocates, fiercely attached to the health and success of their local communities. Paradoxically, it may be just the corrective course our national politics needs.

What’s Wrong with Your City

Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate freedom. We shoot fireworks into the sky, grill burgers, wave flags, and proudly recall the Declaration of Independence. And rightly so: our Founding Fathers fought and bled for liberty, declaring that every man has been endowed by his Creator with unalienable rights.
But in recent years, the word “freedom” has become increasingly unrecognizable. In fact, we’ve reached a point where most Americans talk about freedom while denying its foundation: truth, virtue, and God. So this Independence Day, Catholics should be asking: what are we actually celebrating? And what does true freedom mean in light of our faith?
If freedom now means the right to redefine marriage, to kill the unborn, to divorce and remarry as we please, to mutilate healthy bodies in the name of “identity,” and to mock the moral law with impunity, then it’s time to admit that our national understanding of liberty is not only distorted; it’s dangerous.
The good news is, the Catholic Church has always been the world’s most faithful defender of true freedom. But real freedom isn’t what the modern world thinks it is.
<h2>The Founders Were Right</h2>
The Declaration of Independence rightly states that freedom comes from God, not government. That’s a deeply Catholic idea: our dignity and liberty are rooted in our creation in the image of God. But here’s where modern culture departs from that vision: it wants the liberty without the Lord. We kept the language of the Founders but stripped it of the metaphysics. As G.K. Chesterton quipped, “the modern world is full of Christian virtues gone mad.”
What began as “freedom under God” has slowly mutated into “freedom from God.” Today, the word has been co-opted by those who use it to justify abortion, gender ideology, moral relativism, pornography, and euthanasia.
This is not what the Church is talking about. And it’s not what Christ came to give us.
<h2>Freedom Is Not Doing Whatever You Want</h2>
The popular notion of freedom today is this: I can do whatever I want, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But that’s license—a distortion of freedom, and the first step toward enslavement.
The Catechism teaches us that “freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act . . . so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility” (1731). “By free will, man is capable of directing himself toward his true good” (1704).
Notice that freedom is not the capacity to follow one’s whims, but to choose what is truly good. Freedom is always ordered toward truth. Otherwise, it self-destructs. A train is most “free” not when it jumps the tracks, but when it runs on them. The same is true of the human soul.
When someone says, “It’s my choice,” a Catholic must ask: Is it a good one? Is it morally true? Is it ordered toward God or away from him?
Without those questions, “freedom” becomes a golden calf.
<h2>Free Will: A Gift That Must Be Directed</h2>
God gave us free will so that we might seek him, know him, and love him—not so we could become little gods unto ourselves. That’s what Satan wanted. The Church teaches that man was created with a rational soul precisely so that, by his own free will, he might come to love God (CCC 1730).
But that also means we are accountable. With free will comes moral responsibility. We are not robots. And our choices carry eternal consequences. That’s why the Catechism also warns that misusing our freedom leads not to independence, but to slavery:
<blockquote>Man’s freedom is limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God’s plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin (1739).</blockquote>
In the name of freedom, many today have become utterly enslaved: to lust, to ideology, to social validation, to rage, to self-harm, to envy, to addictions of every kind. But Christ offers something infinitely better.
<h2>True Freedom Is Found in Christ</h2>
This is why Scripture insists, “For freedom Christ has set us free; do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). Christ came not to affirm our choices, but to liberate us from sin. His truth does not limit our freedom; it unleashes it.
Modern America has forgotten this. We’ve turned away from Christ and then wondered why our society feels increasingly unfree. But the more we ignore objective truth and divine law, the more fractured, chaotic, and authoritarian our public life becomes. The Founders never imagined a free republic without moral virtue. That’s because you can’t have authentic liberty without ordered souls.
<h2>The Protestant Confusion on Freedom</h2>
To make matters more confusing, some Protestant theologies further distort the issue. The Reformation, especially in the Calvinist tradition, introduced the idea that human free will was entirely destroyed by the Fall. This leads to a troubling view: that God predestines some to heaven and others to hell, and man has no real say in the matter. That’s not freedom. That’s fatalism.
