By Casey Chalk

But first a note from Robert Royal: We're near the end and near the goal! We're only several thousand short of putting TCT on a solid footing for this year and beyond. Now's not the time to slack off. One last, big push. . . .And then we can all get back to the main, truth-telling purpose of The Catholic Thing.

Now for today's column...

When the classic French novel Madame Bovary first appeared in 1856, public prosecutors tarred the serial novel as obscene – outrage aux bonnes mœurs et à la religion ("an outrage to public morality and religion") – given author Gustave Flaubert's intimate portrayal of a bored bourgeois woman enmeshing herself in multiple extra-marital affairs. As these things often go, the ensuing trial of Flaubert only elicited more public attention for the book, and after his acquittal the following year, it became a bestseller. When it was translated into English two decades later, Madame Bovary became a global phenomenon. The irony, today, is that Flaubert's description of Bovary's sensual escapades would barely merit a "PG" rating.

The Catholic Church doesn't come off particularly well in Flaubert's celebrated masterpiece. Uneducated lay Catholics are described by one character as adhering to "prejudices" and "traditional ways," relying on their "novenas, and relics, and the curé. . .rather than finding it natural to go and see the doctor or the pharmacist."

Pious Catholic literature is described as "condescending," "sentimental," and "saccharine." The local curé is portrayed as ignorant but self-assured, incapable of effectively defending the old religion against Enlightenment-influenced skeptics.

Whatever Flaubert's intentions with the novel, literary critics in the more-than-century-and-a-half since Madame Bovary's publication have noted that the titular character is actually quite banal, a morally and intellectually stunted individual who is ridiculous and unhinged the further she descends into her sins.

She is the embodiment of the romantic – both her intellectual and moral life are entirely detached from the people and world around her. And, in that sense, she very much sounds like the immature, atomized, digitally-addicted modern self.

We are all well-aware of the effect of smartphones on the human attention span and cognitive performance, a fact increasingly well-documented by empirical research. Both smartphones and social media also distort our conception of reality and relationships towards the extreme or idealized, given their tendency towards a filtered, curated self-presentation and algorithmic amplification.

Once, it was commonplace to speak to a stranger in public; now, it's considered awkward and even potentially rude to interrupt a person glued to his or her device. There's even a word for snubbing other people in favor of smartphones: "phubbing."

Then there's the emotional and intellectual dangers posed by artificial intelligence. Recently published research from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University discovered that one in seven young adults in committed relationships routinely communicate with artificial intelligence as a romantic companion. Almost a third of respondents had experimented with one of these romantic bots at least once.

Interpreting that data in light of an ongoing pornographic addiction epidemic, we are talking about generations of Americans whose conceptions of romance and intimacy are alarmingly untethered from reality, focused on idealized fictions that infantilize and morally impoverish the user. Artificial romantic partners and pornography videos cater to one's narrow and (often) progressively depraved desires.

Those who succumb to these temptations are certainly ill-prepared not only for the challenges (and wonders) of true relational intimacy; they're also ill-conditioned for the spiritual life, which requires a capacity for contrition and contemplation.

All of this we see in the character of Mada...