The Catholic Thing

The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

  1. HACE 7 H

    St. John Paul II, Priest

    By Stephen P. White. Beginning in 1979, Pope John Paul II took up the habit of writing an annual letter to priests which would be published on, or just before, Holy Thursday. These letters allowed John Paul II an outlet for repeated meditation on the nature of the priesthood. Read together, they provide a detailed account of his understanding of the priesthood and thus, necessarily, of both himself and the Lord. The tone of these letters was always fraternal. He wrote, not as a superior addressing his subordinates, but as a priest writing to priests about common concerns, hopes, fears, and joys. These were letters among brothers. As he put it in his first letter, "I think of you all the time, I pray for you, with you I seek the ways of spiritual union and collaboration, because by virtue of the sacrament of Orders, which I also received from the hands of my Bishop. . . .you are my brothers." He went on, cribbing from St. Augustine: "I want to say to you today: 'For you I am a Bishop, with you I am a Priest.'" Holy Thursday, of course, is a natural occasion for reflections on the nature of the ministerial priesthood, being the day on which Christ Himself instituted both the Eucharist and the order of the priesthood which flows from and serves that same reality. And as one might expect, writing to the same audience every year on the same occasion, in the same liturgical setting, leads to some thematic repetition. But reading these letters together allows us to see, precisely in that repetition, what Pope John Paul II saw as most important to share with his brother priests. In his first letter, in 1979, John Paul wrote of the importance of priestly perseverance, not only as a matter of personal fidelity, but as an example and witness to those whose vocation leads them along a different sacramental path: Our brothers and sisters joined by the marriage bond have the right to expect from us, Priests and Pastors, good example and the witness of fidelity to one's vocation until death, a fidelity to the vocation that we choose through the sacrament of Orders just as they choose it through the sacrament of Matrimony. (Emphasis original) This theme of perseverance and fidelity emerges again and again in the Holy Thursday letters. When one remembers that tens of thousands of men voluntarily left the priesthood in the decade following the Second Vatican Council (and the subsequent collapse in Catholic marriage rates across most of the West) Pope John Paul II's words take on an added significance. During the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope John Paul II wrote his Holy Thursday Letter from the Cenacle, the Upper Room, in Jerusalem. This letter is especially poignant, both because of the setting from which it was sent – the physical space with all its tangible reminders of the historical events we commemorate in this season – but because of his sense of the human inadequacy of the men God calls to be priests: Many times, the human frailty of priests has made it hard to see in them the face of Christ. Here in the Upper Room why should this amaze us? Not only did the betrayal of Judas reach its climax here, but Peter himself had to reckon with his weakness as he heard the bitter prediction of his denial. In choosing men like the Twelve, Christ was certainly under no illusions: it was upon this human weakness that he set the sacramental seal of his presence. And Paul shows us why: "We bear this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it might be clear that this extraordinary power comes from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:7) The frailty of men was not a stumbling block for Pope John Paul II's view of the priesthood; it was an entry point into the mystery of Christ's own priesthood. The Word Incarnate washes the feet of sinners. He pays out his life in service and sacrifice. And He invites us all – and his priests in a unique way – to do the same. Great indeed is the mystery of which we have been made ministers. A mystery of love without limi...

