Catholics Have Work to Do; Tech Schools Can Help

To celebrate this Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, May 1, we can channel the earthly father of Jesus and imagine his joy that Catholics increasingly see promise in a “tech school” education.

Americans have rediscovered the need to “get their hands dirty” for the sake of career progress, economic strength, and personal growth.

So far, Catholics have seen it happening at the long-lived Don Bosco Technical Institute, a college-prep high school run by the Salesian order in Rosemead, California. Founded in 1955, Bosco Tech is enrolling its first female students in 2026.

Harmel Academy, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, launched fully as a two-year Catholic college in January 2021.

The College of St. Joseph the Worker, a tech college, will open this fall in Steubenville, Ohio.

Also opened this year is Saint Peter Catholic High School in Galveston, Texas. It occupies the grounds of a former grade school.

Leaders say they’re considering a joint program in cybersecurity with Houston’s University of St. Thomas.

The schools were described in an Our Sunday Visitor article in March.  

This concept for Catholic schooling is just starting to build, you might say. But the emergence is concurrent with a rebirth of interest in vocational arts training in secular schools.

Such training faded years ago when high schools refocused on preparation for four-year college degrees. Those degrees have become unaffordable for many students, and they have become less suited to segments of the modern economy.

America’s huge “skills gap” has resulted in many essential fields being short-handed, according to “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe at his MikeRoweWorks website.

He cites the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report that “there are more than 7 million jobs available across the country, the majority of which don’t require a four-year degree.

The TV celebrity has been an influential activist, championing the education of more electricians, plumbers, mechanics, and welders, as well as technologists in medicine, energy, and construction, plus experts in carpentry, HVAC, computing and cybersecurity, architecture, materials, media, and more.

A post at Harmel’s website describes its Catholic roots:

“In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, St. John Paul II suggested that the key to social problems is a proper understanding of human work,” the college points out. “Above all else, Harmel Academy exists to help the working man develop an understanding of the dignity and adventure of work.”

The combination of teaching the Catholic faith and the skills for a trades career recalls the Benedictine motto, “Ora et Labora”—prayer and work.

As Father Dwight Longenecker wrote in The National Catholic Register, the life of Benedictine monks blends prayer and working with one’s hands. That’s in tune with the word “liturgy,” which means “the work of the people.”

Work is not drudgery when it “becomes part of man’s high calling and service,” wrote Longenecker.

A 2005 book, Saint Benedict’s Rule for Business Success by Quentin Skrabec Jr., touts the Rule’s “organizational genius, which has had wide application beyond monastic groups.” It offers insights into “some of the most difficult resource management in business” and a must-read for entrepreneurs and managers.

With all the insights on offer from this first, growing batch of trade schools, St. Joseph the carpenter would be proud—well, let’s say pleased.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Collective Commons designs.

Big Mess on Campus: ‘Fighting Irish’ Lessons on Unrest

The current tumult on college campuses, a sad erosion of their status as centers of wonder, excellence, and shared learning, invites us to go back a half-century and recall how one university community experienced a previous era of unrest.

Let’s visit the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, when Father Theodore Hesburgh was at roughly the midpoint of his remarkable presidential tenure (1952–1987).

Times That Try Men’s Souls

This priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross saw what he called “the student revolution”—especially events in 1969 and 1970—as the most burdensome period of his presidency,  according to Robert Schmuhl, who was among the “Fighting Irish” during those years and later an ND professor of journalism.

Schmuhl’s 2016 book, Fifty Years with Father Hesburgh—On and Off the Record, will serve as one of the guides for our brief tour through those times. Our intent is not to apply Notre Dame’s tribulations either as prescriptions or proscriptions for 2024, but the actions of “Father Ted” highlight some context to consider.

As the university entered 1969, the Vietnam War was in its fifth year, and youthful opposition had led to demonstrations around the country—only a modicum at Notre Dame.

Then, in February, a number of students convened for a “conference on pornography and censorship.” Local police raided it to confiscate one of the movies being shown. Some attendees who resisted were bloodied, and police used mace. The violence “seemed to chart a different course for campus disturbances,” Schmuhl comments.

Father Ted responded in about a week—to the big picture, not the porn. He issued an eight-page letter to the university community to pre-empt disruptions on the private school’s grounds. The letter won nationwide news coverage, much of it favorable, reporting what became known as his “fifteen-minute rule.”

He said “anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or non-violent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist.”

Schmuhl notes Hesburgh’s warning: “If ‘force’ rather than ‘rational persuasion’ continued beyond a quarter hour, suspension or explusion would follow.” This was “the first unequivocal statement by a university president in the United States about dealing with unrest that disrupted the activities of others in a detrimental manner.”

The letter stands out from recent newsworthy comments by university presidents regarding turbulence in 2024 for two reasons we might deem contradictory or anachronistic—its disciplinarian toughness and its combined academic and priestly appeal to people’s faith, reason, and reasonableness.

Even more quotable was the section of Father Ted’s letter describing his motivation: Needing police action on any campus, he said, is “a last and dismal alternative to anarchy and mob tyranny…. We can have a thousand resolutions as to what kind of a society we want, but when lawlessness is afoot and all authority is flouted … then we invoke the normal societal forces of law, or we allow the university to die beneath our hapless and hopeless gaze.”

Hesburgh continued (cited by Schmuhl): “I have no intention of presiding over such a spectacle. Too many people have given too much of themselves and their lives to this university to let this happen here.”

The fifteen-minute rule seemed to have support from the majority at the school, although it prompted outside opposition, including Time magazine’s call for Hesburgh’s resignation. Students tested the rule only once in 1969, and it led to ten suspensions but no expulsions.

Battling for Balance

A bigger potential problem was the support for the rule expressed by President Nixon. Father Ted was highly visible, serving as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent, bipartisan unit of the federal government.

According to historian Father Wilson Miscamble’s 2019 book, American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh, the Nixon administration considered pushing severe legislation to fight anti-war “lawlessness”—an approach Hesburgh’s letter “had been composed to avoid.” He said he did not want to become “a folk hero among the hawks.”

It was time to clarify his position in a variety of ways. “Hesburgh deftly tacked back toward a stance more sympathetic to student concerns,” Miscamble writes. He established a popular program to teach the subject of nonviolence. He loosened up on lifestyle restrictions, granting more “visitation” rights for women in all-male dorms.

Notre Dame enjoyed a semblance of peace, compared to ongoing demonstrations around the country, through the early months of 1970.

Then, in late April, Nixon directed the invasion of Cambodia, and demonstrations resumed in South Bend. Activists disrupted a meeting of the university trustees, and further plans for violence were rumored, Miscamble reports.

Once again, Father Ted stepped forward promptly, but with a different tone. He had already called for the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam, and on May 4 he spoke to a large student-sponsored rally. He offered another lengthy statement of broad vision.

This successor to the “fifteen minute rule” addressed the whole community and the nation, including its leaders. The name given to this proactive policy statement was the “Hesburgh Declaration.”

He bemoaned Nixon’s decision “to take yet another step into the quicksand.” While recognizing the president’s “sincerity and courage” as guided by his own lights, Father Ted rebutted, “Let me tell you why I do not agree.”

The speech went on to propose reasoning for the angry youths to embrace, just as he had explained his own motivations in the 1969 letter on discipline. In the “Hesburgh Declaration” text available through Notre Dame’s university archives, he urged a rejection of violence in the homeland, again sounding like an academic and a priest.

“I must tell you that, if the world is to be better than it presently is, you must prepare yourselves—intellectually, morally and spiritually, to help make it better,” he told the throng. “Striking classes, as some universities are doing, in the sense of cutting off your own education, is the worst thing you could do at this time, since your education and your growth in competence are what the world needs most, if the leadership of the future is going to be better than the leadership of the past and present.”

Summoning the Best in Students

He urged a heightened commitment to “whatever creative initiative that peace requires of us right now,” and he went on to posit common cause: “If you want to put this conviction into words, may I suggest the following statement that I would be proud to sign with you and transmit to the President.”

His six-point blueprint included: designating a definite date for U.S. withdrawal from the war; repatriation of all American prisoners of war; rebuilding a “new and hopeful society” in all of Indochina; allowing those nations self-determination in their paths forward; redirecting U.S. priorities away from war and toward national unity, with justice and “equality of opportunity”; and pledging “our persons, our talents, our honor, and our futures to help work for a better America and better world….”

Response to his speech was soon interrupted by tragic news.  The Ohio National Guard had shot and killed four students at Kent State University. On May 6, more than 5,000 Fighting Irish marched into town to protest those slayings and the war, as Miscamble’s book reports.

On May 7, Father Ted celebrated Mass for the Catholic feast day of the Ascension with a packed assembly in the university’s chapel. He eulogized the Kent State victims and pleaded that “ballots replace bullets” for American youth. (The voting age was 21 until the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution in 1971.)

Miscamble said of the crucial week in May, “Hesburgh’s action helped keep these days of protest from taking a violent turn.” Through the series of events and a return to regular classes the following week, the mood trended toward peaceful, purposeful effort.

There was still much healing to be done, but students took numerous copies of the Hesburgh Declaration and distributed them as petitions, ultimately garnering 23,000 signatures from the South Bend area, according to the book by Schmuhl. Hesburgh sent them to Nixon.

Idealists saw a path of action, as well as a responsibility to make it noble and constructive. The turmoil remained, but there was a chance to find common ground with many Americans, including Father Ted, who later told Schmuhl of his pride in the campus’s “instinctive moral approach.”

This concludes our browse through Notre Dame’s Vietnam-era experience. Does it offer some helpful context for understanding the mess in our present moment?

Seeing the Good, Bad, and Ugly

The New York Times reported on April 28 that more than 800 people had been arrested around the country.

“Amid a dizzying array of standoffs involving pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments at colleges, schools that cracked down on protesters over the weekend [April 27-28] have given varying justifications for their actions, while others sent mixed signals with their inaction,” wrote Patricia Mazzei.

She said colleges that took action have cited “property damage, outside provocateurs, antisemitic expressions or just failures to heed warnings,” she said.

