The prayer app Hallow’s decision last Advent to partner with Irish actor Liam Neeson, an outspoken pro-abortion activist, drew condemnation from several prominent Catholics.
The decision is one that Hallow CEO Alex Jones now says he would like to have back.
“There’s a bunch of stuff we’ve worked through and learned over the last couple of years about all the ways that we have to be careful in terms of how we work,” Jones told the Register regarding the Neeson controversy. “There’s the sin of scandal. There’s material cooperation with evil. There’s a bunch of stuff that we learned and are growing in understanding.”
Jones’ comments signify a reversal from statements he made in the immediate wake of the controversy. In a statement to Catholic News Agency in November 2023, Jones defended his decision, citing the company’s need to work with “non-traditional partners and people from different backgrounds” to fulfill its mission of reaching fallen-away Catholics. He maintained that Hallow was “proudly pro-life.”
In a subsequent statement to the Register, Jones said, “We respectfully disagree with those who claim that working with an actor who has done something in the past that disagrees with Church teaching, regardless of the details of how the work is arranged, is morally wrong.”
“Hallow is not a place of judgment,” he added. “Hallow is a place for anyone looking to grow closer to God. Especially sinners.”
That response didn’t sit well with many of Hallow’s Catholic fans and caused prominent pro-life figures to distance themselves from the company, citing Neeson’s pro-abortion activism.
In 2018, the actor, who is a baptized Catholic, publicly advocated for overturning a constitutional right to life for the unborn guaranteed in Ireland’s Eighth Amendment.
Three years earlier, Neeson narrated a blatantly anti-Catholic commercial for the pro-abortion nongovernmental organization Amnesty International that appeared to call the Church “a cruel ghost of the last century” that “blindly brings suffering — even death — to the women whose lives it touches.”
However, a year after the controversy, Jones and Hallow have reconsidered their position.
“About last Advent, we certainly made some mistakes,” said Jones, who later clarified that the decision to feature Neeson was one of those errors.
“In retrospect, we would have thought through decisions differently. We are working always to get better and learn,” he said.
He later added, “I certainly would discern things differently now.”
Jones’ candor comes at the end of a consequential year for his company, one that began with the Neeson controversy and included an “election prayer challenge,” a Super Bowl commercial, Hallow’s sponsorship of Fox News’ Election Night coverage, and Jones’ in-depth interview with Tucker Carlson on Nov. 15.
Publicly acknowledging a corporate misstep marks another milestone in the company’s evolution.
To the question of whether Hallow is a Catholic company, Jones replied, “Yes.” Though Hallow sometimes refers to itself as a “Christian prayer app,” all 10 members of the company’s “advisers” are Catholic and are often consulted to “ensure Hallow always stays 100% authentically Catholic & aligned with the Church,” according to the company’s website. (Members include Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana; Father Mike Schmitz of The Bible in a Year podcast fame; and University of Notre Dame theology professor John Cavadini.)
The Neeson controversy, however, points to the challenges Hallow faces now that it has expanded beyond its Catholic niche into mainstream culture. One of the most closely watched challenges is the delicate balance Hallow has tried to strike between partnering with figures who privately hold views contrary to the Church and those who publicly oppose Church teaching.
Life-Changing Prayer
Jones describes Hallow’s reassessment of last year’s Advent campaign in the context of his ongoing spiritual journey, which inspired the app’s creation.
After graduating from Notre Dame in 2015, the pressures of life in the professional world caused Jones to fall away from his faith. He began to meditate using a secular app called “Headspace” but found it wanting.
So Jones called Holy Cross Father Peter McCormick, his old rector at Notre Dame, to ask what the Church had to offer on meditation. Jones eventually began to pray lectio divina (prayerful reading of Scripture).
“Contemplative meditative prayer just changed my life,” he told the Register. “It was a relationship with the Lord. I never really had one before.”
