The Algorithm Has No Soul: Why the Saints Would Be Banned on Social Media by Jeff Callaway

The Algorithm Has No Soul: Why the Saints Would Be Banned on Social Media

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

Picture this: Saint Athanasius logging onto his social media account one morning, ready to post about the true nature of Christ's divinity. Within hours, his account would be flagged for spreading religious extremism and dangerous misinformation. His posts denouncing the Arian heresy would be labeled as hate speech against a protected theological viewpoint. The content moderators in their silicon towers would never understand that this man spent seventeen years in exile, was condemned by a Pope, faced false accusations of murder and political sedition, and yet stood firm against an empire that wanted him silenced.

They would ban him faster than you can say Homoousios.

The uncomfortable truth that gnaws at the belly of our modern age is this: the very Saints we celebrate in stained glass and marble statues would be deplatformed, shadow-banned, and canceled faster than a Texas thunderstorm rolls across the plains. These men and women who turned the world upside down for Christ would find themselves on the wrong side of community standards, their voices muzzled by algorithms designed to protect feelings rather than pursue truth.

The Exile That Never Ended

Athanasius of Alexandria knew what it meant to be censored. This fourth-century bishop defender of orthodox Christianity faced exile five times totaling seventeen years because he refused to compromise on the nature of Christ. The Arian heresy swept through the Church like wildfire, teaching that Jesus was a created being, subordinate to the Father. It was popular. It was accepted by emperors and bishops alike. It had the backing of the powerful and the influential.

And Athanasius stood alone and said no.

The man was accused of everything from murder to political rebellion. They said he killed a bishop and used his severed hand for magic. They claimed he supplied grain meant for the poor to his own supporters. They labeled him a troublemaker, a divider, an extremist who would not bend to the consensus. Even Pope Liberius, under pressure and likely torture, condemned him. The whole machinery of both Church and State tried to silence this one stubborn Egyptian bishop who would not shut up about the divinity of Christ.

Sound familiar?

Today, Athanasius would be flagged for religious intolerance. His fierce denunciations of Arian bishops would violate community standards on bullying and harassment. His refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of Arian teachings would mark him as a religious bigot. The algorithm would note that his content generates controversy and division, that people report his posts, that he does not promote harmony and inclusion. His account would be restricted. His reach would be limited. His voice would be drowned in a digital silence more effective than any fourth-century exile.

The irony would choke a horse: the man who helped define the Nicene Creed that billions of Christians recite today would be banned for hate speech against theological diversity.

The Maid Who Heard Voices

Joan of Arc was a teenage girl who heard voices and led armies. In our current age, the mental health professionals would be called before she ever picked up a sword. The content she would post about her divine mission would be flagged as promoting violence and warfare. Her videos showing her in armor, leading troops, would violate standards against militaristic content. Her claims of direct communication with saints would be marked as dangerous religious delusion requiring intervention.

They burned her at the stake in 1431 for heresy. The charges? Wearing men's clothing. Hearing voices from God. Refusing to submit to the authority of corrupt Church officials. They said she was a witch, a heretic, a fraud. The trial was political theater designed to discredit both Joan and the king she helped crown. Bishop Pierre Cauchon and his ecclesiastical court spent months trying to trap this nineteen-year-old girl in theological arguments and legal technicalities.

She stood her ground. Even when they showed her the instruments of torture. Even when they forced her to sign a recantation under threat of immediate burning. Even when they stripped her of her female clothes in prison, forcing her back into the male garments that would seal her doom.

The modern parallels are striking. Joan would be deplatformed not for being wrong, but for being inconvenient. Her gender non-conformity in wearing armor would be praised in some circles and condemned in others, but her unwavering faith in her divine mission would mark her as a dangerous fanatic. Her refusal to submit to corrupt authority would label her an insurrectionist. Her military victories would make her a promoter of violence.