The reasons did not seem to include Hesburghian appeals to the respect for learning, peaceful persuasion, and long-term aspirations.

In fairness to the university administrations, they were facing situations different from Notre Dame circa 1969—activities based on proclamations of outright hatred, actual fear among classmates, and “oppressor vs. oppressed” perspectives tied to global politics and cultural polarization. Any opportunity for a pre-emptive “fifteen-minute rule” urging “meditation” on personal principles had long since disappeared, if it existed at all.

But the Times, also on April 28, published a commentary by columnist David French, Colleges Have Gone Off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out,” which did contain echoes of Father Ted.

In a previous legal career that included defending many college demonstrators, French wrote, “I’ve learned that the issue of campus protest is remarkably complex and that campus culture is at least as important as law and policy in setting the boundaries of debate.”

He pointed to “profound confusion” at today’s colleges about distinctions between free speech, civil disobedience, and lawlessness, and also about schools’ “fundamental academic mission.”

Administrators, he said, should enforce “content-neutral legal rules that enable a diverse community to share the same space and enjoy equal rights” while protecting “access to educational opportunities” for all.

French cited three pieces of wisdom from Hesburgh’s own times.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1965 those exercising civil disobedience must do it “lovingly” and “civilly” and “with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

Legal scholar Harry Kalven Jr. set forth the “Kalven Principles” for justice at the University of Chicago in 1967. A university is a “home” for critics, but is “not itself the critic.”

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 1957 decision, “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study, and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.”

French concluded by saying universities now should “declare unequivocally that they will protect free speech, respect peaceful civil disobedience, and uphold the rule of law by protecting the campus community from violence and chaos.”

Even if ideas can be hurtful, even if some administrators think their neutrality means complicity with injustice, French said colleges must protect everyone’s “ability to peacefully live and learn in a community of scholars.”

Our pursuit of clearer context amid the collegiate maelstrom can benefit from these points, regardless of any nostalgia for the simpler (?) times of the 20^th century or for the days when priests could run schools with a touch of the disciplinarian.

About People and Purpose

The shaping of our policies and mind frames in these relatively undisciplined times ideally will include a view of education centered on persons and shared purposes, not obscured by faculty advocacy, trustee politics, intellectual theories, and funders’ strategic donations.

In the spirit of Hesburgh, professors and administrators should play a role as “public intellectuals” who formulate and propose positive trajectories in philosophy, policy, and practice. They should be among those starting wide conversations with well-reasoned ideas. Their vocation is education.

And they have the privilege of educating young adults at perhaps the most idealistic times in their lives. Undergraduates are thirsting for justice even as their generation endures disenchantment and deconstruction.

They must have a sense of responsibility not only to their course work, but to the higher reasons for their studies. Colleges shouldn’t dismiss them into the hands of invasive species of coordinated, manipulative show-runners.

College communities offer growth in moral principles, plus the preparation to keep informing and exercising them throughout life—partly for students themselves, partly for their country and world, and partly for their God.

An immersion in history is vital. With that gift, participants in today’s turbulence might be thinking deeper and broader thoughts, dealing better with complexity, and asking smarter questions of more people.

Any undercurrents of animus, or performing “oppressor vs. oppressed” scripts against classmates and others, are suicidal for university communities.  Hesburgh didn’t have to deal with many truly hateful people. Having had visceral experiences of wars, all generations recognized hate’s consequences. Most shared a basic respect for law and order.

Again, in fairness to today’s college leaders, they are dealing with levels of malice and strategic lawlessness which Notre Dame did not see. Actions, demands, procedures, and counter-arguments among zealous or self-protective stakeholders, including intellectuals, funders, lawyers, PR and DEI staffs, political influencers, and others create serious constraints for presidents.

They can’t act quickly when needed, speak spontaneously with their communities whenever possible, or find time to prepare detailed, panoramic insights when broader conversations can begin.

That is a big takeaway from our visit with Hesburgh: He was a great communicator at a time when scholars (and priests) could inspire avid pilgrims of peace.

He had the time to “read the room” and the proactive inclination to cultivate constructive bonds of accountability. Unburdened by a big academic bureaucracy or a post-truth culture, he could trust his gut, even though he was suffering much heartburn.

Hesburgh told Robert Schmuhl in 1989 that his management of the student-revolution days was “a monumental case of improvisation.” Today, that is a luxury many of us neither have nor seek. It requires years of disciplined education and formation before we can truly liberate ourselves.

Right now, our overall impression of the unrest is one of spontaneous combustion. Thanks largely to universities, Americans have a lot we can draw upon to pursue what endures. Notre Dame’s “Fighting Irish” remind us to seek wisdom in governing our fights, causes, and instincts.

Image from Bing’s “Designer” program, using AI. Note that two links to Father Hesburgh’s biography above take you to the Hesburgh.nd.edu website, for which Bill Schmitt was on the initial content-design team while working at ND.

Our Magical Mystery Tour–Now Departing from Reality

Also check out the Magis Center blog, which this week posted a previous, related commentary by Bill Schmitt: “We Seek Authenticity, But Be Careful Defining What’s Real.” The Magis Center is directed by Father Robert Spitzer, SJ.

Breathe in the magical realism that is all around us. Are you sniffing the literary genre we identify with 20^th century Latin American authors? Or the latest iterations of the style now morphing in multiple media? Or the phenomenon we witness in non-fiction, indeed in the way we think? Yes!

This perspective on life will gain attention in all three cultural currents this year and beyond. We would be wise to remember what we thought we knew about it so we’re prepared to catch its drift .

Lots of students have been taught that magical realism referred to a somewhat esoteric style which emerged around the 1930s, mainly in art and literature and notably (but not exclusively) in Latin American novels. Brittanica.com says it is “characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastical or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction.”

The encyclopedia adds that this hybrid approach has cultural resonance. Scholars see its roots in “post-colonial writing” because it strives to “make sense of at least two separate realities—the reality of the conquerors as well as that of the conquered.”

Mysteries that Span Decades

Various writers worldwide have injected imaginative features—telepathic characters, even a moon that speaks—into otherwise realistic storytelling. Their goal: to emphasize and illuminate aspects of truth whose complex authenticity defies a merely prosaic presentation.

One esteemed exemplar, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, featured an otherworldly element in his 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, as an article by Master Class points out: A Colombian family’s patriarch dreams about a city of mirrors, and that city takes shape physically, and mysteriously, across generations.

Here come our first connections to the present day. The Netflix streaming service has released a video preview of a 16-episode serialization of One Hundred Years of Solitude, coming soon to a screen near you.

Magical realism is not new to small or large screens. Observers have said TV series such as Stranger Things and Westworld utilized the style. They have spotted it in films like Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Midnight in Paris (2011), as well as Disney’s Encanto (2021).

A headline in The New York Times calls the new movie Omen a “trippy” drama which “explores Congolese society through magical realism.” It “operates on another—frenzied, magical, gender-bending—wavelength,” the Times reviewer said on April 11.

Several months ago, the newspaper reviewed a noteworthy movie produced by Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki, now 82. The Boy and the Heron uses magical realism to tap into experiences from Miyazaki’s own life.

This animated film has been thriving in theaters and on platforms, but the Times reviewer advises audiences to watch it as an “exercise in contemplation” because it’s so enigmatic. “Magical fires rage, souls of the preborn and the dead mingle, and the fate of the universe is determined in ways unclear.”

It appears the enigmas of these latter films, and of other entertainment served up nowadays, aim to take us where no magical realist has gone before. We can choose to come away from the intense images and ideas either as disoriented wanderers or as mystery-lovers on pilgrimage.

We should assess our trippy 21^st century culture expecting this kind of realism to grow. Note that an essay in Writer’s Digest in 2016 advised authors to embrace the style broadly: “It’s as much a worldview as a category.”

Perhaps the worldview of magic, which is distinct from science fiction, surrealism, fable, and fantasy, has found a new home for its enigmas—in non-fiction and our daily search for truth.

When the American public must distinguish between authentic and “fake” news, information and disinformation, reasoning and conspiracy theories, our thinking seems vulnerable to incursions from the unreal.

After all, the Oxford Dictionary in 2016 declared its word of the year to be “post-truth.”

Verisimilitude? Not Very

Katherine Maher, the suddenly controversial CEO of National Public Radio who previously headed Wikipedia, assured a 2022 TED Talk audience that “truth exists.” But, if you take into account a world of different beliefs, she said, our “collective decision-making” needs the “tremendously forgiving” notion of “minimum viable truth.”

This means “getting it right enough, enough of the time, to be useful enough to enough people,” according to Maher. Using patience and humility, fact-gatherers should work incrementally to state what we know now and then keep sorting through the “many different truths” in people’s minds; our “messy humanity” will accept more truth as time goes by.

Because Wikipedia is based on “collaboration” by a volunteer editor “community,” Maher suggested, the online encyclopedia is now one of the few places where “disagreements actually make you more agreeable.” Sadly, agreeability has proven more elusive at NPR.

Meanwhile, early this year, artificial intelligence became disagreeable with its own version of magical realism. Google’s Gemini image-generator concocted a world peopled by a female pope and Black founding fathers. Users rejected this as inclusivity promoting exclusivism, a tweak of reality creating the unreal.

How do people think about reality today? Obviously, each individual will be different. Politicians of either party might act like fabulists in their resumes and speeches. Other influential figures in the public square will be more rigorous and common-sensical.

Of course, it’s natural for us to Photoshop our slices of reality to make ourselves look better. But we also insert our unseen world, perhaps recalling a moment of spiritual epiphany, a personal passion that motivates us, or an observation about people that blends our knowledge and kindness.

Even thoroughly secular people, grounded in empiricism, will try to impress audiences with the values and experiences of their interior selves. Our modern culture favors role models in whom we see deeper dimensions of empathy, belief, and principle.

Judeo-Christian tradition and other religions have been telling stories with these dimensions for millennia. Catholic hagiography, finding inspiration in the stories of canonized saints, integrates mundane biography with the recognition that some people, through sacrifice and the sacred, can live life to the fullest.

