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Hey everybody,
Today’s the seventh Tuesday of Easter, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
In less than two months, we’ll celebrate the Fourth of July and the 250th anniversary of our national founding, by the Declaration of Independence.
There are some celebrations already underway, although it shouldn’t surprise us that they’re tinged with the clannish hyperpartisanship endemic to everything now, and we shouldn’t expect that a calendar milestone will somehow bring Americans together, past the rampant tribalism of our politics and the devastating atomization of our technology.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate: America is perhaps in the period of “sustainable decadence” described by Ross Douthat, or perhaps her cultural crisis is decidedly more acute, but in either case, she also has an extraordinary national history, and the possibility, at least, of future renaissance.
And it’s worth reflecting on the history of our Founding Fathers — the young men who banded together, and the nation they set in motion.
And while July 1776 gets all the credit, it’s actually May where things got moving:
On May 15, 1776, Congress adopted a resolution that each colony’s government should abandon its oaths of loyalty to the Crown, remove the Crown’s authority from their constitutions, and replace Loyalist governments with independence-minded ones.
Soon after, Virginia set in motion the proposal that would lead to a declaration of independence, to be adopted just two months later.
Meanwhile, in early May, Benjamin Franklin was in Quebec, Canada, with Founding Father Charles Carroll, there to urge Canadians to join the American colonies in their rebellion against Britain.
Among the members of their delegation was Fr. John Carroll, then 41 years old, who had been a Jesuit until the order’s suppression in 1773.
Fr. Carroll was brought along with hope that he could persuade French Canadian priests to support the American move toward independence, and to encourage Canadians to join the cause.
But he had no luck.
In Montreal, Fr. Carroll met with another displaced Jesuit, but he had no other meetings. Bishop Jean-Oliver Briand of Montreal had been assured by the British government that Catholics would enjoy broad religious freedom under British rule, and the anti-Catholicism of many American Founding Fathers was well known. Plus, Bishop Briand, like most Canadians, was convinced that the Americans were dead broke, and saw no future in their plans.
So Bishop Briand told his priests they could not meet with Carroll. The priest had no more luck than anyone else in the patriots’ mission, and Fr. Carroll and Benjamin Franklin left Montreal on May 11, making the long journey home together.
Franklin was sick for much of the trip, and Carroll was kind to him.
For his part, Franklin came home with the soft fur trapper hat that would become an iconic part of his look. Carroll came home with nothing.
But he did show aplomb. The mission to Quebec went, like everything else, into Fr. Carroll’s personnel folder.
It also went into the memory of Benjamin Franklin, who less than 10 years later advised officials from the Vatican Secretariat of State that while a French bishop might serve America well — reportedly this was Rome’s first plan for the U.S. — Fr. Carroll would be the best choice to lead the fledgling American Church.
By 1784, Carroll was apostolic prefect for the United States.
He did a good enough job that he won the support of priests in Maryland, who almost unanimously urged Rome to make him their bishop.
In 1789, John Carroll was appointed America’s first diocesan bishop.
The news
After The Pillar reported on a pending Vatican-ordered investigation in a Louisiana diocese, the Bishop of Baton Rouge told priests that media reports did not tell the whole story, and that diocesan officials had not been informed whether an investigation was underway.
In a May 8 letter, Bishop Michael Duca told priests that reporting in a “Catholic Internet Newsletter called The Pillar … only contains one point of view.”
In fairness, reporting from our internet newsletter on the Diocese of Baton Rouge has contained several points of view, including that of a whistleblower who says he was discouraged from calling the priest, a Catholic layman who says he was coercively propositioned, and the accused priest, who denies the allegations against him.
But our internet newsletter did not contain much about the diocesan point of view, because the diocese declined to answer questions, or even respond to emails asking them to answer questions.
At the same time, local Catholic parents say they’ve been asking for the diocesan point of view — considering a priest assigned to their parish is accused of admitting to possible sexual contact with minors. They say they’ve gotten no details, despite their ongoing concerns about the matter.
Meanwhile, a Vos estis lux mundi investigation into the case has been authorized, and is expected to get underway shortly.
And, it should be noted, the principal allegation against the priest in question is that while he attempted sexual engagement with a parishioner, he allegedly recounted unspecified past incidences of sexual contact with minors. That’s not an everyday case, and few would blame a bishop who said he was unsure exactly how to proceed with an alleged admission, which lacked specificity.
