My column from the @USCCB in Baltimore this week in @americamag
When it mattered, the bishops came through. And maybe it’s time to retire (or at least update) a few narratives we have about division within the conference and with Rome
https://t.co/uKfJ72MGM4
Wonderful to see laywoman @MontseEWTN appointed prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication. Montse is a longtime friend, an experienced leader, and a real pro, and will bring so much to reform efforts. A major step in internationalization of Vatican communications.
1/3 I don’t share that fear. She’s an energetic, articulate communicator, likeable, and by all accounts an excellent manager. Her record reassures: she has sought to bring EWTN into the mainstream, and deplores the work-of-the-devil Arroyo show.
Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas
I am still a bit stunned that Magnifica Humanitas had basically nothing to say about AI-generated art. Its main concern was about what makes us authentically human, I know. But how much of our humanity is lost when we farm out the creation of culture to the machines?
@JLLiedl No, I think a discerning reader will draw some of these conclusions on their own. But I am seeing an awful lot of AI-generated art to accompany commentary on the encyclical, so I might be wrong there!
I would have liked to see a more robust/explicit treatment in the doc itself.
In his encyclical, +Leo XIV criticized transhumanism-- not for seeking to much, but too little. Instead, he offered what he called "the authentic 'more than human.'"
What was he talking about? Something at the heart of Catholicism called "deification." 👇
https://t.co/DeHk6XuWcA
@DavidAFrench I get and share the frustration here but I also have a soft spot for the desire to memorialize and ritualize rites of passage, even if it is done imperfectly. Our culture would benefit from more of this effort, not less, I think
For Pope Francis, the emblematic image of the church he desired was that of a “field hospital.”
Pope Leo has sketched out his own: A construction site.
As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity, we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God. It is in this sense that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological, and it is my hope that the Encyclical Letter to be published within a few days will contribute to answering this challenge.
For a profoundly leak-free pontificate, the advance rumblings (title/signing date echoing Rerum Novarum) indeed held up….
The Pope presiding at his encyclical’s launch-event, however – capped by his own major speech introducing it – is entirely new, and unforeseen.
Bishop Erik Varden: "I don’t think AI is going to generate any spiritual renewal, because any spiritual renewal worthy of its name is one that pierces the human heart, and that is something that an algorithm can’t do."
https://t.co/vIizRfxRbr