In 2018, Jones and two of his former classmates, Alessandro DiSanto and Erich Kerekes, quit their jobs to found Hallow. Feeling that neither the 501(c)(3) nonprofit structure nor the C-corp model, which risked prioritizing profits and shareholder value above the mission, fit their vision, they chose to structure Hallow as a public-benefit corporation (PBC). This allows them to pursue their social mission while attracting investors and customers who share their values.
Hallow’s success in its six-year history — it is one of the most downloaded apps in the world, at times besting tech behemoths such as ChatGPT and Google — has been propelled by celebrity endorsements, including Catholic pro-life actor Jonathan Roumie, and high visibility in the secular media. The company’s steady growth, coupled with the religious and political sensitivities inherent with the product, has led to significant challenges for Jones and his team. The balance between avoiding scandal and taking the necessary steps to fulfill the company’s mission, which Jones emphasizes is to reach Catholics who no longer practice their faith, has proven difficult to strike.
“What we’re trying to do is to take these big swings, these big risks, and really reach out to folks who have fallen away,” Jones said. “That certainly could fail, and we certainly could make mistakes. And we have made many of them.”
Even so, Jones argues that the benefits of engaging secular culture through celebrity partnerships have outweighed the risks. For him, the greatest reward of all is helping people grow in their relationship with the Lord.
“People who would never give church a shot are giving this a shot,” he said. “We have so many stories of lives that have been completely changed: people who were about to end their own life who see a post from someone they recognize and stop for a second to give the Lord a chance — and he saves their life; people who have lost kids but have been able to find some sense of hope again,” he said.
“We have thousands of stories of people converting from different faiths to the Catholic faith.”
Spotlight on Partners
Regardless, Jones believes that operating in accordance with the Church, especially on the issue of life, is nonnegotiable.
“It’s really important to make sure we do everything in line with Church teaching,” Jones said. “It has to be a tool for the Church. Has to be. I want to get into heaven. I want to do everything I can to lead people deeper into a relationship with the truth as taught by the magisterium. We take all that seriously, and we try to get better every day.”
New and surprising celebrity partners seem to join Hallow’s mission by the day. This means Jones and his company must remain constantly vigilant of the risk-reward ratio and their commitment to remaining fully aligned with the Church. Recently, pop-music superstar Gwen Stefani contributed a reflection about an original Christmas song she wrote as part of this year’s “Advent Pray25 Prayer Challenge.” Bear Grylls, a British survivalist and television personality who has made disparaging remarks about organized religion, has also recently partnered with Hallow.
According to Jones, both Stefani and Grylls are acceptable because they fall under the banner of “content partners” as opposed to “spiritual leaders.” Hallow discerns who can be included in the former group by considering “whether or not the core of what the person does or is known for is against the Church and Her mission,” according to a document Jones shared with the Register.
“We take great care to make sure all of the content on the app is in line with Church teaching, but we do not stand behind each individual actor or musician’s past public comments, actions, or personal beliefs,” the document states. “Any answer to any question about where Hallow stands on Church teaching can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We stand behind the Church’s teaching on all issues, including those that are unpopular in today’s culture and especially the preeminent issue of our time in our country — the right to life.”
“We think about this group of people similarly to how we would think about the cast for The Passion of the Christ or The Chosen (most of whom are not Catholic and many of whom are not Christian),” it reads. “We believe these powerful works stand on their own, point us towards the truth, and can be used for spiritual growth, despite the diversity of faith backgrounds involved in their creation.”
The latter group, on the other hand, includes only highly trusted Catholic figures such as Bishop Robert Barron and Father Schmitz.
“We stand behind what these folks say,” the document reads, and “trust them to lead us in reflection and prayer, and allow them to guide conversations or interviews how they think best.”
Jones believes the stress involved with making difficult decisions at Hallow — and with being a startup founder in general — has helped him learn to radically surrender his life to the Lord.
“Any startup founder will tell you it’s way too much weight,” said Jones of the personal responsibilities involved with his position. “Elon Musk describes it as staring into the abyss and chewing glass. The founder is staring into the abyss because you’re looking into the potential death of the company and you’re chewing glass because you’re solving the hardest problems.”
He added, “The only way that I’m able to make it through is by radically surrendering to the Lord.”
