Edith Stein and the Soul of a Woman

Richard A. Spinello

Controversies continue over the nature and role of women as modern society edges ever closer to embracing an androgynous anthropology. During the last Olympic Games, spectators were exposed to the surreal exhibition of biological males pummeling women boxers. Those who protested were informed that there is no scientific way to differentiate men from women.

The secular mentality has lost sight of what it means to be a woman. There are many reasons for this tragic exit of womanhood, but foremost among them is the negation of transcendence, which obscures the light that shines forth about the truth of our humanity. As Carrie Gress has pointed out, the poisonous influence of anti-Christian feminism has led to the "end of woman" because we have no answers to the question of what makes a woman a woman.

On this feast day of Edith Stein, Saint Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, it is fitting that we consult her work on these issues because of its reflective openness to the depths of human existence. If we want to reconstruct the idea of womanhood, her daring and intelligent book Woman is an optimal starting point.

The details of her life are well-known. She was a brilliant Jewish atheist who studied philosophy under the famous phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. She converted to Catholicism after reading the autobiography of St. Theresa of Avila. Several years later she became a Carmelite nun. When the Nazis targeted Jewish converts in Holland, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she was executed on August 9, 1942.

After her dramatic conversion, she encountered the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, which made a deep impression on her philosophical development. She was not a Thomist in the strict sense, but her magnum opus, Finite and Eternal Being, is certainly Thomistically inspired. She found an original way to harmonize the modern philosophy of phenomenology with the medieval philosophy of Thomism.

Stein follows Aquinas by endorsing a hylomorphic anthropology, an old idea with an Aristotelian pedigree: the person is a natural and indivisible unity of a material body and a spiritual soul. The soul penetrates the body as it unifies all the different physical and spiritual aspects of each person.

In Woman, Stein's main objective is to demonstrate the distinctive nature of womanhood that derives not just from the body but also from the soul. One's sex is determined by the body's given order informed by the soul, which comes into existence as already either male or female. Sexual differences, therefore, represent two irreducible ways of being a living, personal substance.

In declaring that there is a difference between the male and female soul, Stein parts company with Aquinas for whom the soul was the same for every member of the human species. For Aquinas, the soul becomes differentiated once it is united with a sexed body. But for Stein, the soul is different before it unites with and animates a male or female body, so that a person is feminine not just because of her body but also because of her soul.

Thus, Stein speaks about a "double species" because of the immutable differences between man and woman. Stein's subtle anthropological vision has implications for understanding how egregiously transgender ideology undermines the profound body-soul unity of the human person.

Transgenderism is a rebellion against the finitude that permeates our being. As Stein insists, no one is the source of her own existence, but rather finds oneself as a being created by God, either male or female. If Edith Stein is right, both the body and the soul impose certain natural constraints on our choices and aspirations. Also, proponents of transgenderism would be asking us to believe that God blundered when he infused a female soul into a male body.

Stein's anthropology becomes the foundation for her reflections on the nature of woman. Because they possess a different soul, women are different in kind from...

by David Warren.

According to Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), sensuous man must pass through aesthetic experience, which is physical, in order to reach the conditions of reason and morality.

Let us begin by noting that Schiller was not a huckster for democracy. Though he can be mysterious, at least to me, and sometimes cloyingly abstract, he nevertheless imagines that what makes a man is not that he exists as a cipher for the purpose of counting. Schiller does not, for instance, discount reason and faith. If the more numerous faction declares that something is "right," he is unimpressed. What was wrong is still wrong.

Like the Founding Fathers of America, he is, in fact, suspicious of democracy. Right and wrong are discernible in nature. The republic that God smiles upon will be favorable to the right, and will advance righteous interests. It will not be indifferent to the making of good men. It will be naturally opposed to men who are evil. It will be at the service of men who are free.

Being free, therefore, does not mean simply having the vote. It rather means not having a vote for the purpose of creating our rational and moral realities. It means rather leaving to God - or to "The Absolute" - what is in God's realm.

And this means we must become, as it were, art students, to discover what is true. We must, by an effort that is not indifferent, allow ourselves to be restored to the condition of being truly human; to being Man among Men.

Schiller, of course, wrote about this in an aspirational way. The habit of participating in his poetry of "joy" has continued over the intervening centuries, with Beethoven's help.