    6 min

  2. HACE 1 DÍA

    The Week of Holy and High Ambition

    By Joseph R. Wood. This is the week when we contemplate, more than any other week, how much we are loved. This is the week when the words of John's Gospel, that we are "given power to become children of God," are brought to fulfillment. This is the week when we are restored to the possibility of having a great soul. God is love, claims St. John. At the Last Supper, Christ tells us repeatedly to love Him by knowing His commandments and keeping them. Such is the person who "loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. . . .This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." That emphatic call for love as Christ prepares to suffer follows His teaching after His entry into Jerusalem. Asked which is the greatest commandment, He replies, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." Christ has come to fulfill the law in its every detail, the law that is love. Of the three theological virtues that we must be given by grace – faith, hope and love – St. Paul tells us that love is the greatest. If God is love, and the foundational commandments are love for God and each other, then all sin must be a failure to love well, an absent or misdirected love that shrivels our soul. The crucified Christ saw every sinner in all of history, and He became every sin, every failure of all time to love our neighbors properly – acts of theft, murder, adultery, lies, injustice against parents – and every failure to love God as we are created to love Him. All of those failures follow from the original sin that divided the divine and supernatural from the human and natural, splitting our human logos or reason from Logos itself. After that catastrophe, but without divine revelation, philosophers reasoned about what an excellent human life would entail. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle identified the excellences of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. These habits permit a good life in human or natural terms, and they result from rightly ordered reason. Failures in these virtues derive from failures of reason or prudence, failures either to know reality or to act according to it. Prudence, writes Josef Pieper, is the mother and guide of the other three virtues. Without prudence, a person cannot be just or brave or moderate. Aristotle also described the virtue of magnanimity, or great-souledness. The magnanimous man is dissatisfied with modest achievements. He is concerned not with money but especially with "matters of honor and dishonor." He wants the highest honors his community can offer – because he rightly deserves them for his great action. He knows he is built to be great. Philosophers have puzzled over what Aristotle meant, or whether he was serious, or even whether he actually wrote these passages. And Aristotle himself is puzzled. "For we blame the ambitious person, on the grounds that he aims at getting more than he ought." We see some people as overly ambitious when they seek honors that are greater than their souls merit. "We blame the unambitious person, on the grounds that he chooses not to be honored [even for] what is noble." He is wrongly self-effacing. Yet "sometimes we praise the ambitious person as manly and a lover of what is noble, and praise the unambitious person as measured and moderate." Aristotle seems to conclude that our speech and opinion about ambition are confused. We are to want great things in the right proportion to the greatness of our souls, but we can't get our praise and blame about this greatness consistent and clear. My pastor, Fr. Paul Scalia, preached recently about "holy ambition," two words whose association we might find as confusing as Aristotle would. He meant, I think, that we are supposed to...

    6 min

  3. HACE 2 DÍAS

    Our Untouchables

    By Randall Smith We pride ourselves on the fact that we don't have a "caste system" in America, with higher and lower castes and those at the bottom who are "untouchables." I sometimes wonder, though, whether we have something analogous in the way we distinguish "the elite" from the "deplorables." As for "untouchables," try going to a "Not a King" rally and saying, "I like some of the things Trump does," and you'll quickly discover what lepers felt like at the time of Christ. Each side in the political divide has created its hated "other." But one group that has become our society's real "untouchables" is the weak and infirm elderly. Rather than honoring the elderly, our tendency is to warehouse them in institutions to keep them out of sight and out of mind. Please don't misunderstand me. Many of those in "personal care homes" or "assisted living" facilities were placed there out of loving concern for them because they could no longer live alone and needed the extra medical care that such facilities can offer. But this reality still gives rise to several questions. Why are so many of our elderly alone? Have we valued "independence" in ways that are not conducive to health and human flourishing as we age? Why warehouse the elderly in separate facilities rather than trying to incorporate them into society in a new, vital way? And finally, why are so many of those facilities for the elderly so terrible? Rarely are they very good. One lesson anyone who has dealt with elderly parents needing special care soon realizes is that there is really no good answer to the challenge. Everyone I have asked, "Did you find a better way?" has said in no uncertain terms: "No, it's all terrible." The second lesson is don't be old and poor in America. A small room with mediocre care can run $8,000 to $8,500 per month, and often more. So, if you don't have $100,000 to $150,000 dollars per year to spend on housing and food alone and continue that level of spending for ten or twelve years, you may find yourself in some very uncomfortable circumstances, your world contracted to a small room with a television. Even the expensive places that are nicer have the feel of a cruise ship. Life there may be pleasant, but one gets the sense that there is also a sense of meaninglessness – of facing one's own death while watching one's fellow cruise-ship passengers die off one by one. Inhabitants sense that they have been shunted aside by society, no longer needed (or so we mistakenly imagine). Personally, I have never understood why we have a society of elderly, who are filled with stories of life and the wisdom of old age, on the one hand, and groups of teens, on the other, who need someone with wisdom to talk to and listen to them. For some odd reason, we can't figure out how to put them together. Instead, we do everything we can to warehouse them as far apart as possible. We don't put high schools or colleges next to centers for the elderly, likely because we know that the teens in those schools won't respect the elderly. We don't put elder care centers next to the gorilla cages either. But what if, instead of following the cultural trends, we took seriously the word of God? Leviticus 19:32 states: "You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God." This passage has long been understood as showing that respect for our elders is directly connected to reverence for God. One could draw this conclusion as well from the first commandment on the "second tablet" of the Decalogue corresponding to the respect for God on the "first tablet": it is the command to "Honor your father and mother." 1 Timothy 5:1-2 exhorts us to treat older men as our own fathers and older women as our own mothers, admonishing us not to speak harshly to them. Technology offers some hope. Self-driving cars may help older people who no longer can or should drive. Being unable to drive oneself in America is like being a child again, always ...

