There is a sentence in Sacerdotalis Caelibatus that Paul VI plainly did not intend to be read the way I am about to read it. Defending the law of clerical celibacy against every objection he could muster the courage to name, he concedes that the young man who embraces it is walking a road that leads, “on the one hand … to a certain physical and psychic void.”… Read further…

The recent remarks of Pope Leo XIV urging priests “to resist the temptation to prepare homilies with artificial intelligence” merit careful and extended analysis. His concerns touch on the nature of preaching, the exercise of the intellect, the authenticity of pastoral communication, and the place of technological mediation in ecclesial life. Because the Pope is correct on several foundational points, it is all the more important to examine where his conclusions do not follow and where his diagnosis of artificial intelligence rests on conceptual misunderstandings.