Catholic doctrine, by contrast, holds both truths in harmony: grace is primary and necessary, but our response is real and free. God desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but he does not force us. He respects our free will, even when we use it to reject him. That’s why salvation requires cooperation—our fiat, like Mary’s.
If America’s founding motto is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Catholic response is that such happiness can be found only by freely choosing the good, in communion with Christ.
<h2>Are We Still Independent?</h2>
This Independence Day, we should ask the hard question: are we still a nation that knows what freedom is?
Many Americans believe they’re free—but they are in bondage to sin, enslaved to false ideologies, and captive to passions they no longer control. We’ve confused liberation from tyranny with liberation from virtue. We’ve mistaken rebellion for freedom and autonomy for excellence.
But there’s hope.
The Church still holds the keys to true liberty. The saints are proof that real freedom is not found in breaking rules, but in being conformed to Christ. St. Maximilian Kolbe died in Auschwitz, but his soul was free. St. Thomas More was executed for defying <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/martin-luthers-most-shocking-opponent">a tyrant king</a>, but he went to his death joyfully free. These are the men who truly embodied “independence”—not from God, but from sin, fear, and falsehood.
<h2>A Call to Catholic Patriots</h2>
If you love your country, then help its people remember what freedom really is. That won’t come through slogans, parades, or partisan slogans. It will come through conversion, repentance, and truth.
Celebrate the Fourth of July—but use it as a moment to proclaim that the highest liberty isn’t political independence. It’s the freedom to say “yes” to God. The freedom to obey when the world rebels. The freedom to choose virtue when sin looks easy. The freedom to become holy.
Because Christ didn’t die to make you autonomous. He died to make you free.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). This Independence Day, don’t just wave the flag. Choose the truth. Choose Christ. Choose real freedom.

Is America Still Free?

Salvation often seems more like a Protestant issue than a Catholic one. And when Catholics don’t engage with the doctrine of salvation, they can develop some misunderstandings about it.
For instance, the topic of salvation can be grouped in our bookstores in the “self-help” section. Lots of things under that heading can be helpful, but salvation is not a self-help concept, as we will see. Another misunderstanding is viewing the issue purely from a “fire insurance policy” framework. Salvation is objectively a “saving” from hell, yes, but that significantly condenses the breadth of the matter.
<h2>Not Just Self-Help</h2>
Salvation isn’t something we do to become better. Rather, it is about something that God has done for us. God has given us a gift beyond comprehension.
Before exploring this gift, it will be helpful to get some background on what the ancient Roman Empire thought about gift-giving.
Recently within Pauline scholarship, John Barclay published a monumental work called “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Gift-John-M-Barclay/dp/0802868894">Paul and the Gift</a>.” He notes how gift-giving was a major part of daily life in the ancient world, and how the Greek word charis was used often by nonreligious writers. A wealthy individual would give a gift to somebody he considered worthy—that is, someone who would not pocket the gift and walk away. Rather, the worthy person would gratefully receive the gift and give a gift back in return. A relationship of mutual gift-giving would develop.
With this background in mind, let’s look at Paul’s famous quote on gift-giving. He says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). God has engaged in gift-giving to humanity! How exciting! Everybody likes to receive gifts.
But there are some differences between what God does in Ephesians 2 and what the ancient world thought of gift-giving.
God does not focus on giving gifts to worthy individuals, as the Romans did. Like the parable of the sower (Matt. 13), God spreads the gift-seeds recklessly, whether on good soil or bad soil. The latter looks like an utter waste of seed! Yet Paul says in his letter to these Romans that Christ died for the ungodly and unworthy (Rom. 5:6). This is saying that the gift God offers to humans is to unworthy receivers. Humans are sinful, defiant, and inclined to nasty selfishness. It flips the Roman concept of charis on its head. Surely humans are just going to pocket salvation and walk away. Yet God gives gifts to all.
A good example of this gift-giving in the Gospels is the episode of Zaccheus. In Luke 19, a worker for the Romans, Zaccheus, is approached by Jesus, who desires to give the gift of his presence. Anybody in his right mind would not offer a gift to this guy. He is not worthy and, from a human standpoint, will not offer a gift in return. Zaccheus is stealing from the people of Israel as a tax collector. His primary concern is taking money with the force of the Romans behind him, not receiving and giving gifts!