    6 min

  4. HACE 3 DÍAS

    Holy Work: Michelangelo's 'Pietà'

    By Brad Miner. "The sculptor arrives at his end by taking away what is superfluous." – Michelangelo to Benedetto Varchi, 1549 The greatest artist of the Renaissance is famous for something he may never have said: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." There are other versions of the quotation, as in the epigraph above, that are genuine, and they may seem to suggest that Michelangelo believed he merely liberated a form trapped in stone. Anyone who has visited the Accademia in Florence will appreciate the idea, because resident in the Hall of Prisoners there are Michelangelo's "slaves" – unfinished sculptures intended for the never-constructed tomb of Pope Julius II. The figures do seem to be struggling to escape: But stone is stone – even though quarks within are in constant, rapid motion – and the block of marble won't cough up a statue like a cat disgorging a hairball. It takes the mind, muscle, and imagination of a sculptor, not to mention his hands and eyes, to chisel a statue into existence. Thorne Smith, American humorist of the Great Depression (most famous for Topper), wrote a screwball comedy called The Night Life of the Gods (1931) in which an amateur scientist discovers a way, Medusa-like, to turn living matter into stone and vice versa. He animates sculptures of the Greek gods in New York's Metropolitan Museum, who escape to the streets of Manhattan. Chaos and hilarity follow. The ancient Greeks and Romans made sculptures, and they painted them. Some of that statuary still exists, and even more was standing or lying about in Rome in Michelangelo's time, at which point (as today) the paint (polychrome) had long ago worn off, and an erroneous theory arose in Renaissance Italy that classical artists glorified in the purity of plain, white stone. That has mostly remained the standard for figurative sculpture ever since. For Michelangelo, Carrara marble was the ideal medium, and, as the MET Museum's Carmen C. Bambach writes, he spent: long stretches of time on-site at the marble quarries in Carrara and Pietrasanta, where he not only selected marbles and gave precise orders regarding the sizes and shapes of the blocks being quarried, but even concerned himself with the building of roads to transport the stone. And that Tuscan quarry was the same one used by the Romans and is still used today. Michelangelo lived a long time – 88 years. At 13, he was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a very fine painter, but this most famous of his students was more interested in stone than paint. At 15, Michelangelo joined the school of the Florentine sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. This was a savvy move because Bertoldo's patron was Lorenzo de' Medici, ill Magnifico. It was Leonardo da Vinci who wrote in one of his notebooks (likely comparing himself to his mentor, Andrea del Verrocchio): "Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his teacher." Michelangelo certainly outshone Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. One may debate which of Michelangelo's sculptures is his greatest, but, in my opinion, it's his Pietà. His David (also at the Accademia) is the most imposing, especially when you see it in person: it's 17 feet tall. His Moses (about which I've written here) has fascinated many, not least Sigmund Freud. But Pietà is best. Pietà means "pity," but in the secondary sense in English: "tenderness and concern aroused by the suffering or misfortune of another; compassion, sympathy." (O.E.D.) Unlike many other artists of the Renaissance, nearly all of whom were Roman Catholic, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was among the most Catholic, by which I mean the most devout. He has also proved to be the most catholic, by which I mean the most universally recognized and admired, although much of that is thanks to that ceiling in Rome. Pietà may also have been Michelangelo's favorite sculpture. Certainly, it's the only one he ever signed. But it's also one he hoped would make him famous. Not an unholy ambition, it s...