The Church, which has developed a healthy skepticism toward miraculous claims, still asserts that an expansive view of reality offers a sense of purpose and joy. Persons cultivate this perspective not instantaneously as solo actors, but gradually in relationships with each other and their God.

Skeptics will use the term “magical realism” to dismiss these statements of faith. But religion shouldn’t be dismissed as magic. It continues to provide communities of benevolence where big-picture questioning is encouraged, even in these times of atomization.

So, we see magical realism taking opposite directions these days—as a blessing upon those who seek more meaningful truth, or as an insult from those who want “truth” without the baggage of higher perspectives.

Those in the latter segment will either limit different worldviews to portion-controlled bites or demand immediate definitions to ensure cultural progress.

Neither of these choices respects the noble roots of the magical realists. They birthed the genre to expose reality on multiple levels without imposing it. They felt a duty to preserve and honor their ancestral cultures’ essence in the midst of oppression and oversimplification.

Their imaginative, non-conformist “truth bombs,” vividly amending regime-sanctioned, minimalist doctrines, have helped countless readers see far more than the “minimum viable truth.”

These days, our battle for fuller truth confronts a new, yet familiar, cultural opponent—the “oppressor vs. oppressed” paradigm. It is more a handy tool of interpretation than a conquering force in our lives. But it allows a new “non-fiction” in America’s post-modern public square.

The new stories (morphed into narratives) emerge not from the grass roots, but from strategic communications. Too many leaders—and those amplifying them—will mix just enough reality and ideology to generate engagement through polarization. That’s precisely what “OG” magical realists resisted.

The Case of the Missing Opportunity

Let’s work toward a final judgment about our reality-challenged culture. Our first witness is NewsNation journalist Chris Cuomo.

America’s current political landscape is “not about truth,” he commented during his April 19 program. “It’s about preference, advantage, and animus…. All that matters is the other side being worse, not you being better.” 

In performative politics between Democrats and Republicans, one’s opponents are “not just wrong, they’re bad.”

But that’s not a dead end, says Cuomo. In all areas of life outside politics—“where you work, your partnering, your parenting, your parents, your kids, your friends, your passions”—the norms do center on “truth in every manifestation,” he says,  These include tough love, accountability, right and wrong, charity, loyalty, long-term thinking, and “trying to correct and interconnect and think team.”

Cuomo calls upon freethinkers to rage against the “binary” political traps in the media. “Start looking at politics through the lens of the rest of your life. Don’t accept that it’s a different reality and different rules.”

There is great wisdom here, pointing toward magical-realism themes which celebrate family and faith, community and cultural authenticity, to refresh the political battleground .

But he fails to acknowledge that our grass-roots advantage has been whittled down. The aspects of life which he rightly salutes are in the process of being politicized themselves. More and more, it seems politics is the only (zero-sum) game in town, played with fear, confusion, and hostility.

We can blame various causes—the two-party structure extending into state and local governments, big-money lobbying and activism, our lopsided class structure, the education establishment, global economics, our lack of strong relationships, and a power-and-greed culture whose intellectuals have replaced God with the “oppressed vs. oppressor” ethic.

There still may be hope. Drawing upon Americans’ spirituality, love for country, freedom, and fairness, and the same cultural strengths that made early magical realists declare the whole truth, we may have a chance to heal our secular politics over time.

However, we can’t assume that masses of people will offer us systemic assistance. Others’ promises to incrementally build a broader common ground of beliefs and experiences are unlikely to bear fruit. Not if Wikipedia, NPR, social media, artificial intelligence, and world leaders are any indicators of collaboration.

The job of refreshing our link-up with reality—its practical and moral mandates, its meaning and hope—is ultimately up to individuals. We can’t use magic tricks, but imaginations attuned to the fantastical and elevated aspects of life will help us to paint a panorama together.

Therefore, in this inquiry to locate magical realism within the 21^st century, we call a second, surprise witness. Unfortunately, he is deceased, but surely our sensibilities can incorporate his memory and message.

The imaginative comic Robin Williams famously mused, “Reality: What a concept!” He may be the very personification of benign magical realism—hardly a clone of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, but a genuine representative of a culture trying to make sense of itself.

His worldview perceived life’s abundant connections, and he expressed them spontaneously, with fervor, in his improv routines and screen roles. He was a maximalist, embracing hefty doses of truth and insight, acclaim and pain. A rare disease ate away at his body and mind, and he took his own life in 2014.

We can draft him as a secular “saint” whose deeper dimensions still offer the encouragement we need. Like Williams, our society teeters between brilliance and suicide. We crave the fullness of truth, but we’re afraid of it.

He made audiences feel happier, and smarter. He exposed us to lots of reality and absurdity, but we also had fun in the otherworldly playground of his brain.

As our assessment of worldviews in the 21^st century concludes, what’s our takeaway from the man who said na-nu na-nu?

In this trippy century, magical realism can play a role in making both non-fiction and fiction richer—so long as it keeps them separate, and so long as we keep control of our inner dreamers.

We must grow in respect for both the prosaic and the profound in our personal stories. Once we balance them properly, we can share them in relationships, helping everyone see and honor truth on a grander scale.

If we surrender reality to artificiality, either tyrannical or trivial, we’re in the conundrum described by Robin Williams as Aladdin’s Genie in the bottle: “Phenomenal cosmic powers … in an itty-bitty living space.”

Images from ClipSafari.com, a collection Creative Commons designs.

After Easter, Shedding Lenten Lessons is a Crying Shame

It was timely to learn about so-called “cry spas” during Lent. That period of sadness and penitence ushered in Easter, when our tears are “turned into dancing,” as we’re told in song. The tricky part starts now, as our lives combine both seasons’ lessons, with no spa escapes guaranteed. Another song cautions us: “It won’t be long before it’s crying time.”

In mid-March, the New York Post reported on Anthony Villotti, who has started opening pop-up locations where customers pay $20 to book a private room for 30 minutes of crying time before rushing back to the office.

Luxury Lamentations?

“I was surprisingly happy to be sad for the moment,” wrote Asia Grace regarding her visit to a recent setting for the “Sob Parlour” experience. Her Post commentary noted that Villotti, 31, had come up with the idea of providing “swank and secure” settings where New York City denizens  could pursue moments of respite and healing.

Each of the private rooms, typically set up in such venues as community centers or art galleries, provides facial tissues, a journal for jotting notes, optional playlists of music, and a few other amenities while a person summons up evocative thoughts.

Lent brings us emotive Gospel texts of Jesus’ passion and death, rites for the Stations of the Cross, and opportunities for adoration and confession, when many Catholics and other Christians shed tears together.

Easter arrives, and we’re ready to shout “alleluia” about the happiness and hope found in the Resurrection.

But we must admit that the spigot of tears can be reopened at any time. Our culture and serious challenges facing our world have made mental or spiritual distress more common. Indeed, we witness pain and grief in people all around us, including the poor and homeless. Those with the eyes to see also sense melancholy in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

We can be deeply moved by various feelings, including personal sorrow, empathetic sadness, depression, frustration, remorse, anger, and bliss.

Still, the act of crying may be difficult or awkward—for women being judged in the workplace or other social situations, as well as for self-conscious men who try to “tough it out.”

Reservations on the Red-Eye

“Girls and boys cry about the same amount of times until they reach the age of 12,” says Psychology Today, citing researcher William Frey. “By the time they are 18, women cry on average four times more than men. That is about 5.3 cries a month, compared to a man’s 1.4 times per month.”

Overall, 85 percent of women and 73 percent of men say they feel better after crying. One key reason is the removal of toxins from the body, according to Frey. But who knows the whole explanation? Another Psychology Today article acknowledges that “why humans cry is still a mystery in many ways.”

Perhaps the most telling takeaway from the magazine’s team-coverage of teardrops is this analysis from neuropsychologist Jodi DeLuca: “When you cry, it’s a signal you need to address something.”

Pope Francis would agree with that sense of urgency. One of his recently published books, an English translation of A Good Life: 15 Essential Habits for Living with Hope and Joy, includes this section headline, “Those Who Do Not Know How to Cry Are Not Good Christians.”

It is said that Francis embraces a “theology of tears.” With loving intent, he wants to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

In encountering the anguish of others, “temporal compassion is completely useless!” the Pontiff says in his book. “That kind of compassion has us, at the very most, reaching into our pockets and extracting a few coins. If Christ had had that kind of compassion, He would have cured three or four people and then returned to the Heavenly Father.

“It was when Christ wept—and how He wept!—that He understood our troubles. The world today needs us to weep! The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, but those of us who lead a relatively comfortable life do not know how to weep. These are truths we can see only with eyes that have been cleansed by tears.”

Francis advises that we weep when we see a hungry or mistreated child. “This is your challenge,” he says. “Be brave—do not be afraid to cry!”

Cry of the People

Spiritually speaking, we can ease our fear of tears by seeing that Easter helps the somberness of Lent make sense. We receive God’s great promise of redemption, and we can pass that gift around like a candle. The light that pierces the darkness of evil is a gift of courage—and also a gift of tears because we still see the world’s many shadows.

Our capacity to mourn can “open one’s eyes to life and to the sacred and irreplaceable value of each person,” the Pope said in a 2020 General Audience as Lent approached. “Understanding sin is a gift from God…. It is a gift we must ask for.” He quoted St. Ephrem: “A face washed with tears is unspeakably beautiful.”

Mystical writers in the Catholic tradition have recognized that the Holy Spirit sometimes imparts a “gift of tears” to a person as part of a deep experience of God’s encouragement and comfort, not the result of any earthly emotion.

A blessing attributed to followers of St. Francis of Assisi, who was known to cry copiously, suggests these awakenings shouldn’t be hidden under a pillow:

“May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.”

A compelling Jewish Learning Institute video features an elderly rabbi who experienced the horror of the Holocaust telling a story about the power of tears—and how it can spread.

When World War II had ended and an orphanage-school opened in France to care for children and young adults who had lost their parents in the concentration camps, a group of benefactors visited the site one day in 1945 to give welcoming speeches.

