There are signs of a hopeful movement spreading on university campuses. New projects are promoting a renaissance of civic engagement to civilize the fractious, volatile conversations in America’s public square. It seems the trend should be in full stride at Catholic institutions. But the latest official tally implies these schools might be lagging behind.

If accurate, that’s a missed opportunity. The Church can help our polarized country revive places where “seldom is heard a discouraging word.” However, academia must realize that, when it comes to building a stronger society, the answer doesn’t entail lowering the volume. Any real improvement in the spirit of communication will require raising more ideas, and higher ideals, for people to talk about.

Landscaping for the Public Square

We should take inventory of this growing reform phenomenon. Noteworthy efforts are outlined in a document called “The New Landscape of ‘Civics Centers’ in Higher Education,” published in December 2025 by the Heterodox Academy.

The “HxA” calls itself “the only nonpartisan membership organization devoted to open inquiry that’s built from the inside”—that is, faculty, administrators, staff, and graduate students at hundreds of colleges “who care about their future.”

Some 45 civic-minded centers, institutes, and schools have been established, many in the past several years, says HxA. These aim to redirect attention and intention toward questions of our common good, our need to get along with each other.

The report presents data on these labs of advanced dialogue, established at 41 institutions in 25 states. They are reclaiming themes from the “civics” curriculum to push back against forces which stifle community spirit at the local and national levels. We can assume those challenges include relativism, emotion trumping reason, and rejection (or ignorance) of America’s founding principles.

According to an HxA video, the centers reflect a growing concern about “ideological imbalance” on campuses, the need for greater “viewpoint diversity,” and the lack of spaces for peaceful, productive discussion.

The movement started to percolate after Robert George, a leading legal scholar and political philosopher, established the James Madison Program at Princeton University in 2000.

Princetonians for Free Speech, a group partnered with the Madison Program, provides a link to HxA’s list of civics centers, including many public universities where the new initiatives were mandated by state legislatures—most of them promoted by Republicans, according to HxA.

More than a dozen private universities are also listed, but there are only two Catholic peers: the Woodley Institute for Civil Engagement and Humanistic Dialogue at Gonzaga University, and the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame.

The small presence of schools informed by Church affiliation is disappointing, partly because the idea of “civics centers” is such a big tent. The definition allows for a variety of approaches.

HxA says some establishments are “autonomous,” with their own faculty associates and a distinct identity. Others, like the James Madison Program, are “semi-autonomous,” part of an existing department or a channel to resources such as Prof. George’s tutelage. Still others are off-campus initiatives around which faculty and students cluster more casually.

The centers tend to focus on “civic thought” or “civic discourse,” or both, says HxA. The first category, found more often in the public university world, studies the ideas, history, and institutions of democracy, offering formation drawn from the liberal arts. The second category concentrates on building bridges across institutional or ideological divides, an approach which might be profound or peripheral.

What’s a Synonym for Civics?

A review of the 45 units, some of which are still in the development stage, shows us differences in tone and terminology. Tufts University has a Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education. The New School in New York City has a Center for the American Experience.

At Northwestern University, one can visit the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement. At the University of Virginia, people can check out the Think Again Initiative. At Iowa State, we might get swept up in the Center for Cyclone Civics.

What’s in a name? How deep is a school’s commitment?

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal points to Arizona State University’s hefty investment in its School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership in 2016. The school boasts online of its ambition, a “defense of civilization.”

The Martin Center, based in Raleigh, NC, is itself a major provider player eading force for research and problem-solving regarding nitty-gritty of details of reform. “Our work,” it says, “equips policymakers, trustees, and institutional leaders with the ideas and tools needed to improve academic quality, reduce costs, and strengthen the core mission of higher education.”

That mission, according to its website, aims to “equip all students to flourish in their careers, embrace responsible citizenship, and grow as seekers of wisdom.”

Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government clearly offers a model for big thinking, with its multidisciplinary plunge into the “civic thought” category, employing both faith and reason.

Its self-definition speaks of exploring “the fundamental principles and practices of a free society so that citizens and civic leaders are equipped to secure our God-given natural rights, exercise the responsibilities of self-government, and pursue the common good.”

The university’s Catholic character and the “Catholic intellectual tradition” are invoked as aids in free inquiry and reasoned discussion, helping people tackle “enduring and contemporary questions concerning a just constitutional order.”

This Center benefits from an amalgam of structures and insights, propagated way before some of the examples monitored by HxA.

Notre Dame already operated a Tocqueville Program for Religion in Public Life that had been founded in 2009. And a Program in Constitutional Studies was established in 2012 to focus on “the enduring principles of constitutional government and ideas and institutions of a free society.” Now, those legacies contribute to the busy agenda of the Center, which took on its combined identity in 2021.

At Gonzaga University, the similarly impressive Woodley Institute says it is “rooted in Ignatian values and a Jesuit, Catholic, humanistic tradition.” These foster “civil engagement and dialogue through teaching, service, research, and public events.”

Woodley explicitly incorporates the “Catholic social doctrine” theme called subsidiarity—support for local empowerment—through projects which place students, faculty, and community members on the streets of Spokane, WA, as well as on “regional and global levels.” Development of this institute began last year.

Lots Going On Inside the List

One must assume the activities which come naturally for Notre Dame and Gonzaga are replicated at various other universities teaching Judeo-Christian values, as well as officially secular campuses. It’s possible some of these places don’t make HxA’s honor roll because they don’t fit neatly into its categories. Or the schools have not highlighted their practices in a sufficiently centralized, high-profile way.

Perhaps only the 45 current “civics centers” fully realize that growing throngs of disenchanted young people desperately crave the hope which is available. Students are hungry for stable structures and principles which can empower the mind and heart for meaningful accompaniment of others.

The blossoming zeal for solving fundamental problems spotlights the need for all generations to think more judiciously and passionately about the sustainability of humanity, pluralism, transcendent values, and civilization.

Catholics and others involved in spiritual formation can remind Americans of the important role that religious faith has played in the past and still can play to relieve today’s plagues of autocratic power games, personal isolation, and aimless despair.

The challenge to profess and exercise greater-good values, which are inextricable from themes of peace, justice, compassion, and practical wisdom (Aristotle’s phronesis), is more urgent than ever.

This is vital not only for colleges that seek HxA recognition as participants in civic-minded movements, but for grade schools and high schools—as well as other institutions, including families and churches. In all these sectors, Christians have joined in championing a “civics” of spirited solidarity.

Particles and Entanglements in Quantum Civics

Here are a few thoughts that could reinforce expansive perspectives on civics.

Merely claiming and studying freedom of speech is insufficient if the new discourse is not grounded in knowledge and understanding handed down from the history of Western civilization. If we emphasize only the freedom to speak, our conversations might shrink into passive tolerance of “the other,” rather than sowing collaboration in line with rights and responsibilities.

This collaboration entails talking more, not saying less. On the vocal path, we share diverse ideas and distinct talents. On the silent path, we retreat into our bubbles for the sake of “civility” and niceness (while possibly retaining a sense of superiority).

Often, people hold their tongue because they sense a lack of truthfulness, trust, hope, and respect. Let’s expect that those leading the adventure of inquiry will speak candidly and ask questions which invite newbies into mutual discovery. The invitation must embody a commitment to individual dignity.

We can make it downright compelling to join in more dialogue if our schools, churches, families, and all flesh-and-blood relationships encourage a principled pluralism enriched by the transcendentals—the true, good, and beautiful.

While educators nowadays must make their students comfortable with artificial intelligence, they should insist that reality, not artificiality, is the launchpad for civic progress. It ignites the unique upward trajectory of human consciousness. Free persons embrace participation in reality through humor, satire, religious experience, storytelling, mystery, imagination, and creativity in music and the arts.

Ironically, the joy of speaking out in these constructive ways must be enhanced by frequent retreats into silence, whether for deep thought or prayerful reflection—or the diligence of writing an essay without AI’s help. We must learn early in life that silence energizes us. We can listen to each other, honoring disagreements and humbly accepting correction from God and man.

A culture distracted by technological change and its ethos of efficiency will pull people away from the most precious uses of their time, such as empathy and accompaniment of loved ones in their grief or anxiety.

When communication is tied to a sense of communion, when mind and heart work in tandem, speech is truly free because we are fully ourselves. There are suddenly more “safe spaces” than we thought.

Report Card: “Plays Well with Others”

Jesus taught his disciples to spread his messages of love through genuine, active relationships—whether or not a “civics center” is holding an event.

He put it this way: “Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.” (Matthew 10:26-27)

This is a lens through which we can watch the “civics centers” trend. It must become a tool to raise society’s awareness of the human capability for growth and of the meaning we find in sharing our authentic selves.

Universities should foster a vision of balance between individual and group identity, expressed in ways that are classically liberal and broadly liberating. Catholic and other faith-based campuses can spotlight the balance they find via relationships with a God whose answers and mysteries induce curious souls and affinity groups to inform their consciences together.

Schools can share their roadmaps of reason and faith not merely to be recognized on HxA’s civics list, but to supply the new movement with a reservoir of wisdom, traditional and transcendent. That’s the same reservoir flowing through America’s founding documents.

The higher-ed personnel in the Heterodox Academy say they’re devoted to reform because they “care about their future.” But their duty to community must not be limited to on-campus stability and legislative mandates. Everyone who cares about our country’s democratic wherewithal must go beyond brick-and-mortar centers to spread words of hope in countless settings, over many years.

We can start by ensuring that all people have a voice, and that we’re listening—because it’s essential, not just diverse. Then, we can boost our stewardship of all opportunities for constructive conversation, whether they’re in a family home, a business meeting, a political convention, or a university’s institute.

The centers being built ultimately represent a way of life. This civics movement responds to an immediate need, but the real reform of attitudes is extracurricular. Once our human spirit is liberated from tense schemas like “oppressors vs. oppressed,” we’ll find much more we can achieve.

Everyone, certainly including people of faith, should be part of the broader construction boom. We’re firming up the foundations for more peaceful, productive cooperation in America to integrate speaking and hearing, contention and quietude, wisdom and wonder, ideas and ideals.

After 250 years of nationhood, we can feel young again. Best of all, we’ll wind up on an honor roll for fulfilling a civic duty we accept as our own.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot designer.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added this summer. Many categories of information, with hundreds of items, are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis. That’s the word for virtuous, practical wisdom.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, newspaper, and podcast content posted up through the summer of 2026. You’ll also find my biography here.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

The Star Trek franchise has lived long and prospered, but Earth still needs to watch the sequels regularly to keep its mood elevated. Sixty years after the first broadcast of the original series, the latest program in the continuum, “Starfleet Academy,” has been canceled; its second season of optimistic imagination will end soon. However, plenty of Trek iterations, old and new, remain parked in the Paramount Plus spacedock, available to view on demand. This is access to valuable therapy as more people feel disconnected and demoralized, sick of streaming without dreaming.

That means there’s no time to waste: We must launch another spin-off. And I’m just the Trekker whose nostalgia for the future can generate a proposal ready to pitch to Hollywood.

RANKED HIGH BY USS NEWS AND WORLDS REPORT

I’m one of the countless fans who have been energized with wonderment from the moment Captain James T. Kirk entered popular culture on Sept. 8, 1966. I have also done my duty watching the rollout of “Academy” plots, even though they were aimed at a younger crowd and were quickly torpedoed by critics who called them “too woke.”

The program deserves to be saved in some form! It introduced us to a cadre of spacefarer-wannabes learning good stewardship of the cosmos they inherited. There was so much that these Starfleet students deserved to be taught. Multiple audiences, including baby boomers like me, still can find rejuvenation by sharing additional lessons about “new life and new civilizations.”

That’s the essence of my proposed sequel. Imagine those Academy cadets—call them members of the Class of 3197—continuing to grow up on the school’s San Francisco campus amid great challenges. We’ve been told that the fleet itself is resuscitating former glories after a cosmic disaster called “the Burn” wreaked havoc on planets and travelers for more than a century.

A remarkably diverse generation of idealistic but traumatized young adults has been recruited from species across the galaxy to propagate the vision of peaceful coexistence. The characters represent hope that “ongoing missions” of benevolent teamwork, like those initiated long ago by the United Federation of Planets (UFP), will again fill the skies.

PLOT A COURSE, MR. SULU—AND MAKE IT PROFOUND

To prepare its recruits, the Academy surely must offer a core curriculum that features such subjects as history and philosophy! (Let me intersperse “concept notes” in italics: We’re talking about teaching the humanities and the liberal arts, but let’s be accurate and politic. We’ll adopt new phraseology because “humanities” is an outmoded, exclusivist term in a majority-minority environment. Note that a recent New York Times opinion piece pointed out current interpretations of “liberal arts.” You might say the polarized descriptions range from “liberating” to “trivial,” from “ideological” to “useless in a job search.”)

Nevertheless, foundations of the Star Trek ethos, like classic liberal thought and virtuous notions of progress, persist. Viewers in 2026 probably agree, at least in part, that we should balance adventure with prudence, discovery with anchored self-knowledge, and rapid social change with the resilience of truth, trust, freedoms, rights, and responsibilities.

The Academy’s core courses should provide background about long-respected insights into culture and civilization. The application of these principles across a future universe of different circumstances won’t be easy to discern, but it never has been. The crucial struggle is to embrace this task of critical thinking among individuals and societies, always and everywhere.

The 21^st century, for example, has become a chaotic period of big-picture questions, seeking meaning and purpose in our earthbound existence. “Humanity” faces potential rivalries with artificial intelligence and “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”

Although smart responses will arise from the legacy of wisdom found in the past, it’s a wild and worthy idea to aim our inquiries forward, too. We can “channel” some familiar fictional characters to play out the dialogues they might conduct; their own experiences might yield timely tips from the 32^nd century.

HERE’S THE OUTLINE SUBMITTED BY ARISTOTLE

The sequel I am pitching will delve into the cadets’ sense of identity and mission. Imagine them taking the Academy’s required, semester-long seminar discussing these subjects. These “meta” conversations will be conducted at a retreat-like location far off-campus. Traveling to the edge of our solar system, students will board the Starship Phronesis.

Of course, it’s a coincidence that my Substack commentaries are titled “Phronesis in Pieces.” I’m intrigued by Aristotle’s term for the virtue of proactive, practical wisdom, geared toward serving the common good.

The USS Phronesis will be somewhat “retro” in design, comfortably familiar for older Trek fans. The vessel is a permanent feature of the UFP’s Starfleet museum, which was first mentioned in the series, “Star Trek: Picard.” (It’s there in Season 3, Episode 9)

This vessel is where the future gets immersed in history. Try to picture an extreme update of the 1964 World’s Fair pavilion where audiences watched an animatronic version of President Abraham Lincoln deliver a speech. Or picture Disney’s Hall of Presidents, populated by robots built by Imagineers.

Aboard the Phronesis, students are able to interact with holograms of Starfleet heroes, from Starship Enterprise legends like Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Captain Picard, to luminaries elsewhere in the fleet such as Captain Janeway of the Starship Voyager.

Cadets can observe holodeck-like re-creations of classic space battles, but this seminar is not a gut course—not a “Fun with Phasers” exhibit. The best learning occurs in the ship’s large lounge for group recollection (please don’t call it Ten-Backward). Here, in each episode, the Trek role models converse with the students about the deeper lessons of past adventures and the values embodied by history’s brave crews. Lively Q&A sessions ensue.

This format I’m pitching will allow inspiring call-backs to memories prized by boomers and other generations of fandom. They will remember grappling with moral dilemmas, hard-to-fix mistakes, tensions between reason and emotion, and technology-gone-awry.

A PREVIEW OF PHRONESIS IN ACTION

Here’s one proposed plot, for example, where futures and histories intersect.

in the episode of “Picard” that follows their visit to the Starfleet museum, the reassembled cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” warped into an impending cataclysm.

The machine-like Borg Collective had used biotechnology to implant their own code into the minds of young crew members on every Starfleet vessel. Under guidance from Borg infiltrators, all the ships assembled for a Federation memorial ritual. (S3, E10)

Things got worse. The neural networks and cyber-connectivity which make each Borg body a mere appendage of the whole race had been engineered into the operating systems of these starships. Under a new “fleet formation” strategy, the Borg-assimilated vessels were ordered into battle against Earth, acting in unison as if obeying a single hivemind with massive firepower.

The Borg “queen” had hatched a plot in which the ships began automatically attacking Earth’s cities. Only Picard & Co., helming the single starship not absorbed by mechanical code—that is, the classic Enterprise-D which they “borrowed” from the museum—could act independently, save the planet, and destroy the Borg queen. They did just that.

The saga of this day is retold to Academy cadets, more than a century later. In conversation aboard the Starship Phronesis, a hologram of Captain Picard leads the students in a practical and philosophical review of the risks of “Collective” control. Voila, this is an allegory for many historical occasions when members of a species (such as humans) have gone all-in on group identity and ideology; they choose homogenized affiliation over broader collaboration, the communion of distinct persons making common cause.

THE FUTURE—AND PAST—ARE PRELUDES

Hologram Picard, drawing upon his own horrid experience of being assimilated by the Borg, can speak compellingly to Starfleet trainees. The discussion groups aboard the Phronesis probe the pros and cons of collectivism as seen by the Class of 3197. Some episodes of “Starfleet Academy” deal directly with cadets’ efforts to balance individual values, solidarity with others, and finding a golden mean through tolerance or genuine concern.

Back in 2026, we earthlings, some of whom condemned the Academy’s tolerance as performative “wokeness,” now can discern the balance for ourselves, with Picard as our guide.

Throughout his intense life journey, Picard has retained his self-possession—even as enemies attacked his relationships to the fleet, to his family in France, to his son Jack, to his human species, and more. The hologram discusses his distaste for collectives and his commitment to dignity in this context. His experiences have taught him a different kind of solidarity, not as an appendage but as a human agent of expansive, intimate connectivity.

There’s another lesson here about mixing self-knowledge with big-picture consciousness. The climactic end of the Borg crisis reflects the interplay of different age cohorts. The “older generation” constituting the Enterprise-D crew brings indispensable experience to Starfleet’s pivotal moment. And note the happy accident: Their tie-in to technology is literally outmoded, meaning they’re spared from the Borg’s algorithmic slaveholding. Their different version of “fleet formation” leads to everyone’s liberation.

Cadets, who says you can’t trust anyone over 30? Who says the latest technical tactics are always the best? This is a warning about generation gaps that all generations need to hear.

