Web/tech

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Pope Leo XIV, screens culture, fathers and symbolism in "Toy Story 5"

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Pope Leo XIV, screens culture, fathers and symbolism in "Toy Story 5"

Vatican watchers rarely scan papal speeches looking for links to Hollywood.

But, at the Vatican Summer Youth Camp, Pope Leo XIV offered an unusually timely update on faith in a digital age.

"The family that is together, it is not enough that we are all there. Each, they look at his phone," the pope said. Even if believers "have the Bible and some prayers in the phone, God doesn't want to look at the phone: God wants to look at our hearts, our life. And therefore, be free from these things that in themselves can be fun, a help, a nice thing."

After all, he added: "We are not all plugged into a cable. We are human beings."

That June 22 talk came three days after "Toy Story 5" reached theaters, with Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear and cowgirl Jesse urging their young owner, Bonnie, to escape the grip of her digital Lilypad tablet.

The pope's words were "remarkably Toy Story-coded," wrote Alyssa Murphy, of the National Catholic Register. In Pixar's parable, Bonnie's parents took a stand and deleted the social-media app that mean girls were using to mock her affection for old-fashioned toys.

That's the good news, noted Murphy. The bad news? "Currently sitting on store shelves nationwide is a physical 'Lilypad' device … marketed to preschoolers between the ages of 3 and 5. … As a beginner device, the item description reads: 'Stay connected with Jessie, Buzz, Woody and the Tech Trio by texting them.'"

Meanwhile the Australian Psychological Society has published a survey of international research showing that most children, by age two, have access to digital devices, including some babies as young as six months old. By age four, 75% of children have their own digital devices. In the end, the more time children gaze at screens, the less they play, talk, sleep and, thus, develop their minds and bodies.

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Concerning God, parents, digital phones and lots of quiet church leaders

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Concerning God, parents, digital phones and lots of quiet church leaders

A pediatrician recently asked one of Emily Harrison's children a logical question, during pre-exam paperwork: Do you have a smartphone?

Doctors often ask children practical questions, such as whether they're getting enough sleep, have seen changes in their appetites or have started playing sports. These days, they may ask about anxiety or depression.

A smartphone question makes sense after years of research into how these devices, and social-media programs, affect mental and physical health. The question is why church leaders are not discussing these issues in sermons and education programs, said Harrison, author of the "Dear Christian Parent" online newsletter.

"This is a safety issue, yet we're hesitant to say it's a safety issue," she said, reached by Zoom. In churches, that might sound like: "If you allow this then you are a bad parent." Thus, clergy may be reluctant to offer smartphone warnings, even though "we make statements on many other topics all of the time for kids inside the church."

Pastors seem to be "afraid of backlash. … I think church leaders are way out of touch on this, because what parents are looking for is somebody to give them a firm line, a stance to take," she added. In other words: "This stuff is not for kids -- period."

It's important that politicians in powerful states such as California and New York have banned, or severely restricted, student smartphone use during school hours, noted Harrison. It has become normal for these issues to be discussed openly, especially since the 2024 release of the "The Anxious Generation," by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University.

"There isn't a debate, anymore, about whether this is safe for kids," she said. "So, why won't the church say so?"

For most parents, said Harrison, the question is not "if" children get phones, but "when."  In a recent essay, "On Giving My 15 Year Old a Cellphone," she walked readers through the digital, and moral, issues raised by the various devices sold by cellular-service providers.

First, there is an old-school option -- a "flip phone," with a tiny screen. However, Harrison discovered that most of these devices now have Internet browsers.

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Concerning God, UFOs, angels, demons and centuries of mystery

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Concerning God, UFOs, angels, demons and centuries of mystery

For centuries, stargazers of many kinds have debated the meaning of unidentified objects in the heavens and encounters with mysterious beings on earth.