The orphans in the audience, which included this rabbi telling the story, refused to applaud or even look up at those sponsors, whom they considered pretentious strangers. The children stoically had taught themselves, after seeing their families killed, never to show any emotion, largely in resentment toward their captors.

The last speaker to rise, Mr. Liebovich, was introduced as an Auschwitz survivor who likewise had lost his family. “Spontaneously, with no word, 220 heads were lifted up with sympathy and solidarity,” the rabbi recounted. Liebovich was struck by the children’s sudden attention and the first sight of their faces.

Holding the microphone with trembling hands, he said only, “Dear children,” and began to cry profusely. The rabbi recalled, “Every one of us on the grass felt that his cheeks became wet with our own tears…. We all started to cry loudly—free, loud, maybe five minutes—a valley of tears was there.”

One of the oldest orphans then rose to speak and thanked the assembly for one gift—“the ability to cry.” The rabbi continued relaying this 18-year-old’s remarks: Ever since they killed my father before my eyes, he said, I haven’t shed a tear, much less “smiling or laughing.” After my liberation to the orphanage, I haven’t slept one night, asking myself, “What will be my future? If I cannot cry, cannot smile, I have no emotions … I have a stone in my chest.

“So who will marry me, bless me with a family, if I am not a human being? Five minutes ago, when Mr. Liebovich came, I felt for the first time that I am a mensch. And I know the secret: The one who can cry today has a chance to smile tomorrow.”

Public Displays of Affliction

That story has a fresh impact in 2024. So many of us lack a healthy relationship with ourselves and our feelings, as well as other people, and God. Our culture of hardened hearts, “toughing it out” with mostly negative emotions, begs for a readiness to shed tears. Those droplets are subjective, but they are links to objective truths.  

One might say, especially after instruction by two liturgical seasons, that we can’t address society’s rampant assaults on reality and reasoning—our performative ethics, our narcissistic indifference, our sloppy logic, our divisive groupthink—without hearts that have learned to care.

The baring and sharing of right-minded emotions is a healing point of connection for all the meaningful relationships we seek.

Think about those pop-up Sob Parlours. Anthony Villotti has a good concept—allowing folks to find safe spaces for deep reflection in the middle of the day. Asia Grace, who was “surprisingly happy to be sad for the moment,” echoes the New York City rhythm that keeps step with urban swagger while also demanding reality checks for oneself and others.

It’s reported that Villotti plans to make the pop-ups a monthly routine, and they may thrive.

Perhaps we should worry about this popularity as an alarm signaling Americans’ inner disrepair. Perhaps we should feel cognitive dissonance about relatively posh rooms as settings for the teardrops we normally associate with sacrifice.

Those issues won’t paralyze us if we consider that, in important ways, our tears have been turned into dancing. Spiritual shalom and earthly sadness, the upbeats and downbeats of everyday life, can coexist. Of course, these combinations, which reflect solidarity and resilience in the populace, will require more sacrifice within a secularized, scatter-brained culture.

Here’s a bigger concern—people desiring to do their crying solo. The preference for privacy is understandable, but the “gift of tears” can’t bear the best fruit when it occurs in a private room. Ideally, we build relationships by using our voices (and our eyes) to peaceably speak truth with others.

Pope Francis is promoting public displays of affliction. For some people, the best Parlour might be a large lounge, or a living room, or shelter, where we can comfort each other. EWTN media foundress Mother Angelica might have suggested group-watching the television news, so we can discuss the tragedy of this event or the injustice of that situation, followed by prayer and action.

We also need to ponder what happens when we leave the “cry spa.” Are we in our own comfortable world, feeling better in a selfish way? When we pass a homeless drug addict on the sidewalk, have we found an inner restfulness that allows us to stop, interact, and offer accompaniment?

We should remember that people on the margins, like the concentration camp orphans, may be wrongly deadening their emotions, yearning for an ear to hear them and a tear to free them. Our Judeo-Christian culture must maximize human beings’ freedom to seek fulfillment together. The Bible says the poor will always be with us, and that means we must pursue solidarity continuously; we must be attentive when souls fall silent.

The courage to offer life-giving emotions to others, as Pope Francis reminds us, must come from a relationship with God—with the Christ who gives consolation through faith and reason although his heart has been broken. This is the model for all authentic relationships which strive to keep balancing and elevating our bonds.

Lent has ended, helping us appreciate the mandate to review and renew our own hearts. Easter Sunday has ended (although the season continues), buoying us with a redeemer whose way, truth, and life can be passed along confidently, with sense and sensibility.

Now, throughout the year, whenever “crying time” is coming, whether we’re in a comfortable spa, at home with the family, or on the streets encountering one of God’s children in pain, the galvanizing insight of Jodi DeLuca sharpens our blurred vision: “We need to address something.”

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs

Timing is the Key to Comity: No Joke!

This is a preview of the commentary to be published tomorrow in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com. Be sure to check out some of the links below to view videos.

Comedians have a key area of expertise: timing. We enjoy entertainers’ mastery of this crucial aptitude, so worthy of preservation, for a couple of reasons.

First, comics get us to laugh by surprising us with an insight that illuminates something in the here and now. They hop aboard the train of thought we’re currently riding, and then they derail it.

Second, today’s jesters are avid students of the present itself. They draw their material, and construct their relationship with an audience, from what’s happening now in our heads, perhaps details in the news. They make good use of the past and the future insofar as those time frames inform our understanding of this moment.

Top comedians through the decades have bonded with us by elevating our spirits while pointing out our screwball nature and peculiarities in the truth around us. It’s no wonder that humorists keep popping up on current media panels of wisdom and punditry.

Back in the day, Don Rickles insulted his audiences outright, but he was good-natured, and most of his targets felt invited into the game, not victimized. He may not be our favorite in 2024. Nevertheless, we laughed at his jokes, and everyone rose together above the absurdity of division.

Gadflies remind us that our times are not exclusively in our hands, as Psalm 31:15 affirms. We ride our trains of thought with a mix of spontaneity, humility, and readiness for anything, having learned our earthly timelines are replete with uncertain possibilities. Somehow, we’ll get to our destination. Life is like Amtrak.

To the degree that typical comics pelt and puncture reality but still embrace and preserve it, one might say their art is conservative. If they lean toward progressivism, the art may be more difficult.

Consider late-night host Steven Colbert. Wherever the line between his real self and his TV persona has drifted during his career, he and other celebrities now use wit as a tool, and it seems more forced. Jokes “pile on” to make a point, adding more word twists to an already established narrative. The reality they portray holds less surprise.

Partly because humor now is less free-wheeling and fun, it’s possible that America, or at least our popular culture, is losing its sense of timing. We bring our tool belts to the party instead of checking them at the door.

Progressive politics seem particularly disdainful of the present and the past, concentrating on the “cutting edge” of our timelines. There is hope in the future, our opinion-leaders say, but only if we follow certain kinds of scripts.

The future doesn’t exist yet, so our approach to it is filled with abstractions. Our discussions about it must be accompanied by an externally imposed glossary. Comics, commentators, and audiences who lean far left (or toward either endpoint of our political spectrum) prefer terms and motifs they have pre-digested, not the basic facts which flow in on internet tides.

They deem alternative scripts mistaken, requiring revision, even though these stories may contain pungent insights, fuller celebrations of reality, and plain enjoyment. Reducing the number of ideas we can safely react to risks closing not only comedy clubs, but our minds. We find we’re not “in the moment.”

These trends are not new. Back in 2015, Jerry Seinfeld said he had stopped performing on college campuses because political correctness was quashing laughter.

Students “just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” the comic told Entertainment Weekly. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Senses of humor which have morphed from self-effacing to self-identifying can stifle the imaginations of audiences and presenters alike. Tom Lehrer, a mid-20^th-century favorite of college students who has been called “the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” told The Los Angeles Times in 2000 why he retreated from the spotlight after the 1960s.

“I stopped having funny ideas, that’s all,” said the composer of “The Vatican Rag,” “National Brotherhood Week,” and “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” He mused, “What caused that, I have no idea. Times have changed? Senility replaced adolescence? I don’t know.”

Modern (and post-modern) audiences want to be on the “right side of history.” But history does not write the stories of our lives, our families, or our sit-coms. Human beings construct them in a cosmic collaboration, from moment to moment.

It takes time, under conditions of creative freedom, to interpret our rapidly changing world. Without patience, grace-filled fact patterns are reduced to pre-programmed narratives.

By contrast, in a comedy club setting, observers have said the key to good timing rests in the performer’s continuous management of, and responsiveness to, the fans in attendance on any given evening.

Greg Dean, who taught stand-up for four decades, talked about this in a 2017 New York magazine article. “A successful comedian reads what each audience needs and delivers at the right time for that night’s crowd,” the author explained. As Dean put it, “The timing is in the relationship. It’s in the feedback loop.”

Aspiring truth-tellers behind the microphone—comics, expert speakers, advocates, etc.—may be canaries in the coal mine who can spot when Americans’ timing goes awry. They see up-close when audience members try to reschedule (or cancel!) our train trips. Attendees may lack interest and attentiveness, familiar encounters with diverse people and situations, or a comfort level with comments which violate their abstractions.

At worst, audience members will try to fit every “slice of life” tale from our shared stories into an oppressed-vs.-oppressor matrix or a pocket guide to some ideological future. This sort of augmented reality is valuable sometimes, but artificial intelligence cannot “read the room.”

All event participants owe it to themselves and to the presenter to make a special effort for the sharing of experiences. This is not difficult. They merely need to mix three modes: relaxing, receiving, and remembering.

This is true of conservatives and progressives alike. The feedback loop is everyone’s responsibility. Of course, the management of the story-telling process must be handled well by audience-conscious presenters, whether they’re telling jokes, giving a lecture, making a political speech, or offering their opinions in the local or global public square.

Time and timing go together. Perhaps the major revelation from the canaries is that our “common ground” is shrinking. Participants simply may not be bringing the memories and learning, the values and virtues, which can place a whole group into a zone of dialogue and discovery.

