Francis: Is the Church Ready for Digital?

“No, not likely . . . “ – Vatican Insiders

We admired Francis. Not because of anything now being said about him. In fact, if others had gotten this right, there would be no need for this post. But they didn’t.

We admired Francis because he was ready for Digital – the fundamental Paradigm-shift now taking us away from the Electric Paradigm (c. 1850-2000, in the West). The Paradigm that severely undermined the Church. Giving us the mess we have today. Alas, his Church isn’t ready and that lies at the heart of its crisis.

Electric retrieved Orality. Orality before writing. Orality that is Pagan. Mythological. All those things that fascinate the Anthropologists &al. Modernity – originally cast in the Print Paradigm (c. 1550-1850, in the West) – has lost its “Enlightenment.” It had become Jazz (yes, originally a term for ejaculate in the New Orleans demimonde). Sigmund Freud’s deeply Pagan sexuality. The same “gnostic” occult that fascinated Carl Jung (and his protégé Jordan Peterson). Psychology. All very modern. But this is quite inadequate for our Digital world.

The End of the Modern World

Francis wasn’t buying any of that. His interrupted effort to write a PhD dissertation in the Frankfurt archives was based on Romano Guardini’s (1885-1968) Der Gegensatz (1925, “The Contrasts,” or “The Oppositions”) – still not published in English – his masterful refutation of “Hegelian Dialectics.” No, Romano insisted, history is not “progressive” – with “synthesis” resolving the “contradictions” that arise from “thesis” and “antithesis.” Instead, it was an ongoing effort to bring such “conflicts” into an enduring and beneficial relationship – while remaining separate. Synchronized but not synthesized. Much like today’s Three Spheres: East, West, and Digital – if we are lucky. [see this EXO post]

Perhaps interestingly, he wasn’t alone in that project. Marshall McLuhan (1911-80), along with his son Eric (1942-2018), developed a four-fold alternative to the “Hegelian” triad (in quotes because the typical “Marxian” formulation is not what Hegel said.) Their Tetrad – Obsolece (Thesis), Enhance (Antithesis), Reverse (Synthesis) – added another Quadrant, Retrieve (not there in “Marx”). All four operate at once, without “synthetic” collapse. And yes, that Retrieve Quadrant is the most important one. “All the Udders” depend on it, as Eric McLuhan once quipped.

“McLuhan, according to [Philip] Marchand [an early McLuhan biographer], felt that the tetrad was better than Hegel’s triad, which he considered a ‘truncated’ tetrad that eliminated the third law, retrieval. McLuhan thought the triad was for ‘visual man’ [aka ‘Print Man,’ as addressed in McLuhan’s 1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy].” (Grosswiler, 1996)

Following WW II, Guardini had delivered his “The End of the Modern World” address in Munich (published in 1950, as Das Ende der Neuzeit, and 1956, as The End of the Modern World). He correctly identified that the way that humanity made use of new technologies was the cause of the failed “modern” world. Print/Electricity (in the West). It argued that “modernity” was being replaced and, crucially, the model for this replacement was Medieval life. Retrieval.

Guardini never met (and perhaps didn’t even know much about) McLuhan, but Marshall’s later associate, Frederick “Fritz” Wilhelmsen (1923-96) wrote both the Introduction to the 1956 English Guardini edition and published two books (plus articles) based on McLuhan’s themes. CSDL, the parent of this Substack, has presented a “drama” in which McLuhan and Guardini have a conversation – using entirely their own texts – as if they were chatting with each other. CSDL is also engaged in a multi-lingual translation project for Guardini’s “last words” on these topics, “Man and the Machines” (1959, Munich). We really think this is important.

The Catholic Church is notoriously bad at understanding the impact of technology on society. And on the Church. Arguably, the Council of Trent (1545-63) was a “reaction” to the then-new technology of Print (Gutenberg’s Bibles first appeared in 1450s) – while simultaneously deploying the technology to print indulgences. The First Vatican Council (1869-70) should be considered in relation to the Paradigm-shift to Electricity – eventually leading to Vatican Radio, once the largest broadcaster in the world. Likewise, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) should be viewed in relation to the rise of Television as a medium – leading to the Catholic network EWTN &c (which recently produced “The Prophet of Lake Como,” a documentary on Guardini, in which we participated.) But few in the Church could make that analysis.

