POPE LEO XIV TELLS PRIESTS IT’S TIME TO STOP USING AI TO WRITE THEIR SERMONS
AI seems to be hell bent on staying in the news no matter who the U.S. is invading, what trickles out of the Epstein Files, or who Congress is handing out subpoenas to. And no, I’m not talking about Anthropic vs. Trump, either. I’m talking about pervasive, lazy use of AI. We know about students using it to write their papers from grade school thru grad school. We know about lawyers using it to write briefs and even precedent citation, government staffers for bill padding, and high profile media articles. But now we know that priests have been using it to write their sermons! And Pope Leo XIV has banged the papal scepter saying enough is enough.
POPE LEO MAKES IT CLEAR THAT MACHINES SHARE FAITH, THAT’S A PRIEST’S JOB
I have to say that I’m somewhat appalled. And I’m not even Catholic! And I hate to use the slippery slope allegory (yes, I know) here, but if Pope Leo didn’t put the stop to this now, where would it end? With the Bible being re-written by AI to more efficiently proselytize the masses? I’m imagining the snake in the tree becoming a much more nebulous figure…. But Pope Leo words about this seem appropriately infallible, even to my Protestant sensibilities. He said, “To give a true homily is to share faith, [machines] will never be able to share faith.” In other words, delivering the words of God in a meaningful way requires people to shape the spirit of those words.
Related:
Troubling: Swiss Church Uses AI, Holographic Jesus For Confessional
POPE LEO MAKES IT CLEAR PRIESTS NEED TO USE THEIR BRAINS, OR LOSE THEM
But he continued with logic we’ve seen addressed elsewhere about AI, saying, “Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity.” We’ll just have to see if Catholic priests take this as Gospel, never mind Doctrine. But clearly everyone, in every walk of life, is sliding down the mind numbing slope that now seems all but inevitable with increased use of AI. But I never thought it could invade the pulpit, too.
