Manage Account

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

The earliest extra-biblical surviving historical record of the Church comes from Eusebius (c. 260-339), a bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. For that reason alone, Eusebius’s History of the Church is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the first three centuries of Christianity. And, as even a cursory study of his ten-chapter work shows, there is much to confirm a singularly Catholic understanding of the Church.
It’s important to acknowledge Eusebius’s shortcomings. The fourth-century bishop was an overt advocate and defender of the emperor Constantine (the tenth chapter of his history is a not so subtle paean to the emperor), which provoked criticisms from later Church historians that Eusebius was a bit of a toady and his writings too politicized. He was an early supporter of the heretic Arius, leading to accusations that he was himself an Arian. (Eusebius was later exonerated of the heresy charges with the approval of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.) And his history has been the object of much criticism, with many scholars, including the great patristic scholar William Jurgens, noting various historical errors in Eusebius’s work.
Nevertheless, despite these legitimate concerns, it’s hard not to overstate the value of The History of the Church. It is the first extra-biblical history of the Church. (Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is the first ecclesial history.) Even with various errors, modern scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, recognize Eusebius’s work as invaluable to understanding the early Church. Indeed, in many cases, we are aware of other early Church thinkers (and their writings) because the Cesarean bishop cites them. And, whatever error Eusebius made, there is also plenty in his history that is confirmed by other ancient sources. Thus, whatever broad trends we can decipher from The History of the Church are incredibly important for us as we contemplate Christianity in its first three centuries.
There are several key themes in Eusebius’s history that illuminate the identity and interests of the early Church. The first of these is the centrality of apostolic succession. Eusebius begins the chapter, or book, noting the “chief matters” he intends to address in his work, and at the top of his list is “the lines of succession from the holy apostles, and the periods that have elapsed from our Savior’s time to our own.” Thus, throughout his history, we find reference to apostolic succession in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome (what are called patriarchates).
Eusebius at one point cites a churchman named Gaius, who not only claims to know where the monuments to Ss. Peter and Paul lie, but also refers to the two as “those who founded this church.” Eusebius also refers to Alexander as “fifth successor to Peter and Paul.” He cites the second-century “Easter Controversy,” over the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-pope-vs-tradition">dating of Easter</a>, noting that bishops in the East—as well as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon—disagreed with the Roman bishop (that is, the pope) Victor over his decision to excommunicate some dioceses in Asia Minor. Yet even in his criticism of Victor, Eusebius implies that he and Irenaeus both recognized the Roman bishop to possess an authority to excommunicate, since “he [Victor] should not cut off entire churches of God.” Moreover, Eusebius refers to Peter as the first bishop of Rome and describes how the great theologian Origen felt the need to prove his orthodoxy to Fabian, bishop of Rome.
A second central theme of the history is the repudiation of heresies. Among the heretical groups Eusebius discusses are the Ebionites, who rejected Christ’s divinity; the Montanists, charismatics who believed in new prophetic revelations; the Novatians, who refused readmission to lapsed Catholics; and the Sabellians, who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three distinct “modes” of God. In each case, Eusebius repudiates heretics because they are not faithful to Scripture or the traditions of the apostles preserved through their successors, the bishops. For example, the historian mentions Pope Stephen and unnamed synods of bishops as authorities in the debate over baptizing lapsed Christians.
This emphasis on alignment with apostolic teaching preserved through the episcopacy is also relevant to a third critical theme in Eusebius: the persecution of the early Church and the coeval significance of martyrs. Every chapter of the history contains stories of martyrs, and some, like book nine, contain little else. Eusebius points to their value in his citation of Justin Martyr, who writes, “When I found them [Christians] fearless in the face of death and all that men think terrible, it dawned on me that they could not possibly be living in wickedness and self-indulgence.” In other words, martyrs served as an effective, provocative testimony—the Greek word literally means “witness”—to the veracity of the Church’s claims.
Yet Eusebius recognizes that there is a potential problem with this “motive of credibility”: some heretical groups also claimed martyrs, such as the Marcionites or Montanists. The historian in response cites an unnamed Christian writer who argues that false martyrs are those who “do not truly acknowledge Christ,” and with whom members of the Church refuse to fellowship. In effect, true martyrs are those in communion with the true Church, and, by extension, the true Church is identified by apostolic succession.
There are other currents in The History of the Church worth exploring. Eusebius’s descriptions of the sometimes acrimonious debates over the dating of Easter will likely surprise twenty-first Christians (especially non-Catholics), who place less of a premium on the liturgical calendar. His hagiography of Origen evinces his theological leanings. But the themes of apostolic succession, combating heresy, and celebrating martyrs loom largest across the text. And, regardless of the historicity of Eusebius&#8217; various accounts, the work demonstrates what issues and controversies dominated the first three centuries of the Church.
In sum, the early Church put a pedigree on apostolic succession, not only as a means of identifying the true Christianity against false imitators, but also to recognize its true martyrs. Certainly, Eusebius also believed that heresies could be refuted by reference to Holy Scripture, but it was the apostolic Church that was Scripture’s faithful protector and interpreter. And that the Roman bishop—beginning with Peter but continuing with such figures as Clement, Stephen I, Sixtus II, and Fabian—is so central to the debates of the early Church is at least suggestive of the growing recognition of the pre-eminent authority of the Roman see in the early centuries.
Whatever its historical limitations, Eusebius’ The History of the Church quite demonstrably shows that <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-early-church-was-the-catholic-church-softcover/">the early Church was</a> a singularly Catholic institution.

