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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May a Catholic Receive Acupuncture?

In Catholic parenting circles, nothing seems to incite more rage and disgust than video games. They are a waste of time. They are conduit for sin and the devil. They are the breeding ground of vice. Etc., etc., etc. That’s what I’ve heard about video games, and for a long time, I held similar thoughts. But then, at a work conference years ago, I sat in on a presentation detailing the benefits of video-gaming. I somewhat reluctantly changed my mind, and our family has greatly benefited because of it.
Video games, believe it or not, are able to do much good in the world, even for faithful Catholics. That’s not to say there aren’t better or worse ways of gaming. No, there are many nuances and caveats to that statement, some of which we’ll cover here. But hopefully the reader will see that there is a wide spectrum of how we can view video games, from the puritanical “all gaming is sinful” to the gluttonous “gaming is life.” Catholics can find a pleasant and recreational middle ground, on which to grow in virtue, boost quality family time, and cultivate a safe arena in which to learn and navigate the inevitable use of technology in our age. We can have our games and play them, too.
The science behind the benefits of gaming is clear: everyone, from children learning better <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01853.x?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&amp;rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&amp;rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed">spatial recognition</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201608/video-game-play-benefits-coordination">hand-eye coordination</a> to military veterans <a href="https://www.research.va.gov/currents/0519-Video-games-can-help-Veterans-recover-from-mental-health-challenges.cfm">healing</a> post-traumatic stress disorder, can benefit from video games. Video games can improve <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28522259/">manual dexterity</a>, increase the brain’s <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/gamers-have-more-grey-matter-and-better-brain-connectivity-study-suggests">gray matter </a>and connectivity, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/games/video-games-children-learning-intelligence-social-skills-study-a6920961.html">improve social intelligence</a> among children, boost <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/11/video-games">problem-solving</a> skills, improve <a href="https://www.livescience.com/1382-study-playing-video-games-improves-eyesight.html">vision</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978245/">improve mood and overall mental health</a>. None of these benefits is isolated to time spent while playing games; rather, all of them are infused into everyday life. Playing video games off the job <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2008/08/video-games">makes a surgeon better</a> at performing intricate medical procedures while on the job.
All of this research paints a different picture from the vilified image of “the gamer”: the socially awkward, unproductive, miserable kid (or adult) hiding out in a darkened basement, fostering a hatred of his fellow man and a love for junk food and raunchy images.
That’s not to say such a person doesn’t exist, but it isn’t what all gamers, or even the majority of gamers, are like. Anyone who routinely plays video games as a hobby is “a gamer,” and whether folks are talking about it or not, a ton of people fall into that category, from a peak 77 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old men to a still impressive 25 percent of men and women over the age of sixty-five. Those numbers cover a lot of ground, a lot of personalities, and a range of games, from the obscene to the educational.
Of course, just because a lot of people are doing it doesn’t make it right, but are video games really so bad that good Catholics should eschew them?
To be sure, some video games certainly are. Gore, extreme violence, foul language, and suggestive imagery can be found in quite a few games, and those are the ones l bet the anti-video game constituency have in mind when they claim that Catholics shouldn’t play video games or that the world, or at least their homes, would be better off without them.
But the same claims can be made of movies, TV, and print media. Just as Catholics ought to avoid video games that promote or lionize licentiousness, violence, and depravity of all stripes, so too should they avoid all forms of media that do. It isn’t just video games.
Unlike some other forms of modern media, however, video games, when “done right,” offer the Catholic family a slew of benefits. Over the past five years of playing games as a family, we’ve experienced some great teaching moments and quality time together.
What we’ve found is that video games offer wonderful opportunities for siblings to work collaboratively toward a goal, helping older children to be patient with and learn to teach younger siblings. The younger siblings learn to ask for help and be comfortable taking guidance from older siblings. And when communication breaks down, a nearby parent reminds everyone that respectful and patient tones are the only permissible ones to use while gaming together.
Video games also give kids a chance to practice good sportsmanship and fair play. Nothing ends a child’s turn at video games faster in our home than whining, cheating, or gloating. This means they’ve had to pause and reflect before saying anything that might get the system switched off.
Like <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/bl-carlo-acutis-and-saints-in-sneakers">Bl. Carlo Acutis</a> and his self-imposed video game limits, gaming has helped our children with time management skills, temperance, and work-play balance. Through games, which themselves offer benefits as discussed above, lessons can be imparted on how to moderate media usage. How much is too much? Too long? Is this a worthwhile game on which to spend the little time I do have?
We also have a rule about not even asking to play video games until all chores and schoolwork have been done—and not just completed, but done well. No shortcuts here. If they ask before the work has been done, then the answer is no for two days. And if they haven’t completed their daily tasks early enough in the day, then there won’t be time for games. (We typically limit screen time to before dinner so there isn’t blue light or visual stimulation leading up to bedtime.)
It’s also a group effort. No one can play until everyone is finished with his work, so they cheer each other on in order to get the job done. And as they often work together, they play together. Video games that offer multiplayer or collaborative play get emphasized. Or for single-player games, those with more intricate puzzles or problems are played, and the family helps to solve them.
Overall, as a family unit, we are creating positive memories around wholesome games while promoting temperance and prudence, among other virtues. So far, we have yet to find another simple, accessible, and enjoyable activity that is relatively low in cost and that we can hop into at any time.
Video games (the good ones, and for this I refer almost exclusively to Nintendo) have greatly benefited our Catholic family. I firmly believe we can set aside the “all video games are sinful” bias and introduce them into our homes in a mindful and meaningful way.