The mob would demand her silence. The authorities would comply. And twenty-five years later, when the rehabilitation trial declared the original verdict fraudulent and unjust, it would not matter. The damage would be done. Joan would be another name in the list of those who dared speak truth and paid the price.

They cannot burn her at the stake anymore. They do not need to. The digital pyre is far more efficient.

The Stigmatic Under Suspicion

Padre Pio would break the internet, and then the internet would break him.

Imagine the content: a Capuchin friar with bleeding wounds on his hands, feet, and side that match the crucifixion of Christ. Fifty years of visible stigmata that doctors could not explain. Reports of bilocation, reading souls, predicting the future, fighting demons. Hours upon hours of hearing confessions, people traveling from across the world to see this living saint.

The Vatican itself did not know what to do with him. Between 1921 and 1931, the Holy Office investigated him repeatedly. They accused him of using carbolic acid to fake his wounds. They said he was having sexual relations with female penitents. They claimed he was a political agitator inciting riots. They banned him from saying Mass in public, from hearing confessions, from showing his wounds, even from writing letters to his spiritual director.

Fellow priests, bishops, and archbishops led the charge against him, threatened by his fame and influence. A physician from Rome's Catholic university hospital called him an ignorant, self-mutilating psychopath without ever meeting him. The accusations were wild, vicious, and relentless. And Padre Pio submitted to it all, saying only that God's will be done.

In our age, the content moderation would be merciless. Videos of his stigmata would be flagged as disturbing medical content or self-harm imagery. His mystical experiences would be labeled as promoting mental health crises. The testimonies of miracles would be banned as medical misinformation. His hours in the confessional would be scrutinized for potential abuse. Every aspect of his extraordinary life would be filtered through a lens of suspicion and skepticism.

The fact that the Church canonized him in 2002, that his tomb is the third most visited Catholic shrine in the world, that Pope John Paul II himself declared him a saint, would mean nothing to the algorithm. The algorithm does not care about vindication. It cares about compliance.

Padre Pio spent fifty years bearing the wounds of Christ in his flesh. The modern age would not let him bear them for fifty days online before his account was permanently suspended.

The Woman Who Scolded Popes

Catherine of Siena had the audacity to tell the Pope he was wrong. Not once. Repeatedly. In writing. With witnesses.

This fourteenth-century Dominican tertiary, a woman with no formal education or ecclesiastical position, wrote over 380 letters to popes, cardinals, monarchs, and soldiers. She did not make suggestions. She made demands. She called corrupt clergy what they were: stables and pens for pigs and barnyard animals. She told Pope Gregory XI to stop being a timorous child and be a man. She commanded him to leave Avignon and return to Rome. She criticized bishops for multiplying priests rather than virtues.

Her language was bold, raw, uncompromising. She called out sin where she saw it, regardless of rank or title. She worked for Church reform with the passion of a prophet and the fearlessness of someone who had nothing to lose. She traveled throughout Italy advocating for repentance and renewal, inserting herself into political conflicts, demanding justice and righteousness.

And here is what would get her banned: she did all this while maintaining fierce loyalty to the papacy itself. She declared that even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, Catholics should not raise up their heads against him. She defended the office while condemning the occupant's failures. She spoke truth to power while submitting to legitimate authority.

The modern mind cannot compute this. Catherine would be accused of contradicting herself, of being a bootlicker and a rebel simultaneously. Her criticisms of corrupt clergy would be celebrated by those who want to tear down the Church, but her defense of papal authority would enrage them. Her calls for reform would be praised by progressives until they realized she was calling for a return to holiness, not an embrace of modernity. Conservatives would champion her loyalty until they heard her scathing denunciations of cowardly leaders.

She would be labeled a divisive figure. Her content would be reported from all sides. The platform would conclude that she generates too much controversy and restrict her reach. Her letters would be removed for violating policies against harassment of public figures. Her account would be suspended for coordinated attacks on Church officials.

Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, co-patroness of Italy and Europe, would be silenced by the very people who claim to want strong women speaking truth to power.

Unless, of course, the truth they speak is convenient.

The Chancellor Who Would Not Bend

Thomas More knew the cost of his conscience. The man went from Lord Chancellor of England, second only to the king in power, to the executioner's block because he would not sign a piece of paper.

King Henry VIII wanted his divorce. Most would not approve of it. Henry wanted to be declared Supreme Head of the Church in England. More would not acknowledge it. The Act of Succession required subjects to swear that Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid and his union with Anne Boleyn was legitimate. More refused to take the oath, not because he opposed the succession itself, but because the preamble rejected papal authority.

They locked him in the Tower of London for fifteen months. His family begged him to compromise. His friends urged him to find a way around it. Brilliant lawyer that he was, he could have crafted legal arguments to save his life. But Thomas More understood something that our age has forgotten: there are things more important than survival. There are truths that cannot be negotiated. There are principles that must not be compromised, even when compromise seems reasonable, practical, and prudent.

He stood silent rather than speak against his conscience. And they killed him for his silence.

In our digital age, More would face a different kind of execution. His refusal to endorse the king's actions would be framed as bigotry and intolerance. His defense of marriage as indissoluble would violate community standards on inclusivity. His assertion that no temporal prince could be head of the Church would be labeled as sedition against legitimate authority. His writings against heresy would be flagged as religious extremism.

The mob would descend with the fury of the righteous. How dare this privileged white male lawyer impose his religious views on others? How dare he refuse to evolve with the times? How dare he choose his conscience over compassion?

They would destroy his reputation before they destroyed his platform. They would paint him as a fanatic, an oppressor, a man who valued abstract principles over human relationships. And when they finally banned him, they would do it in the name of protecting vulnerable people from his harmful rhetoric.

Thomas More died saying he was the king's good servant, but God's first. The modern age cannot abide such a priority. God must come after everything else, after feelings, after comfort, after the consensus. And those who insist otherwise must be silenced.

The Uncomfortable Pattern

You see it now, don't you? The pattern that repeats across centuries and contexts. The Saints were not banned because they were hateful. They were not silenced because they were wrong. They were censored, exiled, condemned, and killed because they refused to accept comfortable lies when truth demanded their witness.

Athanasius was banned because he would not let people redefine the nature of God to make Christianity more palatable to the masses. Joan was burned because she would not submit to corrupt authority that cared more about politics than righteousness. Padre Pio was investigated and restricted because his very existence challenged naturalistic assumptions about reality. Catherine was offensive because she demanded holiness in an age of compromise. Thomas More was executed because he would not call evil good, even when everyone else was doing it.

The Saints were disruptive. Not because they sought disruption for its own sake, but because orthodoxy itself is disruptive. Truth divides. Righteousness offends. Holiness makes the comfortable uncomfortable and the powerful angry. When you stand for something absolute in an age of relativism, when you declare that some things are true and others false, when you insist that God's law supersedes human preference, you become a target.

Every age has its mechanisms of control. The fourth century had imperial decrees and exile. The fifteenth century had ecclesiastical courts and fire. The twentieth century had Vatican investigations and restrictions. The twenty-first century has content moderation and deplatforming. The tools change. The spirit behind them remains constant.

The spirit that seeks to silence inconvenient truth. The spirit that demands conformity to the consensus. The spirit that will not tolerate anyone who says that the emperor is naked, that the king is wrong, that the crowd is heading toward a cliff.

The Algorithm Has No Soul

Here is what makes our modern censorship more insidious than the exiles and executions of the past: it claims to be neutral. The algorithm is just protecting people from harm. The community standards are just maintaining civility. The content moderation is just ensuring safety. Nobody is being persecuted. Nobody is being targeted for their faith. The system is fair, objective, and scientific.

