Pope Leo, AI, & the Tower of Babel

 

INTRODUCTION 

1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. 

Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” [1] In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.

I've had serious misgivings about Artificial Intelligence (AI) for some time now, for a number of reasons including the erosion of human creativity as algorithms lead us to the mushy middle. Yet when I do a search for different reasons, including information for this blog, it is AI that leads the way in response, often with helpful information.

On Monday Pope Leo issued the first encyclical of his pontificate and he didn't mess around. It is titled MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS: ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Thank God that in this age of Christian communities on the decline and increasingly voiceless, along wihthe disturbing movement toward toxic religious individualism, someone such as Pope Leo and the Roman Catholic church are willing to address the implications of a runaway-train technology that seems to have no limits or guardrails.  The Pentagon is considering using AI guided autonomous weapons which will make the decision to deploy without human involvement. This is morally wrong and even evil --them's 'ligious words!

This encyclical, essentially a theological position paper, was released with a Canadian, Christopher Olah, at Leo's side. Olah is a co-founder of AI giant Anthropic and in the presentation he said that the development of artificial intelligence cannot be ‌left solely to technology companies, urging greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society. This is a striking observation from someone who has overseen the development of AI. 

Will I read this encyclical the way I did with Laudato Si, Pope Francis' magnificent encyclical regarding the environment and what we call Creation? Maybe not. but I do look forward to the summaries and analyses which will some be available. Here is a thoughtful take from a Jewish writer. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/idols-of-the-valley

                                            Tower of Babel -- Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1561

The Tower of Babel

 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 

6 And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 

8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel,[b] because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11: 1-9 NRSVue

Mystery in a Remote Island Monastery

 

                                                                                Justin Evans

How is this for a premise for a mystery series? We'll set it on a remote island off the coast of Scotland in a somewhat secretive and controversial monastery called Golgotha. A young monk goes missing without a trace and the thorough search of land and sea by authorities brings no results. Is this suicide, misadventure,,,or murder? 

Sadly, this is an actual recent news story rather than fiction. The monk who disappeared from Papa Stronsay was 24-year-old Justin Evans, also know as Brother Ignatius. An early comment from Golgotha stated that  "It is believed he came to harm in conditions involving the sea."

An article in the Scottish Daily Express offers: 

A message sent out to members of the order said Mr Evans had left his "monastic cell" shortly before midnight on Saturday and had been missing since. The vicar general of the monastery, Father Anthony Mary said he had been the last one to speak to Mr Evans hours before and he had been "fortified with confession" the night before. "We have no explanation of why this happened," the message said.

Then the plot thickens: 

In July 2024, the Catholic Bishop of Christchurch [New Zealand] asked the religious order to leave the diocese after a Vatican investigation into claims of ritualistic abuse including holding prolonged, unsanctioned exorcisms. Father Christopher Longhurst, the leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said the allegations included children being told they were possessed by Satan, people having lengthy exorcisms performed on them without prior medical examination and isolation of parents from their children.

Yikes. Over the years I visited a fair number of monasteries, convents, and secluded retreat centres. Sometimes I was the only guest but I never feared for my safety other than an ill-advised icy hike on a mountain trail and a stay in cougar country. No exorcisms were performed. 

When Evans went missing in early April there were no clues about where he'd gone. On May 6th his body was retrieved from the sea and police said there were no suspicious circumstances. No doubt this is a tremendous loss for his family and friends. They may never know what transpired. Sometimes the truth in life is stranger than six fictional episodes.

                                                                   Golgotha Monastery

Ruthless and Ruthful.

  

                                                               Ruth and Boaz -- Rembrandt

But Ruth said,

“Do not press me to leave you, to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;  where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus to me, and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”

                                       Ruth 1: 16-17 NRSVue

When we were married 50 years ago one of the passages of scripture in our ceremony was from the short but captivating Old Testament book of Ruth. Ruth has it all with environmental refugeeism, the sorrow of loss, unconventional kinship, a bit of sexual intrigue, With several  happy endings. All in four short chapters!