Keep in mind who the Romans were, too. They were terrorists and bullies. There are coins that depict them raping their subjects. Any basic respect for the human person went out the window for the Romans. Zaccheus is on the wrong team! He should not be approached by Jesus! Certainly, he will be ungrateful for a gift.
Yet Zaccheus turns into a worthy recipient. He experiences a conversion instantaneously, it seems, and gives a gift back to Jesus in a way that he knows Jesus would want: to return his stolen goods back to the injured parties and to give alms to the poor. Jesus gives a gift, it is received, and a gift is given back.
Now let’s turn to the specific gift God gives to humanity. Primarily, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus. This gift of atonement and payment of debts is for another article, but what needs to be highlighted here is that humans receive this gift by dying and rising themselves. What do I mean? They mystically, invisibly, and spiritually enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Humans are “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20), are “buried with him&#8221; under the waters of baptism (Rom. 6:3), and “rise” to new life (Col. 2:12).
This concept of entering into Jesus’ resurrection life is connected to the second misconception about salvation:
<h2>Not Just Fire Insurance</h2>
Salvation is not just a protection against hell, although that is a weighty advantage in and of itself. Condensing it into a “get out of hell free” card is a tremendous disservice. For it’s also about new life.
Humans receive the gift of Jesus’ resurrection life—the life that involved Jesus being able to defy logic and reality when he appeared to the disciples in their room although their doors were locked (John 20:26). This is the life that changes wealthy people to suddenly give their lives to lepers, whose skin is decaying and falling off (St. Francis of Assisi). It is the life that changes the jobs of comfortable people to the jobs of suddenly picking dying people off the streets and caring for them with tenderness (St. Mother Teresa). In a word, we enter Christ’s school of love.
This new life involves an ontological change in our being. Humans *partake* of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). They share in Jesus’s divinity. Christians truly become the body of Christ, which is why when people persecute Christians, Jesus says they are persecuting him (Acts 9:4-5).
Christians are literally what their title is: Christian means “little Christ.” As Fr. Jose Maria Castillo once emphasized, when I look at my hand, I don’t look at just a hand—I look at Jesus’ hand. This is why numerous miracles occur even today (see the studies found in Craig Keener’s book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Today-Supernatural-Modern-World/dp/1540963837/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1J4GIO1GWC71G&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IEObadFBzNp20zQW9K9lACoOaVYMT44Yzluw1iWwWxNi6ZpbGpEZ3pzhC1x7f1UndqUbOr8pUid3ms3QnrRJZia7orlcmTBVxWlu5-Urwy-oXzH-AvKGW0zqd9hKc0VUZOkr_ZzbvZpjsF1PTEBjuzuBLSkUe35d3w2B6aTvF9Pl2rchtg0iYCVMIfZ4qzFimh3Kh-d9Nq7BIdQ_abP0EZ3piaiRVY3JHpvJg4u_TXQ.EqAJ7n0m484ej3Sv0hl9e4e74spdn5gv99WC2anfgw8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=miracles+by+craig+keener&amp;qid=1762965501&amp;sprefix=miracles+by%2Caps%2C118&amp;sr=8-1">Miracles</a>). I witnessed one last year at <a href="https://www.damascus.net/">Damascus Catholic Youth Summer Camp</a>, in fact.
To conclude, salvation is neither a self-help issue nor just about fire insurance. However, there is a sense in which salvation is self-help. For if you truly care about your well-being, you’ll gratefully receive the gift of salvation from Jesus. You’ll die to your old ways of selfishness and pride, enter into a gift-giving relationship with God, and give immense gifts back to God (the highest gift of which is your gift of self). As Paul continues in Ephesians, “we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). We are made for giving gifts back to God, for God is the one invisibly propelling us to do this. Nor is salvation just fire insurance; rather, it is about receiving the gift of eternal life.
(To learn more about other misunderstandings on the topic of salvation, see the book by my professor at the Augustine Institute called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Salvation-What-Every-Catholic-Should/dp/1733522182">Salvation</a>.)