It is an almost impossible question: What would you include or exclude if you were creating your own religion? What do you prefer to see in your Church unboxing, as you might prefer in a cosmetics or shoe unboxing? What would you click away from? The word religion necessarily conjures up the idea of a system of beliefs and practices that we do not, indeed cannot, make up. And with rare exceptions among genuine psychopaths or the most ardent ideologues, even people who explicitly eschew established religions piece together for themselves a way of living that appeals to truths outside themselves. Everyone, everywhere, experiences some pressure to conform to ideas of right and wrong. Therefore, despite the expansive space and liberating feeling of the Catholic faith, it is important to say this plainly: being Catholic is hard. There can be no sugarcoating it. In many respects, a person would be crazy to prefer it to other options—and indeed, in the world today, most

Christian apologetics arose during a time of persecution in the 200s . . . and not much has changed between then and the 2000s.  What Rome started then, the secular culture continues now, but often in even more vile and vicious ways. Whereas a person living in the second century was utterly convinced that something numinous governed the universe and that truth was both discoverable and demanding, modern man mocks both of those realities: if there is a god, he must be a moral monster for allowing so much suffering in the world, and if there is truth, it’s a purely personal preference or just part of a power grab by those with an agenda. The early Church battled heresies that were trying to lay false claim to the privilege of being called Catholic. Today, Catholics are under continual barrage from Christian and quasi-Christian sects that want them to exchange their received apostolic faith for the novelties of the Reformation and its offspring. And where the first g