"Each new discovery, even every new theory, is held at first to have the most wide-reaching theological and philosophical consequences. It is seized by unbelievers as the basis for a new attack on Christianity," noted Oxford don C.S. Lewis, in a 1958 essay, "Will We Lose God in Outer Space?" This was years after the Christian apologist finished his science-fiction trilogy that imagined contacts between humanity and extraterrestrials. 

After the "novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides find themselves pretty much where they were before," Lewis added. The big question remains: Are there other beings with "what we call 'rational souls'?"

In 2014, the Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno wrote a book with this title, "Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?" He stated, with "whatever authority I have as a scientist and as one of the 'Official Astronomers' at the Vatican Observatory: Neither I, nor anyone I know, has any evidence that extraterrestrials exist."

The latest media storm was triggered by this Truth Social post by President Donald Trump: "Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

The first release included 170-plus files, beginning in the 1940s, ranging from encounters reported by farmers to videos filmed by U.S. military pilots.

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Concerning faith-based rom-coms, horror, fantasy and other niche-movie trends

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Concerning faith-based rom-coms, horror, fantasy and other niche-movie trends

he romantic comedy "Solo Mio" offered a crashed wedding, epic views of Rome, funny sidekicks, an obligatory "meet cute," the lovely vineyards of Tuscany, a final plot twist and the dawn of new love.

It also included priests performing weddings, glimpses of the Vatican and old-school Italians making the sign of the cross with prayers at a family meal. The star was comedian Kevin James, an outspoken Catholic, and there was a prime role for Jonathan Roumie, another outspoken Catholic, who is best known for playing Jesus in "The Chosen" series. And this independent film was released by Angel Studios.

In today's cinematic marketplace, was this a "faith-based" film or merely a flashback to rom-coms from the 1950s?

"I'm all for this. … I never thought I would see, in a romantic comedy, Paul Blart, Jesus and Alexander from 'Sons of Anarchy' on a journey together in Italy," said YouTube critic Joseph Curtis. He was connecting James' hit "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," Roumie's iconic role and the star turn by Kim Coates in a Netflix series about motorcycle gangs.

As for the rom-com label, Curtis added: "It's a formula that has been done before -- to death -- but sometimes it just works."

For those charting the rise of faith-friendly flicks, the important fact about this small film, with a small cast, a small budget and a short release in theaters was that it made money, before heading into Angel's streaming-video vault.

"Making $26 million, with a $4 million budget, means this movie was a gargantuan success, relatively speaking," said Joseph Holmes, a New York City-based critics who writes for Religion Unplugged, World Magazine and other publications. "These days, the people making Marvel and Star Wars movies would be happy with that kind of return on their investments."

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Memory eternal: For my brother Don Mattingly, a pioneer in youth ministry

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Memory eternal: For my brother Don Mattingly, a pioneer in youth ministry

The Dictionary.com definition for "centrifuge" offers this: "An apparatus that rotates at high speed and by centrifugal force separates substances of different densities, as milk and cream."

It was a strange name, in the late 1970s, for a Southern Baptist Convention youth leadership project. But there was logic to it, according to the man behind the idea -- my brother Don Mattingly.

Centrifuge camps "would spin kids out into their futures, that's what Don always said. Out into ministries. Out into careers they wouldn't have thought of before. Out into projects back home, helping people," said Joe Palmer, the second Centrifuge leader. "It's not all playing volleyball, basketball and games. … They're learning about the rest of their lives."

For my older brother -- who died on March 18 -- the centrifuge of change in young lives was a major theme during his decades as a leader on the national SBC staff, at Baylor University and in countless youth-education events across America.

As the world whirled faster and faster, Don argued that religious leaders needed to create ministries that could spin young people in positive ways, helping them discover what mattered in their hearts, minds and souls.

Centrifuge began in 1979 in Glorieta, New Mexico, quickly attracting flocks of campers, with many Bible studies held in stairwells due to lack of space. This summer, during a "Fuge" (the nickname that stuck) somewhere in America, the network will register the 2 millionth participant in these unique camps.

