Is Hallow Shallow?

[00:00:16] Hallow, the wildly popular Catholic prayer app recently ran into controversy when it hired the rabidly pro abortion actor Liam Neesom for part to read a script for their Advent lessons. Yet I would argue that this is just a symptom of a more problematic approach to prayer that monetizes it and celebratizes it. That's what we're going to talk about today on Cris Point. Holomatics. I'm your host and editor in chief of Crisis magazine. I want to welcome everybody here. I want to encourage you to smash that like button to subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. You can also follow us on social media at crisis. Mag all the various social media channels, subscribe to our newsletter, our email newsletter. It's the best way to get all the Crisis content right to your email inbox. And we promise we're not going to spam you. We're just going to send you what you asked for. And you can just do [email protected] and just fill in the form where it says to subscribe to the newsletter. Okay, I want to get started here. So the Hallow app has been news, Catholic news, at least recently. And I just want to say before I even continue on this, I feel like we live in the age of disclaimers that you cannot make a statement without having disclaimers before it because people will jump to all these conclusions. So, for example, when I would say that the US. Should not get involved in the Ukrainian war, I had to disclaim. That doesn't mean I'm supporting Russia and things of that nature. [00:01:42] And so my disclaimers here are simply I am not going to be arguing that anybody who uses the Halo app is a bad Catholic, that there's something that there aren't good Catholics using it. I'm also not having any problem with I'm not going to question the intentions of the founders of Hallow or the people who run Hallow, the employees of Hallow. [00:02:06] I don't know their intentions. I assume actually they're good intentions. They seem like they're good intentions. But I am going to criticize aspects of Hallow, and I think this is something that we should be allowed to talk about just because it's really popular. A lot of people use it, and people even argue that I'm sure people have been helped by it, but doesn't mean that we shouldn't be open to criticism in ways our faith is being used, in ways that we're being encouraged to pray. I mean, this is the most important activity of our lives is prayer. And so we should be careful how we do it. We should know that we're doing it in the way that the Church is always taught. We're doing it in a way that is the way that our predecessors in the faith have done it. So that's my disclaimer. Now, Hallow got in controversies. I already mentioned because it was announced that Liam Neesom, the actor who was the voice actor for, aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia movies, he was going to be involved. They had hired him hal had hired him to be the voice for some of their Advent meditations. They were based on c. S. Lewis. And he's doing it also with I didn't I think it's just Rumi, right? The actor who plays Jesus in The Chosen, who's very big on the Hallow app. [00:03:27] And this was controversial because Liam Neesom back five years ago, he's an Irish citizen. He's a dual citizen, actually, Ireland and United States. He argued very strongly for the repeal of the Constitutional protection of the Unborn in the Irish Constitution. I mean, he was rabidly pro abortion. He argued very much against he was involved in an ad that basically was anti Catholic, that was basically saying, we have to get rid of the ghost of the past. And it showed an old church in Ireland. And so this is a man who has publicly argued for child murder. He has publicly stated that he thinks that women should be able to kill their babies. And he's also involved in, frankly, the destruction of Catholic Ireland. I mean, he's part of that. [00:04:22] So he's very vocally pro abortion. And this is the man that Hallow decided they'd use to read Advent Meditations for their app, their Catholic prayer app. [00:04:36] Now, I would urge you, by the way, one thing I found in researching for this episode, hallow is very open about what they do. [00:04:44] Their CEO, Alex Jones, by the way, not that Alex Jones, I'm sure he gets that a lot. [00:04:51] He has a blog on the website, and they talk about different a lot of the information I have here, they talk about very freely. He has a response to this controversy. And I'd encourage you to read that. I'm not going to read here, but you should read his defense of it. But essentially the argument was that, first of all, we don't support everything that our actors and our readers do. Okay, granted. And also that he thinks it's a good way that Hallow thinks it's a good way to bring in non Catholics, people maybe outside the institutional church, people who aren't really following the Catholic faith, but who know who Liam Neesom is. It's a way to bring them on. And there's also the implication, I saw in some defenses that it would even help Liam Neesom. And so that's essentially the argument. And I get that on one level, obviously, an organization doesn't necessarily, when they hire contractor for something, endorse everything else they do. I mean, here at Crisis, I have writers who write for me who I don't endorse everything. I don't agree with everything they do on Twitter or on various social media or other articles they write or anything like that. So I should be clear about that, that that part isn't a problem. The problem is