Athanasius knew he was being exiled. Joan knew why she was being burned. Padre Pio understood that he was under investigation. Catherine knew her letters were provocative. Thomas More had no illusions about why he was in prison. They could name their enemies. They could identify the opposition. They could call persecution what it was.

But in our age, persecution comes wrapped in the language of protection. The censorship is called safety. The exile is termed deplatforming. The silencing is described as content moderation. And because it is done by machines following rules, nobody is responsible. Nobody is guilty. Nobody is persecuting anyone.

The algorithm has no soul. It cannot recognize that it is being used as a tool of oppression. It cannot understand that some truths are worth offending people to speak. It cannot distinguish between genuine harm and hurt feelings, between actual violence and prophetic challenge, between hate speech and holy rebuke.

And the people who program the algorithm convince themselves that they are the good people, the tolerant ones, the progressive forces making the world safer and more inclusive. They would never burn a witch. They would never exile a bishop. They would never execute a chancellor. They are evolved, enlightened, beyond such barbarism.

But give them a report button, a ban function, and a platform policy, and they will do the same thing their ancestors did. They will silence the prophets. They will censor the Saints. They will remove the voices that challenge their comfortable assumptions about reality.

The only difference is that they will sleep better afterward, convinced they were fighting misinformation rather than truth.

The Cost of Holiness Remains

The Saints would be banned on social media because the Saints have always been banned. The medium changes. The message threatening the medium does not.

Athanasius preached Christ's divinity in an age that wanted a more reasonable, less absolute Christianity. Banned. Joan heard the voice of God in an age that wanted pliable mystics who confirmed political narratives. Burned. Padre Pio manifested supernatural gifts in an age that wanted religion safely contained in the natural order. Investigated. Catherine demanded holiness from Church leaders in an age of comfortable corruption. Criticized. Thomas More refused to compromise his conscience in an age that demanded flexibility for the sake of peace. Executed.

Every single one of them could have saved themselves by simply going along. Athanasius could have signed the Arian formula. Joan could have stayed in women's clothing and kept her visions private. Padre Pio could have covered his wounds and stopped hearing confessions. Catherine could have written pleasant devotional letters instead of prophetic challenges. Thomas More could have taken the oath with mental reservations.

They would have kept their freedom. They would have maintained their influence. They would have avoided suffering. And they would have betrayed everything that mattered.

This is what our age cannot stomach: the idea that some things matter more than acceptance. That some truths are worth dying for. That some principles cannot be negotiated, even when negotiation seems like wisdom. The Saints knew that gaining the whole world means nothing if you lose your soul. They knew that the crowd is often wrong. They knew that popularity is a poor substitute for righteousness.

And so they chose the narrow way. The way that leads to exile, investigation, condemnation, and death. The way that makes you a target in every age, whether the weapon is a Roman sword, an ecclesiastical decree, or a content moderation algorithm.

The way that makes you a Saint.

What This Means For Us

You are reading this and you think I am talking about them. The Saints. The historical figures. The people we admire from a safe distance. You are wrong.

I am talking about you.

Every Catholic who insists that marriage is between one man and one woman is now Joan of Arc, facing accusations of hate speech. Every believer who proclaims Christ as the only way to salvation is now Athanasius, labeled an extremist for religious exclusivism. Every faithful Catholic who speaks about the Real Presence, the sanctity of life, the reality of sin, is now Padre Pio, treated as delusional for believing in supernatural truth. Every voice calling the Church to holiness is now Catherine of Siena, accused of being judgmental and divisive. Every Christian who refuses to compromise conscience for career is now Thomas More, choosing faithfulness over security.

The cost has not changed. The choice has not changed. What has changed is our willingness to pay the cost and make the choice.

We want to be Saints without suffering. We want to stand for truth without standing out. We want to follow Christ without carrying a cross. We scroll through our feeds, carefully curating our image, measuring our words to avoid offense, compromising just enough to maintain our platform while convincing ourselves we are being strategic, prudent, wise.