    7 min

  5. HACE 4 DÍAS

    Blessed Is He Who Mourns

    By Fr. Paul D. Scalia All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. We don't know how to mourn as we ought – especially not our sins. So, we need these 40 days of penitence, to train us how to be sorrowful in the proper way. We need to learn genuine contrition. How not to skip over the gravity of our sins, nor to catastrophize them as if there were no Redeemer. To be sorry for our sins, not because we're embarrassed by them ("I can't believe I did that!"), nor only out of fear of Hell, but because they have hurt Him Who loves us perfectly – and so deserves to be loved. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled. That's the Lenten Beatitude. We want to know how to mourn our sins, the sins of others, the fallen world, and most of all Christ Himself. We want to experience the blessedness of that kind of mourning that frees us from sin. Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Jesus exemplifies this Beatitude. He is the One Who mourned first and perfectly. Last week, we heard that He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He did so because He had lost a friend, because sin has come into the world and, with it, death. But He also wept to give us an example of mourning. For they shall be consoled. Jesus shows the Beatitude's reward as well. By weeping at Lazarus's tomb, He shows us how to mourn. By raising Lazarus from the dead, He gives an image and foretaste of the reward promised to all. The Lord's weeping for and raising of Lazarus prepares us for today's account of His Passion, in which we encounter the perfection of His mourning and the sanctification of our own. In the Garden, Jesus announces the beginning of His Passion by saying, "My soul is sorrowful even to death." God became man, He assumed our passible nature, so that He could suffer and die for our sins. It's significant that the first suffering He experiences is sorrow of soul. "His passion has begun from within," John Henry Newman said. The cause of His sorrow is our sins. He is in agony, yes, because He anticipates the physical sufferings to come. But His greater agony is interior, in the sorrow He allows to rush in on Him on account of our rebellion against God. It is the sorrow of the holy One, Who knew no sin but was made to be sin. It is a sorrow exacerbated by our lack of sorrow – by our justifying, downplaying, or simply denying sin. Blessed is He Who mourns. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows. He is also blessed – happy – because He is doing the Father's will. Indeed, the reason He mourns is because He assumes the guilt and punishment for our sin in obedience to the Father. His mourning shows His oneness with the Father, His participation in the Father's plan to confront and uproot sin. For He shall be consoled. Jesus promises consolation to those who mourn. So also, He's granted a consolation even in His Passion. The High Priest places Him under oath and commands Him to say whether He is "the Christ, the Son of God." It's the pivotal question, the very thing He has come to reveal and proclaim. Perhaps in all His sorrow and pain Jesus experiences a slight consolation in this opportunity to solemnly affirm His identity. He joyfully confirms His Sonship and therefore reveals the Father too: "You have said so. But I tell you: From now on you will see 'the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power' and 'coming on the clouds of heaven.'" All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. The sorrow we desire is summarized beautifully in the 13th verse of the Stabat Mater: Let me mingle tears with thee, Mourning Him who mourn'd for me, All the days that I may live. Mourning Him who mourn'd for me. . . .Blessed are they who mourn because the Blessed One has already mourned. We are blessed to be able to share the sorrow of the One Who sorrowed over us. We should mourn Him because His soul first became sorrowful even to death. All that days that I may live. No, our mourning can't always be as intense as it is during Lent. But such sorrow should be a constant in the Catholic lif...