that the role they have him doing, he is being viewed as a role model. I mean, look at this ad. Here's an ad that was on Facebook. It's funny. This came up on my Facebook feed after I had started doing a little bit of research on Hallow. This automatically comes up in my Facebook feed, and I have a screen capture here. But this is a video of Liam Neeson who talking about being involved in this project. [00:06:39] And look at how it is marketed. The title here below I'll read for those who can't see it, pray with Liam Neesom. [00:06:47] It does not say listen to Liam Neesom, read Advent Meditations or anything like that, but pray with him. When you pray with somebody, that's a lot different of an activity than listening to somebody read a book, for example, or even listening to somebody read the Bible, it's saying, you're praying with him. Now, according to the statement from the CEO of Definitely, they make it sound like he's just reading some stuff. And really it's more Jonathan Roomy and a religious sister, I can't remember her name, who will be giving more the content of it, like the prayers and maybe something like that. But this is advertising as pray with Liam Neesom. [00:07:29] And for those who might not think even this is a problem, let me show you a comment from this ad I took out. The person's name says, so thankful to hear one of my favorite actors talking about God in prayer with such humility. First of all, it's a script he's reading in this ad. [00:07:49] May God take him ever deeper and may his witness impact many for Jesus. [00:07:54] His witness. This person is saying that Liam Neesom is going to be a good witness for Jesus. This is a man, let me remind you, I just said two minutes ago, who was advocated for child murder and has helped the destruction of Catholic Ireland. [00:08:12] That's not a witness we want. Now, obviously, if he had repented of those things, and he said, now I completely repent of that. I'm going to work for pro life for the babies. And then he was doing this, that's completely different story. We believe in forgiveness. We believe in redemption, but he hasn't done that. He has not taken back his pro abortion stand. And yet Hallow is saying, pray with Liam Neesom, and people are saying, we thank him for his witness. [00:08:37] And this is exactly the problem that people have with Hallow, using Liam Neesom as basically a role model. I know they're going to say they're not, they're not intending that, but that's what they're doing with their advertising. And that's how people are interpreting it. They're looking at Liam Neesom as a role model. Now, honestly, it's like if the first century BC jews were like, hey, pray with King Herod. [00:09:09] Let's go ahead and pray with the first Christians, did that, the man who killed the innocents, pray with King Herod, or something like that. [00:09:17] This is not something that we should not be praying with somebody like Liam Neeson. We should be praying for him. [00:09:24] If Liam Neeson came up to me, he said, please pray for my salvation, my conversion, I'd say absolutely. If he said, hey, let's pray together, I would say, wait. A of are you basically a practicing Catholic? Now, again, have you repented of these public things? It's not like I check everybody I pray with to make sure they're not in sin, but a public person, a Liam Neesom, a Nancy Pelosi, somebody like that. Yeah, I do think we don't pray with them. We pray for them. This is something that's very much part of Catholic tradition. [00:09:58] If you look at early church fathers would never consider praying with heretics, for example. And so we should not pray with Liam Neeson. We should pray for him. Now, I will say, though, that I personally think this guy a big controversy, but I personally think the Liam Neeson issue is a symptom. It's not the underlying problem. [00:10:19] Now, where I'm going to go with this, I know already that there are going to be people who basically just dismiss it probably because of my age and it might be a generational thing. I admit it. I'm in my 50s. [00:10:32] I've been around the block a little bit. I will admit this. Now, I also want to note that I was a computer programmer for more than 15 years. [00:10:42] My undergraduate degree is in systems analysis in computers. I'm very familiar with technology. I like technology. [00:10:49] I use technology. You've probably heard me on this podcast talking about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. Clearly. I've written a book on bitcoin. Clearly I'm not anti technology. [00:10:59] But I do think that there is might be a generational issue here. But I don't think that's enough just to dismiss it. In fact, as Catholics, we should be looking to our elders. Now, I'm not claiming I have any great wisdom as an elder. I'm not that much of an elder, but we should be looking at how people did things in the past as models for how we should do them today. Not we do them always identically, but we should look at that. [00:11:20] But I found that boy, when you have criticism of pop culture, catholicism and celebrity Catholics, I get more hate mail and criticisms when crisis does something about that. Like when we did a negative review of the Father Stew movie with Mark Wahlberg. I think I got more negative responses to that than anything we've ever done. [00:11:49] Catholics don't like us criticizing Catholic celebrities or the Catholic pop culture. But I think we need to do it because I think we need to be serious about prayer. We need to be serious about how we're living as Catholics, and