Nowadays, given America’s deficits in history and civics education, as well as changed sensibilities and the involvement of at least six age-cohorts, or “generations,” in our population, we can grasp why citizens (and non-citizens) might see each other as strangers in a strange land.

Recall the controversy that erupted last month when Politico journalist Heidi Pryzybyla cautioned on MSNBC that the idea of our rights coming from God, rather than human institutions, signals danger from a growing force she identified as “Christian nationalism.”

She surely knew unalienable rights from our Creator were a central theme in the country’s founding, but she may have downplayed the idea as an abstraction being manipulated, not a transcendent principle with personal significance held dear by numerous audience members.

We need to spend more time being “real” with each other. If we don’t, our respective bubbles of nostalgia or utopianism, floating in asynchronous orbits, will never allow for the in-sync timing—the respectful responsiveness—Americans have shown in the past.

Think of the unity we developed during World War II and the 9-11 terror aftermath. Or the spontaneous passionate outpourings—of pride after the first moon landing, of grief after school-shooting horrors. Or the whopping TV viewership of MASH and Friends finales, not to mention this year’s Super Bowl.

Nowadays, many apolitical situations look like cultural time-warps where different dimensions clash. But instead, they could become teachable moments of comity if better understood with help from historians, theologians, philosophers, other scholars, and, yes, good listeners.

For example, emotions now play an outsized role in public affairs and popular culture. This is bad timing.

We need more people behind microphones reminding us that the complex, urgent nature of today’s most crucial issues requires disciplined cooperation exercising knowledge and wisdom—rather than unrestrained emotions.

Even braver presenters should “get real” about the mental health and social-media crises which have planted atomization, narcissism, and malevolent overreaction which make gatherings more volatile.

Despite regular announcements of big spending and futuristic visions, we lack coordinated, coherent responses to our growing reliance upon the power grid, varied energy resources, cybersecurity and AI, uninterrupted shipments of necessities from overseas, and a sustainable, balanced economy. This is bad timing.

We need to educate and motivate more people to take responsible roles in a wide range of purposeful vocations that answer these challenges. Leaders in our families, communities, houses of worship, and media should call out “quiet quitting” and our dismissal of duties to each other and the common good.

The phenomenon which Dietrich von Hildebrand called the “cult of cognition,” profusely and egotistically generating abstract ideas as solutions to concrete problems, must be replaced by a proactive simplicity—a drive to achieve the priorities of natural law, human dignity, societal stability, and charity. In Transformation in Christ, he cites a metaphysical dictum: “Simplicity is the seal of verity.” Yea, verily, it would set our timing aright.

Why are we injecting politics into all aspects of our lives at a time when our politicians amply demonstrate that games of power and persuasion create alternative, post-truth realities, not actual solutions?

Why are we cultivating additional reliance on government spending at a time when the financial, functional, and moral pillars supporting our founders’ vision of governance are suffering reputational decline?

Why are we replacing religion with science when the Covid pandemic and technological advances show us that science can just as easily be misused or misinterpreted? Science, writ large, is a process for generating ever-better questions, but it would flop on any game show that asks, “Is that your final answer?”

Perhaps we can imagine overly philosophical comics making points like these at the local comedy café. They might not be funny, but they could help find peace in the foibles which inevitably arise on our cognitive Amtrak.

Ultimately, as comic-coach Greg Dean suggests, these matters of timing must be addressed by free-thinking, free-wheeling audiences who ease on down the road, enjoying the feedback loops and sharp curves.

Progressive or conservative, we all should convene for such learning, bringing offerings of interpersonal experience and hard-won humility.

Our beliefs will be crucial to the alchemy of renewal and rebound which takes place when we laugh at our incoherence. The most valuable beliefs will not “cut to the chase” in search of a perfected future. Rather, a vision of solidarity will reward whole lifetimes of patient pilgrimage, stirring trust in a Creator who inspires our steps—and permits missteps.

Popular evangelical pastor T.D. Jakes has urged us to preserve the give-and-take aptitude our best messengers model for us. “Timing is so important!” he says.

“If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing,” according to Jakes. “It’s the same in the Spirit. People who don’t understand God’s timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don’t get His rhythm,  and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams.”

Comedy club scene from Bing AI, using “Designer” image creator.

It’s Time to Baptize the ‘Gig Economy’

The Gallup organization advised the corporate world last month to take steps to support employees—especially younger generations—who increasingly report “disengagement” from the workplace.

That’s not news to leaders in America’s religious groups, who have bemoaned the rise of the “nones”—those who no longer affiliate with, or participate in, any organized faith.

Any comparisons between trends in the secular and spiritual realms should stir our skepticism, but it couldn’t hurt to draw a Venn diagram to find intersections. Experience tells us there’s a large common ground, dappled with trends ranging from societal atomization and isolated melancholy to “quiet quitting” and the “gig economy.”

One Type of “Wisdom of the Ages”

We can sum up Gallup’s announcement this way: Employers are finding that workers in their 20s and 30s are more emotionally detached from their organizations. In lieu of a sense of development and purpose, this “gig-worker mindset,” especially noteworthy since the pandemic, causes eyes to wander in search of new job opportunities and greater flexibility.

Members of the baby boomer generation (born 1946-1964) actually became more engaged in their jobs in 2023 compared with early 2020, before Covid struck. But Generation X, already deemed a peer group of individualists (born 1965-1979), slipped deeper into low engagement numbers.

Among millennials (born 1980-1996), “engagement has plummeted,” especially in the older half of that group, according to Gallup. And Generation Z (born 1997-2012) also showed declines from pre-pandemic levels.

The polling and business-advisory company drew these findings from questions related to “twelve elements of employee engagement that measure the extent to which employees have their basic needs at work met, feel supported and valued, receive clear expectations and feedback, and have opportunities to learn and grow.”

The elements tallied by Gallup influence whether employees see a consequential future for themselves where they currently work.

“Across all generations,” Gallup added, “the percent of workers who know what is expected of them at work has declined by four or more points since March 2020.” The Feb. 27 news release noted employee complaints about “a widespread lack of clarity and alignment in the post-pandemic workplace.”

The company offered this advice to corporate leaders and managers:

• “Communicate a clear, compelling vision of the organization’s purpose, values, goals, and the type of culture that supports these aspirations.”
• Managers themselves are getting burned out, so help them simplify their roles. The company must provide clear goals and accountability, and all employees should be offered “a meaningful conversation” every week to discuss how their work “contributes to the bigger picture.”
• Companies must recognize workers’ need for “personalized development” and mentoring aligned to each individual’s strengths and goals. They need to build a structure of connection, collaboration, and trust, inviting everyone’s input.
• Special attention is needed when employees are on “hybrid” schedules, working both in the office and at home. People will have different mixes that work best for them, but Gallup saw real value in face-to-face encounters at the office site.

Can these lessons for the corporate “C-Suite” suggest any guidance in other realms, such as how to get students more engaged in classrooms or athletes more engaged in their teams—or the faithful more engaged in their faith? What about getting persons more engaged in personhood?

One big concern springs from a factor Gallup leaves out because of its limited audience.

“This Wasn’t in the Strategic Plan”

Engagement is essentially a relationship, imposing responsibilities not only on a company, but on its workers. They must be open to observing and utilizing their employers’ offers of connection to purpose, camaraderie, support, and growth.

Alas, social connectedness makes many people uncomfortable unless they can control it. Spontaneous, candid conversations that imply commitment to truth and growth can seem downright scary if they might challenge the safe spaces of expressive individualism.

The two-way street of relationship also carries other requirements. The employee needs a structure of values and priorities that generates important, satisfying  goals with which an employer is a good fit.

Neither party needs to be focused on a grand plan to “save the world.” But the goals should at least be benevolent and constructive toward a common good or greater good. This makes the pursuit and achievement of goals a source of spiritual energy which, when spread, can do wonders for a workplace.

If the only shared purpose is to make money—and perhaps the company is largely a get-rich-quick project ignoring communitarian trust—we can’t expect commitment from either the boss or the bossed. Both will inevitably spend their time looking for bigger salaries or show no zeal for the same salary.

Even if the job is a stellar vocation, or at least it leaves human dignity unscathed, too many jobs today lack the concreteness of colleagues and customers. The impacts and rewards of work well done, especially in cyberspace, can become abstract amid technological processes that reward productivity alone.

Numerous advertisements sell apps promising us push-button simplicity in buying a car, getting a mortgage, or making appointments with various experts. They portray an economy of anonymous persons, knee-jerk transactions, commoditized talents, and the triumph of marketing over substance.

Such an economy, where the convenience of a smartphone overrides our intuition that excellence requires relationships, is ripe for takeover by artificial intelligence.

Hiring, firing, and messaging based on metrics of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) also raise the risk of manipulating people based on superficial factors.

It may be high time for a company to recruit a Black or Hispanic team member, but in some cases new employees will feel their uniqueness isn’t valued, their path is on automatic pilot, or their reputation for quality is overshadowed. Also, managers might wonder, “Should I treat this teammate like everyone else, or differently?”

“Show Me the Manna!”

Today’s debates about higher education and expertise could yield new standards for engagement. Likewise, economic policies boosting jobs which prize hands-on craftsmanship might spark exactly the workplace fulfillment that has become elusive in this society.

We can expect certain academic courses, focused on one’s ideas and perspectives rather than creative additions to our shared reality, will generate an excitement suited only to particular kinds of organizations. Professors should spread Oliver Wendel Holmes’s guidance to “think things, not words,”

Wise, diligent students will also avoid too much attachment to manipulated words and disenchanting worldviews. These can sow fruitless seeds that are eaten by birds, starved of fertile soil, or dried up by scorched-earth conditions. (Matthew 13)

Future job-seekers must start in their classrooms and families to decide where their abilities and aspirations reside. Meanwhile, employers should work with teachers and colleges to let students sample the kinds of experiences that will connect them emotionally to important skills.