    6 min

  6. HACE 5 DÍAS

    Scott Hahn and His Happy Band of Convert Brothers

    By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza The feast day of the newest Doctor of the Church, John Henry Newman, is not his dies natalis (death) but 9th October, the day of his conversion in 1845. That date was definitive for the shape of the Catholic Church in England. So much good for the Catholic Church followed. On March 29, 1986, Scott Hahn was received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. So much good for the Catholic Church followed. Praising and thanking God in Steubenville on this fortieth anniversary, some three dozen of Dr. Hahn's family, friends, colleagues and collaborators are gathering in retreat to celebrate the occasion. I consider it a great honor to be serving as chaplain. But preaching to Scott Hahn brings a measure of nervousness! It's also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reception into the Catholic Church of John Bergsma, one of Hahn's principal colleagues at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, which is also marking its twenty-fifth anniversary. Preaching to Bergsma runs the risk of bringing coals to Newcastle, as I have for years relied upon his four-volume commentary on the Sunday lectionary in my own homiletic preparation. Hahn, Bergsma, the St. Paul Center – much indeed for which to praise God! Hahn would be embarrassed by the comparison to St. John Henry. The two are not in the same ballpark as theologians. But in terms of impact on ordinary Catholic life? Hahn, Bergsma, and other Protestant pastors – now Catholic – have taught millions of Catholics to know the Word of God better, and thus to love it more. Add to that list Jeff Cavins of the Great Adventure Bible and the massively influential Bible-in-a-Year podcast. Twenty-five years ago, I graduated with my STB from the Gregorian in Rome, and had come to loathe the Scriptures. Not exactly. I loathed my Scripture classes, which sucked both spirit and life out of the Bible. Our Johannine course included excruciating weeks of dissecting John 2 into ever more minute fragments, so much so that it was years after ordination before I got over my aversion to preaching on the wedding at Cana. Our professor never mentioned that Augustine had written on John. The period of emaciated Scripture study is over. The leading figure in restoring the Bible to the entire Church as the "sacred page" and "soul of theology" – Vatican II's language – is certainly Joseph Ratzinger. But the St. Paul Center in Steubenville, founded in 2001 to multiply Hahn's Biblical approach, has played a key role. The books it publishes – both scholarly and popular – and the retreats it runs – especially for priests – have transformed the Catholic Biblical landscape. I grew to truly know the Scriptures – and love them – only after my theological studies were no longer impeding me. Three converts were key: the sermons of Newman and Msgr. Ronald Knox (still my favorite) and Frank Sheed's To Know Christ Jesus. (Sheed was a quasi-convert, baptized Catholic but raised Protestant.) Hahn and his happy band of former Protestants were teaching Catholics how to read and understand the Bible – and that it was the book of the Church. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible volumes were perfect for parish Bible studies. And A Father Who Keeps His Promises is the best introduction to Hahn's covenantal theology. There was a time when I led pilgrimages to the Holy Land regularly, and Hahn's book was the required advance reading. There was a graphic of successive covenants, which I insisted pilgrims memorize, from the original couple (Adam and Eve), to the family (Noah), the tribe (Abraham), the nation (Moses), the kingdom (David), and the Church (Jesus). Hahn accompanied us along the paths of salvation. Throughout the English-speaking world, I doubt there is a parish where some of the key lay leaders have not read Rome Sweet Home, his conversion account written jointly with his wife Kimberly, or The Lamb's Supper, on the Biblical character of the Mass. Hahn's popular works, littered aplenty with painful ...

    7 min

  7. HACE 6 DÍAS

    The Nine Billion Names of God

    By Francis X. Maier Science is an odd theme to choose on the brink of Holy Week. Or maybe not so odd. In a way, science is miraculous. It's an expression of man's dignity and genius. It offers our species two deep satisfactions: the joy of discovering how the world works, and the means of using what we learn to improve our lives and the lives of others. It also seems to answer the "why" of things. Why do colliding atoms produce energy? Why can enough of that energy, properly channeled, vaporize an entire city like Hiroshima? And why can we even wonder about such things? The first two questions are really disguised versions of "how." To the third question, science will likewise offer a very reasonable theory of evolution: the route from chemicals in a primordial soup to the contents of a Tiffany's display window. It will explain why those chemicals might combine and morph; why some of them ended up as wildly expensive diamonds; and why those diamonds trigger favorable biological responses in the mating dance of a uniquely intelligent animal. But genuine science has the modesty to know its own limits; to acknowledge and respect other paths to truth and human fulfillment. Thus, when it comes to questions of why, science won't – because it can't – answer the Big One: Why is there anything instead of nothing? The above has already been said by others, many times. But it's nonetheless worth noting a point made by the social scientist Christian Smith in Moral, Believing Animals. There are no "non-believers." That includes hardcore atheists. We all believe in something. We all, first and often unconsciously, make a foundational assumption about the nature of the world based on our instincts, preferences, or experiences. We then build a rational framework on top of it to answer and engage the "whys" of life. As it happens, some choices are better, and some worse, than others. Scientism, for example, is not science. It's a materialist philosophy about nature dressed in scientific vestments. It's animated by the belief – a confident leap of faith – that reality is purely material "stuff" and processes. It assumes that science, at least theoretically, can someday unlock all or most of what there is to know. Thus we can properly accept an implausible but very real thing like superposition in quantum physics: the fact that a quantum particle can be there and not there, in the same place, at the same time. Nature, after all, is mysterious. But a virgin birth? A resurrection from the dead? Biblical nonsense. Here's the irony. Intellectual vanity is good news for a gifted writer. It makes a great target. Which is why the work of Arthur C. Clarke, himself a committed atheist, could draw praise from the likes of C.S. Lewis. In the early 1950s, Clarke produced a story – "The Nine Billion Names of God" – that's unforgettable and especially relevant to our reflections here. The plot is simple. A Buddhist monastery high in the Himalayas contacts an American computing firm. The monks hire two of its engineers, who then travel to install and run a computer on site. This will drastically speed up a project the monastery has been working on for 300 years: listing the nine billion names (claim the monks) of God. The engineers think this foolish. But the pay and food are good, the monks welcoming, and the scenery stunning, By day the world is endless, astonishing mountains. By night the sky is a carpet of intensely beautiful stars. The deeper "why" behind the project eventually becomes clear. When all of God's names are collected and codified, man's purpose (again, as the monks believe) will be completed, and Creation will end. The engineers suspect that when the world doesn't helpfully disappear, the monks will be unhappy – very unhappy – with them. So on the night the project nears conclusion, they slip away on horseback for the long trek to an airfield far below, and the trip back to reality. They chat affably on the way down. Then one of them fall...