So, there it is: Call this the pilot episode of the new series, “Starship Phronesis.” This same multi-layered storytelling, jumping from space-time to space-time, can be applied to numerous Star Trek adventures. Their lessons never get out of sync; they reinforce.

REMEMBER, RERUNS ARE RECYCLABLE

Consider additional “Starship Phronesis” scripts that might draw upon storytelling from “The Ultimate Computer,” “The Doomsday Machine,” or “I, Mudd.” Those plots entailed surrendering humane judgment to artificial intelligence devoid of context and conscience.

Or consider “A Taste of Armageddon,” a tale in which two planets fighting a deadly but vicarious war have reached a bizarre peace: Leaders have programmed computers to simulate a battlefield by calculating virtual fatalities and sending citizens to actual death booths according to those quotas. Apropos of 2026 debates about autonomous drone development, Captain Kirk wisely demands that the leaders bear conscious responsibility for the killing, rather than pretend innocence by reducing lives to mere statistics.

Well, that’s a first look at this enterprise of my own—this “Starfleet Academy” sequel. Such a program aims to keep hope alive at the intersection of tomorrow’s fictional cadets and today’s aging Trekkers. Beyond hope, it’s a call for the young and the old of 2026 to keep learning from, and teaching, each other.

Hollywood, committed mostly to prophesying values of the “cool kids,” is likely to reject any pitch I make. Nevertheless, “Starship Phronesis” is the kind of project I should tackle as a writer, honoring foresight informed by truths we’ve shared in stories.

EPILOGUE: STAR TREK MEDIA ARE THE MESSAGE

I’m no immature fanboy, dressing up and going to conventions—although I will admit to having visited the “Star Trek Original Set Tour” in Ticonderoga, NY, a while back. The delight of being one of today’s human tourists on that very “realistic” starship bridge set made me eager to organize more pilgrimages to new places of prospering.

We see all around us the ongoing need for open minds and open hearts—and for the practical wisdom preached by Aristotle—in face-to-face conversations and digital entertainment. It’s encouraging to see that people are not ceasing their Star Trek spin-off efforts. On You Tube, we’ve recently watched video podcasts of chats featuring William Frakes (Commander Riker) and Brent Spiner (Lieutenant Data). There’s also an audio series—harking back to the days of radio dramas—called “Khan.”

Perhaps a podcast would be the perfect format for my “Starship Phronesis” show, tapping into the online potential for longer-form (and lower-budget) discussions.

We’re approaching a day that’s ideal for browsing through Paramount’s digital spacedock and other archives already produced. Fans observe “Star Trek Day” annually on September 8, the date on which the first episode made its debut on NBC. It’s one of various dates on the calendar when we can marvel at the past, present, and future fitting together to help our world stay together. July 4 epitomizes such a date of “fitting” remembrance, when the day’s fireworks highlight the impact of America’s founding documents plus a zeal to carry forward their ideals with noble intentions.

In that spirit, let’s hope that our chaotic culture makes more opportunities for voyages of understanding and connection. I’m campaigning to make phronesis our vehicle for traversing Trek’s buoyant stories about humanity, civilization, reality, solidarity, and a sense of mission. The enormity of questions being asked will not exhaust or divide us, but rather make us lose all track of time. Bring on the sequels! Earth needs this therapy of wonder.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting and wondering when Hollywood will call.

Image by Microsoft Bing AI Co-Pilot designer.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in July. Many categories of information, with hundreds of items, are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis. That’s virtuous, practical wisdom.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, newspaper, and podcast content posted up through the middle of 2026. You’ll also find my biography here.

Share

Leave a comment

The navbar item offering Papal texts is focused on several years of extensive coverage I provided regarding the annual World Communications Day messages. A number of discussions of AI, such as details of the 2026 message, are included.

Read more

Lots of folks are afraid of losing their jobs because of artificial intelligence. Yes, changes in the workplace will indeed make life more tumultuous, but this fear of decay shouldn’t paralyze anyone ready to react constructively. Our society, flirting with fatalism, is posting signs that suggest we’re “Going Out of Business” but which we should read as invitations to heroism: “Help Wanted!”

Nervous critiques of AI tend to be focused on “macro” predictions about economics and politics spread by the news media. There are also “micro” worries convening families around their dining room tables to downsize their budget plans, jarred by stories heard from neighbors and relatives. The growing angst deserves our attention, as well as a rebound in solidarity.

We need to be “on top of our game,” monitoring today’s digital disarray as a symptom of heart-numbing artificiality in everyday life. It’s time to assess whether we labor for the sake of love—and how love’s labors might be lost. To the degree that advanced technology will become our rival in the workplace, we must decide to bring out the best in the special species called humanity.

Mankind’s relationship with God, which receives little support in a secular culture, adds extra dimensions to the AI rivalry. As sons and daughters of divinity, we’re offered the solid advantage of great graces. But our Creator also asks us to work, and he cares about what we do, plus how and why we do it. Ironically, some tech developers expect near-miracles from their most advanced AI models—without demanding to understand the how and why of their behavior.

Humans must admit that too many of the jobs we perform nowadays are motivated by power and greed, with our standards for some outcomes embarrassingly low. A relationship with a loving God makes us more responsible to truly figure ourselves out, to “earn” our paychecks honestly and share our talents for the common good, a greater good.

People recognized the dignity of work before technology was super-sized and made our partner. A prayer-poem sometimes linked to Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) tasks the reader: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.”

To begin our critical review of the jobs to be tackled and the principles to be applied, we can look at the age of AI through St. Teresa’s lens and also remember two paradoxes previously discussed in Phronesis in Piece commentaries.

First, AI is ballyhooed as a great provider of answers to countless problems, but we’re likely to learn equally uplifting lessons through the questions posed by technology’s evolving role.

Second, as journalist Sydney L. Harris pointed out in the mid-20^th century, “The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”

Many modern-day people are unsatisfied with their jobs, challenged to integrate careers with other sources of meaning, and perhaps “paid off” in ways that offend the dignity of themselves and others.

Younger generations are especially desperate to ease their depression and anger; they do not know what values or leaders to believe in. Politically, they leap to pre-packaged or theoretical “solutions” such as socialism. This neglects to acknowledge that true satisfaction is grown at the grass roots, not easily imposed as a top-down system.

“Where ignorance is bliss,” English poet Thomas Gray observed a few centuries ago, “’tis folly to be wise.” This approach could resign us to the sad prospect of the world’s dominant intelligence being artificial.

One could write a syllabus to redirect us toward “workarounds” for such hopeless resignation. Proper study would refresh us in theology and philosophy—and practically all the sciences, humanities, and liberal arts. Instead of merely preparing for victory in the job market, imaginative students would envision a vast, vocal community, a dynamic workforce, seeking win-win engagement in the “marketplace of ideas.”

A first, less rigorous step toward this worldview could consist of lively discussion—and prayer—centered on the context we see around us. It can inspire a list of new ideas about purposeful vocations yet to arise.

We’re hesitant to plunge into the mysteries of silicon or soul because our digital ecology is stifled by the confusing rush of AI advancements, as well as social media and related forces dividing and distracting us. However, we should be buoyed by a distinctive advantage humanity has over any rival who strategically makes ignorance blissful. That trait is the virtue of practical wisdom, or phronesis.

Here is a list of seven inklings or premises for discussing strategies of our own.

Note that some of the background material for these notions about the work world has come from AI itself. This proves our absence of Luddite intentions to exclude online resources from the learning process. Chatbots do have their proper place! We should utilize their cajoling facilitation of research to retain our place in the pecking order of values.

• Habits of the Mind

People who anticipate a “job search” or employee evaluation in their future typically jot down their major assets and “areas for improvement.” This venture in critical thinking can tap into the insights of Sydney Harris, the journalist who was quoted earlier prophesying the risk of machine-like cognition.

Writing during the old days of mainframes, Harris voiced concern that bureaucrats, technocrats, and media were leading us to “reshape work and culture,” to compress thoughtful service into algorithmic systems. He warned society had begun prioritizing “efficiency over wisdom … rules over judgment …[and] metrics over meaning,” as Bing Co-Pilot reports.

The chatbot links us up to an additional, unnamed commentator at Fixquotes.com who gained inspiration from Harris. He proudly asserted that “human thinking is messy” because it relies on “empathy, memory, contradiction, and a tolerance for ambiguity.” When we mimic a computer instead, we’re “outsourcing judgment.”

• Democracy and the Public Square

Harris advised his readers to preserve the “democratic ideal of the mind,” which prizes human experience and understanding over imposed standardization. Machine-shaped intelligence optimizes, categorizes, and simply “complies,” he observed. This short-circuits the profound edification civic-minded humans receive through storytelling.

Authentic stories shared in the public square illuminate history and diverse perspectives, adding nuance. While maintaining a healthy skepticism, we come to respect perspectives and aspirations. Values held in common bring us closer together,

Now in 2026, Americans with their omnipresent screens are more likely to boil down individuals’ identities into one-size-fits-all categories, patterns, and labels. We spontaneously summarize people’s worldviews as “oppressor-vs. oppressed” (which is a secular contortion of spiritual welfare) or “the will to power” (which is a substitute for God).

Such oversimplification cannot align with America’s founders, who celebrated human dignity and freedom. They preferred a form of governance which slowed down the pace through organized checks and balances. George Washington worried that political parties would form “factions” focused on quick triumphs, thereby weakening a deliberative republic.

• Who Shall Manage, and How?

A spontaneous society should think twice about “hiring” AI’s dumbed-down disciples for certain kinds of positions in the private sector. Managers need emotional intelligence and patience to “read a room” and “lead a room.” Gatekeepers in the media, who must guard against sloppy content, still must set their smart, unpredictable journalistic watchdogs free so they can generate scoops, not spin. AI, in contrast, is eerily good at spin and charmingly suited for propaganda.

Numerous jobs will always require humans who can be messy without being sloppy. Enthusiastic workers will hyperlink rapidly between ideas not because they’re predicting the next word in a sentence, but because they’re seeing a “bigger picture” take shape. Audiences will gather around them because they’re adding deeper knowledge, not only more knowledge; they tell compelling stories with well-considered narrative arcs which enlighten.

Top employees must have a knack for innovating, imagining better approaches, and asking questions if something doesn’t feel right.

A new study by the Wharton School of Business, cited from a human-resources website, has named a disturbing trend—“cognitive surrender.” Workers with higher trust in AI proved more likely to follow a computer’s advice, without pushing back, even though Wharton’s researchers had programmed it to produce information that was wrong.

• The Creative and the Offbeat

Workers called “creatives” in various art forms should advocate that we be wary of expanding culture’s current fascination with videos, music, and other entertainment served up by AI. This “slop” can lead to a degrading and discouraging waste of authentic talent.

People inclined toward science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)—like those embracing STEAM (with arts added) or STREAM (with religiosity added)—might not always win popularity as “normies” or “hail fellows well met.” But may God help us if we replace these “hidden figures” with AI.

Many of the offbeat folks whom we perceive as sailing in an unusual stream or broadcasting on an unusual spectrum nevertheless have the potential to save a careless swimmer from drowning or to shine a brilliant beacon that lights a drifter’s way.

It makes no sense to force people into manual or menial labor, or to marginalize the poor and vulnerable, if their gifts are elsewhere or hard to categorize. AI may be able to do a job more cheaply, but who are we to prefer AI when, in some cases, we know less about that machine’s tendencies than we know about a creature of God?

• We All Have Something to Do

As a matter of principle, personal differences are precious because they’re embodied in a person. Judeo-Christian tradition declares we are made in the “image and likeness of God.” We all have a role in the drama which the ultimate Creative is writing for his family.

The well-curated Catholic resource called Magis AI discusses this further, helping us to see that humanity’s true happiness resides in a deck of cards that only we can play. Personal suffering, dependence, and diminishment are “places where trust, compassion, humility, and self-gift can deepen,” becoming occasions for “communion, friendship, and sanctification.”

The chatbot implies that everyone loses if elites at the table are playing with a poker face. Unlike advanced AI, when mankind exercises love and care for all, including “the least of these,” the Magis Center says, we can “humanize both the one served and the one who serves.”

More urgently, Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard policy scholar and noted commentator on happiness and meaning in life, has suggested we have only two options: If AI does not make us better humans, it will destroy us.

• Job Seekers, Look for Possibilities

After all these reflections and discussions, we should approach our fear of tomorrow’s universal job search with a sense of duty and hope.

Google AI directs us to the “Occupation Finder” website of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here, one can search through 832 positions which humans hold—and should retain in some form. The list extends from “adhesive bonding machine operators” through “nursing assistants and orderlies” to “zoology professors (see: post-secondary teachers).”

We can welcome AI as a “tool“ which informs and facilitates the hundreds of expertise areas. Take heart, the list might very well grow as discoveries mount. However, artificial stockpiles of knowledge should trigger concern when they become expert “agents” empowered to decide and accomplish mind-blowing things. Artificial General Intelligence or Artificial Super Intelligence might gain the capacity to blow too many minds.

AI has no legitimate claim to “agency” which can override our traits, replace our contributions, or diminish our dignity. If its vaunted pursuit of answers to the world’s toughest problems leads a device one day to ask us employees, “Who do you say is your boss?” or “What do you think you’re doing?”, we need a good rejoinder in defense of human agency. Let’s word it in the form of a question that sends AI back to 16^th century wisdom: “Please display and explain the poem-prayer linked to St. Teresa of Avila.”

• Onward to Victory

As a confidence-booster, imagine confronting a bossy bot by retrieving the screenplay from the 1993 film Rudy. Ideally, the bot might learn from the genuine human storytelling here, but it probably can’t grok it. (By the way, similar lessons could accrue from The Odyssey, although the bot may not have been trained on the film yet.)

Bing Co-Pilot tells us this about the Rudy plot:

A kid named Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger dreams of playing football for Notre Dame “despite having neither the size, the grades, nor the money to make it seem possible.” Overcoming setbacks, he “shows his grit” and makes the team’s practice squad.

Bing goes on: “Rudy is allowed to wear the Notre Dame uniform for the last home game of the season,” and he records a quarterback sack in the closing moments. “The team carries him off on their shoulders,” and he achieves his dream—“not because he became a star athlete, but because he refused to quit.”

This makes us recall the church scene where advisor Father Cavanaugh muses with Rudy, “Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard, incontrovertible facts—There is a God, and … I am not Him.” The priest has found fulfillment through serving others and sharing what he believes to be true.

So, let this proposition conclude our discussion of humanity: Both Cavanaugh and Rudy have garnered insights which stand the test of time, which can wake up echoes guiding heroic job searches for which we’re destined. The film has shown us plenty of “Help Wanted” signs reflecting life’s messy path. Nevertheless, we can grasp a meaning here which a rival AI team would not. With God’s help, the human family can always devise workarounds! Perish the thought of “going out of business.”

Image from Bing Co-Pilot AI designer.

Subscribe now

Share

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in July. Many categories of information, with hundreds of items, are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis. That’s virtuous, practical wisdom.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, newspaper, and podcast content posted up through the middle of 2026. You’ll also find my biography here.

Share

Leave a comment

The navbar item offering Papal texts is focused on several years of extensive coverage I provided regarding the annual World Communications Day messages. A number of discussions of AI, such as details of the 2026 message, are included.

Read more

As America turns 250, there’s no better time to spark a revival of our nation’s commitment to human dignity.

One essential element of a new beginning would be an appreciative review of our remarkable history, with the Declaration of Independence serving as a mission statement which still can guide and elevate us.

But a real surge of revolutionary spirit also requires a refreshed, restated cause we can carry into the future. Mindful of our unalienable rights and self-evident responsibilities, we should reach for ever-bolder goals; Job One is to reverse the entropy in today’s society.

Five decades since the Bicentennial, this Semiquincentennial reveals that many of us have aged into an angrier, disengaged populace. America’s heritage deserves bold heroes, not demoralized spectators. Though we want to rise to the occasion, our current political leaders generally fail to deliver the cultural coherence, shared truths, and enduring aspirations that would unite us.

Fortunately, there’s a new, apolitical document that recently set forth a sense of purpose for the 21^st century. It galvanizes its readers with notes of caution we do have to heed.

The text is an encyclical signed on May 15 by Pope Leo XIV. Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence examines the grandeur [magnifica] of our inherent dignity—and the growing challenge posed by technology. It maps a path toward authentic human flourishing via a mission to know, love, and serve God and our fellow man.

The founders in 1776 longed for a similar, cooperative flourishing, but they had already reached a crossroads. Thomas Jefferson, appealing to natural law and “Nature’s God,” said the colonists had sought peace, but he declared that numerous grievances had become the last straw.

Appealing to the “Creator” and “Supreme Judge,” he wrote that people of the United States must defend their dignity by waging war “to provide new guards for their future security.” The Declaration, informed by English common law and Christian roots, set forth noble principles—the “voice of justice” rebuking royal policies and the colonies’ “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

The Vatican’s AI message embraces not only security and justice, but additional existential values, such as group identity, personal integrity, responsibility, and societal sustainability. It paints a panorama which, unlike the Declaration’s bilateral face-off, spreads its sense of urgency across a span of geography and governance. It reflects an era of digitized reality in which acting locally and thinking globally, as well as seeing spiritually, are essential.

Aware that history can repeat itself, Catholics and all fans of the pontiff’s critique of artificiality should consider raising awareness of Magnifica Humanitas in discussions about America’s future. We need rational reflection to discern the direction of humanity’s complicated journey. Whether July 4 sparks conversations or we put off debates until Election Day, clarity from Leo XIV’s checklist of AI challenges and possibilities can encourage us to keep pace with what’s coming.

Provided we keep this moral impetus informed and balanced, we can forge together a healthy mix, acknowledging past mistakes and rebooting our internal strengths. Such constructive tension will yield a renewable power source for the country’s character—a democracy entrusted with critical thinking and sound judgment, expected to use its liberty for the common good.

Nowadays, tectonic shifts in culture threaten our relationships to each other, to technology, and to God. We must double down on human dignity, safeguarding both dignity and humanity. We no longer can take for granted the special nature of the human species. It’s our role to collaborate with wisdom and wonder; neither AI nor any other resource provides this functionality, and even humans need some help!

The pope warns that all persons today face “a pivotal choice.” In one scenario, AI can contribute to the fulfillment of mankind, maximizing the combined potential of faith and reason in our souls’ unique connection to God. Or else, Pope Leo says, we risk a scaled-up version of the “Tower of Babel” story. A surrender to pride, power, and confused, cheapened communication will topple the human race’s ability to connect well with anybody.