America has a shortage of graduates ready for high-tech and entrepreneurial trades partly because some young people have not been encouraged to discover their appeal. Their families and communities need to cultivate an ethos of contribution and appreciation for others’ hard work.

These observations bring us back to the Venn diagram—to its intersection of interests displaying the breadth and depth of our culture’s need for personal engagement. Gallup’s twelve tests for connectedness hold true for many organizations and areas of endeavor because they relate to caring, purposeful interactions which yield human happiness.

Let’s look briefly at the survey’s relevance to religion because the problem with disengagement in our churches is obvious and tragic. It is represented sometimes by “nones” who drop their affiliations. And sometimes by “quiet quitters” who vacate the pews, or fall short in their zeal, or dismiss chances to learn and grow. And sometimes by those who slip away to graze at the Church’s cafeteria section.

We’re Trying, But So is the World

Gallup could customize its message for each faith group. But the advisors probably would tell Catholics that the Pope, our bishops, and our priests represent the managerial class tasked with renewal.

How are they doing? God will be the judge of them and all of us.

But let’s say Pope Francis, especially with his call for synodality, is making noteworthy efforts to make young people feel the Church supports them and listens to their concerns. Alas, too many of them have added “synodality” to the list of inside-baseball terms discussed only by their pious grandparents.

Bishops aim to maintain a structure of development and purpose—places where everyone can learn and grow, and can see that the universal Church is present for us in our region. It promises to offer a life-sustaining future for us and our children, albeit one that seems pared back and less dynamic than competing influencers.

Pastors, often overworked and advanced in age, do the noble and nearly impossible job of keeping the “office” open, providing life-changing sacraments and caring conversations tailored to each person’s needs, on-demand.

They are managing the equivalent of a “hybrid workplace,” where many people prefer to remote worship (in more ways than one). Our screens and Sunday sports appear to matter more than the Lord of heaven and earth.

Like their corporate counterparts, Catholic leaders know how much people would benefit from a flesh-and-blood presence in the daily life of the church (in more ways than one). They serve as patient role models, offering what they can.

Parishioners forget how much their presence and energy would mean to their priests. As Gallup recognized, managers are easily burned out if their missionary zeal is greeted with distracted resistance.

This returns to the point which Gallup ignores: the two-way street of engagement. The Church has worked hard to sow seeds of profound appreciation for the transformative legacy of Jesus Christ. Our ministers, teachers, and libraries can let laypeople “know what is expected of them” and recall our millennia of seeking “clarity and alignment,” to quote from Gallup.

Dismissal of this legacy is the bad news, but God’s continuing presence as an omnipresent source of abundant grace and aid is the Good News.  A church’s managerial class has a resource for up-close problem-solving that the executives at a corporate headquarters could never provide.

Indeed, the shepherds and the sheep both need to remember that most of the mission is not in their hands. EWTN commentator Father Mitch Pacwa describes his advantage over the business world by quipping, “God is in charge of management; I just work in sales.”

Merging Gallup with Pew Research

In today’s culture where nobody seems to manage anything very well, the assurance that the Lord of pure wisdom, truth, and love is in charge should make our hearts leap. This isn’t a get-out-of-work-free pass, however, because it demands from everyone accountability equal to the gifts.

Congratulations to Gallup for offering insights that can assist the C-Suite. But the Church suite, which means all of us—in Catholicism and other religions with such  motivations—should be shouting out to this chaotic world, recommending a fulfilling engagement that lifts up and humbles us, together. The Latin religio means bond or connectedness.

As Galatians 3:28 says, for all who have clothed themselves with Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male or female” … and neither burnt-out manager nor disenchanted gig-worker.

This frees us from weekly discussions of DEI metrics. But we are wise to seek daily, personalized conversations and interactions with Jesus, along with his communion of brothers and sisters.

Why? For one thing, we open our arms to the Kingdom of God, where diversity, equality, and inclusion are not a checklist but a lifestyle of mercy, justice, and dignity. We give ourselves the “flexibility” to hope and pray for possibilities far beyond the freedom to drive for Uber.

In addition, our church involvement informs and inspires us, meeting the Gallup requirement that our regular encounters offer “a meaningful conversation” about how our work “contributes to the bigger picture.” That’s one big picture we’re talking about.

Catholicism replaces the piecemeal gig economy with what it calls “the economy of salvation.” This term, according to the Catechism’s glossary, builds upon the Greek word for “management of a household” or “stewardship.” It “refers to God’s revelation and communication of himself to the world, in time, for the sake of the salvation of all humanity.” Gallup can’t even contemplate this benefits package.

Perhaps the baby boomer age-cohort reported having increased their levels of workplace engagement because they have seen the fruits of that attitude in families, communities, other life experiences, and America’s Judeo-Christian culture. In light of their many flaws, boomers also see a deadline ahead to determine the eternal consequences of detachment.

Gallup reminds us that the “common ground” of social atomization among young people is an oxymoron we must address. Fortunately, the Church, while it suffers from rampant disengagement, can imagine a way out through its grander structure of identity and meaning.

We should ask Venn fans to flip their mathematics. The answer for the Church, and thereby the world, is not to “manage” more intersections and intersectionality (∩), but to model personal, transcendent relationships which lead us to more perfect unions (∪) .

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

Homeland Security on an Island of Misfit Toys

This is a preview of a commentary soon to be published in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com. Please also see the story below, which is an accompanying sidebar essay.

Today’s headlines proclaim wars and rumors of wars—not only between countries, but between activists, advocates, and interest groups in our polarized homeland.

Fears of US vulnerability under the scenario of all-out, high-tech warfare deserve their share of serious reflection. We can’t disconnect that analysis from our everyday experiences with volatile issues here in America. They help reveal the essentials of our preparedness, as a nation and as individuals.

To begin, please check the boxes that identify us properly: A peace-loving country? Land of the free? Home of the brave? Good crowned with brotherhood? Shining city on a hill? Land that I love? God shed his grace on us? Needs to be great? Never was that great? (This last option was captured on video.)

Why We Fight

An ancient Roman general said, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” But he wasn’t calling for his own people to practice hostility toward each other!

It’s time to candidly assess America’s frequent dalliances with animus. We are a divided culture that too often mimics the antics of the lost children in Lord of the Flies.

Our common ground of values and aspirations has been nudged to the side by many factors, from social media to antisocial politics.

“NewsNation’s” Dan Abrams is still right to find hope in what he calls “the marginalized moderate majority.” Many of our problems and disputes are wrongly amplified. America’s heart is underappreciated.

But the country is haunted by skepticism, disrespect, mental strife, and nihilism. These can hobble our relationships abroad as well as in our public squares and politics. Caring relationships must also extend to those on the socioeconomic margins in the US and everywhere.

At all levels, our vicious cycle of insecure, self-affirming judgmentalism and passive-resistant appeasement is a destabilizing force. Visionary goals of coexistence and cooperation are being replaced by grandiose worldviews and micro-views of “us vs. them,” somehow promising secular salvation.

We’re making external judgments about good and evil constantly, especially those which are pointed simplistically toward “offensive” individuals or labeled groups, or leaders of nations.

In the media and sometimes in real life, we play the judge in mock (as in mockery) trials with little objectivity or cross-examination. The “oppressed vs. oppressor” mind frame pleasures us with lots of virtue-signaling, identity-building, and confirmation bias, not to mention conscience-easing and profit generation.

Too many folks see the globe merely as a cartoon of Bond villains. America itself looks like a playground filled with bullies, spectators, and those targeted as misfits.

In a culture without God or any trusted authority figures trying to bring us together, we tend to replace intellect and will with emotions. Guidelines like justice, mercy, and the common good give way to the selfish rules of power, protection, ego, and greed.

We invest bigger emotional stakes into smaller triumphs while we avoid addressing our deepest problems. For many (certainly not all of us), hostility or suspicion is our new habit of the heart. In lieu of faith and reason, we protect our passionate stances “at all costs,” even denying or re-interpreting uncomfortable realities.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that our abstractions must be replaced with concrete realizations and responsibilities: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

Job One on the road to improving our attitudes is to observe carefully how good and evil factor into our consciousness and relationships. We really ought to think concretely about more things, and good vs. evil is an excellent starting point.

What kind of stage are we setting? For what kinds of dramas? We need to humbly critique the good guys and bad guys we write into our scripts. More compelling stories would tell instead of basically good people who are struggling against their “most grievous faults.”

For decades, in a land blessed with relative peace and prosperity, we have had the luxury of creating enemies. Geopolitical dangers seemed distant. We began comfortably downplaying the broad consequences of our actions, forgetting the democratic knack for compromise.

What Hath Peace Wrought?

The Club of Rome saw this coming in its 1991 report, The First Global Revolution.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the report’s two authors wondered, “Can we live without enemies?” They saw the supposed dawn of global peace as an opportunity to make environmental perils the new, unifying foe. They called for “new enemies” and “new strategies.”  Soon, America got busy polarizing internally—not only around ecology, but around what Pope Francis nowadays calls the whole “human ecology.”

Looking for new things and people to hate is a terrible activity, given Christ’s command to “love your enemies” lest you unleash a cycle of chaos.

Nevertheless, we launch volleys of back-and-forth accusations even before we try to understand each other or examine the “root causes” for our fears.

So-called “leaders” have seized this discord as a persuasive tool, discovering that media, mimetic desire, confused values, and autocratic condemnations boost their niche popularity by dividing the populace.

Disagreements connect to other disagreements. Sometimes, we discover our fellow travelers have become strange bedfellows. Our political parties have become patchworks of interest groups to be pandered to or provoked.

Politicians forgot to ask the statesmanlike question, “Shouldn’t we sustain a united and viscerally strong nation just in case we someday must defend ourselves in a major war (not to mention the goal of promoting human flourishing)?”

We now reside in a strangely vulnerable superpower where individuals and groups perform as makeshift superheroes—self-styled Avengers—looking like teams but showing off independently. As loners, we feel fragile and uninformed, but we keep that identity secret.

The insightful journalist Bari Weiss expressed her concerns about today’s world of warcraft in the Feb. 1 edition of her podcast, Honestly.

