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Happy Friday friends,
All week I’ve been seeing various articles and videos by and about senior figures in the world of AI, grimly assuring us all that these programs have, in recent weeks, crossed some kind of line and moved onto a new plane of uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable self-development.
Hardly anyone appreciates what’s coming, and how dangerous it all looks to be, is their consensus. And no one at all is doing anything to stop it — the people most informed and most alarmed about it all are quitting to go study poetry, it seems. Big help that’ll be when the robot hive mind tries to switch us all off, I’m sure.
The irony that I’m being fed these testimonies by The Algorithm isn’t lost on me, either. Maybe Skynet has a sense of humor, or impunity. Maybe it wants us to panic?
In any event, I’m prepared to believe that some desperately nasty waves of change are headed our way, and far too soon for my liking.
It’s easy to be sanguine about my own prospects, at least in the short term. If I have any professional value it’s derived from networks of human information and intelligence that Big Data can’t mine or replace — if AI generated copy on Church news could put us out of business, it would have done so already.
But expecting as I do wholesale changes to the economy, with proportionate knock on effects to our politics, and from there society and culture, I don’t think anyone should expect to just ride the wave without fear of being dragged under.
For about 10 years I’ve been repeating the mantra to my siblings that we should all of us buy a farm, dig a well, and get some pigs, because all of this (gesturing broadly) is hanging by a loose thread.
Sadly, I’ve been unable to turn prophecy into practical preparation. So we’re all going to have to white knuckle the next few years together. But there is some comfort in that.
What I do expect, and hope for, is a sudden and renewed premium on the basic human currency of trust, which has been devalued terribly over the last two or three decades. The communal, the real, the authentic are going to become pearls of great price. And those we can yet store up in abundance, together, if we’ve a mind to.
Unless anyone out there wants to buy half of a lightly used Catholic news website for the price of a small farm I have my eye on in western Pa. In which case, email me.
In the meantime, here’s the news.
The News
The Institute for Works of Religion this week launched two ethical investment indices “designed to serve as a benchmark reference for Catholic investments worldwide.”
The two equity benchmarks, the Morningstar IOR Eurozone Catholic Principles and the Morningstar IOR US Catholic Principles, were developed with Morningstar, an American financial service provider and aim to offer an ethical benchmark for investors.
The launch is the latest in a series of developments from the IOR, commonly called the Vatican bank, which has emerged in recent years as the strongest performing Vatican financial body, following years of reforms started by Pope Francis aimed at ethical investments and transparency.
This is especially noteworthy given recent developments under Pope Leo, who rescinded a standing order that all curial investments be made via the IOR last year — clearing the way for Vatican departments to shop around for themselves.
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When Bishop Richard Moth is installed as the 12th Archbishop of Westminster Saturday he will become the most prominent Catholic leader in Britain.
But what is the state of the Church in England and Wales on the eve of Moth’s installation?
Luke Coppen took a statistical snapshot, and while an optimist will find some signs of green shoots, it is clear the new man has a big challenge ahead of him.
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The University of Notre Dame is, once again, making an absolute spectacle of itself.
The most prominent Catholic university in the country (it claims in the world) has been seized by internal debate and external heavy media coverage after appointing a prominent abortion advocate to a senior academic leadership role.
Susan Ostermann, a researcher and professor at the Keough School of Global Affairs was last month named as the school’s next director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
Among Ostermann’s more appalling opinions, and she has a few, is her belief that pro-life laws “have their roots in white supremacy and racism.”
Her appointment has triggered faculty resignations, student protests, and even an intervention from the local diocesan Bishop Kevin Rhodes of Fort Wayne - South Bend.
But what authority does a bishop have over a university like Notre Dame when it is in his back yard? And aren’t there rules about who can teach at an institution that markets itself on its Catholic identity?
You can read our explainer right here.
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There is one thing that participants in — and observers of — Germany’s “synodal way” agree on: it has been a grueling process.
When the initiative was launched in December 2019, its organizers thought it would last around two years. Six years later, the synodal way has just concluded its “first phase.”
No wonder German media are now speaking of synodale Ermüdung, or “synodal fatigue.”
Now, some meetings are being cancelled because of a lack of participation, even while a whole new phase is being scheduled.
So, what’s going on? Luke Coppen takes a look, right here.
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The Venezuelan bishops have issued a plea for human dignity and popular sovereignty to form the foundation of the country.
In their first substantive group statement since the United States captured former dictator
Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the bishops said that the capture of Maduro “has been interpreted as a violation of international law,” but also noted that the sovereignty of the people was violated in the 2024 presidential elections.
“Popular sovereignty, expressed through universal, direct, and secret suffrage, was disregarded when state bodies failed to publish the detailed results of the presidential elections of July 28, 2024,” the bishops said.
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Adnane Mokrani has a very unusual job. He’s a Muslim and a professor of Islamic Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Many of his students are priests, and many are studying in preparation for ministry in Islamic countries — often as missionaries.
So, how exactly does a Muslim scholar approach teaching Islam to Catholic missionaries headed to Muslim countries? And what does he feel about that?
Read the whole conversation with Filipe D’Avillez right here.
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Plaça d’Urquinaona in downtown Barcelona has a major metro station, and is a hub for buses, cars, motorbikes, and the red Bicing bike sharing bikes that are a regular sight on the city’s streets.
But, as Fionn Shiner reports this week, calls for the landmark to be renamed — after a Freemasonic anarchist no less — encapsulate the city and the secularized country’s simmering tense relationship with its own erstwhile Catholic identity and past.
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On Monday, the Diocese of Peoria confirmed that Bishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified after a six-year hiatus to his cause.
Amid that news, Catholics have been flooding the onlines, sharing Sheen’s most famous quotes, best video moments, and favorite pictures.
Of course, Sheen didn’t live to see social media, and he’s probably better off for it. But, if the algorithms of twitter.com, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube had existed in Sheen’s time, would the soon-to-be-Blessed have gone viral?
Going Viral
One of the news items that has been coming in for a lot of commentary this week is the decision by the new New York City mayor to no-show Archbishop Hicks’ installation as the new metropolitan.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth I’ve seen about the relevance, real or supposed, of Zohran Mamdani’s Islamic faith and avowed socialism to the decision to miss out the Mass. A lot of people seem to be interpreting his absence as a clear breach of civic custom and an overt slight against the city’s Catholic population — which is around 29% on paper, from what I can tell.
It is certainly the former: from what I can understand all mayors have by custom attended the installation of a new archbishop for at least as long as New York has been an archdiocese.
I’m simply not sure about the latter, though. Was it meant as a calculated insult to the Church and nearly a third of the city’s voters? If so, it seems an especially gratuitous act with which to begin an already contentious mayoralty.
I think what we are seeing is something a little more organic and a little less deliberate. Of more significance, I would suggest, than the mayor’s politics or religion is his age — he’s 34.