In hindsight we might have chosen a passage which wasn't about a biblical woman's loyalty but it was hard to resist given that it was a Ruth who was was getting married and the words are powerful. 

From time to time through the years we have chuckled over the use of the word "ruthless" to describe hard-heartedness and even wondered it someone can be "ruthed" or "ruthful." Turns out you can.  

If someone can be ruthless, can one also be ruthful?

Ruthless can be defined as "without ruth" or "having no ruth." So what, then, is ruth? The noun ruth, which is now considerably less common than ruthless, means "compassion for the misery of another," "sorrow for one's own faults," or "remorse." And, just as it is possible for one to be without ruth, it is also possible to be full of ruth. The antonym of ruthless is ruthful, meaning "full of ruth" or "tender." Ruthful can also mean "full of sorrow" or "causing sorrow." Ruth can be traced back to the Middle English noun ruthe, itself from ruen, meaning "to rue" or "to feel regret, remorse, or sorrow."

Ruth has always been a compassionate person so that definition is a good fit. You may not want this arcane lesson in word origin but I would ask that you refain from being ruthless in any response.

Spirited Pentecost for All Creation

 

                                        

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 

 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 

 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 

 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

                                 Acts 2: 1-4 NRSVue

COME, HOLY SPIRIT COME

 COME AS THE FIRE – AND BURN 

COME AS THE WIND – AND CLEANSE 

COME AS THE LIGHT AND REVEAL

 CONVICT – CONVERT – CONSECRATE UNTIL WE ARE WHOLLY THINE!

This is the Feast of Pentecost in the Christian liturgical calendar. It is our opportunity to emphasize the magnificent, chaotic infusion of the Holy Spirit into a group of dispirited followers of Jesus who were still in mourning after the death of Jesus. Although they had received the Resurrection promise of Easter they didn't know which way to turn. 

We often describe Pentecost as the birth of the Christian church and it was an event that revived hope through wind and fire and new ways of speaking. I wonder how we can invoke the transformative work of the same Holy Spirit as we struggle to find our way forward in the  face of the crisis of climate change. 

Surely we understand by now that this is not Chicken Little "the sky if falling" alarmism. Here in North America we are already into a destructive wildfire season that is intensified by intense winds and drought. We hear of extreme environmental events almost daily, including heat warnings in India and parts of Europe. We could be tempted to hide away in the places we wish were sanctuaries of comfort while all of Creation is groaning. 

We need to find a common language for change that goes beyond talking past one another at Dis-United Nations environmental conferences to quench the destruction and revive Creation. We need courage to speak the truth that ecology and economy are not separate silos but interconnected.  

I see that last month a group of fourteen Liberal Members of Parliament, including former Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, sent a respectful yet challenging letter to Prime Minister Carney expressing concern about environmental rollbacks and a lessened commitment to climate change mitigation. I admire their courage in doing so. We need so much more of this from our elected leaders. 

                         St. Andrew's United Church Sanctuary Door, Sudbury, Ontario Jordi Bonet artist

How do we as Christ's people  kindle a different sort of Holy Spirit wildfire which will change the narrative of our societies for the healing of our planet? Today we will delight in time with all four of our grandchildren,  a blessing in our lives, and I want this change. 

Another of the passages often read on Pentecost Sunday is from one of the apostle Paul's letters where he speaks of the suffering of Creation and the saving hope of redemption for all, not just humanity.  Come Holy Spirit, come. 

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor,  and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

            Romans 8: 18-25 NRSVue

May God who established the dance of creation,
Who marvelled at the lilies of the field,
Who transforms chaos to order,
Lead us to transform our lives and the Church
To listen to the voice of all creatures,
That reflect God’s glory in creation

Is it Possible to Grieve with Hope?

 

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 

                             I Thessalonians 4: 13 NRSVue

In today's Globe and Mail there is an honest, powerful opinion piece by Danielle Crittenden,  the author of the recently published Dispatches From Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable. It begins: 

If you suffer a tragedy, there will be no shortage of people offering hope. “You’ll get through this.” “It’s hard now but it will get better.” “You’re strong – and one day you’ll realize this will make you stronger.”

