There are seasons when the illusion of safety falls away and Christians are confronted with a hard truth: to live and speak the Catholic faith is dangerous. The recent murder of Charlie Kirk and the wave of violence against Christians and Catholic churches that followed is one of those moments. It is a reminder that discipleship has never been safe, never been convenient, and never been welcomed by the world.
We like to imagine that such dangers belong only to the past. We relegate them to the age of Nero and the Colosseum, or to the missions of far-off lands where martyrs shed their blood. But history is not so neatly divided. The same Christ who told His disciples that the world would hate them speaks to us today. The hostility has never disappeared, it only changes its mask.
George Orwell once observed, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” He wasn’t writing as a Christian, but he understood the dynamic well. Lies are fragile things. They demand constant affirmation, constant reinforcement, because they have no foundation. Truth, by contrast, stands firm whether it is believed or not. When truth is spoken, it exposes the falseness of the lie, and that exposure provokes fury.
Our culture is saturated with lies. Chief among them is the notion that truth is subjective. “Live your truth,” we are told. “Speak your truth.” As if truth were nothing more than a personal preference, like choosing a favorite color. But truth is not subjective. There is no “your truth.” There is no “my truth.” Truth is objective, eternal, and unchanging, because God is truth. To deny that is not simply an intellectual error, it is an act of rebellion against God Himself.
Chesterton captured the heart of this rebellion when he warned, in words I paraphrase, “To make your own truth, you would be that of a god. And I do not worship you.” That’s what every “my truth” slogan really amounts to: man attempting to enthrone himself in God’s place. It is the oldest temptation in the world, the whisper of the serpent in the garden: “You will be like gods.” And every age that builds itself on that lie inevitably turns its hatred on those who dare to say otherwise.
This is why Catholics today are finding themselves more and more unwelcome in public life. We are not hated because we are imposing our own vision. We are hated precisely because we refuse to call evil good. We are hated because we insist that there is a higher law than the whims of the individual, a higher throne than the culture’s approval. And that refusal, that simple act of saying “God is God, and you are not,” is enough to incur the world’s rage.
The first Christians knew this. They were not thrown to lions simply because they prayed quietly at home. They were executed because they refused to burn incense to Caesar, because they refused to say, “Caesar is Lord.” They insisted that only Christ is Lord, and in doing so, they rejected the supreme idol of their age. That was their crime.
The same has been true in every era since. Under Communism, priests were imprisoned and executed not for “politics,” but for daring to preach that the state was not absolute, that there was a King higher than the party. In the French Revolution, convents were emptied, and nuns marched to the guillotine, not because they had plotted rebellion, but because they had given their lives to a Spouse other than the state. Even today, in parts of the world we prefer not to think about, Christians are beaten, imprisoned, and killed for no greater “crime” than attending Mass.
And now, in the West, we are discovering that hostility has not vanished. It is here, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our newsfeeds. Churches vandalized, Catholic symbols desecrated, believers targeted for scorn and violence. It may not yet be lions and coliseums, but the spirit is the same. The world hates truth, and so it hates those who live by it.
For me, as a convert, this reality has always been both sobering and clarifying. I did not come into the Church because it promised safety. I did not leave the comfort of being unremarkable to choose the world’s approval. I entered because I found the truth, and the truth is Christ Himself. Conversion is not an escape from conflict. It is a decision to stand where the battle is fiercest, to take one’s place among those who have always been misunderstood, mocked, and hated for the sake of the Gospel.
This doesn’t mean we seek out suffering or relish hostility. Catholicism is not a cult of martyrdom. But it does mean we recognize that suffering is not an accident of discipleship; it is part of the package. Christ did not say, “If the world hates you, something has gone wrong.” He said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18). To follow Christ is to carry a cross. That is not a metaphor. It is a warning and a promise.
The danger, then, is not a sign of failure but of fidelity. A Christianity that never offends anyone, that never provokes hostility, is not Christianity at all. It is a hollow shell, an imitation stripped of power. If the Gospel we preach never makes the world angry, it is because we have trimmed it down to suit the world’s taste.
So when tragedies strike, when a public figure like Charlie Kirk is cut down, when churches are attacked, when believers are mocked and threatened, we mourn, but we also remember what it means. These are signs that the faith still matters, that truth still cuts, that Christ has not been domesticated into a harmless cultural ornament.
And yet, here lies the paradox: while living the faith is dangerous, it is also the only way to live fully. Safety is not the goal of the Christian life. Fidelity is. Eternal life is. No amount of social approval or cultural peace is worth the price of betraying Christ. The martyrs knew this. They did not run to the arena because they loved pain, but because they loved Christ more than life itself. Their blood is not just a testimony of suffering, it is a testimony of joy.
We, too, are called to that joy. Not all of us will face lions or firing squads, but every Catholic faces the daily decision: will I live the faith openly, unapologetically, even when it costs me? Will I speak the truth when it is easier to stay silent? Will I live as if God is real, when the world insists that only man is god?
If we answer yes, we will face hatred. We may lose friends, jobs, opportunities. Some may lose far more. But none of it compares to what is gained: union with the Truth Himself. As St. Paul put it, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
The Church has always been strongest when it has been hated. The blood of martyrs is still the seed of Christians. The more the world rages, the more clearly the Gospel shines. And while no one prays for persecution, no one should fear it either. What we should fear is the opposite: a faith so watered down that no one notices it, a witness so compromised that it draws no opposition at all. That kind of peace is deadly, not to the body, but to the soul.
So yes, living the Catholic faith is dangerous. It always has been. And it always will be, until the day when Christ returns to make all things new. But that danger is not a curse. It is a confirmation. It is the proof that we are walking in the footsteps of the saints, bearing the same cross they bore, proclaiming the same truth they proclaimed.
In the end, there is only one truth, and it is not ours to invent. There is no “your truth” or “my truth.” There is only God’s truth. And for that truth, for Him, every risk, every hatred, every danger, is worth it.
I’ll be honest. I haven’t written about this until now because I’ve been struggling with it myself. When I first heard the news of Charlie Kirk’s death, my reaction wasn’t clean or pious. It was a mixture of grief and rage. Sadness at the senselessness of it all. Anger at the sheer hatred that could drive someone to pull the trigger simply because they despised a man’s convictions.
For weeks, I couldn’t put words to that storm inside me. Every time I sat down to write, it felt dishonest to speak only of courage without acknowledging the weight of sorrow. It felt false to speak only of faith without admitting the burn of anger.
But the truth is, being Catholic doesn’t mean we feel less, it means we feel more, because our hearts are alive to both the pain of this world and the hope of the next. My sadness reminds me of the real cost of sin in the world. My anger reminds me that evil is not abstract, but active. And my faith reminds me that neither sadness nor anger is the final word. Christ is.
So I write this now not as someone who has “figured it out,” but as someone still wrestling with it. I write because silence was beginning to feel like surrender, and because even in grief and anger, I know this much: truth is worth speaking, and Christ is worth following, even when it costs everything.