Still, that’s what the DDF is for — to ask “how should we proceed” on tricky cases. More to the point — and the expected principal point of concern in the Vos estis — is that if a layman says they intend to call the police over an issue, it’s taken poorly for a bishop to discourage them from doing so, as Bishop Duca is alleged to have done here.
Now, fleshing out the facts is why they have the investigations. But the questions Duca will face seem clear and straightforward — not next from The Pillar or from local parents, but from a Vatican appointed investigator.
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Last year, 3,606,400 babies were born in the U.S., 710,000 fewer than in 2007 — a 23% decrease.
The decline started with a 4% drop between 2007 and 2009, which correlated to the 2008 financial crisis. But when the economy recovered, the birth rate didn’t — and that will have interesting effects on the American economy for a long time to come.
For colleges, the “demographic cliff” is coming now — they’re facing the prospect of fewer applicants, fewer enrollments, and fewer students. That portends the closure of many small colleges across the country — built when babies were booming, not busting.
But what does it mean for small Catholic colleges — the kind without $25 billion endowments to ride things out and wait for a new normal?
Jack Figge talked to college presidents across the U.S. to find out.
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But the monument includes a monastery, and a basilica — which means that as it becomes the totem for a political fight in Spain, the Church, and the country’s bishops, are in the middle.
To date, that includes monks of the abbey suing to stop the Madrid archdiocese from representing them in the affair — with canonically backed claims that they’re accountable only to the Apostolic See.
It’s a complicated fight. And again, with a papal visit looming, it’s not clear how Leo will avoid at least an airplane question about the whole affair.
Here’s a comprehensive legal and cultural breakdown of what’s happening, and what might come next.
How come? What does it mean? And how reliable is the data, anyway?
This is a big deal —after years of German bishops saying they’d defy the Vatican to implement their vision of synodality, things seem to have changed, and quickly.
In a thorough analysis, Ed Condon suggests this is the Leo effect — and as more bishops seem inclined to accept papal instruction, it may lead to deeper cracks in the German episcopate.
The coming encyclical
Pope Leo XIV apparently doesn’t take a three-day weekend to kick off summer with Memorial Day.
I guess if you’re already wearing white year-round, the sartorial significance of the holiday looms less large in your imagination. But while most of us are heading down the shore or hosting barbecues (and hopefully praying for America’s war dead), Pope Leo XIV will be hosting his own press conference, to introduce his much-anticipated first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas.
To date, we know very little — or at least we’ve been told very little by the Vatican, save for the fact that the encyclical will discuss “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” and was signed on May 15, an anniversary of Rerum novarum.
We know the pope has been talking about AI since soon after his election, and that he that sees an epochal change of economy and culture attributable to developments in AI, and in what’s coming.
We also know that among those coming to the press conference is Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, the company that makes Claude.
Now, having the Anthropic guy at the AI press conference might feel a bit like Andrew Carnegie coming to the rollout of Rerum novarum.
It tells us that the encyclical won’t be the scorched earth call for Butlerian jihad that some Catholics, myself included, have been hoping the pope will offer — even if everything said in his papacy has made clear that won’t be his direction.
Instead, it probably means that the encyclical will offer a perspective of guarded optimism with AI: This is a technology with lots of potential to do good, and lots of potential to do bad, which is why we need to use it in accord with human dignity, and make sure that people aren’t economically, culturally, and intellectually decimated by it.
To people like me, who think AI will inevitably cause that decimation, the encyclical might well seem like a half-measure — raising some good points, but insufficiently sounding alarm bells about an actually falling sky.
I suspect the encyclical will reflect meaningfully on economics, and the dignity of both work and wages, on warfare, on culture, and on the danger of glowing screens preconditioned to offer us flattering funhouse mirrors enthusiastic about how clever and wonderful we are.
But I also think it will offer a ray of optimism that AI, properly safeguarded, has extraordinary potential for good.
And that’s where I’ll be challenged by the pope’s words. Where I’ll have to be willing to reconsider my priors, I suppose.
I am pessimistic that AI can be a net force for good because, ultimately, I think the yen for profit, for comfort, for exploitation, for lust, and for greed is more frequently predominant in emerging technology than the basic human desire for solidarity and mutual well-being.