The growing number of wars and disputes “should be alarming for everyone … not just because the threat of nuclear weapons looms over many of these conflicts, but also because I’m not sure America is prepared or capable of winning,” Weiss said.

After the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, “I think a lot of Americans experienced a serious wakeup call,” she continued. “Could something like that happen here … and if we had to fight for our country, who would actually show up?”

Who Sank My Battleship?

Weiss’s question pin-points fault lines of friction where we must accept personal accountability for our positions and impacts.

We have made real progress regarding sexism, for example. The term is often subsumed under broader discussions of rights based on equality and sensitivity toward offenses. Scott Yenor muses that gender issues are now covered by America’s new “anti-discrimination sexual constitution.”

After morphing from an earlier constitution which assumed “that men and women had different and complementary roles,” as Yenor wrote in First Things, gender equality is now a doorway into a matrix of controversial questions.

In the Oct. 7 aftermath, many commentators rightly singled out the terrorism against Israeli “women and children.” But women’s issues slipped deeper into a maze of intersectionality. The United Nations drew criticism for half-hearted condemnation of the horrendous gender-based violence during the Hamas-led incursion. The UN agenda appeared to focus on passing grander judgments.

The New York Times on Jan. 29 reported that a UN team had finally arrived in Israel to investigate the reports of rapes and mutilations. Hamas denied the involvement of Palestinian fighters in those actions. They called the reports “propaganda” meant to justify “mass murder and ethnic cleansing” committed by Israel.

The grisly spewing of words, including genocide, supremacist, and colonizer, has generated a script for a regional war with deep emotional roots.

Since the US is inevitably involved in this and other face-offs, we must integrate additional facts and simplify the expanding equation of our emotions—how we feel about all sorts of subjects, from gender and race to “DEI” and “ESG” metrics. (More facts to ponder regarding these subjects follow in a sidebar essay.)

All these matters require “hard” applications of wisdom, logic, and will, as well as “soft” applications of values and virtues like charity, resilience, and self-restraint. But controversies tend to sow only  antagonism and confusion. How would these play out during a war?

Such a crisis properly would raise awareness of our many moral imbalances. We have to keep striving to reduce these.

But one wishes it also would remind us that life is not fair, there are limits to utopian pursuits, and we all must make sacrifices. JFK’s advice—to ask what we can do for our country, not vice versa—would have to be resurrected.

The list of scenarios here is not intended to trigger disenchantment or despair, but only to suggest what a concrete calculus of society’s options and imperatives might look like. We must see our cultural moment through a lens of readiness to defend both our country and its legacy of freedoms and rights, duty and magnanimity.

How shall we translate all these considerations into resolute acceptance of reality-based responsibilities?

Shall we require women to be soldiers? Shall the military be color-blind or “racist,” or “anti-racist”? Shall conscientious objectors refuse to defend a nation deemed supremacist or discriminatory? We need to better define words and standards so we can better define ourselves and our viewpoints.

Through lenses of victim vs. victimizer, can we still see ourselves as heroes fighting for meaningful justice and enduring security? We will have neither the time nor ability to purge the insecurities of domestic dilemmas before deployment.

Patience is a virtue for heroes on any mission. Americans’ short attention spans have required conjuring the appearance of limited solutions for some problems, but there is nothing quick or ephemeral about military preparedness and success.

Will government officials and other public- or private-sector elites try to maintain the country’s restless status quo of tangled ideas and weakened wills? Or impose a technocracy that changes the US fundamentally? Or appease international enemies to a point resembling surrender?

Ideally, they will reach empathetically into the hearts and minds of grass-roots Americans, the moderate majority of which Dan Abrams speaks. Politicians personifying transparency, esprit de corps, and confidence might find that most of the zeal we need to defend ourselves already exists and simply needs to be tapped.

The Answers are Blowing in the Wind

Much depends on the leaders we will have during a time of war. In the public sector, those on various rungs of the “Washington DC” ladder must be reminded to strive for purposeful excellence.

Their duty to certain absolutes is enshrined in the oath they take: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same … and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”  This says, “we’re in this together.”

We will need meritocratic thinking to ensure our leaders are well-advised and projects are well-run. When charged with elitism, those who rise to the top can justify their power with a commitment to noblesse oblige. At the same time, diversity without discrimination is a smart antidote to expertise that has passed its expiration date.

Wartime standard-bearers will have to speak and listen to the whole country as clear and candid communicators, explaining realities of the present moment, including context and consequences. They must allow and encourage citizens to open their minds and souls to each other, helping them to see our exaggerated differences in a much bigger frame.

Peacemaking and conflict resolution are round-the-clock jobs requiring tireless officials with keen emotional intelligence. “Lawfare” and blame games can be managed by skilled advocates-for-hire.

The words “remember,” “membership,” and “meme” all refer to transmission of, and engagement with, ideas that bind a culture together. Our opinion-shapers should accentuate memories of the US at its best. They should not mock imperfect individuals or obsess over baskets of deplorability. Most folks aren’t evil, but evil actions can easily increase when a society becomes either banal or belligerent.

Civic leaders must be crime-fighters on the home front, affirming that justice is what we’re fighting for. But strike a balance: Tyranny is what we’re fighting! Punishment is rightly aimed at unjust behaviors, not inconvenient persons.

Should we compare candidates “not to the Almighty, but to the alternative”? Perhaps, when our notion of the “perfect” becomes the enemy of the good.

However, don’t downplay the Almighty’s high standards and help. Dismissing transcendent wisdom renders meaningless those oaths of office, not to mention the pledges and ethics codes ubiquitous in the realms of public service, private enterprise, professions, religions, and other institutions which impart hope.

Authority figures should be willing to sacrifice in solidarity with our warriors and the whole population. They will be expected to show authentic tears and express deep thankfulness in the face of suffering.

They must inject a sense of local and global stewardship and restraint, managing internal disputes which make us weaker as well as foreign battles where some military tools are too fearsome for anyone’s good.

They should find and enunciate common ground and build consensus, simply but not simplistically. They must be critical thinkers and smart strategists whose gut tells them what is critical so they can help us set wise priorities.

Of course, the reason for demanding these qualities in our leaders is because all Americans must build the same strengths in each other. We’ll be better “followers” if we remember that our “commanders,” in a sense, report to us. To support and inspire are serious mandates of conscience, not abstract niceties, for everyone.

We can rise to the occasion by reading the section on “just war” in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (starting at page 423), as well as prescriptions and proscriptions from other faiths.

An excellent, short video from the International Committee of the Red Cross describes the globally agreed rules of war. This International Humanitarian Law will help to remind us of our ancestors’ aspirations, applicable both at home and abroad.

The video’s concluding sentence says the law “is all about making choices that preserve a minimum of human dignity in times of war and make sure that living together again is possible once the last bullet has been shot.”

This bottom line about international hostility holds true for the Maginot Line between good and evil which runs through our hearts. So far, letting this struggle rage unrestrained has unleashed dopamine-fueled gamesmanship. But it is an awful waste of time, talent, resources, moral clarity, and spiritual energy—resources that must be preserved during any crisis.

If Americans cannot learn to coexist well immediately, we can at least hope and pray that passing time and growing wisdom will achieve our higher destiny.

In a post-truth age of mistrust and frustration, we must at least honor the reality of structures and traditions that can preserve us. The ultimate truth, present in the Kingdom of God, can give meaning to our perseverance.

Our peacetime prayers today should plead that frightful scenarios of modern warfare fail to come about. Pope John Paul II provided in 1982 a riveting prayer against evil that reflected on war very concretely.

Acknowledging current divisions, allow every home-grown instance of cruelty toward persons and groups, cancellation of others’ ideas and reputations, or pooh-poohing of misdeeds and their impacts to become a teachable moment. Calling out these errors will stretch our imaginations to pierce the protective bubbles we wear on our island of misfit toys.

The Club of Rome asked, “Can we live without enemies?” The right question clearly is, “Can we live with too many enemies?” And can we live with too much fear and hatred? The answer to those questions is “no.”

We have the opportunity to look at the American culture we are establishing—to critique its sustainability and suitability for “living together.” We can gain common sense and wisdom if we invite the “marginalized moderate majority” fully into the mainstream dialogue. With an outreach to all generations of Americans, their resilience, backgrounds of faith, and experiences of good and evil in family and community will make our camaraderie more vigorous.

The preceding litany of questions might help to soften our hardened hearts. Despite what some media and elites model for us, sober hearts will be more receptive to good leaders and teachers, make a violent world less vulnerable, and set the right stage for dramas with a happy ending.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons images.

Now We’ve Got God Right Where He Wants Us

This is the sidebar essay accompanying the story above, “Homeland Security on an Island of Misfit Toys.” Both commentaries will also be published in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com. Please consider subscribing to that publication.

Here is more “grist for the mill” of emotions discussed above, but it can also be food for thought about our warfare at home and abroad. This critical thinking may not lead to solutions, but it can “wake us up,” as Bari Weiss said, to good questions that drive us toward reliance on a wisdom that transcends our media-fed animus.

What about the sex/gender/personal issues in a military mobilization?

The Pentagon has admitted female service members into “combat positions.” Pending further Congressional debates, the Selective Service requires only that men aged 18-25 register for any future draft. (Israel is in a minority of nations that draft both men and women, according to World Population Review.)

Commentators have wondered how many US citizens would resist the draft. And on what basis? The post-modern notion of “conscience,” now tied to expressive individualism, has lost some of the faith-based idealism voiced by conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War.

Debates on racism, identity, LGBTQ equality, and DEI metrics also may loom ahead for today’s all-volunteer military if the US adopts a wartime footing.

As of 2023, the proportion of recruits who are white had fallen to 44 percent, down from 56.4 percent in 2018, according to a recent report in The Telegraph. Black and Hispanic recruits each constitute 24 percent of the total.

How should we determine who fights for us?

A Senate bill introduced last year sought to ease the current shortage of recruits by “widening a pathway for non-citizens to join the US military,” according to a Stars and Stripes report. Immigrants “who entered the country unlawfully as children” would lose the immunity from military service granted by DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Is this fairness or injustice?