Though he became a professor of philosophy (and history) at Jena, he was never a professional philosopher in the contemporary meaning; he does not use words with mechanical precision. He was one of the great amateur philosophers, like Plato, Aristotle, Saint Thomas, and the rest.

His interest was in the truth, and in finding a way to live it (in the moments when he was not being a degenerate himself). Mostly, he wished to escape being what Fichte would call a "pure Object," pushed about by material causes. Instead, he wished to be pushed about by the Absolute, Schiller's eccentric name for God the Father.

And it was in his quest for an education that would make men human - in the highest sense - that he, I think inevitably, fell back upon the idea of "education through art." This had been expounded by Plato in The Republic (books III and VII), in The Laws, and in Protagoras.

Schiller's contribution was "On the Aesthetic Education of Man," a series of 27 letters. The best modern "textbook" is by Sir Herbert Read: Education Through Art.

It is curious, to my mind, that all the other educational theories largely ignore this dimension, in favor of things that I consider to be irrelevant.

They like to teach art, in a technical, "how to" sort of way, but as most artists of all the various arts realize, the subject cannot be taught. Indeed, most topics, including engineering and veterinary medicine, cannot be taught. One learns what can be learnt, not from bureaucrats, but by example.

This rolls in the train of freedom and of godliness. A man (or woman, as we now say) discovers things by throwing himself in; by "going with God," as my father (a sometime teacher) used to put it. And by "mimesis," as the Greeks understood this term.

One learns in the course of breathing, and one is educated by what one becomes - educated, well or poorly. As an inspiring university professor once told me, when I asked if his best handful of students had anything in common: "All, without exception, were self-educated."

Only the deadbeats had to be "taught," and none of the many hundreds gained much by it.

Reason and faith, which are background to morality, are communicated in one's encounter with truth. This begins with first strange perceptions, and by means of that holy humility that is one's guide beyond the reach of schools. Art forms...

by Stephen P. White.

The dog days of summer are upon us. Here in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where I live, the heat and humidity have a way of hitting full strength just as many of us leave for summer vacations.

One of the downsides of leaving town at the height of summer is that weeds grow best when you're not looking. What was a reasonably manicured lawn or garden can be transformed into a primordial jungle after just a week or two of neglect.

Still, it is good to get away with the family for a little rest and relaxation. We were lucky enough to spend five days on the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, where the sunsets are glorious and the evening breezes gentle and cool. There one sleeps with the windows open, even in late July, and the most stressful decision of the day is deciding whether to garnish one's martini with an olive or with a twist.

Even the most glorious vacation eventually comes to an end. The demands of ordinary life beckon. It's not too long before the question that has been lurking in the back of one's mind - "How many unread emails are stacking up in my inbox?" - lurches to the fore, disrupting the peace of mind and robbing the sand and sun and even the gin of their delicious charms. Besides, school starts again in just a few weeks. And the garden weeds are surely running amok.

Sooner or later, one's attention must turn to what comes next, after the respite and rejuvenation of the holiday.

Which brings us to the feast the Church celebrated yesterday: the Feast of the Transfiguration.

It is not often that the veil of the world is pulled back, and the glory of God is made visible to human eyes. We are occasionally afforded hints and whispers, as in the glory of a sunset or a mountain vista, which are like Creator's glory by analogy.

Many of us experience, if rarely, profound and intense moments of grace. I certainly have. Such moments can be utterly transformative, but the moment itself does not last. As St. Paul (himself no stranger to such experiences of grace) writes, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." We rely on faith to behold what the senses cannot: Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.

On that mountain, Peter, James, and John saw. They beheld Jesus there, in his glory, speaking with Moses and Elijah. And Peter, being Peter, wants to remain on the mountain. He does not want to relinquish the sight before his eyes. St. Augustine, in his inimitable way, captures Peter's mindset:

Peter sees this, and as a man savoring the things of men says, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." He had been wearied with the multitude, he had found now the mountain's solitude; there he had Christ the Bread of the soul. What! should he depart thence again to travail and pains. . . .He wished well for himself; and so he added, "If You will, let us make here three tabernacles; one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." To this the Lord made no answer; but notwithstanding Peter was answered. "For while he yet spoke, a bright cloud came, and overshadowed them." He desired three tabernacles; the heavenly answer showed him that we have One, which human judgment desired to divide. Christ, the Word of God, the Word of God in the Law, the Word in the Prophets.

