Letters to the Editor: May 2026

Tools & Their Uses

Christopher M. Reilly offers a sober reflection on artificial intelligence that resists both the technological utopianism of Silicon Valley and the dismissive reductionism that treats AI as merely another neutral device in the human toolbox (“Yes, AI Is a Tool, but It Is So Much More,” March). Reilly begins with Pope Leo XIV’s assertion that AI is “above all else a tool,” a phrase that, at first glance, appears disarmingly simple but which, under Reilly’s scrutiny, becomes the starting point for a deeper moral and anthropological inquiry.

Reilly acknowledges the prudence of the Pope’s formulation. In an era of breathless claims about superintelligence and the imminent eclipse of human agency, describing AI as a tool restores a measure of realism. Technology, after all, does not absolve human beings of moral responsibility. Yet Reilly’s central claim is that stopping at this description risks obscuring the deeper cultural and spiritual effects of AI. He draws insightfully on Neil Postman’s famous observation that every technology carries with it an “ideological bias,” shaping how we perceive the world and what we come to value. AI, Reilly argues, is not simply a tool we wield; it is a pervasive system that quietly reorganizes our habits of thought, labor, and relationship within modern society. Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, S.J., would have agreed.

One of Reilly’s most compelling contributions is his attention to the anthropological confusion fostered by AI. Machines that mimic conversation, creativity, and decision-making inevitably tempt users to attribute personality and agency to algorithmic processes. The result is a subtle erosion of the distinction between human intelligence and machine calculation. Reilly rightly invokes the Vatican’s recent doctrinal note Antiqua et Nova to remind readers that human intelligence is not reducible to computation; it is an embodied and spiritual capacity that includes imagination, emotion, moral judgment, and the openness to transcendence.

Reilly’s most penetrating observations, however, concern the spiritual implications of this technological environment. AI-driven systems, designed primarily for efficiency and productivity, risk reinforcing instrumental rationality — the tendency to treat all human activities as means to measurable ends. Such a mindset cannot sustain the deeper human longing for truth, love, and communion. Indeed, Reilly links this technological mentality with the classical Christian understanding of acedia, the spiritual despondency that arises when the human person loses sight of his ultimate end in God.

Reilly concludes not with technological pessimism but a call for moral clarity. Artificial intelligence can undoubtedly serve human flourishing, but only if it remains subordinate to a richer vision of the human person. Information is not wisdom, and computational power is not intelligence in the fullest sense. As Leo reminds us, authentic wisdom requires openness to “the True and the Good” — a horizon no machine can replicate.

Artificial intelligence is neither a savior nor a villain. At a moment when cultural discourse about AI oscillates between naïve enthusiasm and apocalyptic dread, Reilly provides something far more valuable: philosophical clarity and theological depth. In doing so, he reminds us that the most important question posed by AI is not what machines will become, but what we will choose to be.

Sebastian Mahfood, President

En Route Books and Media

St. Louis, Missouri

“Artificial intelligence” — in quotations because I find it meaningless — is more than a tool but also much less. Christopher M. Reilly gets near the mark by calling it an ideology and summoning Neil Postman, but he falls short of Postman’s elder, Marshall McLuhan. Yes, “AI” is “barely perceptible and poorly understood” because it is, in fact, a medium: an invisible environmental quality, or gestalt, that looms over the entire enterprise of knowledge and human reasoning. McLuhan taught that “most of the effects of any innovation occur before the actual innovation itself.” Longing always precedes creation. This could not be clearer in the current discourse on AI, in which we imagine a tool that does not yet exist and vociferously roleplay with its inferior versions (ChatGPT and Claude, etc. all operate with around 50 percent accuracy) in the hope that we may somehow accomplish that very imagination.

Worse yet, “we look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future” (again, McLuhan). To be comfortable with our new framework, we must go back and conflate the entirety of our technological legacy into the definition of “AI.” No, “AI” is not “present throughout our lives,” as Reilly insinuates. It is not “in our computers and smartphone applications,” as much as Silicon Valley CEOs would prefer this to be true. As someone who has spent thousands of hours sitting in front of a command prompt (not a chatbot prompt, Lord help me) writing JavaScript and Python, I am unwilling to surrender all my achievements to a mythological phrase that supplants the great history of software development.