we need to be serious on looking at how our culture is impacting our practice of Catholicism. And so I would say there are, I think, about three major issues I have with the hallow app. [00:12:17] Two of them directly relate to Liam Neesom. I mean, he's a symptom of it, but one the first one I'll just say is I will just say I think I do have a problem with using an app to pray. I'm not saying nobody can ever use an app to pray. I'm not saying that's a sin or anything like that. What I am saying, though, is a phone, by its nature, is a distraction device. [00:12:41] A phone is a distraction device. It is intended to distract you. That is its purpose. Every single app on there is there to try to get you to look at it and it will do everything it can to get you to look at it. Putting a Catholic app on there, which by the way, has the exact same intention, which we'll talk about in a minute, is just I mean, it's like trying to pray, doing deep meditation in the middle of a subway station. Now, of course you can and should pray in the middle of a subway station, but you can't tell me that's the same thing as going to a quiet place in your house where nobody is around and deeply meditating on, like, for example, the rosary or something like that. They're not the same thing. They don't have the same impact. It's good to pray anywhere, but it is different. And so praying with an app is naturally going to distract you. They've done scientific studies on this. Your brain is just wired to be distracted. And so when you get your notifications, if you're praying with your hallow app, all of sudden a you get a notification of a text message, a notification of an email, a notification of whatever app is telling you, you got to look at me right now. [00:13:59] That's going to distract your prayer. It's going to make it difficult to prayer to pray. Also, I would argue that Catholic prayer, yes, we should pray alone, obviously, but there is something communal about Catholic prayer. But that communal aspect should be physical on some level. [00:14:18] I mean, that was the big issue with COVID One of the big issues was the whole idea of watching Mass on television versus on the internet versus watching going to Mass. Is it the same thing? No, it's not. I'm not saying it's a bad thing always. I mean, obviously, if you're an invalid and nobody can take you to Mass, you can't get out and that's the only way you can have any participation. I'm not going to say that's a bad thing to do. However, there is meaning to being physically present with other people when you pray. And the hallowap gives the illusion of praying with others when you're actually not. It's very disembodied. And Catholicism is not disembodied. Catholicism is very much embodied. It's an incarnational faith. It's physical. And in a way, hallow is replacing community. Now, this is something, I'm not going to say it's hallow's fault, because community is being replaced on the Internet by everybody else. And Hallow's just basically saying, okay, you're already getting your communities replaced. Let's go ahead and have at least an option for a good community, a Catholic community. I mean, I think that's their not again, I don't fault them for that intention. I understand it. But I think as Catholics, we should be striving for real communities with real people. I e real parishes at the parish, not a disembodied virtual parish, quote unquote on our phones. So that's my first issue of Hallow. The second issue is the celebratization, which is a total made up word, but I think you all know what I mean. Basically, our culture, it exalts and elevates celebrities far beyond their actual importance. I remember back in my day, paris Hilton was the exemplar of this. She had done nothing with her. Nothing. [00:16:10] There's no reason to look at her as a role model, yet she became famous for being famous, essentially. And I know, like, I can't name most of them because I don't pay attention to this very those the sisters connected to OJ somehow. Oh, what's their name? Kardashians. The Kardashians. There's another example. Taylor Swift. All these people, boy, I do know a few of them. [00:16:33] We look to them beyond just what they're good at. So for example, if somebody comes to you in front of you is a great plumber and they're really good at what they do, we should admire them for their ability to do their job. But that doesn't mean we look to them as exemplars of anything else. [00:16:52] Your great plumber may not be a good Catholic, he may not be a good financial advisor, he may not be anything else. He might just be a very good plumber. And you should admire that. But that's it. Likewise, a good actor. You can admire how good of an actor that person is, but that doesn't mean they know anything about anything else. [00:17:14] But Hallow really does elevate the celebrities and really sets them a tear apart on a platform. [00:17:24] And you see this because some of the celebrities are Mark Wahlberg, Jim Caviezel, Jonathan Rumi, people like that who I mean, I'm not even saying anything against those people. Those men might all be men of God who are very good men, but the only reason they're on Hallow is because they're famous for being actors. [00:17:45] So like Mark Wahlberg, for example, I know he is a practicing Catholic, at least that's publicly. That's how he comes across. I also know he does some problematic movies, I think, still. [00:17:56] But I'm not going to impunge his faith. He might be a good Catholic, but the idea of him reading the rosary and we're praying