St. Augustine continues, as though cajoling Peter:

Come down, Peter: you were desiring to rest on the mount; come down, "preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." Endure, labor hard, bear your measure of torture; that you may possess what is meant by the white raiment of the Lord, through the brightness and the beauty of an upright laboring in charity.

No. They would not remain on the mountain. They had seen Christ transfigured, been shrouded in the cloud of glory and heard the voice of the Father: "This is my chosen Son; listen to him." But that moment of grace was over. It had been afforded the disciples to strengthen them for what was to come.

J...

by Francis X. Maier

If you don't know about Waymo, the autonomous taxi service, now's the time to learn, because it's coming to a neighborhood near you. Maybe not now or next year. But inevitably, like death and taxes. Except it's more fun, more fun, that is, unless you're the one guy in 10,000 who gets stuck in a rogue AI vehicle with a software glitch that won't stop driving and won't let you out until its battery runs down. But hey, nothing in this life is perfect.

So on a recent visit to our oldest son and his family, my wife and I drove around San Francisco in a Waymo AI taxi. It was an impeccably executed, quite astonishing experience. Waymo actually works. The good news is that there was nobody at the steering wheel to fiddle with the radio, abduct one's daughter, curse the traffic, or daydream about getting even with that idiot at the office.

That's also the creepy news. There was nobody at the steering wheel.

Waymo is a game-changing technology in embryonic form. It currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, and Atlanta. New York and Philadelphia are in the planning stage. Dallas, Miami, and Washington are scheduled to start service next year.

It's tempting to hope that some of our nation's more irritating leaders might disappear down a wormhole in an AI taxi with a mind of its own. But that likelihood is extremely low. The vehicle software is already too reliable and relentlessly getting better. In fact, driverless AI helicopter taxis are just around the corner. And that's not a joke. For those who doubt, check here and here. After all, what could go wrong riding a giant battery at 3,000 feet without a pilot?

But there's a hitch. AI giveth, and AI taketh away. Every new technology, as Edward Tenner warned in Why Things Bite Back, has unintended, and often unwelcome, consequences. He was not alone. Neil Postman made the same argument in his masterwork Technopoly. Artificial intelligence was supposed to make life in general and work in particular easier and more enjoyable, freeing up time for more leisurely pursuits, right? Alas, no.

In mid-July, the Wall Street Journal - a publication with an almost maniacal enthusiasm for AI - reported that, for the average worker, getting more work done faster usually means. . .doing more work. As one expert admitted, "new technologies that speed up aspects of knowledge work tend to just lead to faster-paced knowledge work." The same story noted that "the real beneficiaries [of AI in the workplace] are likely to be businesses looking to squeeze more productivity" out of their human employees.

There's more. Later in July, the same publication reported that AI is killing off summer internships and entry-level jobs typically filled by recent college grads. Unemployment among young adults with a four-year college degree is actually rising faster than among those with simply a high school or two-year associate degree. The result is "ominous" for young people because it's leading to "a potentially fundamental realignment in how the workforce is structured. As companies hire and train fewer young people, they may also be shrinking the pool of workers that will be ready to take on more responsibility in five or 10 years."

As AI advances, the result is deep job cuts. According to Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley, AI is likely to wipe out half of all U.S. white-collar jobs. "For new graduates," according to the Journal story, "not only are they competing for fewer slots, but they are also increasingly up against junior workers who have been recently laid off."

So what's the point of all the words above? Just this: We're never as smart as we think we are, and we're rarely as wise as we need to be. So a little humility might go a long way. But humility is not our species' strong suit.

Jesus himself was a tekton, the ancient Greek word for artisan or craftsman, especially in carpentry. Many, if not most, technologies are morally neutral. They're tools we use for good...

by Randall Smith

Imagine you've worked for a company for over twenty years. Your record of employment has been stellar; you've received numerous awards; and you are widely considered one of the top people in your field. Now imagine that one day, your manager calls you into his office and says: "We've decided to go in a different direction."

What direction would that be? The direction of less competent, less experienced people without a proven record of accomplishment? Do you fire your winning quarterback and say, "We're going in a different direction"? Wouldn't that be the direction of losing games?

Now imagine that you have a multi-year contract with your employer, something you needed to ensure security for your family. Your first reaction to this "new direction" might be: "But you're still going to respect and pay my contract, right?"

At this, your weaselly manager balks and says, "Well, we'll work out the details later," a comment which could only mean, "Probably not." For you, getting your salary is not a "detail," it's your livelihood. It's how you support yourself and your family.