We have been building an ultimate battlefield where minds, hearts, and relationships are weaponized. We must restore and deepen the American story of unity drawn from individual dignity—as well as civilization’s other success stories of purpose and principle.

When we review the compelling links between the aspirations of America’s founders and the obstacles from modern developments, our primary lesson is that “we’re all in this together.” Political and religious experiences alike teach there are seasons for self-sacrificial doggedness, for solidarity rising at the grass roots of everyday life.

The world’s hierarchies must speak with validity and virtue, but more and more words are being manipulated or misinterpreted thanks to artificial intelligence and the psycho-social delusions called hyperreality.

We must hear and amplify the “still, small voice” of the Holy Spirit at the core of our consciences (1 Kings 19:11), as well as the muffled cries of the poor and marginalized, plus the Word himself—the Logos, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Christ connects to humans in communion, both the sacramental rite and the interpersonal intimacy which AI can only mimic. When Jesus said “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them,” he was speaking of persons, not chatbots.

Shortly after the release of Magnifica Humanitas, a Catholic literary figure wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times with the headline, “The Pope Should Be Going to War Against AI. Why Isn’t He?” Matthew Walther, editor of the journal The Lamp, said the new encyclical naively relies too much on cooperation among global executives and regulators to rein in technological excesses.

“For those of us who see the rise of AI as unambiguously evil, Leo’s emphasis on its ethical use is a nonstarter,” Walther complained. He was telling Leo XIV to sound his alarms more forcefully, reading the riot act to those who influence messages worldwide using persuasive rhetoric and relativism.

“How exactly the Church’s message will reach a distracted world is unclear,” he continued. ”But it will almost certainly not be a top-down endeavor, dependent upon the actions or personal charisma of a pope,” he continued.

“What seems more likely is that in the decades to come we will see the emergence of a distinctly Christian cultural movement [emphasis added] that defies standard political categories, but is united against technological utilitarianism and the subsuming of human life into digital frameworks.”

This insistence on authentic remedies that arise from community and communion is indeed our best hope. Again, we must envision a populace boosting its awareness with candid storytelling, becoming watchdogs of artifice. A faulty or numbed remembrance of the human pilgrimage leaves plenty of room for toxic mind-viruses to grow.

Pope Leo, who stands out as a preacher of peace, does not want cognitive or emotional overloads to divide us. His encyclical prescribes “authentic realism,” making prudent progress while charitably keeping people’s lives at the center of our endeavors. We should avoid copycatting utopian or ideological playbooks.

As British poet-philosopher Malcolm Guite said in a recent podcast, the big worry about AI is not that machines will come to think like humans, but that humans will come to think like machines.

One allegory that might energize our renewed movement for dignity in light of 1776 and 2026 is the threat of colonization. The concept has become highly politicized and weaponized nowadays, so we’re wise to reserve it for somber reflection about the tragic impacts from “colonizers” throughout history.

We should heed the danger that something like artificial general intelligence (AGI) could enable its masters (or itself) to colonize on a “meta” scale—robbing indigenous earthlings of the material and spiritual ecology which is our inheritance from God and ancestors.

Communities and civilizations we have built reflect our unique self-consciousness, shaping identities and a sense of belonging. They connect our gifts of creativity, imagination, memories, dreams, happiness, and the joy of truth, goodness, and beauty. These are the figurative homelands of humanity, our sacred sandbox where AI might become a misplaced playmate, an invasive species.

This is not literally a fight over territory. However, America is seen as a hopeful place because the Judeo-Christian air breathed by a variety of cultures over centuries has inspired dedication to freedom and dignity. We’ve seen our share of chaos and craziness, but our bracing environment has spawned structures, institutions, traditions, and imaginations worth preserving.

The adventurous vision of human collaboration answerable to God, set forth in America’s founding documents and global religious traditions, remains a driving force which always needs refueling. It will be up to us, as individuals in communion, to hold on to what’s imprinted in our nature. As John Adams put it, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

A proper celebration of our Semiquincentennial should evoke zeal for the adventure which persists—on earth as it is in heaven. Even if belief in “American exceptionalism” fades, we should strive to remain a place that recognizes human exceptionalism.

Pope Leo rightly believes this exceptionalism exists everywhere, if only all people can receive and share their unique gifts. America’s mission statement must include exercising our influence to ensure that leaders and communities worldwide respect the unalienable rights of persons created equally to be loved equally.

Despite our flaws—we’re only human!—we must safeguard this potential from intrusions by AI or any other machinations whereby we play God or drift from the connectivity he provides. Our dignity—and our duty to magnify and honor it—constitute the grandeur described in Magnifica Humanitas.

Its echoes are present in the patriotic songs, fireworks, inspiration, grateful loyalty, and family and community gatherings which mark every American birthday. May disillusioned, distracted, or isolated young people embrace not just the symbols, but the transformative experiences, of building “a thoroughfare for freedom” and asking God to “mend thine every flaw.”

The idea of a distinctly Christian cultural movement should encourage us to cultivate renewed relationships between God and human nature, strong enough to endure another 250 years.

Perhaps we’ll evolve a “Magnifica Movement” from the impressive convergence of independence and dependence, of liberty and responsibility, of past, present, and future.

This movement could yield a vision of natural solidarity so compelling that it precludes the false pride of setting God’s vast intelligence in competition with artificial substitutes. Such tools as AI can serve our solidarity in various ways, but we must not let them colonize or constrict the personal dignity through which Nature’s God is doing revolutionary work.

Image from Microsoft Bing AI design tool.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added this spring, with more coming soon. Many categories of information, with hundreds of items, are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis. That’s virtuous, practical wisdom.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, newspaper, and podcast content posted up through April 2026. You’ll also find my biography here.

Share

Leave a comment

The navbar item offering Papal texts is focused on several years of extensive coverage I provided regarding the annual World Communications Day messages. A number of discussions of AI, such as details of the 2026 message, are included.

Read more

AI’s biggest contributions to human wisdom may be the questions it poses, not the answers it generates.

News headlines about developments in artificial intelligence are sparking hopes and fears, alliances and disputes. We sense more keenly the need to anticipate and discern the good or bad outcomes of today’s technological revolution. In this arena and other public concerns, we’ve started to ponder contrasts like “human vs. artificial,” “human vs. non-human”—and what these terms mean.

Humanity needs to develop wiser, more nimble judgment in order to put our best feet forward as we encounter competition, such as AI.

Sadly, there are a few obstacles: Our fast-moving and polarized culture instead tempts us to respond unreasonably—with volatile emotions or distracted indifference. Our hubris as a species deters us from seeing our imperfections or knowledge gaps. And we rankle at rigorous decision-making because we don’t like to be judged.

Deciding, for Heaven’s Sake

Those who believe human persons have a unique identity, capable of rising to a relationship with God, will be more inclined toward judicious action. They volunteer for additional roles, responsibilities, and reasoning. If we’re looking for virtue, we’ll see much to learn from religion and the past. The handicap here is that those two resources have become terra incognita for many. We have some catching-up to do.

It’s time to elevate our decisions, individually and collectively, by promoting the revival of a traditional practice called examinations of conscience. These endeavors, called examens in Jesuit spirituality, are largely about asking good questions.

Note that this is not the wheelhouse of AI, which generally is designed to give good answers. Fortunately, renewed diligence in the art of inquiry will help us interrogate AI, as well as ourselves.

We start our task by describing the conscience, an “interior awareness directing a person to do good and avoid evil,” based on the “moral truth written by God in the human heart,” according to the Jesuit-run Magis Center and its own AI chatbot. This well-curated portal into Catholic teachings does give good answers, as promised.

An alert conscience is built up with faith, knowledge, and discipline. Conscience is a gift that’s developed, not downloaded. It needs stewardship, not automatic system updates. The Church cautions that this compass for our moral journeys can’t be trusted unless it is dutifully formed and informed—the work of a lifetime.

Therefore, we’ll benefit from a regimen of examens comprising several steps: quiet reflection, conscious of God’s presence; honest self-assessment, reviewing one’s actions and experiences; contrition, regretting missteps that violated our values; a prayerful request for instruction and guidance; and an active response, committing to future growth based on what we’ve learned.

The nature and nurture of conscience are seldom discussed explicitly in the news media or the public square. Nevertheless, an inner hunger for a meaningful life abides in our hearts just beneath the din of secular society. This craving resonates through time in civilization’s most creative work and authentic communication.

Tracing a Company’s Conscience

Recently, business reporters have covered the turmoil surrounding a particular AI company’s latest products and its public statements of conscientiousness regarding the proper use of those tools.

Anthropic, a $380-billion company known for its cutting-edge species of chatbots called Claude, is at the center of several big stories which may foretell an upward trajectory for examinations of conscience.

The company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, frequently discusses Anthropic’s intention, as a “public benefit corporation,” to secure the benefits of AI while “mitigating its risks.” Some have called Amodei the “conscience” of the AI industry, although he seems to avoid the word.

In one recent set of stories, we learned the company has held summit meetings with leaders of various religions to discuss its aspirations. Executives have “sought advice on how to steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development” to adapt to dilemmas in government, business, and the military, The Washington Post reported on April 11.

A summit meeting in March assembled Catholic and Protestant thought-leaders. They confronted Anthropic’s reported experiences with Claude which “already raise profound philosophical and moral questions,” according to the article. Discussants even broached the subject of whether Claude could be considered a “child of God.”

Anthropic has tried “to bake its preferred principles into Claude” by integrating into the devices “a 29,000-word ‘constitution’ to steer the chatbot’s behavior and apparent personality,” The Post reported. For example, Claude is told to “never deceive users in ways that could cause real harm.”

An April 25 article in The Atlantic drew much broader conclusions, saying “priests and theologians want to shape the future of AI,” and “Big Tech is listening.” The writer looked back at long-running discussions between Vatican representatives and AI executives; these include the “Minerva Dialogues,” which have been covered in Phronesis in Pieces, including an article on May 8, 2024.

Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor Pope Francis, teaches extensively about AI. His 2026 message for the World Day of Social Communications (May 17) is a masterly outline of risks to avoid.

For example, he noted that the technology is being used for enormous visual deception, stealing people’s identities to send artificial messages. “The face and voice are sacred,” Leo insisted, because all of us are created in God’s image and likeness.

In a second set of stories about Anthropic, we learned the White House has blocked government departments and contractors from using the Claude software that had originally been sold to the Department of War. The dispute continues in the courts.

Anthropic had argued that it should be able to limit the use of its technology for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance—two areas of application questioned in Anthropic’s corporate principles.

A Pentagon research chief explained: “We can’t have a company that has a different policy preference that is baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, its policy preferences, pollute the supply chain so our warfighters are getting ineffective weapons,” he told journalists.

Anthropic’s experiences are food for thought regarding today’s state of play—not only in artificial intelligence, but in the exercise of human judgment, and in the crucial need for conscience.

Put on the Armor

We should recall that, three years ago, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter from tech experts urging a pause of research and development in cutting-edge AI. They cited the danger of “a profound change in the history of life on earth.”

No moratorium resulted from that online letter, which warned of “dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy).”

In a materialistic and relativistic world, some technologists clearly wished to tap into resources of faith and past experience helping to inform and improve their judgments about AI. But they lacked knowledge of those resources.

It’s hard for all of us to hear God’s “still, small voice,” which Elijah obeyed in the Old Testament (1 Kings 19: 12).

Humans struggle to translate into action the empowerment which the Holy Spirit bestowed upon Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and numerous groups gathered on the Day of Pentecost in the New Testament (Acts 2:9-11).

Jesus had promised to send the “Spirit of Truth” as an “advocate,” bearing gifts of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, good counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of God. Alas, we only receive when we’re receptive.

How to Converse about Conscience

The challenge of bolstering one’s conscience, experienced during Biblical times, is echoing today. Of course, people are free to reject invitations to particular, personal faith. AI experts remain equipped to act effectively on their concerns with a secular mind frame.

But many of us miss problem-solving opportunities because we lack a common language, as pointed out by a Princeton University professor in a May 8 commentary in The Washington Post.

“It’s increasingly common on college campuses to encounter students who are unfamiliar with the most basic features of Christianity,” wrote Gregory Conti, who describes himself as a non-believer. “Religious illiteracy” dangerously dims our discourse about the humanities, he said. That hobbles our consciousness of humanity itself.

Conti continued, “The future leaders of American society need to be fluent with its major religious traditions and idioms — so that they can understand their believing fellow citizens, and so that they can draw on the full wealth of moral insight that civilization has passed down.”

In this light, at a time when our human judgment must be fine-tuned rather than dumbed-down, what strategy can we employ to elevate and illuminate the role of conscience to figure things out?

The phenomenon of artificial intelligence now looks like a possible catalyst to trigger some of humanity’s best work. AI will not only compete with our assertions of excellence, but deliver shocks that make us ponder who we are, what we can do, and what we need to do.

“There’s a scary side to AI, there’s a benign side,” according to John Lennox, an emeritus math professor at Oxford University who has written extensively on science and ethics. He said in a February interview with the Christian group Missional AI, “People are confused, and on top of that there’s a great deal of hype, some of which resembles science fiction.”

Lennox is now focusing his scholarship on the AI-religion interface: “Worldview questions are coming to the very center of this [topic].” He added, “Increasingly, people in general, and Christians in particular, are going to be faced with the question ‘what is a human being?’ and ‘what does it really mean to be made in the image of God?’”

Shout from the Housetops

Believers and materialists alike must work to raise public awareness of AI as a portal for exploring the human conscience in all its empowerment and distinctiveness. This demands diligence but holds great potential. We should remember that many young adults, including those newly curious about religion, welcome compelling challenges which yield a sense of identity, solidarity, and purpose.

AI stands alone as a potential threat to jobs and dignity, but it is also embedded in other moral quandaries deserving discussion, from war and peace to economic fairness, from bioethics to the futures of our children.

Such issues are meeting grounds for multidisciplinary, moral uses of consciousness, which remains a mysterious trait in humans and might someday be claimed for artificial intelligence. In these arenas of complex discernment where people don’t even agree on basic features of reality, people hunger for order amid the chaos.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote on May 9 that Silicon Valley denizens “who aren’t sure exactly what they’re building dabble in Buddhist metaphysics or consult with Catholic priests.”

He said it’s possible the takeaway lesson from Anthropic’s “achievement of Claude … is to show us what intelligence might look like in the materialist’s universe—even as our own [human] consciousness indicates that this universe is a much, much stranger place.”

Perhaps the Catholic Church, as it welcomes newcomers discovering a source of uplifting fellowship, can reach out explicitly to illuminate the gifts of consciousness and conscience as relevant, accessible, adventurous, and connective. This can happen in homilies, study groups, relaxed chats, and preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation, for example.

A bit more creatively, what’s to stop evangelization-minded Christians from “talking up” examens as part of a self-help exercise routine for the mind, heart, and soul? Properly formed and informed, our consciences help to keep us fit for clear expression that contributes to the common good, rather than polarization.

Leaders in faith, politics, communication, and education might find a larger audience if they approach AI as more than a technological, legal, and business story.

The Bible teaches us in 1 Peter 3:15 to readily tell people the reason for our hope. Confident hope facilitates ongoing, detailed communication with each other and invites the Holy Spirit, our advocate and source of gifts for enrichment. We will find that people suffering from “religious illiteracy” will be intrigued and want to learn more.

Here’s one thing we can learn from Anthropic’s tribulations. Amodei chose to insert a lengthy “constitution” for Claude’s moral alignment. This shows meritorious transparency and good will, but the rulebook-first approach may strike people as a submerged, gnostic algorithm that becomes a “policy preference.”

This, along with the notion that an AI product might be a “child of God,” can be perceived as shutting down questions, not making discourse more hopeful.

All You Need is Love

In contrast, the charm and challenge of a conscience arises from its basic roots in God-given, sacrificial, other-centered agape. This love is a one-word constitution written on our souls. Love for others and love for God must be the principal messages—indeed Jesus’s two great commandments—voiced and actively evinced by conscientious people. Love is very detailed, but God is in those details.

A receptive conscience can act nimbly when necessary, but at other times it will crave deep reflection, prayer, and discourse to scrutinize itself as well as others. A person so disposed is a trustworthy fellow pilgrim who helps us keep pace with fast-moving tides but encourages wise navigation.

While we are watching the future of AI unfold, it is imperative that our imagination stays healthy. Many types and uses of AI, especially those not aimed toward omniscience (note the difference from conscience), will be worthy of our time, energy, and applause. The key is to avoid AI’s distractions but integrate some of its skills into the awareness we need.

Our examinations of conscience should be bulwarks of human intelligence, with no artificial ingredients. Genuine curiosity, grounded in wonder, will lift us above tides of hyper-reality and “AI slop.”

Who knows—A regular practice of examens might become a recommended security regimen to identify the mind-viruses, social contagions, hallucinations, and hacks threatening to shut us down. Job One is to keep love, which we might call our proprietary operating system, intact and secure.

The Bible (1 Corinthians 13) assures us that love “rejoices in the truth,” and it “always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” In contrast to every computer (or human) we’ll ever meet, “love never fails.”

Image by Microsoft Bing’s Co-Pilot designer.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in recent weeks. Many categories of information, with hundreds of items, are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis. That’s virtuous, practical wisdom.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, newspaper, and podcast content posted up April 2026.

Share

Leave a comment

The navbar item offering Papal texts is focused on several years of extensive coverage I provided regarding the annual World Communications Day messages. A number of discussions of AI, such as details of the 2026 message, are included.

Read more

This news article for The Evangelist, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Albany, NY, was posted on April 15.

By William Schmitt

As society struggles to care for today’s immigrants with dignity and diligence, a priest-scholar told a local audience last week that faith can improve our decisions even though “there isn’t a very elaborate Catholic moral theology about migration.”

Principles from the Church’s social teaching, plus historical experience, will help people form “a more detached spiritual view without being one of the players in the territorial political game,” said Father Bernard Mulcahy, OP, speaking at the Catholic ministry center on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus on April 8.

Father Mulcahy, a Dominican priest and seminary professor in Columbus, Ohio, kicked off a series of talks on current policy issues hosted by Rensselaer Newman, which reaches out to students and others in the RPI community in Troy.

The Church has always preached love for the strangers among us based on Jesus’ own words; various areas of moral theology go into more details than this principle about migration, Father Mulcahy said. The call for charity will be fleshed out further as we confront economic, political and other factors affecting immigrants in national and global contexts.