It’s a kind impulse. It’s a generous impulse. But it’s also the most unwelcome impulse.

Two years ago I suddenly lost my eldest daughter, Miranda. She was 32. The cause was complications from a brain tumour she’d had removed five years earlier, along with the pituitary gland it had destroyed. Her doctors had assured Miranda and us that she would live a full, healthy life. That didn’t happen. One February morning, the call came. Miranda was gone, and so was my life as I knew it.

Her loss is literally unimaginable. In paragraph after paragraph Crittenden dismantles some of the response  to her loss by usually well-meaning folk who had no intention of being "Job's comforters" but said and did things with the desire to console when there was no consolation. She also describes the grief as a pathway to personal growth that hasn't been helpful either. 

There was a time where rituals and encouragements around grief were largely the domain of religion. Sometimes they have been been awful to the point of cruelty with a happy-clappy "Jesus is Risen" approach that actually deepens profound grief. 

As a pastor I tried to travel a careful road on which we acknowledged the grim reality of death and mourning while affirming our resurrection hope in Christ. I won't claim to have always been adept at this but I attempted to be as genuine as possible. I found that any groups I offered on grief were well attended but no one came because they were seeking platitudes. There were some participants who had experienced shocking losses and others who watched elderly loved ones leave this life for the next. Grief was real and often lingering in all these circumstances. I came to appreciate that grief affected every person differently and I had no right to impose timelines or make assumptions. 

There were funeral and memorial services in which I included the passage above in a framework that is described so thoughtfully by New Testament Scholar N.T, Wright in a brilliant post on X. I appreciate that Wright acknowledges the apostle Paul's personal grief and a recognition that misusing this passage that his grief is "a standing rebuke to the shallowness that forbids Christians to grieve on the ground that all shall be well."

Tom Wright

@profntwright

·

2h

Paul's deep, constant, and unresolved grief is a standing rebuke to the shallowness that forbids Christians to grieve on the grounds that all shall be well. Earnest preachers have sometimes read 1 Thess 4:13 as forbidding grief of all sorts, whereas what that passage forbids is grieving of a particular kind ("after the manner of pagans who have no hope"). To hold firmly to the Christian hope is not to pass beyond grief; indeed, not to grieve is not to love, since grief is the form love takes when the beloved is taken away. Paul himself speaks elsewhere (Phil 2:27) of the grief he would have had if Epaphroditus had died ("grief upon grief," he says); no suggestion there of simply "rejoicing that his friend had gone to a better place." As long as death is real, grief is real too. If it is not acknowledged, and expressed appropriately, it can be poisonous. At the same time, it is vital to learn the lesson that this deep and inconsolable grief can co-exist with the joy and celebration that fill the previous four chapters. The many-layered texture of Christian experience has room for both, and more besides. Learning how to live with these different layers, giving each its proper place, is part of Christian maturity; pointing to this task, and helping people to engage in it, is a vital part of Christian ministry. What happens between Romans 5-8 and Romans 9-11 at the level of literature must be facilitated at the level of prayer and Christian self-understanding. -Romans, The New Interpreters Bible

Seeing the Forest & the Trees

 

“We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were.”

                                             from the 1986 United Church Apology to Indigenous Peoples 

When Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard published her book The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest to considerable acclaim in 2021 I purchased it and deeply appreciated her insights. Simard concluded through her research that trees have ways of communicating in mutual support with networks of fungi aiding the process. She was also convinced that in areas that were being cut it was essential to leave what she termed mother trees, the larger trees that have a unique role in nurturing younger growth. Although she had worked for the forestry industry she realized that clear-cutting caused irreparable damage to the complexity of soil and plant interdependence even though replanting took place. 

I recently finished her new book When the Forest Breathes:  Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World. She continues on the themes of interdependence based on the rigorous research she undertook with a long-time scientific partner, her adult daughters, and committed graduate students. The outcome distressed me as she described the compacting and destruction of forest floors by massive machinery. Protests against clear-cutting old growth trees in British Columbia seemed futile.

After the mother tree was published Simard faced strong resistance from some members of the scientific community including persons she had mentored and supported through the decades. This was devastating for her.