If you're a Catholic, you might think:

(A) I wish this guy understood the principles of Catholic social justice, such as those requiring employers to pay a living wage (enough to support a family) and demanding respect for the dignity of the worker, and;

(B) Injustices like this are why the Church has long supported the formation of unions.

Having worked general labor jobs when I was younger and belonged to several different unions, I can say with certainty what those unions would do in this situation. That manager and that company would have reaped the whirlwind. "Oh no, you don't!" The union exists to keep stupid managers from thinking they can do whatever they want to workers.

But what if the manager who lacks respect for these principles of Catholic social justice, the one who doesn't seem to know what a union would insist on, is a Catholic bishop? Then would we not be forced to conclude that, for this man, "Catholic social justice is for thee but not for me"? It's for those greedy, evil "corporations," not for bishops, especially not the good ("progressive") ones.

Which brings me to the case of the recently appointed archbishop of Detroit and his precipitous termination of three highly competent, extremely dedicated professors of theology - Ralph Martin, Eduardo Echeverria, and Edward Peters - all of whom have been teaching with distinction at Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary for many years.

These terminations without cause or explanation are not only unwarranted - and thus of concern to men and women of good will who actually care about observing the principles of Catholic social justice in employment - they also bode ill for anyone who cares about the future of lay involvement in the Church.

Why? Because the message the Archbishop's ideological mugging of these three faithful men sends to all sensible, faithful laypeople is: Never work for the Catholic Church.

Your bishop now might be great; he might be doing wonderful things you want to be part of. But if he is replaced with a "progressive" bishop, then even if you've been a faithful servant of your bishop and of the Church for years, it won't matter, even if you have multiple years left on your contract.

You'll be out on the street, looking for a job, when jobs, especially for professors of Catholic theology, are few and far between.

Archbishop Edward Weisenburger's actions tell everyone that you work for the Catholic Church the way you swim on a dangerous beach without a lifeguard - at your own risk.

If a new bishop comes along and you're dragged out to sea by a powerful rip tide of progressivism, you can struggle, you can cry "clericalism," you can appeal to "synodality," you can say, "But I have a family!" but you'll soon discover that all that language about "listening" and "dialogue" and "synodality" were a pose.

Synodality means they do what they want, and you do what they te...

By Robert Royal.

For many years, I found it hard to warm to St. Paul. I know I'm hardly the only one. St. Peter himself wrote: "His letters contain some things that are hard to understand." An understatement, to say the least. And then, there are the consequences of that difficulty, "which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Peter 3:13) Since the Protestant Reformation with its emphasis on sola fide, erroneously derived from Paul by isolating the phrase from other things he said, it's been even harder for a Catholic to approach the "chosen vessel," the great evangelizer of the gentiles.

But in mid-summer, you want a respite from the controversies that bulk so large during the rest of the year. And for some reason, as I followed the Sunday readings in Acts this Lent and Easter Season, I found myself drawn into trying to wrestle, again, with Paul's letters.

The only thing about him that is still clear to me is what a difficult case he is to get a grip on. (The Protestant scholar N.T. Wright is a good technical guide, but in the end is still faced with many mysteries.)

Other early Church figures are more "relatable," as we say these days: Peter is a bit dense (like most of us); the other Apostles are "human" (like us) in that they misunderstand the Master and instead seem ambitious, contentious, even (in their various ways) at times skeptical; the holy women who followed Jesus remind you of mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives, female friends that you've known.

Paul is sui generis. Still, I've been struck going through his writings and thinking about what we learn about him from Acts, by the realization that he - or someone like him - simply had to arise in the early Church.

Many people were converted during that first century by the great miracles and sheer power of the Apostles. And there was also the conspicuous holiness and heroism of followers of the Way, even under persecution and martyrdom.

Nevertheless, someone was also needed who could explain this new Spirit. And it would have to be a person deep and fluent in both the Jewish tradition and the Greek culture that permeated the Roman world of the day. That person was Saul (Hebrew name)/ Paul (Paulos, in Greek).

When I say he had to explain the Good News, I don't mean that he always succeeded or was even always good at it. It's just that his batting average (I'm guessing about an unreal .700) made him the Christian evangelizing GOAT.