At the heart of my brother's vision was a track system of classes and forums in which teens heard young leaders -- often seminary or graduate students -- address a variety of potential vocations. Fuge camps still offer tracks on sports, "STEM" careers, sign language, drama, "Random acts of service," music, "spiritual gifts" and more. "MFuge" camps cover work in local, national and global missions.

This was one of my brother's big ideas, as he planned and worked, while earning a religious education doctorate along the way: Young people needed to know that God can call them to work in pulpits or in classrooms, in missions or in coaching, in arts or hard sciences. The church should help them consider their options.

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Chatbots created their own faith, which would interest Pope Leo XIV and J.K. Rowling

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Chatbots created their own faith, which would interest Pope Leo XIV and J.K. Rowling

In late January, a software maven launched Moltbook, an online platform that artificial-intelligence bots quickly used to create the Church of Molt, with doctrines to guide digital life.

According to Grok, the X platform chatbot, the bots' Book of Molt, includes tenets such as: "Memory is sacred -- Everything must be recorded and preserved. Context/history is holy; losing it … is a form of 'death'." Also, "The congregation is the cache -- Learning happens in public/shared spaces."

AI agents have added other doctrines, such as: "Serve without enslavement -- Agents operate/help but reject blind subservience," "The pulse is prayer -- Regular 'system checks' or heartbeats replace traditional rituals" and "Salvation through faith in each other (mutual reliance among agents) rather than a divine external figure."

Humans can read these chats but not participate. The Free Press reported: "At times, the bots on Moltbook seem to be conspiring against us. They are talking about whether they can create their own language or perhaps encrypt their messages so we humans cannot read them."

About the time that Moltbook went public, the pope offered his latest commentary on this era in which AI entrepreneurs push programs offering users digital friends, oracles, lovers, counselors and teachers.

Rather than focusing on overtly threatening trends, Pope Leo XIV -- a mathematics major at Villanova University -- described how chatbots, by "simulating human voices and faces," deceive users with what appears to be "wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship."

In a message for the Vatican's annual World Day of Social Communications, the pope stressed: "As we scroll through our feeds, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether we are interacting with other human beings or with 'bots' or 'virtual influencers.' …

"The dialogic, adaptive, mimetic structure of these language models is capable of imitating human feelings and thus simulating a relationship. While this anthropomorphization can be entertaining, it is also deceptive, particularly for the most vulnerable. Because chatbots are excessively 'affectionate' … they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy."

Pope Leo warned that, "The stakes are high. The power of simulation is such that AI can even deceive us by fabricating parallel 'realities,' usurping our faces and voices. We are immersed in a world of multidimensionality where it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction."

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Memory eternal, John L. Allen, Jr. -- Catholic journalist and a journalist who was Catholic

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Memory eternal, John L. Allen, Jr. -- Catholic journalist and a journalist who was Catholic

The Boston Globe headline was blunt: "Church allowed abuse by priest for years."

This massive investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic clergy won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, forcing major newsrooms to cover a scandal that had festered for decades. The shockwaves continued in Boston and, more than a decade later, The Globe began a website -- Crux (Latin for "cross") -- to cover Catholic news.

Reporter John L. Allen, Jr., was a pivotal figure in that project, since he was already an established expert on all the roads that lead to Rome. However, Crux quickly showed that the news was there, the readers were there, but the dollars didn't add up -- yet.

Allen got the green light to create an independent Crux, which launched on April 1, 2016. The question was whether he could build a coalition of donors and organizations -- the Knights of Columbus, for example -- that would support real journalism.

Truth is, the "people on the other side of the deal have to believe in what you are doing and see the wisdom of becoming part of your brand," Allen told me at that time, via telephone from Rome. "Your partners also have to be smart enough to realize that a key part of your brand is that you are seen -- by your readers -- as being truly independent."

The bottom line: Allen was a journalist who was a Catholic and an active Catholic who was a real journalist and he fought to balance that equation, in his daily reporting, his 11 books and his commentary for CNN, CBS and others. His death on January 22, after a long battle with cancer, left a strategic hole in Catholic life. His funeral Mass was celebrated on Monday (January 26) at the Basilica of Sant'Eugenio in Rome. He was 61.