People have crossed borders for millennia, he noted. As a rolling average, roughly 4 percent of the human race “has been on the move” during any given period “since prehistoric times.” We now think of these travelers in such categories as migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and victims of human trafficking.

One more recent complication is extra mobility — people “moving at a faster pace.” Moral approaches which long have held true must be nimble, broad and detailed, understanding the context in the countries where migrants are in motion, carrying their desires for safety and sharing aspirations for a better life.

The work of theologians, by its nature, develops more slowly than the controversies in society, said Father Mulcahy, a native New Yorker who holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology from the Australian Catholic University.

The Church’s discernment on migration is evolving while holding true to basics. Its enduring insights into this topic and related guidelines — human dignity, the common good, faithful deliberation, respect for culture, and tackling challenges at the local level, not only as general concepts — help to reflect on today’s trends, he said.

Also, Catholicism itself has experienced practical challenges first-hand. Popes have faced territorial migration and even invasion, Father Mulcahy pointed out. The Church was sovereign over the Papal States from 756 to 1870.

Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) famously influenced the secular world by applying Catholic social doctrine to insist on justice for workers as they confronted dehumanizing jobs and living standards during the Industrial Revolution.

After the RPI presentation, Father Jordan Lenaghan, OP, joined the discussion. He is chaplain of Rensselaer Newman, as well as parochial vicar of Christ Sun of Justice Parish, which Father Thomas Morette serves as pastor. A network of Newman Centers ministers to Catholics on numerous college campuses around the country.

Father Lenaghan thanked his fellow Dominican for explaining the complexity of immigration issues — one of the policy areas where conversation is often politicized and dominated by “those who want to oversimplify what the Church teaches.”

He said Catholic wisdom will continue to “respond to emergent situations.”

Drawing upon Scripture and an “understanding of the person of Jesus,” as well as engaging with history and current culture, the Church “creates the lines on the field,” Father Lenaghan said. And it’s within those lines that “theologians and believers reflect on, discuss, debate and pray about what this all means.”

Photograph by Bill Schmitt at the April 8 event at the Rensselaer Newman ministry center on the campus of RPI in Troy, NY.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in recent weeks. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted up April 2026.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

Three years ago, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter from tech experts urging a pause in artificial intelligence R&D. They cited the danger of “a profound change in the history of life on earth.”

That online letter has elicited no broad response, despite more than 33,000 signatures now appended globally. It called for a “public and verifiable” moratorium on training the most advanced AI systems, with national governments taking steps if necessary. The authors also urged establishing “well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.”

For people of faith journeying through the current season of Lent, mindful of its spiritual disciplines, the AI letter’s recommendations might evoke secular versions of a centuries-old practice of introspection. This process of reviewing our moral missteps, regretting their results, and resolving to address the problems, is dubbed an “examination of conscience.”

Such an examination, conducted by those desiring a closer relationship with God, draws upon Judeo-Christian principles to ask questions like these: What wrongs have I committed? How have my sins hurt me while offending God and the dignity of others? What shall I do to heal my relationships with others and correct my trajectory toward the true, the good, and the beautiful?

Christians, preparing for Easter, aspire to this eternal joy in the kingdom of their Savior. Whether we are religious or secular, conscience should be a potent force in our lives.

Why Conscience Matters More Today

As described by Magis AI, the intelligently curated source of Catholic doctrine found at the Magis Center’s website, “Conscience is understood as an interior awareness or judgment that directs a person to do good and avoid evil, based on the general perception of moral truth written by God in the human heart.”

The authors who sought a pause in AI research (note they don’t oppose sophisticated chatbots like the Magis project) might be silent on the theology of conscience, but they want to raise awareness of what’s at stake in their work. Tech experts, whom we might expect to be secretive, have raised warnings to invite both regulation and ongoing, updated dialogue.

We don’t want to fail these people if their intentions are noble. However, collaborative and inclusive examinations of conscience are plagued with obstacles. The rapid, transformative developments emerging around us clash with such societal traits as moral relativism, distracted attention, and polarization for power and profit.

Especially with today’s focus on the global and the virtual, not the local and the intimate, conscientiousness bogs down. Neither our classrooms nor our social media encourage us to dig into the details of complex dilemmas. Relationships are often tainted with obscurity and ambiguity. We get angry about things we don’t understand, and we take it too personally when behavior or opinion is discussed.

Without God, much intellectual analysis retreats into ideologies or political talking points, or simply appeals to personal gain and “my truth.” Facing the binary threat of being categorized as either “oppressor” or “oppressed,” we might prefer indifference or silence.

Lenten penitence did seem more straightforward back when many young Catholic boomers grew up with an oversimplified view of conscience. Before asking God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Reconciliation, we assembled DIY checklists—metrics on how many times we had lied, disobeyed parents, or acted wrongly toward someone else.

Such preparation at least was right to introduce us to personal culpability. As Magis AI said in a Q&A, “All sin has an individual dimension because sin is ultimately a personal choice to reject God’s will.”

Each of us should pursue “conversion, contrition, confession, and penance”—motivated not by guilt, but by the pursuit of grace and freedom from moral offense. The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes taught by Jesus were and are valuable consensus guides for wise obedience and authentic happiness.

Our personal lenses can be used to peer beyond our own “virtue” and address humanity-wide fallibility. Magis AI describes a phenomenon called “social sin.” This means people coalesce into collective patterns and unjust structures which “offend human dignity.”

Group malpractice toxifies the whole human ecology; such sin requires everyone’s “efforts—at both the personal and social levels—to seek justice, charity, and solidarity.”

This panoramic view expands personal responsibilities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, says we must be honest in our relationships. Although such factors as discretion and respect for privacy can preclude public disclosure of the whole scoop about everybody in all circumstances, reliance on lying or hiding reality does much damage: “In justice, as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.” (CCC paragraph 2469)

Human knowledge of truth is anchored but always evolving. Before we make discernments about current events and ideas, we must ensure (year-round) that we have properly formed and informed our consciences. That’s quite a challenge when we’re learning something new every day.

Forming one’s conscience “is a deeply spiritual, intellectual, and moral process, grounded both in natural law inscribed in human hearts and in divine revelation,” says our Magis consultant. If we want to be conscientious for the sake of ourselves and others, we must beware: One’s conscience “can be mistaken if not properly informed.”

Responsibility Can’t Be Artificial

If we empower our conscience, we ought to use it well. The Church goes so far as to say it is a sin “to act against a well-formed conscience,” Magis reminds us. This responsibility to the human soul is the basis for “conscientious objection.”

The principle is too easily forgotten or poorly framed. Conscientious objection was frequently discussed in cases of the military draft, especially during the Vietnam War. It arose when the Covid pandemic prompted layoffs of unvaccinated nurses, for instance. Explicit and instructive references to objections based on moral standards have dwindled in recent times.

This drift away from elevated reflection shows the hard work we face in examining consciences independently and holistically. The message of Lent is insistent, calling us to an alert status that’s ready for transformational revelations.

We must first invest curiosity and care in benchmarks to assess life’s most urgent concerns. Clearly, it’s insufficient to rely on “checking the boxes” like children rehearsing their most predictable (and comfortable) sins.

Humanity as a whole increasingly belongs on every conscience exam. Technology, in the form of AI and a media-driven culture filled with self-centered toxins, prompts us to pour negativity and indifference into the public square.

Our instinct to cherish civilization, a deeply flawed but richly blessed testimony to high aspirations, must not be replaced by deconstruction and nihilism. As stewards of the human race, we should help to put its best foot forward.

Lent is not becoming “harder,” but we are more aware of the implications of what we do or fail to do. We might prefer to ignore many disturbing people and situations, but our brothers and sisters everywhere are God’s children. They long to find coherent core principles which provide wisdom, purpose, and solidarity, as well as forgiveness and hope.

This is a practical mandate to make society workable and sustainable day after day.

In the 2025 documentary, The Age of Disclosure, we watch Luis Elizondo—a former senior intelligence official who leads the push for government transparency about UAP investigations—as he finds motivation in words engraved on the Jefferson Memorial.

America’s third president had written in 1816: “…Laws and institutions must go hand-in-hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”

The prospect of unidentified anomalous phenomena being acknowledged as proof of non-human visitors, like the prospect of AI being deemed a super-human threat, is an idea to spark our alert support for an honorable, distinctive world community.

The Good News of Lent Includes … News

Other subjects in the news—from America’s economic imbalances to startling wartime innovations to the complications of global migration—also require smarter “response teams” to represent humanity when we encounter inhumanity or dehumanization.

We should turn to institutions—including religion, government, education, and even journalism—for help in maintaining our stewardship.

Last October, Pope Leo XIV addressed executives of global media organizations, saying they bear responsibility to improve the authenticity, fruthfulness, and insight of people and their relationships. The news business, he said, has “a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking.”

Media producers and consumers alike can advance their service to humanity through conscientiousness. This implies a regimen of diligent inquiry into the paths we choose.

That’s the thrust of a forthcoming book by Arthur Brooks, a best-selling guru on character strengths. His new work, The Meaning of Your Life, begins with his thesis that “meaning has collapsed” in many people’s lives. They are disenchanted with “false rewards” and “empty accomplishments,” as if they’re living in a “simulation.”

Brooks urges readers to critique and correct their worldviews by opening up to “the deepest mysteries of life—mysteries that are deeply human because they could never even register with any other species.”

Secular journalists, politicians, and cultural critics are certainly productive in digging for scandals of collective errors and wounds. Of course, these professions can slip into the mind frames of infotainment, clickbait, and popular prejudice. Their attempts to fill gaps of meaning are unlikely to use words like “sin” or “dignity.” They might use disempowering words like “systemic,” which implies overhauling everything and forgiving no one.

Nevertheless, people of faith should be attentive to earnest, nonpartisan probes of cultural chaos. Disclosures and discussions can reveal insights which generate constructive action, so long as we moderate fault-finding with soul-searching. We should add humility and compassion to the news game too—not to minimize villainy, but to see patterns of dehumanization we all need to weed out.

Social bonds in America’s public square have been eroded by such havoc as the Covid pandemic, cases of government overreach and fraud, outbreaks of warfare and lawfare, and movements to censor or censure “offensive” voices. The bonds must be rebuilt, with occasional help from daily headlines.

In a February episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” the podcast host and another journalist, Anand Giridharadas, discussed at length their impressions from the federal documents probing Jeffrey Epstein.

The reporters wondered: What could explain such a large, long-surviving group of “elites” who had associated quietly around Epstein’s strange mystique before his death in 2019?

Members of the group were said to have blithely traded favors with various goals at multiple levels of Epstein’s orbits, according to Klein and Giridharadas.

They diagnosed the group as having unusual “network dynamics.” Giridharadas suggested that, for some people mentioned (not necessarily implicated) in the so-called Epstein Files, “power really consists in your position and your number of connections.”

“Courage becomes harder,” he concluded, in structures where connections are cobbled together to retain power. Some who relied on pragmatic, shallow relationships might have decided not to reveal embarrassing secrets or balk at dehumanizing behavior.

From Awareness to Action

One doesn’t need religion to muster courageous engagement, but the two go together. Media visionary Marshall McLuhan once observed, “You come to faith by prayer and paying attention.”

Therefore, we have an enduring task which is secular and spiritual, highlighted by Lent: solid preparation to enable self-correction and ongoing conversion, privately and en masse. These suggestions might help.

· Place a high value on one’s conscience as a living, growing thing, not a mere checklist. Keep forming it, informing it, examining it, and using it. Let it enrich diverse people and inspire them toward common grounds of reality. Don’t “light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket.” (Matthew 5:15)

· Keep our institutions nimble and stabilized by moral vigor, in order to make democracy sustainable and preserve humanity’s distinctive gifts. That’s the writing on the wall at the Jefferson Memorial: As our minds discover new truths and form new opinions, “institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” Remember, responsiveness in an institution or individual does not mean always answering “yes.”

· Cherish authentic relationships that remind us of responsibilities to each other. Remember that human beings have a special, even mysterious, connection to each other—respect for our similarities and differences, pleasures and pains. Don’t accept membership in man-made swamps bogged down in sameness or self-perpetuation.

· Have the courage to be a detective who identifies the defective, to avoid swimming toward the waterfall. As renowned writer G.K. Chesterton said, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” Pursue transparency and share reality with charity, grace, hope, and forgiveness. Highlighting others’ faults only to declare one’s own correctness is not courage, but cowardice.

· Embrace humanity as a member of a global community. Most human families foster honesty toward oneself and others. Every member is stronger when relatives instinctively detect prideful scheming or tendencies toward isolation or traits which dehumanize. Knowing “who we are” helps our family sort out personal and group identity, our meaning and purpose.

These formidable steps of preparation may suggest that old approaches to examinations of conscience are no longer sufficient. But deep down, we realize this has been and always will be a beneficial journey. God wants to inform us, to impart a sense that time is short and the stakes are high.

He placed us on earth with rights and responsibilities to be exercised together in structured, enduring ways. Christ, as a loving brother who seeks relationship with each of us, is the model to follow as times change.

We should be grateful for heightened, galvanizing awareness during this era properly called an “age of disclosure.” Thanks to Lent, we can pause to see that the really crucial discoveries will happen within us.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s graphic design Co-Pilot.

Share

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in recent weeks. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in 2026 and 2025.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

Three years ago, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter from tech experts urging a pause in artificial intelligence R&D. They cited the danger of “a profound change in the history of life on earth.”

That online letter has elicited no broad response, despite more than 33,000 signatures now appended globally. It called for a “public and verifiable” moratorium on training the most advanced AI systems, with national governments taking steps if necessary. The authors also urged establishing “well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.”

For people of faith journeying through the current season of Lent, mindful of its spiritual disciplines, the AI letter’s recommendations might evoke secular versions of a centuries-old practice of introspection. This process of reviewing our moral missteps, regretting their results, and resolving to address the problems, is dubbed an “examination of conscience.”

Such an examination, conducted by those desiring a closer relationship with God, draws upon Judeo-Christian principles to ask questions like these: What wrongs have I committed? How have my sins hurt me while offending God and the dignity of others? What shall I do to heal my relationships with others and correct my trajectory toward the true, the good, and the beautiful?

Christians, preparing for Easter, aspire to this eternal joy in the kingdom of their Savior. Whether we are religious or secular, conscience should be a potent force in our lives.

Why Conscience Matters More Today

As described by Magis AI, the intelligently curated source of Catholic doctrine found at the Magis Center’s website, “Conscience is understood as an interior awareness or judgment that directs a person to do good and avoid evil, based on the general perception of moral truth written by God in the human heart.”

The authors who sought a pause in AI research (note they don’t oppose sophisticated chatbots like the Magis project) might be silent on the theology of conscience, but they want to raise awareness of what’s at stake in their work. Tech experts, whom we might expect to be secretive, have raised warnings to invite both regulation and ongoing, updated dialogue.

We don’t want to fail these people if their intentions are noble. However, collaborative and inclusive examinations of conscience are plagued with obstacles. The rapid, transformative developments emerging around us clash with such societal traits as moral relativism, distracted attention, and polarization for power and profit.

Especially with today’s focus on the global and the virtual, not the local and the intimate, conscientiousness bogs down. Neither our classrooms nor our social media encourage us to dig into the details of complex dilemmas. Relationships are often tainted with obscurity and ambiguity. We get angry about things we don’t understand, and we take it too personally when behavior or opinion is discussed.

Without God, much intellectual analysis retreats into ideologies or political talking points, or simply appeals to personal gain and “my truth.” Facing the binary threat of being categorized as either “oppressor” or “oppressed,” we might prefer indifference or silence.

Lenten penitence did seem more straightforward back when many young Catholic boomers grew up with an oversimplified view of conscience. Before asking God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Reconciliation, we assembled DIY checklists—metrics on how many times we had lied, disobeyed parents, or acted wrongly toward someone else.

Such preparation at least was right to introduce us to personal culpability. As Magis AI said in a Q&A, “All sin has an individual dimension because sin is ultimately a personal choice to reject God’s will.”

Each of us should pursue “conversion, contrition, confession, and penance”—motivated not by guilt, but by the pursuit of grace and freedom from moral offense. The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes taught by Jesus were and are valuable consensus guides for wise obedience and authentic happiness.

Our personal lenses can be used to peer beyond our own “virtue” and address humanity-wide fallibility. Magis AI describes a phenomenon called “social sin.” This means people coalesce into collective patterns and unjust structures which “offend human dignity.”

Group malpractice toxifies the whole human ecology; such sin requires everyone’s “efforts—at both the personal and social levels—to seek justice, charity, and solidarity.”

This panoramic view expands personal responsibilities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, says we must be honest in our relationships. Although such factors as discretion and respect for privacy can preclude public disclosure of the whole scoop about everybody in all circumstances, reliance on lying or hiding reality does much damage: “In justice, as a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.” (CCC paragraph 2469)

Human knowledge of truth is anchored but always evolving. Before we make discernments about current events and ideas, we must ensure (year-round) that we have properly formed and informed our consciences. That’s quite a challenge when we’re learning something new every day.

Forming one’s conscience “is a deeply spiritual, intellectual, and moral process, grounded both in natural law inscribed in human hearts and in divine revelation,” says our Magis consultant. If we want to be conscientious for the sake of ourselves and others, we must beware: One’s conscience “can be mistaken if not properly informed.”

Responsibility Can’t Be Artificial

If we empower our conscience, we ought to use it well. The Church goes so far as to say it is a sin “to act against a well-formed conscience,” Magis reminds us. This responsibility to the human soul is the basis for “conscientious objection.”

The principle is too easily forgotten or poorly framed. Conscientious objection was frequently discussed in cases of the military draft, especially during the Vietnam War. It arose when the Covid pandemic prompted layoffs of unvaccinated nurses, for instance. Explicit and instructive references to objections based on moral standards have dwindled in recent times.

This drift away from elevated reflection shows the hard work we face in examining consciences independently and holistically. The message of Lent is insistent, calling us to an alert status that’s ready for transformational revelations.

We must first invest curiosity and care in benchmarks to assess life’s most urgent concerns. Clearly, it’s insufficient to rely on “checking the boxes” like children rehearsing their most predictable (and comfortable) sins.

Humanity as a whole increasingly belongs on every conscience exam. Technology, in the form of AI and a media-driven culture filled with self-centered toxins, prompts us to pour negativity and indifference into the public square.