A Catholic Case for Video Games

The verse immediately following our first reading from Jeremiah makes this striking claim:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately corrupt; 
who can understand it? (Jer 17:9).
Of course the answer is “God can.” He is the one who can see clearly through our motivations and excuses. But I think we can say even more. Jeremiah asks, “Who can understand it?” The answer also might be “no one.” Because the Christian tradition thinks of sin and evil as something irrational and incoherent. It is wrong not just because God says it is, or because it is against this or that rule; it is wrong because it makes no sense.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus lays out two pathways: a way of blessing, or happiness, and a way of woe. These are strange options. We don’t normally think it is a blessing to be poor or a curse to be rich. We don’t normally look forward to being hurt, nor do we usually think it a bad thing when people speak well of us. These seem to be the exact opposite of what you might see online if you look around for people labeling things with #blessed. I never go into the home décor section and see cutesy little framed artwork or wood carvings that you hang in your entryway saying, “Hunger, weep, be insulted.” What’s happening here, apart from the fact that many people loudly proclaiming their Christian values seem to have mistaken the gospel for a celebration of their own comfort?
Jeremiah makes a distinction between those who rely on “flesh,” who put their trust in people, and those who put their trust first in God. This is the same choice that Jesus is showing in Luke. We could also say that it is a choice between this world and the kingdom of heaven.
It’s not that riches are intrinsically evil or poverty intrinsically good. It’s that when you’re rewarded and feel happy about the things of this life, it becomes easy to forget that this life isn’t the end goal. The things of this world are passing away. They will not last. As St. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, our hope centers on the resurrection from the dead. “If the dead are not raised . . . your faith is in vain.”
The reason it is wrong to put our trust in created things is that it is ultimately unreasonable. Think about it like this: Would I put my toddler in charge of making dinner or watching her siblings? Would I trust an important document to the table outside on a windy day? In comparison with God, created things are all ephemeral, unreliable, temporary.
We live in a time in American politics where a lot of people seem full of despair while a lot of people seem full of optimism. Certainly both groups can’t be right, though we might wonder if both are wrong. Perhaps we could attempt to agree on the goodness, in principle, of both dismantling corrupt structures and preserving good constitutional order. But as Christians, it is essential to remember that none of these things saves us.
You can hear a lot of Catholics in the public square complaining about ways that the government is failing to uphold this or that value. I wonder if that witness would be more meaningful if it came across as a little more apocalyptic—not, mind you, in suggesting that a policy is going to usher in the end of the world, but by reminding politicians that their own souls are definitely on the line, and by insisting again and again that even if, miraculously, the nation suddenly embraced a fully and recognizably Catholic policy on immigration, on abortion, on marriage and family, on education and poverty, we would not somehow be able to sit down and say, At last, the work is done! For as good as these goals are, they are no more lasting than the other kinds of “blessings” that the world gives. When we face the great judgment seat of Christ, the question isn’t going to be about the general direction of the country.
To translate this into a more local context, I want so badly to build up my parish into a shining example of stability, mission, holiness, and beauty. I want people to invest in it with their time, their energy, their money, because this is the place where, for us, heaven meets earth, where salvation is worked out with fear and trembling. This matters for us every bit as much as big questions of national policy matter, maybe more. So here the contradiction is perhaps more acute, because at the center of our witness is the crucified God who reminds us that we can find strength only in weakness, that our success is never really success, our blessing never really blessing, if it leads us to imagine that we do not need to depend on God at every moment for every breath and every act of existence.
This is the hardest lesson of the beatitudes: it is easier to have faith when you have nothing else. The more goods you have, the harder it is to remember the true and ultimate Good. The more food you have, the harder it is to appreciate the sweetness of the bread of heaven.
This world is good. God created it. And it is full of good things, not to mention God’s own people and their enormous potential to do good work. But none of these things is trustworthy in the way that God is. None of them is reliable in the way that God is. So reason demands that we put our trust in God over these other things. This is the way to happiness—to understand that nothing in this world can ever finally make us permanently happy. Nothing but God.
Today is the third Sunday before Lent. And as we approach that season, I encourage you to go ahead and think about how you might use Lent as a time to get your priorities straight. Often we give up things for Lent—but it’s important to remember that we give up things not because they’re bad—if they’re bad, we shouldn’t be doing them anyway! We give up things to help us remember that they cannot truly make us happy. Nothing can make us completely and finally happy but God. To him be glory now and forever. Amen.