She is forthright about her treatment for breast cancer and slow recovery on the way back to working in the field. Her vibrant mother developed dementia and other serious illnesses leading to her choice to leave this life by Medical Assistance in Dying. A brilliant grad student died in a ski accident leaving Simard and many others in profound grief. 

A key element in Simard's recovery was connecting with Indigenous communities in BC and in the Amazon region. She realized that these peoples had been practicing a sustainable and reverential form of harvesting the forest for centuries with a wisdom ignored by Western science and resource depredation.

I was moved by her acceptance and humility as she absorbed these insights while understanding the continuing importance of Western science. There is the realization that everything is connected to everything in ways that are both spiritual and measurable. David Suzuki has also benefited from Indigenous wisdom and he too has been criticized.

I ponder all this from the perspective of a Christ-follower who desires health for our planetary home. So often Christianity became entwined with colonialism in subjugating  Indigenous peoples around the planet. We did so out of arrogance and to our peril. Our Judeo/Christian scriptures and heritage honours Creator and Creation yet we chose to ignore this in service to imperialism. I am grateful that Simard has stayed true to her science and has also opened herself to a wisdom that honours all of Creation. 

Reading Scripture, Seriously or Literally?

A king is not saved by his great army;

    a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
 The war horse is a vain hope for victory,
    and by its great might it cannot save.

 Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
    on those who hope in his steadfast love,

to deliver their soul from death
    and to keep them alive in famine.

 Our soul waits for the Lord;
    he is our help and shield.
 Our heart is glad in him
    because we trust in his holy name.
 Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
    even as we hope in you.

                                                     Psalm 33: 16-22 NRSVue

I attempt to read scripture regularly using the daily schedule of lessons provided through the ecumenical lectionary. My goal is to peruse the psalm on a daily-ish basis although I often read from the other prescribed passages for the day. Some of the "smitey" psalms are alarming but most of what I read is thought-provoking, inspiring and even emotionally touching. This exercise takes a matter of minutes each day and from time to time I wonder how it is that I fall off the scripture wagon. The "tyranny of the urgent" seems like a lame excuse when I'm non-gainfully retired.

Mainline denominations such as the United Church of Canada tend to claim that they take scripture seriously but not literally, but what does that mean. A current article from the Christian Century by Stephanie Perdew asks important questions about biblical literacy or perhaps more accurately illiteracy amongst mainline/oldline Christians. Here are two from an introductory summary: 

1.  Perdew recalls a conversation with some mainline Christians in which they lamented not having conversational “weapons” to use with White Christian nationalists. How equipped do you feel to discuss the Bible or history with people who strongly disagree with you? 

2. Perdew notes that it is popular for churches in her circles to say, “We take the Bible seriously but not literally,” as a way to distance themselves from fundamentalism. Unfortunately, Perdew laments, it often seems that mainline communities don’t take the Bible seriously or literally. What is your reaction to this observation?

These are honest and to the point. Through my years of congregational ministry I led studies on lots of subjects and always made a point of relating our explorations to scripture as our sacred north star.

 I also offered lectionary based groups including one for a decade which was made up mostly of elderly women with a smattering of men and younger (than them) adults. I was impressed by how well versed and wise they were, with members often coming from denominations that were more literally biblically-based. They left because those churches were too rigid and "us and them" but they brought their biblical foundation. 

When we lived in Sudbury there was a family whose teens had a strong knowledge of scripture and it turned out that the mom grew up as a Mennonite so bible reading were important. 

Biblical literalism usually isn't. It is a bias that often cherry picks scripture in a dismaying manner and ignores essentially aspects of Jesus' message of inclusion and compassion echoed in the New Testament letters. I've had interesting conversations with supposed literalists where I pointed out inconsistencies with this claim. 

I did love that the old United Church Observer magazine featured biblical cartoons by Cuyler Black who brought his wacky sense of humour as a guest speaker when I was at St. Paul's in Bowmanville. 

This morning I read the daily psalm, 33, and it included the verses above. I wonder what MAGA Christians and Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, have to say about this one? Weak, it sounds very weak...