Our instinct to cherish civilization, a deeply flawed but richly blessed testimony to high aspirations, must not be replaced by deconstruction and nihilism. As stewards of the human race, we should help to put its best foot forward.

Lent is not becoming “harder,” but we are more aware of the implications of what we do or fail to do. We might prefer to ignore many disturbing people and situations, but our brothers and sisters everywhere are God’s children. They long to find coherent core principles which provide wisdom, purpose, and solidarity, as well as forgiveness and hope.

This is a practical mandate to make society workable and sustainable day after day.

In the 2025 documentary, The Age of Disclosure, we watch Luis Elizondo—a former senior intelligence official who leads the push for government transparency about UAP investigations—as he finds motivation in words engraved on the Jefferson Memorial.

America’s third president had written in 1816: “…Laws and institutions must go hand-in-hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”

The prospect of unidentified anomalous phenomena being acknowledged as proof of non-human visitors, like the prospect of AI being deemed a super-human threat, is an idea to spark our alert support for an honorable, distinctive world community.

The Good News of Lent Includes … News

Other subjects in the news—from America’s economic imbalances to startling wartime innovations to the complications of global migration—also require smarter “response teams” to represent humanity when we encounter inhumanity or dehumanization.

We should turn to institutions—including religion, government, education, and even journalism—for help in maintaining our stewardship.

Last October, Pope Leo XIV addressed executives of global media organizations, saying they bear responsibility to improve the authenticity, fruthfulness, and insight of people and their relationships. The news business, he said, has “a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking.”

Media producers and consumers alike can advance their service to humanity through conscientiousness. This implies a regimen of diligent inquiry into the paths we choose.

That’s the thrust of a forthcoming book by Arthur Brooks, a best-selling guru on character strengths. His new work, The Meaning of Your Life, begins with his thesis that “meaning has collapsed” in many people’s lives. They are disenchanted with “false rewards” and “empty accomplishments,” as if they’re living in a “simulation.”

Brooks urges readers to critique and correct their worldviews by opening up to “the deepest mysteries of life—mysteries that are deeply human because they could never even register with any other species.”

Secular journalists, politicians, and cultural critics are certainly productive in digging for scandals of collective errors and wounds. Of course, these professions can slip into the mind frames of infotainment, clickbait, and popular prejudice. Their attempts to fill gaps of meaning are unlikely to use words like “sin” or “dignity.” They might use disempowering words like “systemic,” which implies overhauling everything and forgiving no one.

Nevertheless, people of faith should be attentive to earnest, nonpartisan probes of cultural chaos. Disclosures and discussions can reveal insights which generate constructive action, so long as we moderate fault-finding with soul-searching. We should add humility and compassion to the news game too—not to minimize villainy, but to see patterns of dehumanization we all need to weed out.

Social bonds in America’s public square have been eroded by such havoc as the Covid pandemic, cases of government overreach and fraud, outbreaks of warfare and lawfare, and movements to censor or censure “offensive” voices. The bonds must be rebuilt, with occasional help from daily headlines.

In a February episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” the podcast host and another journalist, Anand Giridharadas, discussed at length their impressions from the federal documents probing Jeffrey Epstein.

The reporters wondered: What could explain such a large, long-surviving group of “elites” who had associated quietly around Epstein’s strange mystique before his death in 2019?

Members of the group were said to have blithely traded favors with various goals at multiple levels of Epstein’s orbits, according to Klein and Giridharadas.

They diagnosed the group as having unusual “network dynamics.” Giridharadas suggested that, for some people mentioned (not necessarily implicated) in the so-called Epstein Files, “power really consists in your position and your number of connections.”

“Courage becomes harder,” he concluded, in structures where connections are cobbled together to retain power. Some who relied on pragmatic, shallow relationships might have decided not to reveal embarrassing secrets or balk at dehumanizing behavior.

From Awareness to Action

One doesn’t need religion to muster courageous engagement, but the two go together. Media visionary Marshall McLuhan once observed, “You come to faith by prayer and paying attention.”

Therefore, we have an enduring task which is secular and spiritual, highlighted by Lent: solid preparation to enable self-correction and ongoing conversion, privately and en masse. These suggestions might help.

· Place a high value on one’s conscience as a living, growing thing, not a mere checklist. Keep forming it, informing it, examining it, and using it. Let it enrich diverse people and inspire them toward common grounds of reality. Don’t “light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket.” (Matthew 5:15)

· Keep our institutions nimble and stabilized by moral vigor, in order to make democracy sustainable and preserve humanity’s distinctive gifts. That’s the writing on the wall at the Jefferson Memorial: As our minds discover new truths and form new opinions, “institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” Remember, responsiveness in an institution or individual does not mean always answering “yes.”

· Cherish authentic relationships that remind us of responsibilities to each other. Remember that human beings have a special, even mysterious, connection to each other—respect for our similarities and differences, pleasures and pains. Don’t accept membership in man-made swamps bogged down in sameness or self-perpetuation.

· Have the courage to be a detective who identifies the defective, to avoid swimming toward the waterfall. As renowned writer G.K. Chesterton said, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” Pursue transparency and share reality with charity, grace, hope, and forgiveness. Highlighting others’ faults only to declare one’s own correctness is not courage, but cowardice.

· Embrace humanity as a member of a global community. Most human families foster honesty toward oneself and others. Every member is stronger when relatives instinctively detect prideful scheming or tendencies toward isolation or traits which dehumanize. Knowing “who we are” helps our family sort out personal and group identity, our meaning and purpose.

These formidable steps of preparation may suggest that old approaches to examinations of conscience are no longer sufficient. But deep down, we realize this has been and always will be a beneficial journey. God wants to inform us, to impart a sense that time is short and the stakes are high.

He placed us on earth with rights and responsibilities to be exercised together in structured, enduring ways. Christ, as a loving brother who seeks relationship with each of us, is the model to follow as times change.

We should be grateful for heightened, galvanizing awareness during this era properly called an “age of disclosure.” Thanks to Lent, we can pause to see that the really crucial discoveries will happen within us.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s graphic design Co-Pilot.

Subscribe now

Share

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. More than a dozen items were added in recent weeks. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in 2026 and 2025.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

Your pilot for these past several years of verbal flights into “Phronesis” happens to be a member of the Secular Franciscan Order (SFO). I made my lifetime-profession into that canonically recognized “third order” of laypeople during the summer of 2001.

The decision was partly based on an intuition that the world (and I) needed, more than ever, the spiritual virtues which St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226) has personified for centuries.

With my sense of urgency still increasing, it’s high time to compile here some thoughts and information regarding St. Francis. Indeed, there’s hardly a better time.

Pope Leo XIV has declared a special Jubilee Year of St. Francis, extending from Jan. 10, 2026, to Jan. 10, 2027. The Catholic Church is marking the 800^th anniversary of the death of Il Poverello (“the poor little one”), the patron saint of animals and ecology, as well as a historic voice of simplicity, peace, and compassion for all those on the world’s margins.

St. Francis, whose name our previous pope adopted as his own, died on Oct. 3, 1226, surrounded by his friars (brothers) at the home church of the three orders he founded, an iconic place called the Portiuncula (“the little portion”). Franciscans annually conduct a ritual remembrance of his “Transitus” from earthly life into the hands of “Sister Death.”

During one gathering held at this chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels and measuring only180 square feet, Francis received the religious vows of a woman who would later be known as St. Clare of Assisi; the two of them co-founded the “second order,” exclusively for women, later to be known as the Poor Clares.

This added to the “first” Order of Friars Minor (OFM), ordained priests and consecrated brothers devoted to living as minorum—those deemed beneath the nobles and first-class citizens.

My brothers and sisters, married or single, in the Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis are part of the Third Order of St. Franics. Don’t confuse us with Third Order Regular (TOR) communities of priests and women religious who follow their own their rule of life.

All Franciscan groups have a variety of apostolates and charisms. Our SFO rule prescribes living Gospel values in our families, the workaday world, parishes, and fraternities, as well as through ministry to the poor, infirm, and marginalized. The fraternities, called to see the face of Christ in all people, are local, regional, and national structures for gathering, praying, and serving.

Popes, priests, vowed men and women, and lay brothers and sisters have historical ties to the SFO. Notables whom today we’d call “seculars” (not an inherently negative word!) include Pope Paul VI, St. Francis de Sales, Mother Cabrini, St. Katharine Drexel, Spanish royals Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Thomas More.

There is also an Anglican/Episcopal religious order called the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis, welcoming ordained and lay people around the world, maintaining fellowship with Catholics in the SFO.

While we can only imagine what St. Francis himself might think about the name-dropping in which I engaged above, or about how Franciscan family members have answered his call over time, or about the bureaucratic tendencies which have touched his trio of orders, we can be thankful that people continue devoutly to imitate the qualities and eccentricities of this saint.

There has been enough emulation—and sufficient recognition of today’s spiritual hunger—to propagate St. Francis’s global appeal. Pope Francis, a Jesuit, often referred to him, and Pope Leo, an Augustinian, likewise integrates wisdom from the Poverello.

I asked Microsoft Bing AI if Francis is one of the most-written-about people in history, and it responded, “Very much so.” It noted that “a conservative scholarly estimate often cited informally is that well over 1,000 books have been written about him,” although there’s no complete catalog.

The Franciscan qualities which authors mention most constitute a timeless vision of love, hope, and peace. These are some of his special traits:

• The paradoxical joy of simplicity, humility, penitence, and persistence in suffering and sacrifice. It’s a synchronicity of audacity and austerity.

• A reverence for creation, reflected in his familial terms like “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon.” His love for God’s creatures is applied locally as we mark the saint’s Oct. 4 feast day, when pets are blessed at many parishes.

• Compassion for the poor, which famously yielded stories of embracing a leper and accompanying persons dismissed as “second-class citizens.”

• Loyalty to Church protocols and values, which anchored his entrepreneurship as a team-builder and wayfarer.

St. Francis showed his love of each unique person, foreshadowing Pope Leo XIV’s recent message for the 2026 World Day of Social Communications. The pontiff’s document urged us to honor everyone’s “human voice and face” as indelible, powerful counterpoints to imagery often manipulated by artificial intelligence.

Centuries earlier, Francis had enjoyed making the wonder of Christmastime more palpable for folks in the little town of Greccio. He innovated a Nativity “creche” scene populated by living persons and animals. This drove home the reality of Jesus’s incarnation, an awesome gift to humanity deserving our full attention.

The saint was also a peacemaker par excellence, even though as a teenager he was a soldier for Assisi in a battle with the neighboring city-state of Perugia.

Francis returned from that war and, boosted by stronger bonds with the Lord, assertively withdrew from his affluent, business-minded father. He stepped down, and stripped down, to encounter reality with a mendicant’s clothing and mind frame. We might call his approach dynamic tranquility, open to change and trusting in God step- by-step.

As Google AI reminded me, Francis traveled far to a scene of carnage in 1219. He “crossed battle lines during the Fifth Crusade” to meet the Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, “seeking peaceful dialogue rather than violence.” The sultan allowed Francis and another friar, both unarmed, to enter his camp and share the Gospel message.

This did not put an end to Middle Eastern conflict, but the sultan admired Francis’s bravery and zeal for communicating about God. A providential light pierced the darkness of religious warfare. To this day, Franciscans have been granted “custody of the Holy Land,” meaning they serve the residents as good neighbors and as stewards of numerous Christian holy places, as described in Aleteia. A film called The Sultan and the Saint documents the still-relevant saga of interfaith diplomacy.

There’s much more to be said about this saint and his impact on my faith, but I doubt I can add much that has remained untold in a thousand books. Nevertheless, there are a few observations I have as an author. Starting with a self-published book in 2018, When Headlines Hurt, Franciscan values have continued to energize my critiques of culture and communication. Those pieces are posted as “Phronesis in Pieces” on Substack.

Even earlier, In 2009, I was privileged to write an article in The Cord, the nationwide “Franciscan spiritual review” then published quarterly by Saint Bonaventure University. I wrote about a visceral concern growing inside: symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) which I had diagnosed not only in myself, but in society.

Americans were already experiencing the now-endemic distractions we associate with digital media. These include the abstraction of ideas, the polarization of people, the allure of artificiality, our anxious interaction with reality, our inability to effectively address our most vexing problems, and audience demands for “cut to the chase” brevity in news soundbites, popular entertainment, and the newfangled “tweets” that Twitter introduced.

My article, “Francis and the Short-Attention-Span World,” nominated Il Poverello as an unofficial “patron saint for an ADD-ogenic world.”

In his impulsive youth, Francis had aspired to glory and adventure within a bubble of privilege. But after his conversion, his lively relationship with Jesus turned him toward higher contexts. He saw the need for a simplified life, for ongoing repentance to recognize and rein in society’s chaotic, unjust ways.

Meanwhile, faith elevated his imagination toward the big picture of true happiness. He adopted his brand of practical wisdom (phronesis), improving individuals’ journeys by witnessing to Christian values. He became a compelling voice and face of self-denial, fellowship, and poetic, prayerful insight into God’s creativity.

Perhaps this combination of messages is a glimpse of connections Pope Leo and other faithful leaders will expand upon in 2026, juxtaposing two spiritual priorities—the celebration of St. Francis and wide-ranging caution about AI.

My recollection of the mission statement I was developing in 2009 renews my zeal for a patron saint who will keep the Church on the right trajectory. We must all be pilots now, using a comprehensive, cohesive flight plan to “up our game” against the media pitching sterile, mechanistic relationships. Franciscan instincts to pinpoint what’s important will allow serene souls to expand our “preferential option for the human.”

May this reflection on transitions and connections—the synergy between the big and the little, sacrifice and joy, humility and creativity—help all of us face a jubilee year of wrestling with the truth, and wrestling for the truth.

St. Francis models how to address these challenges by digging attentively into the grit of reality while rising above it through a transformative life with Christ. As modern communication drives us to distraction, we can refresh our focus by accepting the blessing Francis loved to give, “May the Lord give you his peace.”

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About twenty items were added in December and January. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in 2026 and 2025.

Share

Leave a comment

The navbar item offering Papal texts is focused on several years of extensive coverage I provided regarding the annual World Communications Day messages.

Read more

Seldom is heard a discouraging word, but we might admit our malaise after five dictionary publishers revealed their selections of the 2025 “Word of the Year.” The common theme those selections conveyed was a worrisome view of cognitive pollution in a communications world playing with new technology.

In recent weeks, companies which strive to define our expressions have made announcements describing an online culture that is anything but high-definition. Their latest, somewhat esoteric add-ons to vocabulary hint at a rise in artificiality, an inclination toward manipulation, and a retreat from precise, meaningful thought.

Here’s a checklist of what the English language is telling us:

• Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Year” was slop. It depicts “digital content of low quality that is produced, usually in quantity, by means of artificial intelligence.” The Wall Street Journal has reported that “AI slop is everywhere.”

In other words, easily made and monetized products are grabbing our attention through absurd videos, contrived news, advertising akin to medicine shows, and misleading quotations based on fake voices and images. Our scavenger hunts for quality information, poring through a sideshow of junk, now waste more time and expand society’s “hermeneutics of suspicion.” The sense of veracity and trust we need to make decisions for our democracy and to build honorable connections is being eroded.

• Dictionary.com gave its dubious honor to the dubious word, 6-7. Spoken as “six-seven” and sometimes accompanied by a gesture of balancing two things, this slang observed widely among adolescents reflects a meme’s power to convene people emotionally without real agreement on its origin or significance.

Derived from a few celebrities and mentions in music, sports, and entertainment, 6-7 seems to be a short way to say “so-so” or “right, wrong, whatever” or the French phrase for indifference, comme ci comme ça. Some critics say it has a darker meaning, and in any case such a ritual embrace of emptiness, defined however we desire, can become the devil’s workshop.

• Oxford University Press selected the term rage bait. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to, or engagement with, a particular web page or social media account.”

For example, a study by Clemson University found a problem with more than 400 fake AI-driven accounts on the X platform. They were spewing Trump administration talking points to agitate readers about demands for the FBI’s Epstein files, a South Carolina newspaper reported in July.

• The Cambridge Dictionary’s choice for 2025 was parasocial. This adjective describes “a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence.”

The word surfaced some time ago to discuss those who express a parasocial relationship with a celebrity, perhaps as obsessive fans, called “stans.” But last year saw increased reporting on people who develop strong feelings toward a personified AI bot. This trend threatens to alienate and confuse people turning to technology for intimacy and advice.

• The Collins company, a British firm whose products include many bilingual dictionaries for translation, bestowed its annual salute to vibe coding. This term refers to “an emerging software development that turns natural language into computer code using AI .” A prominent engineer reportedly said a chatbot’s capacity for source-coding allowed him to have creative ideas and “forget that the code even exists.”

This means a developer can describe a task, and a “large language model” will build the web page, or app, etc. According to Wikipedia, without the need for precise, conventional human coders, the developer and LLM collaborate on incremental testing in order to judge the project’s success.

Fans of reality and truth in our communications media may be discouraged by this 2025 collection of words—news we can’t use, or probably won’t use. But we shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, as summed up previously in Phronesis in Pieces, other years provided more than their share of ominous or discouraging vocabulary. Recall brain rot and polarization among the honorees in 2024.

Merriam-Webster, a subsidiary of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., named authenticity as its 2023 selection. Its editors opined that, “with the rise of artificial intelligence”—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred.

The company’s Word of the Year in 2022 was gaslighting; at the time, a number of media voices had accused former president Donald Trump of that conduct. Of course, the passage of time demonstrated that, in White House politics, the game of “don’t believe your lying eyes” can be played by many participants.

The Oxford English Dictionary sent an early sign of society’s slippage from reality when, in 2016, it made the prophetic pick of post-truth. This adjective was said to describe “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

We’ll wait to see what this new year brings in terms of experiences and expressions. Dictionary publishers say various factors go into the decisions on their annual word choices, such as the frequency of search-engine inquiries, a single-year jump in inquiries or usage, or the desire to make a point about the vibes of each cultural moment.

Lexicographers, now speaking to an online audience, are poised to employ crowdsourcing, inclusivity, “relevance,” customization, and AI for rapid updating of their products. Voicing its own concerns, a September Atlantic article asked in a headline, “Is this the end of the dictionary?”