The Upside to Having Nothing

Imagine that a king establishes a new country on the other side of the ocean. It is called the Celestial City and has streets paved with gold. To populate his new land, he summons the people and invites them to be citizens. Next, he builds a ship and prepares his chosen people for the long journey across the ocean.
The ship he provides is a large, beautiful ocean liner, well equipped with everything needed for the journey: food and water, showers with hot water, navigation charts, maps and GPS. He has ordained a captain and a crew and an engine with dynamic power to move the ship. The king invites many to join, and soon the ship is full.
Everything needed to reach the new country can be found aboard that ship. The founder of this new country is God, the new country is heaven, and you and I are the ones he has chosen to join the voyage. The ship that he built is the Catholic Church; the captain is the pope; and the crew are the bishops, priests, and deacons. The navigation charts and GPS are Scripture; the maps are Sacred Tradition.
The food is the Eucharist—the food for the journey. The water is the grace of baptism and the life that flows from Christ through the sacraments. What are the showers? Confession, of course. When we get dirty, we need to be cleaned up. The power that moves the ship is the Holy Spirit.
Everything we need to reach heaven can be found within the Catholic Church.
He warns the passengers, before they commit, that there will be troubles along the way. Storms will hit the ship and threaten to dash it to kindling wood. They will get so sick at times that they may wish they had never come aboard the ship.
There will be problems within, too. The captain and crew may not always conduct themselves as expected, and some may even attempt to sabotage the ship. But he promises them, boldly, that if they stay with the ship, he will get them to the other side.
Everyone agrees to go. So the king steps up to the bow. He smashes the bottle of champagne with great solemnity and christens her the Catholic Church. The engines roar, and fire is seen as he moves away from the port.
Over the first 1,500 years, there are some awful storms and waves, and within, there are debilitating intrigues and rebellions. But in the end, the ship is always righted and still on course. Some who fall overboard, due to their own recklessness and disregard for rules. The ship is battered but remains intact and seaworthy, under full steam by the powerful engine.
About halfway across the ocean, some of the passengers start to argue and protest. Like the Israelites who grumbled about the manna in the desert, they begin to complain about eating the same food all the time. They ask, “Who is this captain, and why should he be in charge? Who gave these crew members the right to tell us what to do?” They stir up emotions and rile up some factions and instigate a mutiny.
The protesters go down into the belly of the ship, where they find wood and rope, and they lash them together and build rafts. They collect food and water, clothing and anything else they can find, and throw themselves and their rafts over the side of the ship. Now they are free! No more captain, no more crew. Now they are on their own, to their own!
Instead of a single ship sailing through the sea, there are now thousands of small rafts bobbing around in the water around the ship! Each of these, surrounding the ship, has its own self-appointed captain, with all of the various captains giving conflicting and contradictory orders. Rafts are crashing into one another, competing with one another for people to jump off their rafts and swim to other ones.
As the ship continues toward heaven, some of the rafts remain close by, but others drift off into the distance, and some are moving in the opposite direction and have lost their way completely. Those rafts that are close to the ship are sheltered from some of the wind and waves; those farther away are tossed about during the storms. The farther away they are, the less chance they have to make it to the other side.
And here is a question for you. Everything good they have on their raft—where did they get it from? It all came from the ship. But now they are cut off. Eventually, the king’s food runs out, and the people begin to eat something other than what the king provided. There are no hot showers available for people to get clean.