Catholic History: Good Even When It’s Bad

<div>If I had an invalid baptism, then had the other sacraments up through confirmation, then was baptized properly, is my confirmation valid?</div><div>No, if your baptism was invalid then your confirmation would need to be repeated. Your confessions would also need to be repeated, at least as well as you can remember, unless you are absolutely certain that your baptism was invalid, in which case you to do not need to repeat your confessions. If you are married to a baptized person then, upon your valid baptism, your union becomes a sacrament, as long as both of you still retain your original consent.
Baptism is the entry to all the other sacraments; without it, none of them have for us a properly sacramental grace. Consult your parish priest or your diocese chancery or pastoral center about your situation, and they will help you resolve it.
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Does Invalid Baptism Invalidate Other Sacraments?

“Yes, but have you read [fill in the blank]?” It’s a common enough question in any debate, be it religious, political, or anything else.
All of us (or perhaps I should say, I hope all of us) come to serious conversations having read some number of sources that have informed our thinking on the topic we’re debating. More often than not, we’ve probably read sources that our interlocutors have not, which we believe they would benefit from reading. Nothing wrong with that, of course—it’s how every side of a debate engages with new ideas and refines opinions.
But there is another context in which the question is asked that is common in ecumenical debates. It seems, at face, a rhetorically effective tactic, though I would argue that is ultimately diversionary and purposeless. Catholics should be aware of it in order to point it out, and Protestants, if they are to argue in good faith, should be hesitant ever to employ it.
Typically, the exchange goes something like the following. You bring up a particular Protestant doctrine, perhaps articulated in a specific Reformation-era creedal document (e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession of Faith, or the Heidelberg Catechism) or by a specific famous Protestant thinker (e.g., Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or Wesley). You offer an objection to that doctrine, maybe citing the internal incoherency of that doctrine. Or maybe you meet the Protestant on his own sola scriptura terms and argue that the doctrine isn’t biblical.
Perhaps the Protestant is prepared for that line of criticism and <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-response-how-to-answer-common-comebacks-to-catholic-arguments/">offers a retort</a>. Or perhaps he doesn’t. Either way, there is a way before him to redirect the conversation away from any perceived failings in his own system: to ask you if you’re familiar with some other Protestant historical document or thinker. The less well known that source, the better, because it decreases the likelihood that you’ll have any familiarity with it. Your Protestant interlocutor doesn’t even necessarily need to formulate an extensive summary of that source—oftentimes it’s enough simply to cite it and argue something along the lines of “Well, you really need to consider that source in order to understand [fill in the blank].”
Granted, it would be unfair to impugn upon any Protestant doing what I’ve described above as intentionally committing the “sin” of manipulative distraction. The Protestant may not be conscientiously seeking to deflect (as if he knows he’s beat) in order to avoid admitting defeat. He may very well think the key to that debate is found in some source he’s encountered. Indeed, I’ve observed Protestants often doing this to one another, as I experienced firsthand when I was a Presbyterian seminary student fifteen years ago.
When I was a Reformed Protestant, I would sometimes have a question or concern about a particular point of Reformed theology (the system of thought that defines many Protestant churches, including Presbyterians) as articulated in some standard text—say, the Westminster Confession of Faith; Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion; or a popular, widely recommended systematic theology. The answer to my question would vary depending on whom I asked—pastor, seminary professor, elder—and, because of that, would lead me in a variety of often contradictory directions. If I raised a particular theologian or writer to contextualize my question or concern, I would often be met with a shake of the head or even a scoff. “No, no, no” they would tell me—that person is wrong or simplistic. “You must read so-and-so for the best defense of that doctrine.” For every fellow Protestant I asked, there would be a different answer as to what source would provide me the explanation to resolve my questions or concerns.