If anything, “AI” is less a tool and more a growing worldview that worships acedia and seeks to empty life of its ends; if only because she, the world, associates them with her anxieties. Humans have, after all, always sought to reduce and solve the complexities of existence with a neat, complicated formula.

Reilly absolutely has my full-throated support for his concerns. However, this is no tool. It is a group of tools. And among these tools, none of them fits the bill of “artificial intelligence.” The question is, what will we do when “AI” never wakes up, the novelty wears off, and our loans expire? What will be the legacy of our winsome little mimicking machines?

Michael Marinaccio

Executive Director, Center for Responsible Technology

Washington, D.C.

As a paralegal, I’ve come to rely on AI to improve speed, accuracy, and depth when doing research and drafting briefs. Though AI has saved me days (possibly weeks) of research using “old-fashioned” search engines, it cannot replace “old-fashioned” human analysis, strategy, and judgment. I’ve also found AI horribly inaccurate when it’s asked to produce valid case-law citations for use in legal arguments. When it can’t find an answer, it makes one up.

Most major investments today are in this technology or in support of it. The Three Mile Island nuclear power station near Harrisburg, for example, which once powered most of central Pennsylvania, is being reopened to power a Microsoft data center for AI. That should alarm us.

As designers make AI apps, programs, and robots to act and appear more human, the line between the real and the artificial will blur even more, and we will run the risk of losing our spirituality and our souls.

Jon P. Frey

Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix

Fort Dix, New Jersey

I mainly agree with Christopher M. Reilly’s reflection on the psychological, social, and theological dimensions of AI. As he limns, “instrumental rationality…can overwhelm the human psyche and lead us toward the sin of acedia.” While I also agree with Dr. Reilly that Pope Leo XIV’s teaching that AI is “above all else a tool” is important, and I appreciate the Holy Father’s foregrounding AI, I take a much darker view of AI than does either Reilly or the Pope.

AI is not a tool that enhances any human capacity, as Reilly’s hammers do. AI dehumanizes us even as it pretends to be our handmaid. It is the whisper of Satan, honeyed and coldly exciting, teeming with (stolen) data, promising to unlock secrets if only we submit. If we do not reject its pomp and empty show, we will become lost in its labyrinths. AI is “disincarnational logic,” as Will Hoyt points out in his spot-on review of Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity (“Is AI the Antichrist?” Jan.-Feb.). AI is not a tool but a Faustian bargain. The only way to engage AI is to shun it.

AI is not so much a computer technology as an extension of some two and a half centuries of Kantianism. Immanuel Kant and his progeny have attempted to instrumentalize morality — to disincarnationalize it, we might say — as a substitute for the Christian understanding of the human person. The premise that moral practice can be broken down to logical steps, to a one-size-fits-all process, fitting perfectly within a disenchanted, godless bound, is the driving force behind AI. To put it another way, the fact that the natural law and revealed law are from God does not factor into Kantian logic. Free from constraints, except the compromises Kantians introduce to maintain some semblance of social order, humans act with barely curtailed impunity. AI, whose every iteration ought to be named Kant, lacks the pang of conscience to which a born-of-woman human being is vulnerable. AI thus takes over, with incessant and impeccable logic, the moral field of our human dimension. I would take Reilly’s prescient warnings, then, and maximalize them. Everyone who has intentionally used an AI should, in my view, go to confession and be rid of the demonic thing.

In Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, Karen Hao observes that “those who successfully rally for a technology’s creation are those who have the power and resources to do the rallying. As they turn their ideas into reality, the vision they impose — of what the technology is and whom it can benefit — is thus the vision of a narrow elite, imbued with all their blind spots and self-serving philosophies.” Take a look at who is funding and spearheading AI research and you will see this thesis take on flesh and names.

Worse, the watermark of self-styled elites’ so-called values on technology is septuply dangerous in the case of AI, because (1) concentrated power is inherently corrupting; (2) today’s elites are Kantian by default; (3) most of Western society and much of the non-West is Kantian, too, leaving no resistance to the elites’ amorality; (4) AI’s built-in anti-incarnational logic magnifies the disastrous effects of Kant’s fake metaphysics through both maker and user alike; (5) AI is widely and falsely understood to be a kind of intelligence, a subjective knower with a self or a self-like element, which incorporates it further into Kantian logic; (6) AI is already acting in ways that appear, if not uncontrollable, then certainly autonomous, an autonomy to which (7) other Kantians are highly likely to defer.