(When I was a Protestant, I never realized that everything good that I had on my raft came from the Catholic Church. For example, the Bible was put together by Catholic bishops and copied and preserved by Catholic monks. Martin Luther even admitted that we wouldn’t have a Bible if it were not for “the papists.” My Protestant fellowship had only two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—whereas the Catholic Church has seven. I did not define the Faith, such as the Trinity. That was hammered out by Catholic councils over the first 500 years of the Church.)
One interesting point: I wasn’t one of those who jumped off the ship. I was born on a raft. For most of my life, I didn’t even know there was ship—it was nowhere in sight! I was born on a Baptist raft, and I could yell over to the Methodist raft, and they could yell over to the Episcopalian raft, and they could yell over to the Pentecostal raft, and so forth. Our view of unity was just all trying to get along. We called that fellowship, and we had an invisible unity. How could it really be a visible unity, since we were all split up on separate and competing rafts?
Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of something large. I had no idea what it was. I yelled out, “Hey, what is that on the horizon?”
Those on my raft answered, “We don’t know!” So I yelled louder to nearby rafts, and they responded over the waves, “We don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” I yelled.
“Because it’s an enemy.”
“But what is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s . . . well, it’s the ship.”
As I gazed upon the ship, I thought, “If the founder of the Celestial City had any sense, he would never have pushed all these thousands of rafts into the ocean and expected them all to successfully make the voyage. He would have prepared a ship with everything needed for the voyage.”
It dawned on me that that the founder of the country I was trying to reach had created the ship to carry me home safely. I began to ask questions and discovered from ancient documents that indeed, the founder had chartered only one ship, and the rafts were all a result of a protest!
After a year of paddling around the ship and looking up at it from every angle, and after much reading and researching and praying, I got back on board. I pulled my whole family up with me.
I became a Catholic on May 22, 1994, and I’m amazed at what I have found onboard. Cradle Catholics may take these things for granted, but we converts are in awe. You have seven sacraments, and they work! You have navigation charts—the Scriptures—and the Tradition that helps you make sense of the maps.
You have a crew that understands how to read the maps and charts without error, how to prepare the food of the Eucharist properly, and how to operate the showers so that we can get cleaned up from all the foul-smelling sins we commit. You also have a captain, the pope. There have been good and bad popes and clergy, but throughout history, the papacy has known how to navigate the ship!
So do I now want to shoot cannons at all the Protestants out on the rafts? No! My mom and dad are out there, and Vatican II reminds me that those who are baptized and recite the creeds are my brothers and sisters in Christ, though separated from the ship. Some of the people on the rafts can even sing better than some of the people on the ship.
No, I don&#8217;t want to shoot them. I have decided I will spend the rest of my life calling out to the people on the rafts: “Hey, you out there. I too was born on one of your rafts, but I have discovered the fullness of the Faith in this ship, the way the founder originally planned it. Problems, yeah! But the ship is great. Come rejoin us!”
And when I get a few minutes, I turn around and look at the people on the deck. I say, “Why are you grumbling? Don’t you realize where you are?”

Struggling Catholic? Don’t Jump Ship.

<div>Where can I donate a first-class relic of a pope?</div><div>The best thing to do is to try and contact a parish that is named after the pope. Such a parish would most likely be very interested in the relic. Failing that, I would suggest that you contact a local parish or religious community.
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