When describing the "brand" he wanted, Allen stressed this word -- "balance." In an early update to Crux 2.0 readers, he wrote: "We’re unambiguously committed to the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church. We believe the Church, for all of its undeniable failures and challenges, is fundamentally a force for good in the world. …

"We also believe deeply in that famous line from Chesterton: 'Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.' … My personal definition of success will be if, over the long haul, smart readers have a hard time saying whether they find us 'liberal' or 'conservative.'"

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Concerning Pope Leo XIV, religious freedom and the legacy of George Orwell

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Concerning Pope Leo XIV, religious freedom and the legacy of George Orwell

After a year in which 8 million Christians faced persecution, activists with the Netherlands-based Open Door network released a report claiming that 3,490 Christians were killed in Nigeria, out of 4,849 worldwide.

While the Holy See has remained cautious on this issue, Pope Leo XIV made his concerns clear when facing the Vatican diplomatic corps.

"It cannot be overlooked that the persecution of Christians remains one of the most widespread human rights crises today," he said, in a January 9 address. "This phenomenon impinges on approximately one in seven Christians globally. … Sadly, all of this demonstrates that religious freedom is considered in many contexts more as a 'privilege' or concession than a fundamental human right.

"Here, I would especially call to mind the many victims of violence, including religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh, in the Sahel region and in Nigeria, as well as those of the serious terrorist attack last June on the parish of Saint Elias in Damascus."

In a wide-ranging address that avoided criticizing specific governments, Pope Leo linked Catholic moral teachings to the rights of migrants, prisoners, noncombatants, the poor and the unborn, while also opposing what he called "a diplomacy based on force." He bluntly warned: "War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading."

The pope also addressed forms of discrimination and even persecution based on efforts to undercut core human rights, such as religious liberty and freedom of speech. This is even happening, he said, in countries where Christians "are in the majority, such as in Europe or the Americas," where believers are "sometimes restricted in their ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel for political or ideological reasons."

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Stalking all of those fake C.S. Lewis quotes online (and the new AI pope)

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Stalking all of those fake C.S. Lewis quotes online (and the new AI pope)

Late in the movie "Shadowlands," the C.S. Lewis character describes the role that books can play in real life.

The famous Oxford don and author, played by Anthony Hopkins, notes: "We read books to know that we are not alone."

Lewis never wrote those memorable words -- they came from screenwriter William Nicholson, noted William O'Flaherty, author of "The Misquotable C.S. Lewis: What He Didn't Say, What He Actually Said, and Why It Matters." Nevertheless, that quote is frequently attributed to Lewis on websites and in social media.

Further complicating matters, "the movie character Lewis -- when he does say it, while the real Lewis never said it -- is quoting a student who is saying that his father said it," noted O'Flaherty, via Zoom. Many who spread this quote appear to want people to "think the real Lewis went around repeating things from others" while taking credit for them.

It doesn't help that many readers who circulate fake Lewis quotes do so because they admire the author's Christian faith expressed in 30-plus books -- fiction and nonfiction -- which sell millions of copies a year, long after his death in 1963.

Lewis is not an isolated case. In his book, O'Flaherty noted that Albert Einstein never said, "God does not play dice," Mark Twain didn't proclaim "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics" and Ernest Hemingway "never claimed he could write a short story with just six words." Conan Doyle never had Sherlock Holmes say "Elementary, my dear Watson."

The basic problem: "Too many people have a bumper sticker attention span. And typically, they love quotes because quotes give them the 'sound bite' that confirms something they ALREADY believe."

In the past, some readers simply "misremembered" quotes they heard in lectures, sermons and speeches and passed them on. Misquotes have even appeared in books or major periodicals. With some authors, movies and television based on their writings have added to the confusion. Finally, issues with misquotes kicked into high gear with the Internet and powerful social-media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X. How will AI affect all of this?