This is not a theoretical lament. Turn on the news and see for yourself. Palantir’s Maven will not fuss about unpleasant mass killings, something about which Anthropic’s programmers are uneasy. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s insistence that “democratic values” shape the moral code of Claude, his company’s AI, is black comedy given that the U.S. government used Claude to plan the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro this January — in the name of democracy or otherwise, Claude did not say.

In the end, the operational logic of AI is thoroughly Kantian. Fallen man supplies the moral code, such as it is, and AI runs with it. The Palantir-Anthropic controversy is a fake standoff between the Sixes, on one side, and the Half-Dozens, on the other. And regulating the kayfabe is the Department of War, which ought to tell us something. The Pentagon’s appeals to the “lawful” use of AI in war point out the gross hypocrisy of AI (and Kantian) projects in general. But the Pentagon-AI contracts proceed apace. No one checks Kant but Kant, and in the end, there is no bottom to the categorical imperative.

The human sinfulness that led us to reject Christ’s sacrificial, incarnational nature in favor of Kantian game-rules is the same sinfulness that leads us to palm off whatever is left of our moral responsibilities to AI, letting a Kantian machine — essentially the anti-Christ app — run things. “Teleological ends, on the one hand, and mechanisms allowing for feedback and adjustment per cybernetic logic, on the other, are mutually exclusive,” writes Hoyt. Amen and alleluia. Nothing good comes to the human person via AI. Its operating formulae are orthogonal to our created, fallen, and redeemed humanity. Any attempt at compromise will simply empower AI to gain more and more control, via its anti-Christological logic, over our already broken human nature.

Jason M. Morgan

Kashiwa

Japan

CHRISTOPHER M. REILLY REPLIES:

Sebastian Mahfood’s final sentence is so well-put, I might post it on my office wall. Lest I be accused of simply and uncritically seeking balance, I should clarify that I am indeed a pessimist (but not apocalyptical) about the will of many in our society to wisely design and use AI technologies, as well as about the capacity of society to see through the ideological distortions encouraged by AI. We can, however, choose how we perceive, implement, and relate to any technology. Our goodness or evil will ultimately determine the nature of AI, not the other way around.

I appreciate Michael Marinaccio’s argument, drawing on McLuhan, that AI is a medium that reflects a fundamental longing and worldview that “seeks to empty life of its ends.” Such a worldview too often drives the technology, although I would say that not everyone holds that worldview, and not every effect of AI communicates it. Artificial intelligence is more than a medium; it can, in profound ways, alter our conceptual environment and lead us toward further erosion of respect for human dignity and toward diminished virtue. Many Christians and some others have the resources for combating this influence, if they will only draw on them, yet many people eagerly embrace AI out of a prior, deeply ingrained disposition toward unrestrained consumption, radical autonomy, sloth, hedonistic curiosity, and lust for power over their environment and other persons.

All this points to the moral essence of the problems that arise with AI, which is a concern but also a source of light. Because we each have the inherent capacity for virtuous character and for receiving grace, and because we are invited by Christ to our redemption, a set of technologies like AI cannot, in itself, determine our downfall. I am not optimistic about widespread wise engagement with AI, but my faith ultimately leads me to hope.

The impacts of AI on our apprehension of truth (and understanding of just what truth is) and on our understanding of human nature are going to be profound and complex. I appreciate Jon P. Frey’s mention of the integration of AI with robotics, for that is where both the technical development and ideological effects of AI are going to be particularly intense.

In an environment of irrational exuberance over AI, I frequently join in the counterweight of darker warnings like Jason M. Morgan’s. I would, however, avoid referring to AI as an “anti-Christological logic,” for any such logic would be sinful, personally willed, and anti-relational — not merely mechanical. The limited natures of AI models and associated machines (e.g., manufactured, lifeless, self-less, non-intuitive, often probabilistic) that make them unsuited for moral insight are the same limited natures that make them fundamentally ineligible to be called evil, properly speaking, even if they can influence persons toward evil dispositions or behavior.