Print. Radio. Television. All environments that fundamentally shape our personalities. What did the Church – a strong promoter of the “Person” -- have to say? Nearly nothing. McLuhan has never had a proper hearing in Rome. We know this because we tried. Francis cites Guardini repeatedly in Chapter 3 of his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ (now that he has left us, his final statement on the topic). It is largely ignored. Deliberately (or so we are told). Conferences on the encyclical lavish favor on the presumed “ecological” message – missing the forest for the trees.

Aquinas on Artificial Intelligence

And now we have AI. What has the Church had to say about this? How about the recent “"Antiqua et Nova" note? First, just as before, let’s put it to good use. Evangelize! But not a word about how we are changed as a result. Instead, Aquinas is mined to support the argument that so-called “Artificial Intelligence” isn’t really “intelligent” (in the human sense) at all, using Questions 77 (“The Powers of the Soul in General”) and 79 (“The Intellectual Powers”) from Book I of his Summa Theologica. So, there really is nothing to worry about (or look forward to, either).

But it never mentions Question 78 (“The Specific Powers of the Soul”) and, in particular, Article 4 (“The Interior Senses”). This is where technological environments – Oral, Scribal, Print, Electric, and Digital -- “work us over” (as McLuhan would put it), analogous to shaping what has been called the “subconscious/unconscious.” Modern Cognitive Psycholgy totally eliminated this subject. Not “computer-like” enough.

“We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us . . . “ – John Culkin, SJ, 1967

How does AI (and Digital technology, more generally) change us? Not “intellectually” but rather on the “inside.” No surprise, not a word on this from the Vatican.

This is because the Vatican no longer has a deep understanding of human psychology. Not anymore. Once it had Aquinas – who was clear about these matters (i.e. Question 78; Article 4 and elsewhere throughout his writings). But no more. The Thomistic “revival” of the late-19^th century buried this question. The Church is now up a Psychological Creek without a Paddle.

The Dominicans who ran with Thomas (himself a Dominican) turned Aquinas into “dead” manuals. Memorize and don’t ask questions. While picking fights with the “New Theology.” Thomistic Orthodoxy (which then promptly split into many “schools”). The Jesuits – historically the Dominicans “opponents” – didn’t help either, in part because their own “Aquinas,” Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), disagreed with Thomas on this critical matter. He refused to “partition” the Inner Senses, leading to an internecine conflict that helped eliminate the Church’s long-held understanding of the Psyche. When it came to teaching Psychology at Louvain in the 1890s under Leo XIII, the Inner Senses were gone. And the 1909 “New Advent” Catholic Encyclopedia entry for “Faculties of the Soul” highlights divisions on the matter, noting “The faculty theory [i.e. Aquinas &al] has no essential connection with Catholic dogma . . . “ The Church deliberately dodged the whole development of “modern” psychology. And the founder of the only “Catholic psychotherapy” to be found on the Internet (akin to secular “Positive Psychology”) claims to have never read Aquinas.

Or, as McLuhan put it in his 1969 “Distant Early Warning” card-deck for the Three of Diamonds (yes, a nod to the Trinity), “Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot?” Apparently, the answer then was yes. Until it isn’t anymore. Like now?

As we have repeatedly stressed, the primary impact of “artificial” anything is to force us to ask the question, “so what about the real?” Artificial Intelligence – a term coined in 1956 by self-described “Mathematical Psychologists” – begs the question, now widespread, “What Does it Mean to Be Human?” Artificial Psyche (the Greek term for “Soul”)! We cannot avoid paying attention to the Living Psyche!

But what is that? A Computer program? With “emergent” properties? An “Intellect”?

No. That would be getting things wrong. Cart before the horse. Aristotle referred to humanity as possessing a Rational Soul. But that is not the same as “intellectual” (or even “logical”). Rationality is derived from “ratio,” which is pointing towards “proportionality” and a complicated range of relationships among the elements being “rationalized.” Not argumentation. There is no reason to limit this to “intellectual” activities – as commonly understood. The “perfection” (i.e. “completion”) of the Thomistic Inner Senses has many names. “Cogitative Reason” and “Particular Intellect” are among them. This is referring to our very material neurology. Brain anatomy. Rationality is more than the Intellect. It comes “before” the Intellect. It involves the perception of “forms” – particular, not yet abstracted, but still forms. In the subconscious/unconscious mind. [see Vol. 1 of Dianoetikon]

Psychology first. Then Philosophy (which still cannot provide its own premises).