Even if the US is able to avoid a draft, the country might need to selectively summon personnel in specific fields, such as doctors, nurses, and pilots. Will civilians object to limiting the services they enjoy?

What else would have to be rationed, given the unwieldy federal debt and the shrinkage of the country’s industrial base?

Perhaps virtual reality, cyber-warfare, and AI could help compensate for our thinner ranks of service members. We can expect that technologists would contribute amazing advances—but with an emphasis on victory-centric abilities rather than the “person-centered AI” which Pope Francis and others have continuously called for.

Meanwhile, George Will has invited concern about our high-tech resources in his Feb. 2 column. He quoted an Education Next article on the “national security crisis” taking shape in high schools and colleges. “The domestic supply of college graduates with advanced scientific skills … cannot begin to meet the nation’s need for economic vitality and military preparedness.”

Separately, Will worried that youths “bring to college a complacent sense of entitlement.” Citing a National Review piece, he said many students are “increasingly exempted from meaningful expectations of rigor.” Idleness on campus “breeds extremism and ‘performative rebellion.’’ How would graduates’ mantras of victimization and anti-oppression fit with military goals?

Consider also today’s decline in patriotism, with more people focusing on the negatives in American history and fewer believing the country’s aspirations are a source of pride worth fighting and dying for.

Everything is connected to everything else. Let’s not forget that an America at war would bear much suffering in terms of lives disrupted and lives lost. Many leaders enforced stringent rules during the Covid pandemic partly because we moderns are terrified by the risk of dying. What can a secular, atomized society do for its seniors or juniors who don’t want their screens to say, “Game Over”?

Let’s hope Somebody has the answers.

Image from ClipSafari, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

A Theology of the Disembodied: The Pope’s ‘AI’ Caveats Continue

Hear my interview with Father Philip Larrey, an advisor to the Vatican on artificial intelligence. Recorded in early February, this 47-minute audio provides Fr. Larrey’s insights on AI’s benefits and challenges, expanding upon the World Communications Day message described below.

Among the many ways in which Pope Francis has distinguished himself from his predecessors, he speaks a lot about algorithms. His proclivities as a pastor shine through when he critiques, in words of forbearance and warning, today’s high-tech temptation “to become like God without God.”

That’s a quote from his latest iteration of perspectives on the ethereal battle of Man vs. Machine Learning. It is among the insights in the Vatican’s Jan. 24 release of his 2024 message for World Communications Day, “Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart: Towards a Fully Human Communication.”

One might say that, four decades after Pope John Paul II concluded his landmark presentations on the “Theology of the Body,” Pope Francis is compiling a less formal “Theology of the Disembodied.”

He is summoning the flesh-and-blood faithful to heighten our commitment to mind, heart, soul, solidarity, and dignity at a pace that outwits the growing global endeavor to give us “chatbots” and much, much more.

“A new kind of human being must take shape, endowed with a deeper spirituality and new freedom and interiority,” Francis said in his message, which was posted on the feast day of St. Francis DeSales, patron saint of journalism, months ahead of the Catholic Church’s 58^th annual World Day of Social Communications.

“At this time in history, which risks becoming rich in technology and poor in humanity, our reflections must begin with the human heart,” the Pope wrote. “Only by adopting a spiritual way of viewing reality, only by recovering a wisdom of the heart, can we confront and interpret the newness of our time and rediscover the path to a fully human communication.”

Technical extensions of our natural abilities can help the world to overcome its language gaps, better understand our “patrimony of written knowledge from past ages,” and support our thinking in many disciplines “as a means of loving service,” he acknowledged.

But digital dominance can also cause “cognitive pollution” that misinforms and misleads us. He cautioned against a “technology of simulation” which “distorts our relationship with others and with reality.”

Repeating his urgent call for “a binding international treaty” to regulate the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI), he said individuals and institutions must also take their own steps to cling to very personal values and responsibilities not recognized by “big data.”

The problem is that “algorithms are not neutral,” as Francis taught this week. They create a risk of “turning everything into abstract calculations that reduce individuals to data, thinking to a mechanical process, experience to isolated cases, goodness to profit, and, above all, a denial of the uniqueness of each individual and his or her story.”

Journalists and communications professionals have a particular duty to focus on truth in order to ensure that all people become “discerning participants” in a meaningful process of teaching, learning, and caring.

“It is unacceptable that the use of artificial intelligence should lead to groupthink, to a gathering of unverified data, to a collective editorial dereliction of duty.”

The Pope provides a long paragraph of questions we should pose toward the technology and toward ourselves.

How will we ensure human dignity in our communications, both among the content generators and audiences? How can we make “the operation of algorithms for indexing and de-indexing” more transparent? How can we govern search engines which are “capable of celebrating or canceling persons and opinions, histories and cultures?”

These are ideas Francis has been mulling for years. His monthly prayer intention for Catholics in November 2020 was “that robotics and AI would remain always at the service of human beings.”

In March 2023, he met with scientists, engineers, business leaders, lawyers, philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and members of the Roman Curia at an annual conference on digital technologies called the “Minerva Dialogues.”

He urged the developers of machine learning to “respect such values as inclusion, transparency, security, equity, privacy, and reliability” in order to make AI truly valuable.

As reported at the time by Fox Business News, Francis said regulation of future developments must “promote genuine progress, contributing, that is, to a better world and an integrally higher quality of life.”

A separate Vatican conference on AI ethics in January 2023 allowed him to meet with members of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. They signed a document calling on technologists, who were already seeing a need for a “pause” in their tidal wave of advancements, to make sure future collaborations include leaders in ethics and faith.

Francis returned to the subject in his Jan. 1, 2024, message for the Church’s 57^th annual World Day of Peace.

He warned about the use of AI in propaganda, adding that we must apply critical thinking about communication and humility in our geopolitical plans:

“Human beings are, by definition, mortal; by proposing to overcome every limit through technology, in an obsessive desire to control everything, we risk losing control over ourselves; in the quest for an absolute freedom, we risk falling into the spirit of a ‘technological dictatorship.’”

The Pope even became a bit playful in the use of one of his favorite words. He urged “a cross-disciplinary dialogue aimed at an ethical development of algorithms—an algor-ethics—in which values will shape the directions taken by new technologies.”

It’s useful, even galvanizing, to recognize the thought and prayer Pope Francis is investing in the battle of Man vs. Machine Learning, the Flesh-and-Blood vs. the Disembodied.

As seen in his 2024 World Communications Day message, he has studied both the benefits and dangers of any new “wisdom” that is not ensouled with human values and activated virtues. And this pastor knows that our growth in wisdom must also include an embrace of our frailties and mortality, as well as an immortality in the hands of God—not to be handed over to AI.

His teaching of this theology isn’t just another entry in today’s exciting and enticing marketplace of ideas. As he said in his World Day of Peace message, “realities are greater than ideas.”

We can see he realizes that, in this season of zealous faith in technology, religion has picked up the transcendent duty to defend reality, reason, and truth-telling. That’s ultimately the basis for, and content of, good communication.

Remembering Charles Osgood, a Muse of the News

Charles Osgood, an immensely talented alumnus of Catholic schooling and brilliantly effective purveyor of a “Catholic imagination,” died Jan. 23 at age 91, leaving an upbeat legacy in secular American journalism.

Osgood played a role in inspiring my own study of communications at Fordham University, from which he graduated in 1954. As I traversed my teen years in the 1970s, I was drawn to his knack for wit and rhyme and his enduring ability to integrate personality—and a certain spirit—into radio news.

He said radio was his favorite medium because it offered a “theater of the mind.” According to The New York Times, he continued his “Osgood File” audio broadcasts for decades, but his fame grew when he anchored the “CBS Sunday Night News,” the “CBS Morning News,” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Osgood celebrated his sunrise news duties in the book, Nothing Could Be Finer than a Crisis that is Minor in the Morning. One could also sense his good cheer from his signature closing for many broadcasts: “See you on the radio.”

He compiled many formative adventures from his 1940s Catholic parish life and education with the Sisters of Charity in Baltimore. Those went into another book, Defending Baltimore from Enemy Attack.

Not having officially studied journalism, his style was consistently unconventional.

He didn’t tell jokes, but he found opportunities to express the light-heartedness found in real-life occurrences. He didn’t write poetry, but he composed many memorable rhymes, harking back to books from childhood—as in this lyrical foreword: “To Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)/Who gave me a new way to look at the neuss.”

On some programs later in his life, audiences heard Osgood display his talent on the organ, piano, or banjo. According to a 2004 article by George P. Matysek Jr. in the Archdiocese of Baltimore newspaper Catholic Review, he occasionally played for his teachers and later retained his mastery of Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris.

But he also was a serious journalist who cared about the news because it affected the lives of average people.

That’s why I speak of his Catholic imagination, defined by Jessica Hooten Wilson in National Catholic Register as a worldview which “emphasizes that the things of this world have spiritual meaning, as well as physical.” Through a larger lens of hope, “there is no unholy place, no image so broken it cannot be healed, no sin too gritty that it can’t be written about.”

With help from Osgood’s big-perspective professionalism, I came to think of journalism as a friendly place for Catholics, or at least for the Catholic imagination I sought to cultivate. He prompted pursuit of a curiosity which seeks truth but accepts mystery, using both faith and reason to interpret the world.

Religion was not on his beat, but he allowed the heroism, sorrows, foibles, and silliness in the world to make his coverage multi-dimensional, not merely multi-media.

After all, our faith is a driving force behind journalism, as well as modern science, because we believe the world embodies godly laws and a basic orderliness, challenging and allowing us to explore everything with a sense of adventure.

I send my thanks and prayers to Osgood as an adventurer who helped to launch many journalistic careers with a contrarian energy—not reliant on pride, greed, influence, or raw ambition. As he said in his remarks regarding his retirement from CBS News in 2016, he was reluctant to leave the work. A Baltimore Banner obituary quoted his words: “It’s just that it’s been such a joy doing it!”