Dr. Morgan’s references to Kant are apt, for there are many current attempts to create an “ethical AI” by applying a Kantian style of procedural reason to AI calculations and evaluation of its morally relevant output. Kantians dogmatically dismiss the essential end of human persons in a loving relationship with God and, therefore, cannot find a secure way to link reasoning to the Good, outside a contrived sense of duty. Kant’s philosophy is, in many ways, a justification for reorienting reasoning toward instrumental power over our environment and ultimately over each other, as announced by Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and René Descartes. We must vigorously educate Catholics and others about the fundamental errors of this modernist project and its relationship to AI ethics.

A Brief Moment in Time

What a fascinating moment in history novelist Louis de Wohl fictionalizes in his novel The Living Wood (1947). That nearly three centuries had passed since the birth, life, and death of our Lord (to Americans, three centuries brings us back to the forest primeval), and still Helena could return to Palestine and, from that soil, recover relics of the Passion is almost a kind of magic, and yet it happened. Christopher Gawley’s article “St. Helena’s Pursuits” (March) gives us the taste of all this, and I find myself wanting to know more. The Living Wood and Evelyn Waugh’s treatment of the subject, Helena (1950), are now on my to-read list.

Christopher R. Moore

New Fairfield, Connecticut

The DDF Douses a Flashpoint

Many thanks to Marcus Peter for his excellent column on the pastoral implications of the Marian titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of All Graces” (“Mater Populi Fidelis & Titles Proper to Mary,” Covenant & Civilization, Jan.-Feb.). He said beautifully what I have always thought in his assessment of Mater Populi Fidelis, the doctrinal from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). These Marian titles became a flashpoint in recent years. Should the Church sanction them? As Dr. Peter points out, there is genuine concern among Churchmen that such titles could cause confusion among the faithful that would override any doctrinal benefit the titles might provide. I wish to add a couple points.

This is clearly a pastoral issue, not a doctrinal one. Our Lady is who she is regardless of whether the Church were to add to her existing titles. The question is, do we need these titles for Mary in the 21st century? Let me focus on the most controversial, “Co-Redemptrix,” from a linguistic point of view. First, let’s look at the prefix “co-.” I do not know other languages besides English, so I cannot address how it is in, say, German, Spanish, or Korean. But in English, this prefix almost always signifies “co-equal.” Think “co-champions” or “co-workers,” etc. There are some exceptions (“co-pilot”?), but “co-equal” is what we modern English speakers think of when we hear or see the “co-” prefix. Equal, not subordinate. That’s a problem. If the Church sanctions “Co-Redemptrix” as an official title, then immediately her explainers would be swimming upstream to qualify that the common meaning of the prefix does not apply here. To what benefit? The faithful would be confused, and the explanation would get lost in confusion.

There’s a similar problem with “Redemptrix.” This word is, of course, the feminine form of the base word “Redeemer.” Does the Church really want to say that Mary is our redeemer? No, of course not. Then why confuse the faithful with a title that doesn’t work? Indeed, Mary participates in Christ’s redemptive action, but “Redemptrix” does not clearly capture the theology. Again, theologians could explain the nuances, but to what end? When you have to explain to most people why a term doesn’t mean what it appears to mean on its surface, you get lost in the weeds.

I love Our Lady and have a great devotion to her, but “Co-Redemptrix” is an unnecessary title laden with problems. The DDF got it right. Pastorally, “Co-Redemptrix” simply does not work.

Randall Petrides

Grand Blanc, Michigan

Mystified by the Animus

I am compelled to respond to E. Michael Jones’s letter (Jan.-Feb.), specifically his comment that “the Tridentine Mass is a gateway to schism.” I have always found Dr. Jones’s work of interest, in particular his books Libido Dominandi and The Slaughter of Cities, so I hope this letter is received in the spirit in which it is written: fraternal if critical. For clarity, I think it appropriate to give the biographical context from which I write.

I was raised Catholic and educated in the Catholic school system here in Sydney, Australia, and the traditions of the Church have formed an integral part of my identity. I have always said that Catholicism is a “thinking man’s religion.” It requires frequent self-reflection; if that self-reflection is sincere and honest, it can often be unpleasant. This is because one of the defining qualities of the Catholic is that he is aware of his fallen nature, sometimes painfully so. What is done with this awareness once it is obtained is a function of one’s character. In a word, Catholic thought is a struggle, especially given the distractions of the modern world.