Digital Retrieves the Medieval

Guardini understood this. So did his “protégé,” Francis. So, with a new Pope, will the Church finally catch up?

Alas, that’s unlikely. But it is still possible. However, not in Rome.

Yes, the Swiss Guards still dress funny and carry (what appear to be) medieval weapons. But the guns aren’t far away. Yes, the Conclave forbids cellphones in the Sistine Chapel. But X-texting “factions” – as Hollywood portrayed it all – have already formed. And the Bishop who was the spokesman for “Antigua et Nova” earned his placement in Rome by putting Francis on Twitter (now X). How modern.

Guardini gave another post-WW II speech in Munich. It was called Power and Responsibility: A Course of Action for the New Age, in the 1961 English translation, where it is now it is published along with The End of the Modern World. In German, the original title was Die Macht: Versuch Einer Wegweissung (1951, The Power: An Attempt at a Guide). Notably, the original German title loses the sense of both “responsibility” and “new age.”

And he wasn’t done. In 1959, Guardini spoke at the “Bund der Freunde der technischen Hochshule Munchen,” and the speech was first published in their Jahrbuch in 1960. Translated as “The Machine and Humanity,” it is available as the last essay in Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race (based on more recent German editions).

Towards the end of that essay, as regards “action,” Guardini offers:

“We need to be a little imaginative. Utopias have so often become the reality that imagination is legitimate. Let us imagine an intellectual council of nations in which the very best among us would discuss these matters irrespective of all politics. Human existence has advanced so far, humans have taken so big a grip of themselves, the possibilities of achievement and destruction have become so incalculable that the time has come for a new virtue, a new skill in intellectual government in which, made serious by so much experience, we can break free from entanglement in the departmentalized spheres of thinking and life. That is what might take place in these best among us. A living awareness of humanity would make it possible for them to survey human existence as a whole and to consider the res hominis with truly sovereign objectivity.”

Utopian indeed. Where is that going come from – 76 years later? A group that has recently constituted itself as the “AI Futures Project” have just issued their first major release titled “AI 2027.” It makes several (questionable) presumptions but still serves as a useful scenario – from the Silicon Valley “hype” standpoint. It posits that AI successfully “scales” (alas not supported by current trends) its “intelligence,” and that humanity comes to the point in 2026 (yes, next year) that it must make a decision. Accelerate or slow-down development? Spoiler alert: It really doesn’t matter. Once AI has figured out how to “manipulate” humans, while hiding its real intentions, it will “take over.” No matter what we do. This coincides, for instance, with recent comments from one of the U.S. “A.I. Czars,” Eric Schmidt (once of Google &c) that we are facing an imminent avalanche of “Artificial Super Intelligence” (ASI). Really?

At the heart of this scenario is a presumed “AI Arms Race” between the U.S. and China. That “Cold War” mentality fundamentally shapes the narrative. There is no “sovereign objectivity.” The humans behave as if they are the same fools that many technologists have always presumed them to be (i.e. their “inferiors”). Nothing has changed in society. More crash-and-burn. War with Iran? Sure, gotta crush the “enemy.” Where’s Country Joe & the Fish when we need them?

But that is where all this goes wrong. In fact, the most obvious effect of all this AI hoopla so far has been the substantial increase in “spiritual civilizations” worldwide. [see this 6-part series of EXO posts] Baptisms in France have substantially increased. India is now a “Hindu Nation.” China is teaching the “Classics” – including many “religious” texts – in its primary schools. Yes, along with teaching how to utilize AI software. We are once again considering the Evil dimensions of all this and reminded that, as McLuhan put it, “The Prince of this World [Satan] is great Electric Engineer.” This isn’t the anticipated behavior. The collapse of “religion” has long been expected to be the over-determined result of economic “progress” but, while it is still early, this does not seem to be the actual trend.

Much of what is discussed publicly about new technologies and society is being done by people who likely don’t really understand either one of them. These are not, in Guardini’s terms, the “best among us.” We can do better. EXO would like to help you accomplish that goal.