with Mark Wahlberg the rosary, I'll just say it. I think that's weird. [00:18:12] I'm not saying it's weird to necessarily listen to somebody pray the rosary if it helps you. Like in the car, for example, you put that on and you listen to it because that helps you focus while you're driving. It helps you hear the rosary, whatever. [00:18:23] Why does it have to be Mark Wahlberg? [00:18:26] How is that any different than if you just had a voice actor, somebody who's a good an unknown person who maybe does audiobooks or something like that read it because he's reading a script. I'm not saying he doesn't pray the rosary, but in this instance he's reading a script. So that sounds good. So it's just very OD to me that hearing Mark Wahlberg pray the rosary somehow different. And I think what's doing though, is it is cashing in on his celebrity status. And I will also say this they also have you can pray the rosary with Scott Hahn. Now, I think anybody who's followed me at all knows I will defend Scott Hahn to my dying breath. I have a huge amount of respect for him. I read his books, I read his stuff. I think the work he does is great. But I also think it is kind of weird for the app to say you can pray the rosary. It's got home. I think you get to pay extra for that. You have to be a subscriber, a paid subscriber to do just I think that's a little bit OD also the idea of them being it's not just praying with them, which I think is weird but I also think that it's a bit OD that some of them are actually giving content like I think Jonathan Rumi does. Why is he all of a sudden because he played Jesus? He's now a model we're supposed to look for. And frankly, I've not watched The Chosen but I do think there's some problematic elements in the chosen. So it's not like even that it's necessarily he's playing Jesus in a completely faithful rendition like the passion was of the gospels. [00:20:08] And so I think that's also a bit it's making them out to be role models people we should look to, the people we should look to are the saints first and foremost and alive today. Those holy men and women who might be unknown to very many people, but we know of them. Those are people we should be looking to, not celebrities. Now, I know some people will say, like, by having it be Mark Wahlberg, you're bringing non Catholics in, or you're bringing kind of Catholics who don't really practice their faith a lot in. I get that. [00:20:39] And it might work in some cases, but I still think it's a problem because it really is setting somebody like Mark Wahlberg as the model of our faith and it also is giving this illusion that you are somehow involved in this very intimate activity prayer with Mark Wahlberg when you're not. I mean, praying with somebody is actually an intimate activity in the sense know, this is something we're both talking to God together, and it gives you that illusion when it's not. And so I really think that this celebrity focus is very shallow. I titled this as Hallow Shallow. And yes, that was mostly because I like the word play there, but I think this is a very shallow bit of our faith. It's not really drawing people into a deeper faith by just saying pray with somebody famous like Mark Wahlberg. And I'm not trying to pick on Mark Wahlberg. He might be a great guy, like I said. So that's the second problem. So the app for prayer, the celebratization, but I think a big problem and might be the biggest problem, is the monetization. [00:21:48] And this app is big business, actually, prayer apps are big business. So the Hallow app was founded in 2018 and they did a Kickstarter and it only raised $25,000. [00:22:02] They tried to get donations and $25,000, frankly, isn't that much to run a business or an app. Obviously you can't last even a month probably on that. [00:22:14] And so after that, though, in 2019, they did do a seed round and they raised $3 million. Then in 2021, they did another round and they raised $12 million. 2022, they did a Series B round, they raised $40 million. And then in 2023, earlier this year, they did a C round and they raised $50 million. That's $105,000,000 they have raised from investors. That's a lot of money. Now, I am here to say there is nothing wrong with raising money. There's nothing wrong with Hallow having a subscription service where you pay extra for certain content. Like, for example, they have some courses on there where people are teaching things and you have to be a subscriber to get that. I get that, that's content. I mean, at Crisis, we do everything by donation. We don't actually charge for anything, we just ask for donations. But I have zero problem with Catholic apostolates that charge money for things that they produce. It costs money to produce them. And there's nothing wrong with charging money to produce it to do it. I'm not saying that. I am saying, though, raising $105,000,000 from investors, most of whom are not Catholic, is not the same thing as a Catholic apostolate. Raising money from Catholics donations or even for charging for their services, that's not the same thing. And that's because when you raise money from investors, you have to make them more money back. It's a very aggressive model. They will not give you money unless you have a model that shows them they will make their money back and then some. It's like they're not giving you $50 million expecting $50 million back. They're expecting a lot more than that back one day. And also another issue is you now have to answer to those investors. When an investor gives money to I've worked for a startup