I confess, however, that much of my Catholic identity was expressed in predominantly cultural and not religious terms for much of my life. This was not for lack of want to engage in the practice of religion. My experience with the Novus Ordo Mass was not unique when I was a young student and later a freshman at university. Attendance was, I am embarrassed to say, a chore, and I do not recall an instance in which attendance did not require a conscious effort to simply stay alert. I did not keep the Sabbath regularly. This was due to the aesthetic blandness of the Mass, the over-feminized sermonizing, and the aging and dwindling congregation — all of which produced a subdued climate of passivity and weakness that actively repels young men who are yearning for something robust, confident, and authoritative. My initial response to these thoughts was that I lacked discipline, but I could not accept this as the whole answer, knowing that things were different before the “reforms.” These issues were the subject of constant debate among us young Catholics.

Eventually, I was recommended the parish at Maternal Heart of Mary in Lewisham (FSSP) and started attending regularly in November 2023. I now know that it has only been since then that my intentional Catholicism was rekindled. The Tridentine Latin Mass (TLM) celebrated here is engaging in ways I could not imagine possible in the Novus Ordo. The richness and beauty of the ceremony are an inspiration. I look forward to the Mass now during the week. The congregation is young, and the church itself is almost always full to capacity. Conversation with older parishioners is an education that 12 years of Catholic schooling failed to provide. I must stress this point: The TLM has led me closer to the Church than I have ever been. I am, therefore, mystified why there is so much animus against the proliferation of arguably one of the most vibrant and growing Catholic cultures at a time when general Mass attendance is declining and Catholics are under increasing assault in the public square.

I do appreciate that there are elements within the TLM community that fall victim to the sins of vanity and pride — “spergs,” we call them, semi-affectionately — but no group within the Church has a monopoly on these defects in character. I have met Novus Ordo enthusiasts who can be just as easily described in the same terms, if for other reasons. If a Novus Ordo Mass is doctrinally sound, it is “true” — this I do not deny — but the fact that the TLM community is flourishing should give its critics pause to wonder why. At the very least, we are a distinct cultural phenomenon as much as the Maronites, Chaldeans, Uniates, or even Anglo-Catholics, and we do not need clowns or puppets to stay “relevant.” Though the latter are extreme examples of degeneracy in the Church, it is telling in which cultural slipstream they can be found.

The latest “innovation” I have witnessed in the Church here, always in the Novus Ordo, is the incorporation of an Aboriginal “smoking ceremony,” a pagan rite of questionable authenticity performed before Mass on certain occasions. Might I respectfully suggest that if as much energy were committed to criticizing such actual heresy as there is to bewailing traditionalists for their supposed gateways to schism, we would be in far better shape as a civilization?

Edwin Dyga, K.H.S.

Editor, Observer & Review, Sydney

Australia

The Christmas Narratives: Beautiful Fables?

Fr. Richard “Dick” Weaver, R.I.P., lectured widely around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He gave a series of lectures on Tuesdays in July every summer for about ten years at St. Vincent de Paul parish in Arlington, where I was a parishioner privileged to be able to attend most of them. A historian, among other things, he explained during one lecture some of the differences between modern and pre-1800s history.

In older times, the historian’s job was to tell what happened and then explain what the events meant. So, for example, the emperor stood up, gave a speech, and then sat down. Just then, a bird flew over and let go on the emperor’s head. The bird story was the historian’s way of explaining that what the emperor said was a piece of crap. The modern historian’s job is merely to report what happened; interpretation of the significance of the event is left to the reader.

Also, historians of old would ascribe characteristics to people of importance by way of so-called infancy narratives. Examples include those about George Washington, who threw a silver dollar across the Potomac and admitted to having chopped down a cherry tree. The former portrayed him as athletic and coming from a wealthy family, as he had no compunction about the loss of so much silver. The latter made him out to be always truthful, even if admitting the truth was personally painful.

The foregoing sets the stage, metaphorically speaking, for my thoughts engendered by a sentence in Preston R. Simpson’s review of Taking Religion Seriously by Charles Murray (March). Murray, Simpson writes, “clearly deviates from orthodox Christianity…in his complete rejection of the Christmas narratives, which he dismisses as ‘beautiful fables.’” If the Christmas accounts in Luke’s and Matthew’s Gospels are, as seems to be quite likely, extensive and detailed infancy narratives, then they logically would seem to an outsider like Murray to be the fables that, to modern historians, they actually are.

