Joomla 1.5 Church Site

1.5 has really limited access restrictions. So, restriction by Mighty "Permission" or even "Membership" could be a solution...

but I would suggest to consider a system upgrade. At least to Joomla 2.5. It is about time! No matter, if your site is (still) secure... you will get in trouble with hosting/PHP versions. I encourage you to spend the time (and budget?) on a site upgrade. A nice side-effect is the better ACL in Joomla core.

Not to mention, J!3 is getting more stable and clean these days... and it is promoted and suggested for new sites. But J!2.5 might be an option for you, and a "first step" to the latest release.

BTW, there is also an older CorePHP product "CommunityACL", that is now free on Github:

I agree with pepperstreet answer, but there is a simple solution:
Just assign the category to a (hidden) menu item. Assign that menu item only to registered users in menu settings. This should help. I had a 1.5 site and for many years, I used it this way to show some articles only to registered users.

hakana Just assign the category to a (hidden) menu item. Assign that menu item only to registered users in menu settings... to show some articles only to registered users.

I assumed, there are already regular users which belong to this access group. i.e. subscribers for a newsletter or a smaller online community. The typical use case on J15 sites. But I could be wrong in this case ;-)

I think it is possible to do with Menu access level. Change link to section access to registered. That will only allow to see thisl link by registered users.