Remember to center yourself this Sunday
Plus: This post was not written by AI
Good morning and happy Saturday. I am still relaxing (and recovering from the Lion’s disappointing loss on Thursday) and I hope you are too. For that reason, please forgive me for an abbreviated newsletter this weekend.
That all being said, tomorrow we are celebrating the last Sunday in Oridnary Time: The Solmenity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Univers. It is a particularly interesting feast in my mind because in this new age of private space travel and talk of returning to the moon and eventually travelling to Mars, it is important for us to remember what is truly important. Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe. Despite our societal and technological advances, we will never come close to attaining that title; it can only be carried by the true king.
So this Sunday, remember to center yourself and remember who is in charge of everything; be confident in our leader. Jesus Christ has already won the victory and is reigning in heaven.
The readings for this Sunday are Ezekeil 34:11-12, 15-17; Psalm 23:1-2, 2-3, 5-6; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; and Matthew 25:31-46.
Here is a calendar for the week:
Thursday, November 23rd - Feast of St. Andrew, the Apostle
In the Liturgy of the Hours, we will begin using Psalter Week II tonight and we will be reading from Revelation tomorrow, 2 Peter, 1 Corinthians on Thurs, and from Jude on Saturday.
In the news:
The United States
High altar re-established at Baltimore’s Mary Our Queen Cathedral; allows for versus populum celebration - Catholic News Agency
For those who need some red: “I used to be a good Democrat” - David Carlin in the Catholic Thing
For those who need some blue: Post-Dobbs, Catholics need to emphasize material support to mothers, help for climate refugees, use technology wisely, and become less polarized - Cardinal Blase Cupich (Chigago, Illinois) in America Magazine
The Vatican
Pope Francis: Christians are a light in the darkness of violence and war - Vatican News
The World
Rome tells German bishops female priests and homosexual acts are not up for discussion - The Pillar
Pro-Life: Preruvian bishops hail new law codifying rights for the unborn - Catholic News Agency
On the Cliamte: St. Joseph Parish in Ponkandam, India is country’s first “net-zero” parish - Crux
In the “needing some blue” link this week, I shared an essay written by the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cupich. In it, he claimed that to be completely pro-life we must (obviously) care and protect the rights of the unborn, but we also must emphasize some other pro-life priorities. I listed some of them above.
In his comments about technology, Cardinal Cupich mentioned AI and Pope St. John Paul II’s first encyclical “Redemptor Hominis” and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (Cincinatti, Ohio) who asked this question at an address at Fordham University, “The essential question in the technological challenge is this: In an age when we can do almost anything, how do we decide what we ought to do? The even more demanding question is: In a time when we can do anything technologically, how do we decide morally what we never should do?”
Cardinal Cupich built on that saying, “In the 40 years since the cardinal asked those questions, the risks of unexamined technological advances, especially in the areas of artificial intelligence and defense, have only increased.”
AI interests me not because I am fearful it will take over jobs or our lives, but because I think it will be a great tool not unlike the telephone or the internet. I have used ChatGPT for various projects and proposals and I have learned that it is certainly not perfect.
I am also increasingly amused by the “art” that AI generates. I put it in quotes because I’m not sure that a computer can really create something, it can only reuse what it can find and has been input into it.
At the very beginning of this article, I mentioned tomorrow is the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe. I also said something about launching into space. In the photo above, I asked AI to create a spaceship with Jesus in the background. You can see how close it got. To be totally honest, to me it looks not unlike some of the contemporary art that I have seen in churches (or printed in other versions of the Liturgy of the Hours).
Below, I simply put in the prompt: Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. These are the four options it gave me and I’ll let you be the judge of the “art.”
Have a good weekend,
Matthew
PS. - I can reassure you that not one bit of this post was written by ChatGPT or any other artificial intelligence. It was written entirely by me, Matthew Handley, on Friday, 24 November 2023. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to look for the typos.