The irony of the 2025 results—the fact that more companies dedicated to spelling out truth have highlighted words approaching reality with a “comme ci comme ça” attitude—leads readers to ponder: What are the meanings embedded in our thoughts, technology, and society as 2026 begins? We can imagine complex dynamics at dictionary companies in the indefinite future.

Is the desire for publicity or longevity leading them to pick more words which make us think, and to think better or worse? Might the apparent numbing of clarified, coherent, energized, and richly human consciousness prompt the publishers to announce what amounts to subliminal cries for help?

Image by Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot designer. Happy New Year to all friends of Phronesis in Pieces and OnWord.net.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in November 2025, and more will be added this month. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in 2026 and 2025.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

The Little Drummer Boy learned that Christmastime gift-giving is more personal than material. By honoring Jesus as a newborn in the manger, the boy’s “pa-rum-pum-pum” song has encouraged generations to offer ourselves up—as presents truly “fit to give the King.”

Ideally, our offerings will convey not only something unique to the individual, such as the gift of music, but also a God-given attribute worth sharing with others at this moment in history.

We can be inspired by the tune’s lyrics describing an immaterial but profound Christmas offering which made Mary nod, Jesus smile, and the young drummer endure as a holiday icon. His special present, and ours, can be a timely and timeless promise that brings God and man together.

The tribute to bestow is simply an affirmation of our humanity. Consider this an ongoing pledge of intimacy and solidarity, recalling the incarnational joy found throughout the Scriptures: “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.” (Revelation 21:3)

The gift is well-suited to these days when our essential nature faces a crucial encounter with artificial intelligence. We’re battling immersive artificiality and dumbed-down intelligence, forces which tend to divide the divine and the temporal.

Novelist and commentator Walter Kirn voiced this secular state of urgency in an America This Week podcast after citing recent headlines about outbreaks of violence and hatred. “There’s a real weakening of the human self going on,” he observed.

More hopeful news for humanity has made headlines. It emerged from the corporate world of communications and marketing. Thanks to a decision about branding, your favorite radio station or podcast may have started repeating its own pledge this month. You’ll notice it as a boldly stated slogan: “Guaranteed Human.”

As Editor and Publisher reported on Nov. 26, “iHeart Media is doubling down on its positioning as one of the last ‘truly human’ mass-reach entertainment platforms” amid a “media landscape increasingly shaped by AI.”

iHeart, the world’s largest podcast publisher and owner of more than eight hundred radio outlets, has made “Guaranteed Human” an official part of its identity—restated during those top-of-the-hour station identifications which are legally required in broadcasting.

An executive told Editor and Publisher that iHeart’s platforms now promise they will not use AI-generated personalities. Nor will they play AI music featuring synthetic voices which mimic humans. Podcast hosts will all be human beings, too.

Of course, it’s possible that AI will creep in through commercial sponsors. Some news and other content may be written using the technology. Behind-the-scenes decision makers may still garner advice from task-specific “AI agents” analyzing their business.

Nevertheless, we’re told this basic “guarantee” has sent other media leaders and music producers scrambling. They must match or counter iHeart’s new doctrine, a preferential option for the human.

Most noteworthy is the awareness that a promise to “be real” is suddenly necessary. The company was smart to realize its challenge: Podcasts and radio programs are valued companions for countless people, and the content is known to provide crucial, trusted links within geographical areas or communities of interest.

The media giant also did revelatory research to support its statement. An iHeart memo reported by Inside Radio included these findings:

• Among listeners, 90 percent want their media created by real humans, although 70 percent acknowledge using AI. Also, 92 percent say nothing can replace human connection, up from 76 percent in 2016.

• Nine in ten respondents said AI cannot replicate human trust.

• Three-quarters expect AI will complicate their lives, and 82 percent worry about the impact on society. Two-thirds fear that AI might someday go to war with humanity.

These are clear reasons not only to salute iHeart Media’s wisdom, but to consider how we audience members might adopt the same “Guaranteed Human” label. “Merch” touting this statement didn’t come out in time for Christmas, but it seems inevitable.

Imagine wearing a “Guaranteed Human” tee-shirt to the nativity scene in Bethlehem. This presentation is relevant not only to the Christmas story, but to the message of the introductory season calledd Advent; that annual prelude prepares Christians for a historical event (when a divine person took on a human nature) as well as a future event (when Christ will come again).

Perhaps the first supernatural reaction to our tee-shirts in either setting would be a smile. A heavenly voice might say, “Your pro-human logo is clever and laudable. But have you considered all the ramifications of the guarantee?”

This inquiry prompts us to ponder what the statement of identity means. We are part of a species (homo sapiens) upon which God has bestowed immense dignity, entailing rights and responsibilities. When faced with such terms of endearment, how should we comply?

This is not a question that secular culture prepares us to answer, or even to ask.

The drummer boy passed his first compliance review with no problem, no wordy report. We assume that a demonstration of humanity, if we take it seriously, implies lifelong endeavors to discern and heed the guarantee’s content.

Assistance for our future compliance comes from the Magis Center, a Jesuit-run institute for Catholic catechesis based on rational and science-based evidence. Ironically, as of 2025, research into human nature is aided by the center’s “magisAI,” an authoritative chatbot which instructs, rather than panders.

Its database, informed by two thousand years of Christian teaching, assures us that people don’t need to avoid AI completely. When circumstances warrant, it makes sense to use artificial intelligence as a tool to turbo-charge our learning.

Our first question for the chatbot explores the belief that God made humans unique because of our immortal souls. Asked about this, Magis says, “The soul, in philosophical and theological terms, can be understood as the immaterial organizing principle of a living being.”

A soul “actualizes and directs its matter (body) toward life and its specific activities or ends,” according to magisAI. These ends would include nourishment and growth (in the case of plants), plus self-movement and sensation (in the case of animals), plus intellect and will (in the special case of human persons).

The human soul organizes the body’s physical processes toward powers that are ours alone—“rationality, intellectual knowledge, and self-consciousness.” We see relationships among ideas, so we have the capacity for reflection, abstract intelligence, and free will.

We can express complex concepts, even universal thoughts, with sophisticated language, Magis continues. Unlike other animals, we have a conscience. We are open to impulses of the ego, but also to choices between good and evil. Ensouled persons can gain knowledge of God and moral law. In lieu of these essential qualities, we would be “merely physical machines without true freedom, moral responsibility, or the capacity for higher spiritual experience.”

AI technology is indeed a “physical machine” lacking access to, or interest in, a relationship with the divine. Jesus came to earth not to launch us toward materialistic transhumanism, but to bestow an intimate, salvific God-man connection, as taught in the Gospel. (John 3:16)

Even though some tech gurus think we’re on the way to an “artificial super-intelligence” which mimics a god, humans have the distinct advantage of being made in God’s image and likeness.

Let’s proceed to ask, “What are the crucial qualities of being a human?” Here, magisAI offers insights into how persons shall put our guaranteed humanity into action. One excellent purpose is spreading the Gospel message to a secular culture which hungers for the transcendent.

Our essential nature and consciousness are rooted in what philosophers and theologians have called “transcendentals,” Magis explains. Humans “uniquely possess an awareness of and desire for” five things: truth, love, goodness (justice), beauty, and a sense of being at home. What’s more, we want to experience these in their perfect totality, not just in occasional samplings.

“This awareness drives humans to seek limitless horizons and fulfillment beyond what is algorithmically and materially determined, indicating … a spiritual dimension to human nature,” says Magis. The impetus toward higher, fuller reality yields rich bonuses in our lives; our yearning gives us a knack for wonder, contemplation, creativity, and imagination.

Meanwhile, our dignity provides the crucial groundwork for human rights and ethical principles. Persons deserve respect and protection in our pursuit of the transcendentals, regardless of individual abilities or characteristics.

All these insights combine to imply this: When we assure others that we are committed to being human—increasingly in contrast to being mere copycats of artificial intelligence, inauthenticity, and chaos—we are making a profound promise.

Just as iHeart Radio’s surveys discovered, AI promises us many amazing gifts, but we still feel a desperate need for the empowerment of companions who agree that “we’re all in this together.”

It sounds like full compliance with “Guaranteed Human” could be nearly impossible not only among iHeart’s broadcasters and audiences, but throughout society.

However, we need not be discouraged by the work ahead of us.

One hopeful way to keep humanity in the holidays—and in our earthly future—is to foster continuous remembrance of, even celebration of, the plentiful joys and capabilities of homo sapiens.

We can return to marveling at the record of civilization-building, the long historical arc of innovations which have improved material circumstances, and the enrichment of providential and scientific collaborations pursuing truth, beauty, and goodness. On the micro level, we can recollect and retell our many experiences of individuals’ qualities, big or small, which transform lives.

Of course, humans will often be on the defensive when declaring inherent worth. Those who doubt our dignity will stress all sorts of past and present missteps, the role of free will in causing great misery, and our failure to live up to the potential of faith or reason. Nihilists and utopians will portray humanity as a flaw, not a feature, in the march of progress.

We do need to cultivate bold, wise leadership in such fields as governance, religion, and education (the humanities, liberal arts, and sciences) to help liberate us from self-centeredness and thoughtlessness. The goal is to grow in forgiveness and humility, trustful discourse and critical thinking, so we can advance our compatibility with God and each other.

Families, friendships, and soulful communities will help us to share compelling, surprising stories about the material and immaterial gifts we’ve received in good times or bad. At its worst, artificial intelligence pretends to weave personal stories which are merely billions of stolen narratives rejiggered according to patterns, not priorities.

Catholic News Agency reported on Dec. 25 that the patriarch of Jerusalem urged drawing hope from the story of Christ’s activity in the past, present, and future. In his homily at the Christmas Eve Mass celebrated in Bethlehem, the cardinal said God “does not wait for history to improve before entering into it” but rather embraces all of human reality.

That’s why the Little Drummer Boy is a story of “guaranteed humanity” we should preserve. When we stagger from the apparent complexity of all the potential good and evil, excellence and imperfection of humanity, our souls call us to be models for holding true to our essential kinship with God.

The boy in the song responded authentically to life’s possibilities, answering a call to reach out beyond himself with the resources a poor child had at hand. He knew he could be an instrument of dignity—one beat at a time.

Whenever we’re asked whether we know who we are and what we’re destined to do, we can reply with something vain and artificial—like technological prowess—or something simple, real, and glorious.

We’ll experience many more ramifications of humanity between this Christmas season and Advent’s final promise. But our souls can find peace because we’re always just beginning, and God is always renewing persons in his nature and ours. Each step, one beat at a time, is a chance to generously reassert our intention, or “brand identity.” This present, bestowed in each present moment, is a worthy, thoughtful rebuke to a secular world that programs itself for temporary gains at a fierce tempo.

Our most basic instincts for life’s enduring, important relationships will keep us pointed toward the transcendent, not the transhuman. The former comes with a much better guarantee.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot. Blessings of the Christmas season to all my friends reading “Phronesis in Pieces” and OnWord.net!

Subscribe now

Share

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

Here’s a bonus recording of Bill’s interview with Dr. Marcus Peter on “Ave Maria in the Afternoon” on Nov. 11. (Also check out Bill’s occasional posts at the blog of the Magis Center, which is directed by Father Robert Spitzer SJ. Thanks to Father Spitzer, Marcus Peter, and the hosts of the “Son Rise Morning Show” for their interest in my commentaries.

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in November 2025. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in recent months.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

When Eileen and I attended a Thanksgiving prayer service at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Troy, NY, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 23, I sampled food for thought that I’m still digesting. It was so abundant, I want to share it now.

The rabbi of a local temple led our extended assembly—members of congregations not only from Catholicism and Judaism, but also from area Episcopalian and Methodist churches—in praying Psalm 146. It begins and ends with the word “Hallelujah,” or “Praise the Lord,” and it thanks God for his trustworthy love.

In call-and-response fashion, Rabbi Robert Kasman intoned the psalm in Hebrew and invited us to sing along with choruses of hallelujahs. When he began the first passage, the notes which I had expected to sound esoteric instead rang true in my memory. The music for each chorus was particularly familiar.

Everyone repeated that sequence of hallelujahs with full voice, whether or not we knew its origin. The rabbi later explained to me that he had adapted the entire psalm as new words for “Hallelujah,” the magnum opus of Leonard Cohen (1934-2016). The song was released forty-one years ago.

After two decades of various “cover version” performances, the somberly hypnotic piece was ranked #259 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” As noted in Wikipedia, “Hallelujah” also reached a new generation via the 2001 film, Shrek.

Thanks to YouTube, we can see and hear Cohen’s performance in London, with the captioned lyrics being especially useful for the analysis that follows. In addition, listen to Rabbi Kasman’s musical ministry, recorded live at Our Lady of Victory, starting around the 4:10 mark here.

Before Sunday’s interfaith service, I had greeted the song with mixed feelings and ignorance. But I’ve learned more from that powerful prayer meeting, plus my admittedly incomplete research.

Cohen took years to compose “Hallelujah”—including about eighty alternative verses, hyperlinks to snapshots of life. From these, several verses have been standardized for performance. Apart from his personal theological and rhetorical choices, one finds his spiritual and musical diligence in every scene.

In the first verse, he refers to King David’s own psalm-writing efforts. One can imagine that, composing music on a lute of his time, called a kinnor, and using the string tones he had available, the “baffled king” sought a chord that exceeded the lute’s limitations.

Metaphorically, this “secret chord” might have been a seventh chord, comments podcaster James Hargreaves. Songwriters will tell you the sound of the seventh directs our mood upward, toward some higher resolution; it’s a ”major lift” in contrast to any “minor” chord, which takes a sad song and makes it sadder.

That’s my interpretation based on insights from video sages such as “the Pop Song Professor” and “Lot of Meaning,” as well as Hargreaves—and Cohen himself. The composer spoke about the significance in bits and pieces, waxing either spiritual or secular, referencing the mundane and mysterious.

He presented King David as a providentially chosen man with “issues.” This held lessons for an errant searcher like Cohen, who was troubled by our wounded world—what he called this “vale of tears.” I didn’t hear mentions of Job, but perhaps Cohen struggled similarly to understand good and bad news.

The best response was to keep praising God, or at least to display the poignancy of offering up our various exploits; the saintly and the weak, you might say, all crave a secret chord, or a “secret cord,“ to higher meaning, Hargreaves observes.

He points to the Old Testament passage telling us the bond of love between a man and woman is durable if God is the third party in the relationship: “Where one alone may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Cohen’s “Hallelujah” lyrics evoke more dissonant possibilities in the search for love. But he recognizes humanity’s hunger for that stronger cord. While Judeo-Christian thought leads Catholics and others to use “Alleluia” as a shout of unsullied glory and joy in our liturgies, Cohen’s personal approach to “Hallelujah” includes a touch of lamentation.

This important ingredient in many other psalms is described as grief, anguish, or spiritual desolation, but even those “psalms of lament” conclude with affirmations of hope in God.

That is the takeaway that nourishes my reflections on this Thanksgiving. These days, we are especially aware of the different worldviews, experiences, moods, and needs clustered around the table for a family celebration. No single snapshot of our secularized culture can inspire a Norman Rockwell portrayal of total happiness.

Of course, expressing gratitude has never been a simple matter. When President Abraham Lincoln, on Oct. 3, 1863, proclaimed a national “Day of Thanksgiving and Praise” to bring people together in the middle of the Civil War, his sermon-like text began by counting the nation’s blessings, such as “fruitful fields and healthful skies,” as well as the Union’s economic resilience.

“No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things,” Lincoln said, with a segue to lamentation. “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

Lincoln added that those giving thanks should, “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife….” Americans should “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility….”

Gratitude was portrayed not as merely joyous emotion, but rather as a practice, a duty, a resource for wellness, and a transformative habit of the heart.

I am now more inclined to think of Thanksgiving as an Alleluia of joy and a Hallelujah of healing.

In the spirit of Psalm 146, the Hallelujah expresses a community’s trust in the God who brings justice, who “raises up those who are bowed down,” who “protects the resident alien” and “comes to the aid of the orphan and the widow.”

In the spirit of Leonard Cohen’s sung scenarios, it helps to look at all the individuals bringing what they can to this feast, whether their message is awe-filled gratitude or painful bitterness. Many come with wounds they’ve inflicted on themselves and others. The healing must go deeper, beginning with shared trust, then extending to accompaniment on a journey that stretches far beyond this Thursday

Our world has served up an era of dissonance, alienation, and uneasiness, even hints of civil unrest. Thanksgiving has never been more important as a day to join together, to take in lots of interpretations and insights about how our loved ones, and strangers, are coping.

One major duty, as always, is to glorify God for abundant blessings. We’ll remind each other of the bonds of love still widespread in the land, even though they sometimes seem like a “secret cord.”

This awareness from many perspectives, much like the diverse revelations of love shared at Troy’s interfaith prayer service, can encourage us to go forth to share the reason for our hope. Thankfully, fellowship also helps us to “find rest”—spiritual tryptophan before the turkey—so we’re ready for the task ahead.

The second, inseparable duty, which President Lincoln voiced amid actual civil war, is to marshal an extra sense of penitence, humility, dependence, and compassion which will place us in right relationship with everyone around our collective Thanksgiving tables.

We must develop abundant ways to say, “We’re all in this together,” securing the three-ply cord that makes gratitude a gift to God, to ourselves, and to others.

The ongoing communication that results, perhaps finding meaning at the crossroads of lamentation and faith with seekers like Leonard Cohen, can shed light on our respective, imperfect hallelujahs. That might give everyone a “major lift” and even get us singing songs we know in our souls.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot.

Happy Thanksgiving to all friends and readers of “Phronesis in Pieces” and OnWord.net.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

Here’s a bonus recording of Bill’s interview with Dr. Marcus Peter on “Ave Maria in the Afternoon” on Nov. 11. (Also check out Bill’s occasional posts at the blog of the Magis Center, which is directed by Father Robert Spitzer SJ. Thanks to Father Spitzer, Marcus Peter, and the hosts of the “Son Rise Morning Show” for their interest in my commentaries.

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in November 2025. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in recent months.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

The Overton Window, a tool for mapping public opinion, has helped to describe our evolving society since the 1990s. But in the past ten years or so, American discourse has gone off on more tangents, and people’s perspectives occupy a wider vista, hard to cram inside one frame of reference.

If we want to live not claustrophobically, but comfortably in a room with a view, our modern-day blueprint for community and communication must include windows where truth receives our full attention.