The Saints would look at us and weep.

Not because we are facing persecution, but because we are fleeing from it. Not because we are being banned, but because we are pre-emptively censoring ourselves to avoid being banned. Not because we are suffering for Christ, but because we are so desperate to avoid suffering that we will say nothing, stand for nothing, risk nothing.

We have traded holiness for followers. Righteousness for reach. Truth for engagement metrics. And we tell ourselves it is necessary, strategic, the only way to have influence in the modern world. Meanwhile, the very people we are trying to reach see through our cowardice and dismiss both us and the Christ we claim to serve.

The Disruption Continues

Orthodoxy has always been disruptive. It was disruptive when Athanasius proclaimed Christ's divinity against an empire that wanted religious compromise. It was disruptive when Joan led armies at God's command against kings who wanted compliant mystics. It was disruptive when Padre Pio bore Christ's wounds in an age of scientific materialism. It was disruptive when Catherine called out corrupt clergy in an age of comfortable religion. It was disruptive when Thomas More chose death over betraying his conscience in an age of political expediency.

And it remains disruptive today.

Every time someone proclaims that truth is objective and knowable, they disrupt the narrative of relativism. Every time someone insists that biology matters and words have meanings, they disrupt the consensus of subjective reality. Every time someone declares that sin is real and repentance is necessary, they disrupt the gospel of self-affirmation. Every time someone says that the Church's teachings are true even when uncomfortable, they disrupt the project of making Christianity more palatable to modern sensibilities.

This disruption is not a bug. It is a feature. Christianity is not meant to fit smoothly into the world. Christ Himself said He came not to bring peace but a sword, to set family members against each other, to be a sign of contradiction. The Saints understood this. They embraced it. They knew that following Jesus means being out of step with the world, uncomfortable in every age, always somehow inconvenient to the powers that be.

The question facing every Catholic in this digital age is simple: will you accept the ban, or will you compromise to keep your platform?

Because make no mistake, the ban is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But if you stand firm in the faith, if you proclaim uncomfortable truths, if you refuse to edit the Gospel to make it more marketable, the ban is coming. The algorithm will flag you. The mob will report you. The platform will silence you.

And when it comes, you will have to choose: are you Athanasius or are you one of the Arian bishops who kept their positions by compromising truth? Are you Joan or are you the judges who condemned her to maintain political favor? Are you Padre Pio submitting to unjust restrictions or the priests who attacked him to protect their reputations? Are you Catherine calling the Church to holiness or the corrupt clergy she condemned? Are you Thomas More going to the scaffold or the advisors who urged him to just sign the paper?

The Saints would be banned on social media. Count on it. Bank on it. Bet your eternal soul on it.

The question is not whether orthodox Christianity will be censored in the digital age. The question is whether you will be censored with it, or whether you will have already compromised enough to avoid that fate.

Because if you can keep your platform by staying silent about what matters most, then your platform is worth nothing. If you can maintain your influence by refusing to use it for truth, then your influence is a lie. If you can avoid being banned by never saying anything that needs to be said, then being banned would be a promotion.

The Saints knew this. They lived it. They died for it. And now, centuries later, we venerate them in marble and glass while carefully avoiding everything they actually stood for.

Orthodoxy has always been disruptive. It disrupted the fourth-century empire. It disrupted the fifteenth-century court. It disrupted twentieth-century rationalism. And it will disrupt the twenty-first-century algorithm.

The only question is whether we will have the courage to be disrupted with it, or whether we will join the long line of comfortable Christians who chose security over sanctity, approval over authenticity, platform over principle.

The Saints chose the narrow way. The way that got them exiled, burned, investigated, condemned, and killed. The way that also got them canonized.

Pick one. You cannot have both. You never could. And despite what the algorithm tells you, that has not changed.

Welcome to the fellowship of the banned. May we be found faithful.

~ by Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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