company that got investors. I know this. Firsthand you have to work for the investors. In fact, this was one of the big things in the.com bust that I was involved in the.com boom. Ours actually succeeded for a while. We actually ended up selling the company, but we got investors. [00:24:29] Our business model was actually successful. It was a web hosting company and we were making money, but we got investors. And all of a sudden I noticed that we started shifting towards making the investors our primary focus rather than the consumers. And that's normal because they're the ones who have given you all the money and they're the ones who are expecting it back. Therefore you have to answer to those investors. Those investors are not all practicing Catholics. In fact, one we know one by name, Peter Thiel, you probably know who that is, founder of PayPal. He's very well known. He's very well known in conservative circles because he's basically a conservative person. He's also gay and married to a man. [00:25:10] And so one of the major investors in Hallow is a gay married man. [00:25:16] Are you telling me that won't have any impact on the content of Hallow? I mean, Hallow says they're very pro life, they follow teachings, Catholic Church, and I believe them that they intend to do that. But will they perhaps not mention certain controversial teachings of the Catholic Church, for example, homosexuality or something like that? [00:25:40] I think that's a possibility. I think that's something that needs to be known. [00:25:47] Likewise because they have to be aggressive in making money. They have to be. You can't raise $105,000,000 and not be aggressive in your business model trying to make money. You have to get that back somehow. Because of that they are going to look at things in a different light than just a donation based apostolate or even apostolate that people pay for their services because again, they answer to the investors. And so what has to happen is you have to monetize the app. This is very nothing. I would say there is something wrong with this in one sense. A lot of apps, like Facebook for example, they have all this millions of dollars, billions of dollars probably invested in it. They have to monetize it. What that means is they have to make it so they make money off of your use of the app. Now obviously they're going to make money on subscriptions. I guarantee you their subscriptions will not be enough to pay back, to make that 105 back. That's just not possible because remember, they're spending a lot of money obviously on their employees and their development, all that stuff. [00:26:55] And so that $105,000,000, I mean they got to make more than that. They got to be worth more than that is probably a better way to put it's. Not about making it, but like selling the company at one point, which might be by the way, an end goal is to sell the company for a lot more than that. That's what investors usually do. [00:27:10] They will invest in something, expecting it one day to be sold. Now, they might not expect it in this case, but they do expect to make money. They have to monetize the app. One of the main ways that apps monetize themselves is they collect user data and they sell it. Now, I do not think there's been any evidence that Hallow has done this yet. However, I do know that in the kind of the terms of which when you sign up for Hallow, they are allowed to do this [email protected], I think it is, or Prey.org, something like actually it's known they've sold their data to Facebook and other advertisers and it's very granular. I mean, they will take, for example, I mean this was example from the Prey.com. [00:28:00] Somebody read something on against porn addiction or something like that and that information was sold to Facebook and others. And so they know all this information about you and they share this data. Now, Hallow, I do not know if they do this yet, but they can. And my guess is when they're feeling pressure one day to hit their numbers, they may have to. And to me, I just have a problem with a prayer app that does that. I don't like any app, frankly, that does that is based on trying to get you monetize. You sell your user data. Remember, if you're not paying, you are the product and they do have a free service. So I just think that's something we need to understand. Now, again, I'm not saying that a Catholic organization can't make money or shouldn't make money, shouldn't ask for donations, shouldn't charge for their services, absolutely should charge for your services, that's fine. But this model is not a Catholic apostolate model and they're not trying to be. They are what's called the technical term is a public benefit corporation. They're not a nonprofit. They are not a nonprofit. A public benefit corporation is basically the cross between a regular corporation and a nonprofit. That they have two purposes legally. One is to their social mission, which is like what every nonprofit is. But also the second one, which you're required to follow is to prioritize shareholder value. Who are the shareholders, people like Peter Thiel and other big investors. Their mission, one of their two missions is to prioritize his value, his shareholder value. And we have to remember this. So when they bring in somebody like Liam Neesom, I think that's something that we should remember, that they're trying to prioritize shareholder value. And again, I'm not saying that they're not also trying to bring people to Christ in the Catholic Church and get them to pray and things like that. So I personally