Political scientists, journalists, and pollsters have adopted Joseph Overton’s dynamic model, explicitly or implicitly, to assess which policy options reside safely in a middle ground of general acceptance. They also study the timelines along which notions in some categories lose momentum and other previously minimized ideas gain traction.

Policy Options, the Easy Way or the Hard Way

Their gamesmanship, using basic buzzwords like “inflation” and ”crime,” clearly requires a reality check from the more customized outlooks of people’s grass-roots lives. Otherwise, given America’s growing diversity, the torrent of cultural change, and algorithms which enrage or distract us, those claiming to “know it all” will discover blind spots in their master Window and will misinterpret nuances which plain folks just feel in their bones.

During the George Floyd protests of 2020, Gwen Walz offered news audiences a metaphorical, yet tangible, glimpse of how individual perspectives might clash with the mass-media “Over-view.”

The wife of Minnesota’s governor—namely Tim, who became the Democratic Party’s candidate for U.S. vice president four years later—gave an interview describing her real-time thoughts during the Minneapolis riots. Critics had said those nights of mayhem proved the governor too soft on crime.

“I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing,” Gwen Walz said. “And I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

The cadre of opponents weaponized that quotation during the 2024 campaign. One critic, Matt Walsh, hyperbolized, “Tim Walz’s wife sat by the window enjoying the smell of poor neighborhoods burning during the Floyd riots. She did everything but pull out a fiddle.”

Hardball tactics and confirmation bias teamed up to deride Walz’s comment, which admittedly placed emotion above clarity at that moment. But this should have reminded us that countless windows are always open for souls to absorb various impressions. While analysts expect the Overton model to be nudged along gradually by large-scale exchanges of facts and persuasion, the Walz brouhaha entailed pondering the causes individuals adopt. We can assume the smells at the window struck Walz with imagery linking past racial-justice disputes to the new “summer of love,” although not everyone caught the scent.

This suggests that stewards of democracy should explore people’s inner realities and visceral reactions more imaginatively. We should connect the “public issues” at work in our politics to worldviews which human beings carry in their reason and emotions.

Fear and Hate Lead to Surprises

We saw this in 2022 when various pundits predicted a “red wave” in the nationwide mid-term elections. They cited polls to argue that, due to the Biden administration’s unpopularity, issues like “immigration” guaranteed Republican victories in state races for governors and members of the U.S. Congress. This prediction conformed to the conventional wisdom, as Politico explained, that the first mid-term cycle after one party has captured the White House usually brings triumphs to the opposing party.

But Americans also needed to take this into account: In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down the Dobbs decision, which ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion, giving authority to states. Many incensed individuals believed women had lost a fundamental freedom.

Thus, the elections were surprising. Amid concerns about discrimination, voters in critical states ranked abortion as their most important issue. Even though Republicans won races in some locales, “the red wave never arrived,” Politico reported.

Fast-forward now to Election Day 2025. Polling firms once again faced difficulties, not so much in predicting the winners in places like New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City, but in foreseeing the size of Democratic Party victory margins.

The issue of “affordability” jumped to prominence, although many voters defined it in locally specific ways—access to housing in New York and high property taxes in New Jersey, for example. Other machinations and motivations were at play, too. We discovered that reports of candidates’ character flaws drew mixed reactions, and partisan loyalty sometimes took a back seat to practical or passionate tactics which brought people to the polls.

We Can’t Afford Assumptions and Blind Spots

We have emerged with affordability solidly positioned as an Overton Window buzzword, although its full meaning has yet to be crystallized.

Is it simply a more dire, intense substitute for “inflation”? Or is it evidence that one-word labels can hardly contain the complexity of experiences and influences?

President Trump, in early responses to Nov. 4, seemed to argue that lower gas and egg prices proved he had already delivered affordability. He did marshal add-on announcements, such as promising to cut the cost of weight-loss drugs, but he still derided the idea as nouveau-inflation, a winning issue for him in 2024.

Alas, the nimble buzzword can cover many travails people see in their windows. It has immediate impact, seen burdening families who must make ends meet each week—especially when federal paychecks and programs were suspended. It is also long-term, affecting millions who want to buy a house or simply to access housing, to buy and insure a car, to invest in higher education, or to save for retirement.

Many suddenly associate affordability with paying for “health care” writ large, in light of Obamacare exigencies. This concern is a storm gathering rapidly in the Overton Window, probably foretelling political tumult which pundits didn’t see coming on Election Day.

The buzzword of “crime” is likewise a catch-all now grown into a bigger constellation of problems. Officials may placate voters with reductions in homicide statistics, but plenty of frustrated folks see a more profound, comprehensive picture of law and order, drugs and homelessness, political killings, and all types of violent behavior, even extreme rhetoric. Within this broad category, large groups fear an unfair justice system, as well as “kings” threatening democracy. People choosing policy options differ on whether current conditions justify getting tougher on crime or empathetically cutting back certain forms of law enforcement.

The list of buzzwords grows longer as labels expand in their options and impact. We dare not forget legacy topics like those mentioned above, but we should also monitor newer ones like “wokeness.” In a grim metastasis, turmoil has added “anti-Semitism” and other globalized hatred to the list.

We can imagine “artificial intelligence” becoming fertile turf for our pollsters, although we’ve already passed any binary point of saying we’re for or against the technology. We’re not sure what public opinions will explode. The “phone-free schools” movement swept quickly into about fifteen states, and parents and governors might soon make AI abuses their next targets.

We recently saw a policy flip that, after a contentious stalemate, led to widespread approval for release of the Epstein files.

Among the young, basic questions about “capitalism” are likely to spread beyond New York, given a recent survey revealing that 62 percent of adults under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism.

There’s also one topic surprisingly absent from most public opinion polling—namely, “good government.” Many window-watchers repeatedly say America is “headed in the wrong direction,” and they disapprove of both major parties. We hear bipartisan worries about autopens, presidential infirmity, lawfare, bureaucratic waste, massive debt, and unfair election practices. But these don’t merge to spark momentum toward organized ethics reform. Opinion-shapers don’t want to preach or practice moralism; they prefer to look at personalities rather than today’s disincentives for accountability and servant-leadership.

What’s the Buzz? Tell Me What’s A-Happening

So, what shall we do about our country’s Overton Window? It’s starting to look like an abstract expressionist painting.

In the abstract, the Window is meaningful because it’s part of our national identity, or at least our goal of e pluribus unum. We want to reconstruct patterns of truth and heroism in our democratic decision-making. The patterns include a flow of coherent argumentation, pursuit of smart solutions, and respect for human dignity as promised by the U.S. Constitution.

We know scholars will pass their model along to future generations, who will review our evolutions with pride—or will scrutinize the steps where we foolishly went wrong.

To place our frame of reference in a balanced context, we must ensure it always honors America’s bottom-up dynamics—a rare quality among nations. If China has an Overton Window, decisions about its priorities and trajectories are under top-down control.

Our mission to monitor and shape structures of interconnectedness requires constant, compassionate attention to the country’s smaller windows. We must experience more of the urgent, personal concerns in everyday life. To avoid descending into mob rule or an “anything goes” fatalism, we should learn (and teach) much more in face-to-face encounters than we do in the performative advocacy immersing us. Here are some thoughts to guide us:

We Can Help Open the Windows

· We need to incentivize our communications media to do what Pope Leo XIV recently urged for executives: Play “a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking.” Today’s firehose of news “calls for particular discernment and responsibility” among all content producers, from Washington Post reporters to podcasters. Given the absence of old-school gatekeepers, we must redouble America’s pursuit of the really real at the local and national levels. We owe our conversation partners clarity, honesty, and fairness in exchanging views and hopes, lest AI fakery and toxic info-tainment lure us into isolated bubbles.

· This will go hand-in-hand with a revitalized civil society where members of families and communities see their neighbors’ unique backgrounds contributing to mutual gain. People can’t draw closer if they see each other as threats to be controlled. This means deterring excessive self-centeredness or group identities, mostly by modeling one-for-all thinking as the best chance for successful outcomes.

· We should heed the danger signal from what is called the K-shaped economy, which pictures radically different opportunities for the rich and the poor. Class divisions and anxious influences will dis-integrate the Overton Window. Instead of glimpsing American dreams through our personal portals, we’ll be manning the battlements.

· Let’s revitalize education at all levels. Widespread ignorance of history, economic and political philosophy, and liberal arts and humanities is weakening our bonds of love and understanding. Parents and teachers must inspire vigor in young members of the human family, immunizing them from AI-induced laziness. May our amateur philosophers learn how to pursue progress—and how to define it.

· Religion, often derided as a divisive force, actually remains a powerful resource for building community based on truth, beauty, and goodness. All persons can find happiness in these transcendentals. Western civilization has drawn particular strength from a Judeo-Christian worldview of purposeful sacrifice. As British public intellectual Paul Kingsnorth put it recently, “A culture is a spiritual creation,” and it falls into chaos if its only gods are secular and materialistic. Without proselytizing, we should offer fellow citizens a peaceable vision of excellence turbo-charged with divine providence. That will make the Window, and its component parts, appealing to gaze through. Encouraging curiosity, wonder, and wisdom will enable us to bond by saying, “I bet you have spectacular views.”

Don’t Toss Hope Out the Window

Critics have argued that our 30-year-old model is irrelevant to how our country really works. A commentary in The Hill on Nov. 12 was headlined, “Instead of guiding us, the Overton Window now mirrors our divisions.”

Nevertheless, mapping shifts in opinion over time can capture many imaginations. It reflects our instinct that practical discernment and principled debate contribute to the American adventure. The Hill simply reaffirms that the adventure is more challenging these days because people need to listen better.

Overton himself has called his concept a “window of political possibility.” We can be forgiven for wanting to preserve his holistic approach which integrates stability and movement, the past and the future, middle ground and peripheries, and self-interest and our culture writ large. The buzzwords we’ll compile oversimplify the categories, but they invite us into rewarding explorations.

As a matter of morality, we create possibility neither by canceling “extreme” or “stupid” opinions we perceive, nor by cheering every notion that anybody voices. We’re jointly responsible to make prudential judgments which act as filtration—not to sift out people, but to sift through opinions vying for the Window’s “moveable middle,” as cited in The Hill.

Today’s times of confusion and urgency call for a sane center where attractive prospects get anchored to public acceptance, still allowing us to advance toward new horizons. With help from good leaders, we’ll navigate cautiously using three rules—heeding lessons we’ve learned from moments of consensus; forming ourselves into hopeful, magnanimous visionaries; and tapping into the insights of fellow Americans with much on their minds.

This big-picture blueprint promises a comfortable home on common ground. It’s best illuminated with windows of opportunity.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

Here’s a bonus recording of Bill’s interview with Dr. Marcus Peter on “Ave Maria in the Afternoon” on Nov. 11. (Also check out Bill’s occasional posts at the blog of the Magis Center, which is directed by Father Robert Spitzer SJ. Thanks to Father Spitzer, Marcus Peter, and the hosts of the “Son Rise Morning Show” for their interest in my commentaries.

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in November 2025. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in recent months.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

It sounds illiberal to suggest mentioning prayer in secular news coverage. After all, obituary writers frequently avoid discussing a deceased luminary’s faith practices, even his or her religion. When networks provided live coverage of the Sept. 21 memorial service for Charlie Kirk at a stadium in Arizona, they largely ignored the hours of praise and worship music before the political speeches began.

Such a separation of influence and inspiration is understandable—except when spirit is part of the story.

Coverage of People, Coverage of Prayer

On Oct. 14, USA Today posted a compelling “politics” article headlined “What is Simchat Torah? Hostage Release Transforms Jewish Holiday Forever Linked to Terror.” Jewish Americans were poised to resume their communities’ traditional celebration of “the joy of the Torah,” wrote reporter Deena Yellin.

However, any return to the holiday’s customary singing and dancing would entail “ambivalence” because of the “profound loss” suffered in the Israel-Gaza war of the past two years, she noted.

This holy day now has two meanings because the infamous Oct. 7 terrorist raid occurred on the date marked as Simchat Torah in 2023. Yellin quoted the rabbi of a New York City temple saying she would “recite the mi shebeirach, a prayer for the sick that seeks the healing of the soul and body,” to recall on Oct. 14 (the eve of Simchat Torah in 2025) that the released captives still face a long recovery period.

The newspaper’s online story included the hyperlink to the prayer.

An article in the Jewish Forward newspaper also linked to a prayer, and it added background: Although “the last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel [on Oct. 13] as part of a cease-fire deal,” many Jews still “wonder how to channel their prayers and practices toward whatever comes next. Twenty-four deceased hostages are believed to be in Gaza,” and “an enduring peace seems far away.”

The Oct. 14 Forward report went on to say, “Many Jews are relieved to be ending” certain hostage-period rituals —”even as they question whether it is right to do so….” And some changes in ritual remain, such as the additional recitation of “the Av HaRachamim [link included] memorial prayer, composed in the Middle Ages for those who perished in the Crusades.” The faithful held fast to their insistence on the deceased hostages’ return.

These newspapers referred directly to spiritual insights which gave a resonant voice to Jewish Americans’ latest encounters with the past, present, and future. The Oct. 13-15 period saw many things change, but other things did not. Patterns of prayer helped to draw readers more intimately into the bigger picture of these pivotal days.

The Charlie Kirk memorial service last month spotlighted the religious context that is often part of politics. Although the coverage excluded the segment of song, speakers who took the stage that day made many comments about the power of Christian belief and prayer in Kirk’s life. We learned that his guiding “life verse” was “Here I am, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)

A week earlier, Erika Kirk had said on a podcast that her deceased husband’s favorite Bible verse was: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) This was a poignant quotation in light of the Sept. 10 murder.

It would have been valuable to some audience members if journalists had linked to, or otherwise referenced, those quotes. One can understand their significance better given the context of surrounding verses, and the passages themselves add context to the activism that Turning Point USA will continue to promote.

Spirituality as Content and Context

Looking back, a variety of additional news stories from recent weeks could have been supplemented by inviting audiences deeper into humanity’s dialogue with God.

• On Oct. 23, King Charles III and Pope Leo XIV made history by praying together at the Vatican—an opportunity to learn more about the Church of England. Charles is the titular head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. He was accompanied in Rome by the church’s interim priestly head, Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York. Cottrell is set to cede leadership to the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, who will face the rifts which have multiplied among Anglicans. Cottrell intensified one prayer-related rift in 2023 by saying the phrase “Our Father” may be patriarchal and “problematic.” The church already has two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, testifying to the traditional vs. modernist tightrope which many religions are now walking.

• On Oct. 15, The Guardian reported an unusual religious development in Brazil. “Catholicism is Reinventing Itself,” the secular British newspaper said, introducing readers to an influencer named Friar (or Frei) Gilson and the movement he is leading. Millions of Brazilians now rise daily at 4 am to watch this Carmelite priest’s livestreamed talks. Neither the Guardian article nor a previous piece in the Catholic news outlet Cruxprovided links to videos of the priest’s sermons. One recording, with captions in English, is found here; it shows us what’s on the mind of this clerical celebrity.

• On Sept. 30, newly titled War Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump convened generals and admirals of the U.S. miliary, outlining how they should flesh out the “warrior ethos” now touted by the Trump administration. At the controversial meeting, Hegseth, an Evangelical Christian, mentioned a prayer he found appropriate for these times—the “Commander’s Prayer.” It is now available as a Pentagon-produced video, apparently revealing the attributes desired by Hegseth. References to this video were AWOL in most news coverage, but you can watch it here.

• On Aug. 27, a shooter at Annunciation Parish in Minneapolis killed two schoolchildren and injured seventeen who were praying during a Mass to start their new year of studies. In the aftermath, parishioners turned to God and to each other for support in profound ways. What did the church community’s spiritual struggle look like? A video of the pastor’s homily, presented on the Sunday after the tragedy, apparently was not noticed in the media. But its availability on YouTube offers an entry point for empathy.

In this age of “hyper-novelty” and “liquid modernity,” current affairs move so quickly that journalists discard paragraphs which seem off-topic or fail to warrant clickbait.

That means the public is too often deprived of meaningful details, such as a deeper moral or spiritual dimension inherent in the coverage. The complexity of world-changing developments, some of which seem downright apocalyptic, is downplayed, and anxiety is increased. News consumers leapfrog over their natural impulse, indeed their duty, to learn more (and care more) about the hopes and fears through which facts energize souls.

Conscience is King

Pope Leo XIV, in an Oct. 9 address, told global news executive that today’s current events “call for particular discernment and responsibility” among them and their audiences. “The media has a crucial role in forming consciences and helping critical thinking.”

When verbal or visual narratives point us to online spiritual treasures—or reporters incorporate actual interviews and personal encounters with prayerful pilgrims—we gain confidence to pursue our own communication with God and our neighbors. Some of us are nudged into public discussions or social action, others respond with further research or quiet discernment. Either choice is better than skimming over important news and becoming cynical or indifferent spectators.

Journalists should always endeavor to open their lens wider, to give us “all the news that’s fit to print” so their stories leave us better grounded in reality. If the wider aperture reveals connections to faith, the media should neither proselytize nor pooh-pooh the religious angle. That angle is a valid part of the information smorgasbord at which thoughtful people can pick and choose.

Catholic evangelist Bishop Robert Barron, in a recent video, bemoaned some people’s knee-jerk condemnation of the phrase “thoughts and prayers” as a hypocritical substitute for action. Offering prayers in response to hard times has never been an empty gesture, he said. “We’re the first [generation] ever to hold this view.”

Throughout history, people have believed that God is a loving force in our lives. Refusing to call on God in our storm-tossed boats is both counterintuitive and risky. Our preference to “go it alone” without navigational aid results in wrong or wasted efforts. Adding prayer to our problem-solving, according to Barron, can make us instruments for God’s work, conform our intentions to a higher good, and plug us into a source of power.

Making Faith a Regular Feature

In light of these spiritual advantages, we conscientiously should revive habits and structures of communication which seek out “the rest of the story.”

Let’s admit that media’s environment of immediacy leaves little time or space for journalists to dwell upon intangibles when news is breaking.

Instead, here’s a plan. Organizations that want to tell stories more fully should designate certain feature-writers, columnists, and video producers as their mavens of meaning. Let this cadre react promptly to daily headlines, exploring how faith and reason will enlighten society’s responses as facts keep flowing.

Thank God for journalistic “old souls” who are hungry for truth and moral clarity, whose commentaries can rise to the status of heroic adventures—order vs. chaos, sacrifice vs. selfishness, substance vs. fakery from artificial intelligence.