    7 min

  8. 26 MAR

    Catholics and "Surveillance Capitalism"

    By Michael Pakaluk A correct Catholic approach to AI becomes clearer, I think, if we approach a foundational text in Catholic Social Teaching, Rerum novarum, not as about structural issues in political economy, but rather as about claims on time and claims of authority. The workhouses of the Industrial Revolution, by paying only a subsistence wage to the father, forced wives and children into the factories too, destroying time for the family, the parish, and worship. And making each member of a household directly dependent upon the owner, not the father. This configuration, moreover, appeared fixed; the members of a household seemed to have no way to escape their plight as "wage slaves." A "living wage" busts this up. Pay the father enough so that he can support a family and so that they, if they live thriftily, can acquire capital over time, and the result is that the family is restored as the basic cell of society. And the father's authority too is restored. Workhouses absorbed nearly all leisure time and took authority away from parents and clerics. The living wage, when honored, returned remunerative work to its proper position of being for the sake of the family, not the family for the sake of work. Catholics face a situation today similar to the Industrial Age through what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has called "surveillance capitalism." Technology in the heady days of Wunderkinder like the young Steve Jobs and Bill Gates exulted to be in the service of the value creator – the entrepreneur, the artist, the executive looking for efficiencies of scale. But in roughly the early 2000s, things got flipped, so that the user became the product. You know the maxim, "if the app is free, you are the product." We pay for ostensibly "free" services not through money, but with our time and attention. If revenue comes from targeted advertising, then, once a network of users has ceased growing organically, further growth can come only from more screen time, or from more data, leading to better prediction and more assured control of behavior. Furthermore, things get locked in. Get devices into the hands of children, and their behavior can be shaped into adulthood. You see that your child is addicted to a screen? My colleagues around the country say that students can't sit through a lecture any longer: they must "go to the bathroom" at least once an hour, a euphemism for going away to look at their phones – the way cigarette addicts used to behave. These failings are not accidents or mere weaknesses of human nature. Are our clerics paying attention here? Christians are supposed to live "in the presence of God," not in the presence of short-form videos. If we have free time, saying a prayer is a good thing to do, or visiting a church. Families are supposed to center around the fellowship among the children, not Instagram networks, and follow the culture set by parents, not influencers. Priests and bishops who are internet celebrities are like worker priests who penetrated factories after the Industrial Revolution. They do good work, to be sure, but they are not naming the fundamental problem, or contributing to the needed change in our thinking about how technology uses us. In particular, they are not helping to foment this other "paradigm change," which Zuboff has rightly said is necessary to overcome "surveillance capitalism" – the way we came to see, as a society, that cigarette addictions and polluting the environment are to be shunned. The main ethical question concerning AI chatbots, then, is not new. Will these new technologies serve as de facto fiduciaries, putting the genuine interests of the user first, or will they join forces with existing "surveillance capitalism," so that chats come to be in the service of an advertising master besides the user; and users are drawn more deeply into a web of subjective illusion? Only Anthropic among the leading companies has foresworn advertisement as a source of revenue. Anthropic ...

    6 min
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