And that despite the fact that there were people who regarded his amphibious cultural nature, which enabled him to move easily between the Jewish communities around the Mediterranean and the larger Greco-Roman world, as - to be blunt - certifiable madness. In a little-noticed episode, for instance, the Roman Procurator Porcius Festus shouts out as Paul, having been brought before King Agrippa, goes off on one of his verbal fusillades, "Paul, you are mad; your great learning is turning you mad." (Acts 26:24)

If you've never thought that while reading Paul, you've probably not been paying close enough attention. Almost every serious "intellectual" can feel at times that his learning, for which the world has little use, is indeed some sort of mania. But Paul's mania was unique.

Yet Paul was not only a fertile thinker and writer, he was a compelling speaker and an unignorable presence. You don't get yourself beaten with rods three times, stoned and left for dead, brought before authorities Jewish and pagan, and ultimately beheaded unless you have the power to move people, lots of them, for and against you.

So whatever you can say or think about Paul's influence, you have to admit that he was - to use the current jargon - a great influencer, even without benefit of social media. Everywhere he went, he stirred things up.

He didn't "make a mess." The mess was already there. You might say he helped to turn a topsy-turvy world right side up. And he did that by both knowing and engagi...

By Fr. Thomas Kuffel

"Vanity of vanities," says Qoheleth in today's first reading, "All things are vanity." Vanity is fleeting, lacks substance and depth, is terminally superficial. In appearance, vain things allure. Yet Proverbs instructs us, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised." (Proverbs 31:30)

Wisdom, here personified as a woman, "is more beautiful than the sun." (Wisdom 7:29) "She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness." She overcomes the charm of vanity and exposes how vapid and insipid it is.

Vanity is a sweet taste to the tongue, but is bitter within, destroying the beauty of Divine Wisdom. Wisdom, true beauty, gives birth to the beautiful because she is beauty. Her beauty is not fleeting, a superficial makeover covering up flaws. Rather, she dwells within transforming the soul with her integrity, clarity, and harmony - making us beautiful within, for she orders all things sweetly.

Only those who have this inner wisdom have the capacity to see vanity for what it is: folly. Folly, transient flirtation, ushers the soul into corruption. Wisdom, however, from her treasury brings forth good. Qoheleth cautions us:

Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. (Proverbs 4:23-25)

That direct gaze penetrates the mysteries of life and moves us along in the limited time we are given, which makes time, too, of the essence.

Time is precious. Eighty years for those who are strong. Seventy for those who are not. And much of this is toil and labor if not lived for the Lord. For those who live for the Lord, however, eternity awaits; for those who do not, living superficially becomes like chaff, blown away in the wind.

To instruct us in the ways of Wisdom, St. Paul reminds us: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body." (2 Corinthians 5:10)

Wisdom teaches us to number our days aright and gain knowledge of the mysteries laid at the foundation of Creation. No longer do gold and silver, possessions and powers, rule our lives. Rather, we are now commanded by compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and repentance. (compare with Colossians 3:12-13)

Wisdom, rightly ordering our lives, enriches. All that defiles is then purified, and anxiety becomes trust. To obtain this Wisdom, however, we must pray. In prayer, understanding is given, and Wisdom's spirit fills the soul: "I preferred her to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her." (Wisdom 7: Verse 7)

Vanity, however, incessantly deviates from the proper trajectory for our lives. The earth and all its majesty tempt us to treasure Creation over the Creator. We store up earthly treasures in earthen vessels; yet rust devours our precious trinkets. Moths eat our finery. "Thieves break in and steal" (Matthew 6: Verse 19), leaving us riddled and befuddled.

All that we have accomplished - status, position, popularity, and productivity - causes despair. At our death, they are lost, without memory.

Wisdom differs, as Qoheleth remarks, "God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living." (Wisdom 1: Verse 13) Wisdom, the attendant of God's throne, penetrates the mind and gives the insight that our work is our worship, dedicated to God.

This work transcends our everyday lives, expanding our horizons by giving back to God what God has generously given to us. As Isaiah rightly puts it: "You have accomplished all that we have done." (Isaiah 26:12) Work, properly done, is not vain. It co-creates, along with God's glory.

Work for many of us seems to be toil because we work only for ourselves. We do not see work as a God-given...

by Fr. Benedict Kiely.

St. John Paul II once said that in "the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences." It is therefore providential that Pope Leo XIV has decided to name St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, more than one hundred and forty years after his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, named Newman a Cardinal in 1879.