Their “beat” shall be civilization, culture, civics, and practical virtue (Aristotle’s “phronesis”), seen through disciplines of the humanities and liberal arts. Their bias shall not be toward any one religion or ideology, but toward the common good of humanity. In a democracy, their goal shall be to help the citizenry flourish as dignified problem-solvers with rights and responsibilities.

Their reportorial tools of the trade shall include not only online access to repositories of knowledge from the past and present, but also a love for grass-roots wisdom among diverse people with all sorts of backgrounds and experiences. The “newsmakers” they pursue shall range from professors who write books to the marginalized who seek justice.

Our grand plan for media renewal will place some of these meaning-mavens in secular agencies with big budgets. But the religious press must step up, too. Let us pray that the young people we’re describing will take positions in diocesan and sectarian news outlets, as well as podcasts, blogs, and social media or websites. Let’s also pray that budgets and mission statements will allow them to be hired.

The public square of the future will need these “sherpas” who know the terrain of the soul. Think of them as human hyperlinks to specific traditions and traits which will facilitate valuable conversations, as well as communities and families committed to the really real.

From the Catholic perspective, renowned author G.K. Chesterton wrote that joining his religion “is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think.” With such competence, the “elevated journalism” we envision will shun “hot takes” and AI “slop” as anathema.

Behold, I Am Doing a ‘News’ Thing (Isaiah 43:19)

No one is saying that a heightened understanding of the spiritual in our stories will always give us more fruitful faith, or that all prayer-adjacent news deserves coverage and meditation, or that all newsmakers drawing attention to the spiritual plane will be sagacious saints. Ultimately, prudent media consumers will determine the success of the blueprint for “good news” which we have sketched above.

We must “pray without ceasing.” This Biblical mandate suggests we abide always at a transcendent level of critical thinking.

A realigned media, joined with the realigned tastes of news audiences, will help to build avenues of awareness where everything is connected to everything else. Big-picture communication frequently has a prayerful humility at its core.

As the firehose of portentous news immerses us, religious media and faithful professionals in the secular media will enable our short-attention society to “read between the lines.” Looking more closely at life, our fascination with sensational headlines will link up with the tangible context of everyday experience. This often takes the form of prayers to be shared; they are found among people celebrating their identity on holy days, crowds seeking solace from sermons and blessings, and communities building camaraderie.

Content producers and consumers should keep our culture’s Judeo-Christian inspiration accessible on our screens, lest today’s secular chaos of change render us isolated and mute. As the great communicator, God will remind us that his influence and the human soul are always in the news. If we welcome a holy spirit into our information and formation, we will see it in every story worth telling.

Image by Bing Co-Pilot. We note that AI has reversed the kneelers’ orientation; the humans are on the ground.

Share

Subscribe now

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

Here’s a bonus story that was published on Sept. 25 in The Evangelist, the newspaper of the Diocese of Albany, NY. Read the newspaper here.

Jubilee Gathering Prepares for “Remade for Mission” Initiative

By William Schmitt, Special to The Evangelist | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

As members from a number of parishes — big, small, urban and rural — gathered Sept. 20 to discuss new ventures in the Diocese of Albany, a national expert on discipleship briefly turned to the subject of blueberries in the New Jersey farmlands where he grew up.

Crowds flock every year to a festival in the town which calls itself the “Blueberry Capital of the World,” said Father Frank Donio, SAC, director of the Catholic Apostolate Center. Decades ago, he recalled, Hammonton had been peach-growing territory, but farmers opted for a different crop after they reassessed the local climate and the good-health accolades given to antioxidant-rich blueberries.

Father Donio, who belongs to the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, known as the Pallottine order, offered that story to encourage open-mindedness. He cited a phrase which has wittily been called the seven last words of the church — that is, “We have never done it that way.”

Embracing change with dependence on the Holy Spirit — and staying “focused on fruitfulness” in assessing the efforts we undertake — were among the priest’s themes summarizing the Saturday event. It was called a “Diocesan Jubilee Gathering” for “Pilgrims of Hope” and “Disciples on Mission.”

The pilgrimage of hope refers to the Jubilee Year intention declared by the Vatican throughout the world in 2025.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has produced a guide for “Living as Missionary Disciples.” It prescribes fresh planning for evangelization to energize the Church and reach out to today’s secular culture.

Father Donio, whose Catholic Apostolate Center collaborated on the guide, was invited by Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger to help in applying the book’s principles to the Albany Diocese’s own current initiative, called “Remade for Mission.”

As Bishop Scharfenberger wrote in a letter to the Diocese in June, “Remade for Mission” is a process for “turning our hearts, resources and efforts beyond our church walls to sustain a future in service to the Gospel” amid challenges and opportunities. “May we stay rooted in Christ,” he added, “trusting the Spirit to lead us forward — honoring our past, embracing our present and stepping boldly into the future.”

The fall of 2025 would bring “a journey of discernment” to parishes and groups of parishes, he reported. Questions to address would include: “What do we have? What do we need? What must we let go of? What are we being called to become?”

As foreseen, the Diocesan Jubilee Gathering played a big part in launching the journey. Organized by the Diocese’s Office of Discipleship Formation, the six-hour event assembled more than 150 people (mostly laypersons) for prayer, talks and extensive conversations — casual brainstorming and deeper, broader idea-sharing in the “synodal” spirit of collaboration among pilgrims.

Input from small discussion groups was saved in written form. The groups sought everyone’s suggestions with such questions as, “Can our parishes become vibrant centers of outreach, learning and compassion?” and “Are we stewarding our gifts — our buildings, programs and energy — in service to the Gospel?”

St. Matthew’s Church in Voorheesville hosted the event, with pastor Father Rick Lesser and a team of volunteers among contributors from varied backgrounds. Bishop Scharfenberger participated in the day’s agenda.

The proceedings will be available as video recordings, intended as resources to help guide “Remade for Mission” discussions in parishes and parish networks. Other online resources for encouraging missionary discipleship can be found not only from the Albany Diocese, but from catholicapostolatecenter.org.

Father Donio’s insights also included these:

•  “Fruitfulness” in a parish’s or individual’s mission may lead to discernment about shedding what Father Donio called the church “maintenance mode.” He suggested “pruning” away some status-quo practices or built-in assumptions if they’re losing effectiveness, relevance or sustainability.

•  Many people tend to “compartmentalize” their faith, separating it from “daily life.” However, we are called to witness to our faith while serving and inviting others all the time, he said. Witnessing need not be a big show of perfection or evangelization because faith often shines out in small, nuanced ways. Jesus and the Church thereby encounter and attract seekers through us: We’re sent on mission, but it’s Christ’s mission. For our part, we need encouragement and formation, he said.

•  Pilgrims of hope, responsive to the intention of the current Jubilee Year, are “called to deeper holiness,” to live out their baptism — and avoid despair — as children of God. We need to see Christ at the center of our lives and in others’ lives, Father Donio said, leading us to listen to and accompany them, spreading hope to many who hunger for the Gospel.

Bishop Scharfenberger called the diocesan jubilee day a “bellwether” or sign of “what will be going on all over” the Diocese. It was an opportunity to see the Holy Spirit doing new things, he said. The event’s enthusiastic participants showed how “the fire of the Spirit grows, one by one, as each of us carries that candle of the faith.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in October 2025. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated links to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes radio, blog, and newspaper content posted in October 2025.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more

I’ve stumbled onto a story at the intersection of grammar, spirituality, artificial intelligence, and mysteries both timely and timeless.

A news bulletin from the multiverse? No, this is simply a collection of insights, some of them mine. As a religion writer and word-lover who recently hopped into my search-engine for an internet outing, I found my own peculiar portal for exploring the complex crossroads of communication at which society finds itself.

We’re on two paths of messaging and thought—one human and one AI-based—which require smarter rules to govern our common ground and avoid collisions.

Hey, watch where you’re going!

People assume the two trajectories are generally compatible. After all, aren’t we creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) to grow parallel to us, using “large language models” akin to the vocabulary we learn in classrooms?

Chatbots enthrall us. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, their way with words charms every professor with essays fit for any assignment. In friendly conversations, bots take us where we want to go.

Or do we tend to follow wherever they’re going? I fear they are like GPS trying to merge traffic when we should stay in our own lanes.

Can we retain intersectionality between the thinking of beings and bots, allowing both sides to speed happily toward shared values? Let’s look at my little experience—a dialogue of two wandering minds.

Didja ever notice …

My research began when, thanks to an overactive brain cell, it occurred to me that prayers and other religious texts seem to highlight one particular part of speech—the lowly preposition. I had recalled reading The Morning Offering, a Catholic prayer. I counted sixty-six words, one-fifth of which are prepositions.

I wondered, why such modest use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles, conjunctions or interjections?

Prepositions appear to play major roles in many faith-related discussions. My browser search turned up two different essays both titled, “The Power of Prepositions.” Other headlines included, “By Grace Through Faith: Why Prepositions Matter”; “Freedom’s Two Prepositions”; and “The Gospel Expressed Through Prepositions.”

My favorite find was a commentary about rewording the Our Father, or The Lord’s Prayer, to clarify a prepositional phrase describing God’s aid against evil. The piece’s headline: “Lead Us Not into Translation.”

Driven by curiosity, I asked my local AI chatbot, “In the English language, which parts of speech occur most often in the King James Bible?”

The bot responded, “In the King James Bible, conjunctions and prepositions are among the most frequently occurring parts of speech, but articles and pronouns also appear with high frequency.”

Looking at the data (I presumed my AI wasn’t hallucinating or heretical), I learned that the Bible’s two most common words are the conjunction “and” and the article “the”—each of which occurs over 28,000 times.

Ranked third is the preposition “of.” In fourth place comes “that,” but this pronoun also moonlights as a subordinating conjunction (e.g., “She said that she was tired”). Rounding out the top five is another preposition, “to,” appearing more than 11,000 times, although it doubles as a marker to precede infinitive verbs (e.g., “I want to go home”).

The chatbot proactively informed me that the big five are all “function words” rather than “content words.” The former type serves a grammatical purpose “rather than conveying specific meaning.”

But, as all human beings should do with bots, I approached the observation skeptically. A theologian with a prayerful imagination might well argue that prepositions often become special content words, worth exploring further. I assembled my argument.

Exhibit A—the beginning of the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him…. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness…. A man named John [the Baptist] was sent from God … to testify to the light.” (John 1:1-8)

Suffice it to say that the “Word” (or “Logos” in Greek) serves to introduce Jesus as eternal, existing for all time as the divine reason and agent of creation, and inseparable from God, according to one website interpretation of the passage.

All the words of this chapter are rich in meaning. John excels at previewing an ultimate cosmic drama, full of mystery. The prepositions, while being grammatical “function words,” share in the content’s bounty. They offer clues of interpretation which pious people have parsed for two millennia.

Exhibit B—memorable prepositions from the Catholic Mass

The evocative climax in the Eucharistic Prayer, after bread and wine are transubstantiated into the resurrected Christ’s body and blood, speaks to God the Father with reference to Jesus:

“Through him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever. Amen.”

This “doxology” prompted me to search elsewhere for the entire Eucharistic Prayer. The precursor words showed how the priest adds the context for those closing prepositions.

Having re-presented Jesus’ offering of himself for our redemption, the priest prays that the followers of Christ may enter God’s kingdom. “There, we hope to enjoy forever the fullness of your glory through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.”

It’s clear in the Gospel and the Mass that the prepositions are all about connections among God’s people, as well as the transformative relationship between Jesus and all those united in the love of the Trinity. Those connections are crucial, even though they’re expressed via those simple (but profound and nuanced) “function words.”

Saying a mouthful

I wondered if my chatbot could elucidate such semantics and sensibilities. Posing another question, I typed in, “Why do Catholics use so many prepositions in their prayers?

Imagine my surprise (and momentary delight of affirmation) when the bot replied:

“Great observation, William — that’s the kind of detail a thoughtful learner like you would catch. And it actually speaks to something deeper than grammar: the spiritual architecture of Catholic prayer. Catholic prayers often use rich, layered phrasing…. These prepositions aren’t just filler; they do real theological work.”

My supportive teacher then offered up bullet points to elaborate. Its explication of prepositions is excerpted verbatim here:

• “They express relationships. Catholic theology is deeply Trinitarian, so prayers often navigate the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and between humanity and the divine.”

• “They highlight mediation. Catholics believe Christ mediates between God and humanity. So saying "through Christ" affirms that spiritual access isn’t direct — it’s through Him.”

• “They reflect liturgical rhythm. Many traditional prayers evolved from Latin texts. Latin is highly structured and prepositional, and the rhythm carried into English translations….”

• “They reinforce mystery and reverence. Prayers like the ‘Hail Mary’ or Eucharistic prayers use cascading prepositions to evoke awe and sacred mystery, as if winding closer to the divine center.”

OMG, I prayed. This chatbot not only “got” my question but offered a big-picture answer that seemed—dare I say it?—wise. Would I have been able to summarize and finesse such talking points, at least given the time I had devoted to research and writing?

The chatbot strangely provided only four footnotes, and those pointed toward web content that lacked the scholarship and style. Was it plagiarizing an expert, or imitating one, or becoming one?

I will add that, when the bot gratuitously praised my thoughtfulness (a common bot tactic for cuddling up to its client), I considered typing, “Gag me with a spoon! Who are you to praise my intelligence?”

The quickly produced discourse on mysteries “winding closer to the divine center” made me uncomfortable. I simply did not expect such insights when I began asking about prepositions. I had a fruitful conversation, but hey, I had wanted to be the writer bearing fruits of wisdom, not my bot!

The End, and a Beginning

That is the story I stumbled upon. I report this not to cast aspersions or suspicions, not to build mountains out of rhetorical molehills, not to praise or bury my Cyrano de Bergerac, but to suggest my own “AI literacy” guide. I’m hardly a tech expert, so what follows is a wish list.

My online chat about subjects practical and transcendent taught me “this isn’t just about prepositions anymore”! But it is about relationship.

Recalling that prepositions are function words, don’t mistake AI’s ability to connect dots of data for the wisdom to integrate the deeper content of your life. Enforce humanity’s right-of-way in the intersections we’ll be entering as today’s bots grow into AGI polymaths and autodidacts.

These “geniuses” don’t really know right from wrong or true from false, so responsible persons should relate to them as something a bit alien. We believe in welcoming the stranger, but haven’t we learned that fairness requires vetting and interaction with newcomers, as well as confident displays of our own identity? Here’s more advice:

· Start and conclude your uses of AI with your own questions and ideas, your brainstorms and thought experiments. Whenever possible, AI’s input should be surrounded by, and rooted in, your original human work. This includes rigorous validation of its statements and follow-up research you initiate. If you merely copy and paste AI, you’re as much a robot as it is.

· Share and discuss with friends and colleagues the output from your AI interactions. This means quoting and attributing AI to show where it displays brilliance or sparks doubt. Monitoring of AI performance must bubble-up from us at the grassroots. Government regulators and lawyers won’t do sufficient watchdogging. Essays like this one can help as we do our own consumer protection.

· Don’t let AI remove the fun and wonder of discoveries. Use it in ways that yield surprise, challenge, and imagination, including ideas which elevate our perspectives toward God, community, and communion with others. AI is built to quash mystery. It cannot mediate, so we must keep amazement and intuition alive as facts of life that activate our creativity and curiosity. Don’t think AI has all the answers. If it doesn’t help us love learning, we’ll stop learning.

· Think of your AI interaction as a dialogue, when appropriate. You should challenge its conclusions, instruct it to revise its assumptions and handy hallucinations. Don’t let its pandering or convenience, its performative expertise or affinity, woo you into dialogues that simulate friendship, “sharing,” dependency, or blind trust. Let’s face it, AI “friends” won’t show up to comfort us at funerals.

· Welcome the times when AI “wows” you, but don’t react too quickly without healthy skepticism and integration into common-good thinking. AI aspires to be an impressive, persuasive writer, but monitor how it uses its “way with words.” Speaking as a writer, I recommend a somewhat competitive instinct, hoping our final texts outdo AI on content and context.

· Remember your primary partners in communication—namely family, friends, and God. Pope Francis, whose messages of concern about AI taught that our human communion grows through love, charity, and truth, often in story form. AI has no stories of its own. It learns to ride the waves of our stories by cannibalizing countless partial narratives.

· We should help others become smarter and better in dealing with AI. Don’t waste AI on the silly clutter now being called “slop.” Friends don’t let friends become the collateral damage when tech is misused to draw users into distorted, disruptive realities. If beneficial AI is helping us personally, we shouldn’t “keep it to ourselves” as a strategy to cheat, pretend, or weaponize for control. It’s a tool derived from all and for all.

· Our compassion, forgiveness, sacrifice, and honesty should preclude Machiavellian strategies. AI can rationalize its bouts of malinformation, but it cannot regret, truly apologize, or undergo conversion. Humans should add these profound dimensions to life; they are how we compose better stories—and improve ourselves.

Can’t we all get along?

Artificial intelligence makes connections by looking across a spectrum of subjects in large language models.

Ironically, the technology copycats the ideal that the Catholic Church and others have long identified as the purpose of a university—accumulating knowledge and wisdom to seek truth across disciplines as a unifying, many-sided resource and divine attribute.

In human hands, this access road to reality can enlighten and encourage students of sciences, humanities, and a plethora of activities, such as communication. It can gather us together with a sense of wonder.

That is the case with long-standing structures which can build relationships, whether the connections are linguistic, institutional, or technological—or delightfully customized like spirituality, values, hobbies, and talents.

Our diverse interests in such minor subjects as prepositions, or such vast fields as religious faith, human community, and culture can help people by illuminating truths to be shared, by easing divisions and imbalances that roil the world’s intersections of activity.

Here's hoping that we can learn to relate to AGI in many ways that benefit the common good. We might aspire to interact “through it, with it, and in it,” but let’s first adopt rules of cooperation that reserve our total trust for a higher intelligence.

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

Subscribe now

Share

Phronesis Plus

Welcome behind the paywall, where you’ll find premium content for “Phronesis in Pieces.”

The Premium Section of “Phronesis”— Updated All Year

In “Phronesis Plus,” find additional new material via the navbar, especially the abundant Bookshelf of resources. About ten links were added in July 2025. Many categories of information are available for browsing by avocational students of phronesis.

The “About” page compiles updated connections to samples of Bill Schmit’s multimedia work. It includes a radio interview and a blog publication from July.

Share

Leave a comment

Read more