think that I'm not a big fan, obviously, as you can tell, of the Hallow app. I'm not against anybody who uses it. I just think people need to be aware of the dangers of the Hallow app, of using it, that it could be collecting your user data, which will then later. Sell to people. It's got to monetize you somehow. I'm sure it's going to be aggressive in trying to get you subscribed, which I understand, and then the whole celebrization I cannot say that easily since I made it up. And so the whole idea of making celebrities our role models when really it should be the saints, that's who should be our role models. Now, I want to end this with just a little reflection on Catholicism in the internet age. [00:30:52] The reality is that the Catholic Church is very much struggling with answers to the internet age. If you look at the numbers in America at least, there is a huge drop off in people practicing the Catholic faith in all religions once the internet got big. Now I know there's other I'm not saying causation correlation, blah blah blah. I know that. I do think, though, there is a connection between the two because I think the internet is creating false communities, a feeling of community, and people then aren't going to their actual communities, of their churches and parishes. And the Catholic Church does not have answers for this yet, and I don't have them either. I'm not claiming to have answers. I mean, obviously I'm on the internet. I'm on the internet right now. We have a community in a sense, there's a chat, we have some good chats over here. [00:31:42] And so I think that the fact is that I'm not claiming to have the answers here, but I do think we need to be aware of the dangers. I'm not a Luddite. People who know me know I'm not a Luddite. I mean, obviously I've been in tech most of my life. [00:31:59] I've written apps years ago, not for a long time when they first coming out. I've written software programs. I wrote a shopping cart program once. I mean, I've done all that. But at the same time I'm aware of the dangers of it. [00:32:13] Everybody these days are on their phones and everybody's into celebrities. Is the answer then to have Catholicism on our phones and with celebrities, that seems to be the answer Hallow is giving. I'm not quite so sure it is. I think it's very possible that in this case the church might need to zag when the rest of the culture is zigging. We need to maybe go in a different direction. I'm not saying become amish, but I think we should be really fostering and encouraging real communities with real people. The people you should look to, the people you should look to as spiritual directors, you should know them, you should be able to talk to them in person. [00:32:56] It's not a disembodied voice of Mark Wahlberg or Jonathan Rumi or somebody, or even the people on there, like a Scott Hahn or a Bishop Barron or people like that. [00:33:08] The true directors you have should be people you know. Yes, you can listen to content by Scott Hahn. I do that. Or Bishop Barron or whoever. But the fact is that the core of your practice of faith should be your parish and people you know, it should be the community you have. I noticed recently, I didn't even notice this for a couple of years, but I noticed recently after Mass at my parish, we have a great community that gathers after Mass. A lot of people hang out for a while, but I noticed nobody was on their phone, none of the young people, because most young people aren't allowed to have phones. That's not like the rule of my parish. It's just the families typically don't get their phone gifts, smartphones for their kids, but even the adults, we were all talking, engaging in each other. We were having communication, real communications. We had just prayed together at the Mass and now we were gathering in a real community, talking to each other, helping each other out. We were not glued to our phones. And I think that's important to remember. I think that's a healthy way to do it. I know it's not always possible. Everybody it's not always available for everybody. But I do think that's what we should be striving for. That's what we should be encouraging more real communities where, you know, real people and you have real spiritual directors, not the pseudo community, but the pseudo directors and pseudo people at somewhere like the hallow app. And so I think I'm going to basically end it there. [00:34:42] But I just want to say this is not meant to be. Hallow is evil. I don't think that I do think though, that I personally don't endorse hallow. I don't think it's something that should be the basis of somebody's spiritual life or even a very important part of it. If it brings somebody in who did not pray before and gets them to pray some, great. But it really needs to move beyond that. That's like the milk before they get to the meat, possibly. Although I do think it might send people in the wrong direction because of the whole celebrity thing and things like that. But the point is that if you use hallow, fine, whatever. But really your face should be based on real community and real people, not the internet version of it. And so that's the thing I want to leave people with. And I encourage people to make sure they're in a parish where that's possible, make sure they know people, even if you have to move, find people. Good Catholic priests, good Catholic sisters, good Catholics that you can be with and really build a true community that will help you to grow in holiness. Okay, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God love.