Hallow app defending new collaboration with Liam Neeson for Advent

Hallow, the popular Catholic meditation and prayer app, is running into controversy for adding Catholic abortion-rights actor Liam Neeson to its meditation readings of C.S. Lewis.

Neeson joined Jonathan Roumie of The Chosen and Sister Miriam James Heidland in leading prayer and reflections for its fifth annual “Pray25” Advent prayer challenge. Advent began on Sunday, Dec. 3, which commenced the liturgical season leading up to Christmas.

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The Taken actor is reading the works of Irish-born C.S. Lewis in a four-week-long prayer series “Advent with C.S. Lewis.” Neeson was the voice of Aslan in the film adaptations of Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia books.

The 71-year-old actor had previously voiced his support for the 2018 abortion referendum in Ireland. He had also done a voice-over in a 2015 Amnesty International ad calling to “repeal the Eighth” amendment of its constitution, allowing the government to legislate in favor of abortion.

“Remember: he referred to the Catholic Church as ‘a cruel ghost’ that forces women to have their children instead of aborting them,” one social media critic of the Neeson choice said.

The leadership of the Hallow app responded to the blowback of Neeson joining its lineup.

“We’ve received a lot of feedback over the last few days on the Advent challenge, with many folks really excited and many, understandably, upset, hurt, or confused. Many have asked questions about Hallow’s stance on issues of Church teaching,” Hallow app CEO Alex Jones said in a statement.

Jones added, “We would never allow any content on the app that goes against the pro-life teaching of the Church.”

The app company maintained that Neeson’s choice was not taken lightly but prayed on.

“We prayed and reflected on who might be best to help bring C.S. Lewis’s words to life and help us all grow closer to Christ, while still remaining, as we always do and will, fully in-line with Church teaching,” Jones said.

Jones clarified that Hallow does not “stand behind or claim to endorse any of the personal views, past actions, or political opinions of any of the narrators on the app.”

“Their response was in some ways even more shocking than the mere fact that they had hired Neeson in the first place. The CEO and Co-Founder had the audacity to claim that ‘God is calling’ them to work with Neeson… Is this a joke?” Kennedy Hall, a LifeSiteNews.com writer, said.

One YouTube commenter found hope in Neeson’s addition to the Hallow app.

“It’s great to see Liam has rediscovered his faith. God is working many miracles in these times. Praise be to Jesus and and our Heavenly Mother!” the commenter said.

“He recently was working in a film about nuns killing 800 babies,” a YouTuber responded.

Neeson has been producing a film focused on a long-running scandal in the Catholic Church about 800 babies being secretly buried in a mass grave allegedly by Irish nuns at a former maternity home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, County Galway.

In 2021, Neeson said in an interview that he grew up a “strong Catholic” and was filled with “emotion, horror and embarrassment” when he learned about the story of Tuam babies.

Hallow clarified that it does not endorse every statement of every voice in its lineup but that the app remains true to the church’s teachings.

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“Several have done things in the past or may hold personal views that we would disagree with. The one thing we do stand strongly behind is every word they read within the app itself,” the Hallow CEO said.

Actor Mark Wahlberg was also recently featured as a prominent Catholic on the religious app’s platform and was a narrator earlier this year during the “Pray 40-Day Lent Challenge.”