This seemed, upon reflection, a curious problem for a religious tradition founded, so the narrative went, to rescue Scripture from the obscurantism and esotericism to which it had been subjected by an insular, hierarchical Catholic Church. Isn’t Protestantism premised on a layman’s accessibility to the Bible, that it is clear on the essentials of the faith, or what is necessary for salvation—called the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture—so that one shouldn’t have to read a long list of secondary sources to understand, say, how one is saved, or how the church is to be organized? And what should I do, as I increasingly encountered, when the sources I was recommended by those I respected disagreed with one another? And on what grounds, ultimately, should I trust Calvin, Luther, Beza, Turretin, or Peter Martyr Vermigli?
The trouble, I realized, was that the only authority all Protestants—indeed, even all Reformed Protestants—agreed upon was the Bible. And appealing to the Bible amounted to little more than question-begging, because it was precisely the Bible over which everyone was forming differing, often contradictory opinions. Thus, every Protestant had to identify which creedal documents, theologians, and scholars he trusted to direct him to its proper meaning. Even then, according to Protestantism’s own internal modus essendi, the Protestant had to make up his own mind by evaluating those creeds, theologians, and scholars against his own personal interpretation of Scripture. In the end, every Protestant was his own magisterial authority.
For as much as Protestantism became to me increasingly complicated and abstruse, Catholicism presented itself straightforwardly. Want to know what the Catholic Church teaches? Consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which enjoys the formal approval of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Need more? Consult the various other magisterial documents of the Church. If you encounter Catholics rejecting the Church’s catechisms, creeds, or councils, they’re offering not an equally legitimate alternative interpretation of divine revelation, but heresy.
Now, to anticipate a Protestant retort, of course Catholics disagree over many finer points of theology or praxis that have not been definitely resolved by the Magisterium (our “liturgy wars” perhaps being the most current example). But those Catholics cannot disagree over what has been declared to be de fide doctrine. The Trinity? Settled. Seven sacraments? Settled. Mary’s immaculate conception and assumption? <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption">Settled.</a> You may disagree with these doctrines or the evidence from Scripture or Tradition cited to defend them. But those doctrines—and how they are defended as legitimate—are universally, accessibly taught by the Church. Any priest, theologian, or layman determined to publicly reject them risks excommunication.
In the Catholic paradigm, no one needs to read St. Augustine, St. Thomas, or St. Robert Bellarmine to know the Church’s teachings on salvation, the sacraments, church polity, or human sexuality. Certainly, reading the Doctors of the Church, saints, and respected Catholic thinkers is helpful. But the Magisterium is itself sufficient to know what the Church teaches.
Protestants, in contrast, have no such magisterial authority. They can only contrive an ersatz one, built on the unsteady ground of creedal documents and theologians who, in the end, have no ultimate authority and thus can be picked up or taken off like a set of clothes.
Thus, the next time a Protestant tells you that your critique of his beliefs fails because you haven’t consulted a theologian or scholar you’ve never heard of, ask him why that person has any more authority than the ones you’ve read. No, you may not have read that. But it probably doesn’t matter.