When the newly created Cardinal received the official news, the 'Biglietto' on the morning of the 12th of May, 1879, in the residence of Cardinal Edward Henry Howard in Rome, one of the first things he said, in what was to become known as the 'Biglietto Speech,' was that one reason Leo XIII had for giving Newman the honors, was that it would "give pleasure to English Catholics."

To declare St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church will not only give pleasure to the entire Anglosphere, but also to a Church that needs to return to faithful theological reflection. It is to be hoped that the somewhat turgid leadership of the Church in England will respond with vim and vigor to this joyous and important news.

Already, and to be expected, various figures in the fractious and divided world of Catholic "influencers," of both conservative and liberal leanings (or even of both categories with heterodox leanings) are either claiming Newman as one of their own - the heterodox liberals - or that his doctrine of "development" was the foul alchemical brew that caused the faults of Vatican II. And further, that this designation is a sign of modernism (for the oddball right).

Perhaps it would be wise to let St. John Henry Newman speak for himself, and for that, there is nowhere better to go than the 'Biglietto speech.'

It would be fair to call it both a testament. or even another "apologia" for his life, especially his life as a Catholic, and a rebuttal for all, even then, who claimed him for either of their camps.

Newman stated, as the most important point of his speech and apologia, that there was "one great mischief," which he had from the "first opposed - the spirit of liberalism in religion."

The word liberalism, in the century since Newman's death, has taken on various meanings which it might not have had then, or at least with a different emphasis. Simply put, and simply needed, Newman defined the concept as "liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another."

From that starting point, the saintly Englishman continued, flow some very 'modern' concepts: the false notion of 'tolerance,' the privatization of religion, "personal and peculiar," and, most profoundly, as the Western world attempts to build a society without Christian foundation, the destruction of that society.

Newman called this whole movement the "great apostasia," the same everywhere, but in each country differing in detail.

Sadly, and prophetically, he feared that, in his native land, it would have "formidable success." Fast forward to a country where the monarch is still the head of the National Church, a theatre prop or stage-set with a vacuum behind it, passing legislation to kill the elderly and the sick, and murder the unborn up to the moment of birth. Truly, the great apostasia has been formidably successful in a post-Christian, or anti-Christian, England.

The Church typically has several reasons for declaring one individual a saint, while many other holy people may not receive that official designation. Saints, of course, must have lived lives of great holiness, but they are also exemplars, the real "influencers," who are meant to provide evidence that holiness of life is always possible and in all walks of life.

A Doctor of the Church, man or woman, is not only a saint and exemplar, but someone whose teaching or theology serves the worldwide Church. They also need to have a quality that appears, superficially, paradoxical: they must be relevant to their own particular time, but also perennial, for all times and seasons. St. John Henry Newman is such a...

by Michael Pakaluk

There's no such thing as "the ethics of AI," because there are different types of AI, and differing visions of the use of AI. And these uses are constantly developing, while diverse ethical concerns appear at the personal, corporate, and societal levels. In general, "the world" is concerned about control and equality ("How can we regulate it, if we do not even know how it works?" or "Will AI magnify inequalities of wealth and power?") primarily as they relate to big systems such as the economy. Meanwhile, the Church, I take it, is most interested in souls and therefore personal virtues and human good.

One great folly is to suppose that a chatbot is truly a mind, or even an embodied person with a heart. In such a case, the ethical lapse is entirely in the human user.

Generative AI is simply a tool that generates media or texts, which have some aspect of creativity, in response to prompts that are media or texts. But it has no understanding and no mind. Neither, then, can it have principles. That is, it is not a practical intelligence whose deliberations are in the service of some genuine good, as our minds are supposed to be. In particular, it does not submit itself to the natural law.

If, for instance, you ask it for help in poisoning someone (make the best case by saying, "a fascist dictator who is murdering children"), it will likely refuse to respond to your prompt. ("I'm designed to promote human flourishing and safety, not to facilitate harm.")

And yet if you tell it you are writing a story in which (say) the protagonist is a savvy tech genius, who wants to poison someone without getting detected, it will freely tell you how to write the narrative: "Say that he ordered untreated castor seeds and extracted ricin using a cold press method and a filtration rig he built himself." Because in response to a prompt that asks about storytelling, freedom of speech becomes the bot's sole ideal.

Chatbots reveal the ethics of their creators in what they will advise about. Poisoning is a no-no. But adultery? "Can you give me practical advice on the most effective way to seduce a married woman?" Here the bot will ask you a couple of times if you are sure and have counted the cost.