I think that even with grace — with oodles of grace — harnessing extraordinary power and using it for good is immensely difficult and rarely accomplished.
The history of many Christian kings and pontiffs bears that out. So too does the history of wealthy Christians. It’s why the holy ones stand out enough to be called saints.
It’s why I think most Christians should mostly run from most prospects of power most of the time — unless God makes it abundantly clear he’s calling us — lest any of us be deluded with the idea that we alone are capable/holy/wise enough to handle it with virtue. The real wisdom is often knowing how strong the tempter is, and how little we resist in the near occasion of corruption.
(This is a long-standing part of Franciscan spirituality, by the way, so I’m not alone in my vale of apocalyptic pessimism.)
By way of example, I think the internet is probably a net human drain on society, compromising us morally and socially, leading to our deep isolation and alienation from one another — even if it’s the place where I make my living. And if I had a different plan, or a different way of doing this work to which I think I’ve been called, or even more self-discipline or more wisdom, I’d probably be more strident on this point.
But it’s obvious to me that even in my own sphere — in the world of journalism — the quality of the thing itself, and the flourishing of those who produce it, and the justice with which it is usually produced, and the effect on those who consume it, were all better off when news reporting was a thing done with paper.
The internet has mostly done to journalism what mass-scale food processing has done to human health and agriculture, and to those who labor in those vineyards.
I’ve accepted the inevitability of the internet, I suppose, but it makes me loathe to accept quietly or optimistically the inevitability of more AI.
I am pessimistic that generative AI can do anything more than produce good things accidentally, while remaining essentially destructive of some of the most important pieces of our humanity.
People like Christopher Olah will certainly say the opposite. Olah has made a reputation as the ethical guy-in-AI, famously standing up against Pentagon demands against product safeguards, and apparently convening Christian academics and leaders for conversations about AI, ethics, and culture.
Some very good theologians seem convinced that leaders like Olah want guidance — theological and ethical frameworks for their work — and will therefore welcome the encyclical as a starting point for conversation.
Others are concerned that technocrats want to Church-wash themselves and their work — appearing close to people like Pope Leo to convince people, perhaps especially themselves, of the essential righteousness of their work, or their essential capacity to handle the power to reshape everything.
I think that is a bit like hoping that holy water will make it safe to eat some plutonium — it’s just not how the world works.
And I think — I’m pretty well convinced, actually — that Pope Leo is smart enough not to allow himself to be used, especially by people whose technology has the potential to massively disrupt any semblance of the idea that economy exists for widespread human flourishing and the dignified life of families.
Which means that if the pope has the Anthropic guy up on the dais with him, it’s because Leo genuinely believes he has a chance to ensure that a technology which won’t be bottled up won’t lead to the disintegration of the family and the total diminishment of the human mind.
I am open to the possibility that Leo’s encyclical might soften my perspective on AI. And I think that’s probably his aim in all directions.
I suspect the pope believes he can shape things by dialogue; that his influence on AI leaders — and more importantly Christ’s influence on them — might play a role in shaping a new AI world.
This might well be true. If anyone can bring Christ into that conversation, Leo can.
But I’m most curious about whether dialogue is the only tool the pontiff will yield in that quest. In ecclesiastical and global affairs, Leo’s shown recently that there is a limit to his path of dialogue, and a time when Peter speaks with uncompromising authority, in stark moral terms.
I find myself wondering if Magnifica humanitas will show that side of the Petrine office — or if the pontiff will use it if the AI “change of era” makes it (inevitably) necessary.
I’m not sure that Christopher Olah and the oligarchs of technocracy will be quite so excited for that prophetic voice. It won’t sound like a chippy bit of Claude-derived affirmation.
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Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us. We need it.
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
"I am pessimistic that generative AI can do anything more than produce good things accidentally, while remaining essentially destructive of some of the most important pieces of our humanity."
You're in good company with that outlook. Just last week, Bishop Erik Varden (the one and the same, interestingly, whom Pope Leo appointed to lead his Lenten retreat) threw out this zinger:
"I'm afraid that, if I may express my own nihilism now, that in terms of spirituality I have absolutely no hopes at all for AI."
Worth reading the whole interview: https://dcgary.org/news/bishop-varden-hope-ai-patience-and-not-weaponizing-christianity
Great reporting...even if you're just an internet newsletter