No, I Haven’t Read That

On February 25, 2026, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25365/399395/20260226144523582_25-365%20bsac%20United%20States%20Conference%20of%20Catholic%20Bishops.pdf">an amicus curiae brief</a> in Trump v. Barbara, a birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court. One phrase caught my eye: “As Catholics, our faith compels us to protest laws that deny the dignity of the human person and harm innocent children.”
Immigration is a complex issue. Since I study resistance and protest from the Middle Ages down to the present day, how (and how well) my fellow Catholics understand our obligation to engage in political protest is highly interesting to me.
In many domains—family life, liturgy, even the nature of citizenship—Catholics rely on a centuries-old tradition of reflection. Political protest is not one such area, however. As Charles Taylor, the Catholic philosopher <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-11/pope-francis-ratzinger-prize-taylor-bere.html">who won the Ratzinger Prize</a> in 2019, explains in A Secular Age, the public sphere is less than three hundred years old. Medieval kings considered “public opinion” no more than they met anarcho-syndicalist peasants out in the fields—the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6s9IrXxGGc">gag</a> in Monty Python and the Holy Grail notwithstanding. There is no venerable old tradition, then, that instructs Catholics about how to protest in public.
The is no consensus in society at large about political protest, either. Are political protests about persuasion, pressure, or performance? Some political theorists argue that protests raise awareness about issues, communicate grievance, and aim to persuade public opinion. This is why they have megaphones and signs. For others, protesters are pressure groups that cause a ruckus so that certain policies become costly to implement. One recent example is the civil disobedience in Minneapolis, where protesters blocked traffic and blew whistles to obstruct federal officers working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And some radical professors even argue that protest is a liberating performance or transformative experience for protesters’ own sake. Think of protesters encamped at Columbia University who performed an act of solidarity with besieged Palestinians by inviting the New York Police Department to besiege them.
Political protest in the United States might take the form of persuasion, protest, performance, or all of these at once. Nobody agrees in advance what protest should look like.
Recent popes and the U.S. bishops <a href="https://www.usccb.org/news/2010/usccb-pro-life-committee-chairman-issues-statement-respect-life-month">call for</a> political protest as public witness. It is important to recognize that this is a fourth way of understanding political protest, and <a href="https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/upload/forming-consciences-for-faithful-citizenship.pdf">a distinctly Catholic one</a>.
Church teaching about public witness is anchored in the last and longest apostolic constitution of the Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html">describes</a> the obligation of Catholic laypeople to engage in honest and charitable discussion about the laws of our nations, even when we disagree:
<blockquote>Laymen should know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city. . . . Yet it happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter. . . .
Hence it is necessary for people to remember that no one is allowed . . . to appropriate the Church&#8217;s authority for his opinion. They should always try to enlighten one another through honest discussion, preserving mutual charity and caring above all for the common good (43).</blockquote>
Public witness requires neither the political unity of Catholics nor the explicit instruction of the clergy. But what it does require is a certain attitude. Gaudium et Spes informs how Catholics ought to protest: in the spirit of honest discussion, mutual charity, and the common good.
Catholic public witness involves persuasion, (perhaps) pressure, and performance, but it must exceed the usual standards for each of these. Honest discussion aims at persuasion, but public witness furthermore requires communicating in a charitable way. Pressure and civil disobedience are possibilities presented to our prudential judgment, because Catholics can draw on the principle of lex iniusta non est lex—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-martin-luther-king-jr-get-it-right">an unjust law is no law</a>. However, this principle involves strict “side constraints” that prohibit giving scandal to others, for example, by undermining the authority of law in general.
Finally, public witness is a performance, but our role model must be Christ. Gaudium et Spes explains, “Since they have an active role to play in the whole life of the Church, laymen are not only bound to penetrate the world with a Christian spirit, but are also called to be witnesses to Christ in all things in the midst of human society.”
Public witness is one of several ways, at least in the United States and in American culture, that Catholics may take an “active part in public life” to fulfill our obligations to promote the common good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1914) <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_one/chapter_two/article_2/iii_responsibility_and_participation.html">rightly suggests</a> that public witness is less important than primary obligations of social participation that involve our personal responsibilities in our families and workplaces. This is consistent with <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/DeRegno.htm">Catholic Tradition</a>, where there is a place for political resistance, but in which revolutionaries cannot outshine the teachings of the apostles and the example of the martyrs.
Preponderantly Catholic protests like the March for Life, unsurprisingly, are marked by the public witness of families, Catholic schools, priests, and religious communities. Many marchers are honest, charitable, and willing to suffer opprobrium for their public witness. Protest demonstrations against mass deportation and war, on the contrary, often draw individuals who are attracted to a protest lifestyle.
Public witness against the foreseeable evils involved in mass deportation and war is important. But here, Catholic protesters must hold themselves to higher standards of conduct than other protesters do. We cannot utilize dishonest and uncharitable techniques of persuasion, engage in civil disobedience that undermines respect for the law and legitimate authority, or embrace protest as a form of self-expression. Our public witness is to Christ.
The political optimism of Church documents since the 1960s sometimes stands in glaring contrast to the everyday realities of polarization, the culture war, and the politics of resentment. For example, Pope Francis went further than the U.S. bishops to call not only Americans, but Catholics in every nation to “desire integration” and to <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftn180">draw closer</a> with their compatriots in a “multifaceted culture of encounter.” But public witness reminds us that we must be prepared to suffer for the common good along the way. This realistic expectation is in line with the perennial tradition of the Church. In his commentary on Romans 13:1-7, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftn180">emphasizes</a> how wicked rulers are part of God’s punishment for sin, no less than natural evils like storms and sicknesses. We can simultaneously have democratic hope that our people will come together and recognize that, on our part, this will always include our suffering witness to injustice.
The highest and oldest meaning of public witness is martyrdom. Understanding political protest as a suffering witness can be part of a “spiritual discipline against resentment.” Patrick Deneen, a leading Catholic political theorist who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, <a href="https://firstthings.com/christopher-lasch-and-the-limits-of-hope/">reminds us</a> of the role of this distinctively Christian political virtue in advancing American democracy and civil rights. Whereas secular progressives might express frustration and indignation at progress that ought to have been made, Christians who prepare themselves to suffer patiently for the common good will be more resilient. Public witness must counteract, rather than perpetuate, our present politics of resentment.

How Catholics Do Political Protest

<div>Is acupuncture okay to do?</div><div>Yes, as long as its divorced from its non-Christian spirituality. And, as always, done in consultation with a medical doctor.
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