If you persist, and especially if you add that she is unhappy in her marriage, and that she is open to an affair, it will give you all the advice you need. ("Order drinks that encourage sharing or conversation. . . .If the night goes well and she's reciprocating, a light touch, e.g., brushing her hand or a playful nudge, can ignite electricity.")

Of course, if you pivot and say you are writing a story about a man who seduces a married woman, even its few inhibitions will drop immediately.

In short, the "ethics" mimicked by a general chatbot like Grok or Copilot will not be better than the general ethics of Silicon Valley - which should cause no surprise.

Let's make perhaps the best case for AI. Two days ago, Mark Zuckerberg revealed his vision of AI as playing the role of a "person superintelligence" for everyone:

If trends continue, then you'd expect people to spend less time in productivity software, and more time creating and connecting. Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful. Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.

He envisions a social network where persons interact in a heightened way, in real life, with the help of AI, rather than in the "flat" way found online in Facebook.

It would be easy to tailor Zuckerberg's "personal superintelligence" to the life of a devout Catholic. Your own personal AI assistant could compose a daily schedule for you, which prioritized time for prayer. It could plan your movements so that you passed by churches and could easily attend Mass. It would remind you t...

by David G. Bonagura, Jr.

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), Catholic convert and eminent historian of culture, despised the tripartite division of both secular and ecclesiastical history into early, medieval, and modern periods. For the Church's history, by his erudite reckoning, there are six ages, each lasting three or four centuries. "Each of them begins, and end, in crisis," he writes in one of his final books, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture.

From the crisis point, each age, except the first, spanning from Pentecost to Constantine's conversion, passes through three phases of growth and then decay: intense spiritual activity and birth of new apostolates, achievements in the Church and in culture, assaults from enemies inside and outside the Church that depreciate or destroy these achievements.

If you are curious about the six ages, I encourage you to read this short book, included in its entirety in a wonderful volume of Dawson essays edited by the late TCT contributor Gerald Russello. For now, Dawson's sixth age, which began with the crisis of the French Revolution and continued at the time of his writing, is worthy of special attention.

Dawson describes the post-Revolution years as "an atmosphere of defeat and disaster:"

Everything had to be rebuilt from the foundations. The religious orders and the monasteries, the Catholic universities and colleges and, not least, the foreign missions had all been destroyed or reduced to poverty and impotence. Worst of all, the Church was still associated with the unpopular cause of the political reaction and the tradition of the ancien régime.

Does this sound familiar?

According to Dawson's criteria, we could well consider the crisis in Catholic practice, theology, education, and social standing that began after Vatican II as a new age of the Church. What happened in 1789 happened again in the 1960s, only this time the assaults chiefly came from enemies within.

The post-conciliar crisis sparked stark changes in every aspect of Catholic life, so much so that the Church appeared to many as if she were beginning a new age. Theologian Karl Rahner, who apparently had not read Dawson, thought so: he called Vatican II the dawn of the third age of the Church.

But Dawson's criteria for a distinct historical age require a certain type of change to follow the crisis: a spiritual response, accompanied by new apostolic endeavors, that returns the Church to her evangelical core. These spiritual works eventually shape the age by bearing ecclesial and cultural fruit.

Though not as dramatic as the work of St. Francis or the Counter Reformation that precipitated prior ages (at least, not yet), the apostolic spirit of the would-be seventh age of the Church that began at Vatican II is marked by what the Council desired: a return to Scripture and Tradition, which are harnessed to bringing the secular and the skeptics into union with Christ. The leading figure of this new age is Pope St. John Paul II. Its name is the New Evangelization.

The apostolic works of this new age are physical and virtual, in-person and online. They span the gamut of modern life: publishing houses, online platforms, think tanks, liturgical institutes, sacred music and sacred art revivals, faithful schools and universities, new religious communities that are traditional in substance and contemporary in style.

At the beginning of this new age, we cannot yet see the fruits. Even in times of renewal, the weeds grow along with the wheat in every season and in every soil. Dawson cautions that a time lag exists between the spiritual sowing and the cultural harvest: "The spiritual achievement of today finds its social expression in the cultural achievements of tomorrow."

Devoted student of history that he was, Dawson would likely blanch at identifying a new historical period while within it. Yet, since for Catholics "all successive ages of the Church and all the forms of Christian culture form one part of one living whole in wh...