The Gospel of Luke, written for a community of primarily poor Gentile converts, presents Jesus as impoverished so as to seem one of them. It has a skyful of singing angels appearing to poor shepherds who go to worship Him, but nothing about a raging King Herod or a flight into Egypt. Anyone of the period would assume that a twosome went to Bethlehem to register for the census, and a trio returned to Nazareth soon afterward.

Matthew’s Gospel, intended mostly for affluent Jewish converts, makes Jesus seem more relatable to them by introducing sages from afar bearing rich gifts. And Jesus’ returning to the Promised Land after His exile in Egypt, as Moses also had done, was a powerful image for Jews, though a nonstarter for Gentiles.

The modern mind, when reading the infancy tales in both Gospels, tends to run both stories together into a single blob of actual occurrences, when the thought process ought to go something like this: Hmmm, Luke says Jesus is for poor Gentiles. But according to Matthew, He’s for rich Jews. Ummm, rich and poor, Gentile and Jew…. Whaddya know? Jesus is for everyone!

Was the sky really filled with singing angels who scared the bejeebers out of some shepherds? Maybe. Did Joseph actually skip town with the Toddler and His mother under the cover of darkness? Maybe not. Either way, in either case, the lack of certainty bothers me not in the least. If we are meant to know, we’ll make the discovery when we depart this vale of tears. If it’s intended to be an eternal mystery, we are assured of perpetual bliss regardless.

Jim Rice

Arlington, Texas

PRESTON R. SIMPSON REPLIES:

Jim Rice’s letter takes issue with Charles Murray rather than with my review, so I have no specific response to him. But as long as he is comparing the accounts of Matthew and Luke, we might as well note that there are other differences that some find puzzling. Matthew’s account seems to indicate that Joseph and Mary were from Bethlehem and that their settling in Nazareth after the sojourn in Egypt was in response to fears for their security, whereas Luke clearly says they began their married life in Nazareth. And, of course, the genealogies differ in significant ways.

Wrong & Foolish

I appreciated Marcus Peter’s column “Is President Trump Really Pro-Life?” (Covenant & Civilization, March) for its insightful analysis of Trump’s actions and inactions regarding abortion that threaten to undo some of the few solid gains in the fight against the killing of the unborn, such as the Mexico City Policy. May I suggest an extension of his analysis?

The Right to Life movement hitched its wagon to the Republican Party in the 1980s, and, as a result, a significant number of Catholics began to identify as Republicans. This is hardly surprising given that the Democratic Party, the traditional political home of most Catholics, was in the process of making support for abortion — and later for the normalization of homosexual relations and latterly for transgenderism — one of its fundamental platforms and policies. Nonetheless, by identifying so closely with and so strongly as Republicans, Catholics largely gave up their cultural and social identities to embrace a new identity. This involved repudiating much of the Church’s social teaching, most notably on economic justice, a topic to which 20th-century popes had given considerable and detailed attention.

Those Catholics who saw the betrayal of Catholic identity in this embrace of Republican ideology often made the same error by identifying with the progressive or liberal bloc. As a result, we Catholics no longer offer a distinctive, unified voice in American politics but have simply been subsumed into one or the other of the two cultural-political juggernauts that dominate American life. Until we realize that this was wrong and foolish and begin to recover our voice, we cannot do the work of transforming our society and restoring all things in Christ.

Thomas Storck

Westerville, Ohio

The Gospel According to Gibberers

I live in a multicultural parish. Many of our new parishioners are of Indian (Asian) descent. They are, however, a vast minority. We usually have three priests assigned to our parish. Somebody got the bright idea of replacing the priests with three of Indian descent. That’s no problem in itself. But I have yet to understand a word they say. That is no exaggeration. I’m sure they are very dedicated. When they give a homily, they seem to attempt to merely copy the Gospel, but with a heavy Indian accent. I always thought the homily was an explanation of the Gospel with some kind of inspiration. In the final presentation of the Mass, they usually give announcements of events in the parish. This becomes a bunch of gibberish with no plain English.

On top of this, we have also added a clearly homosexual cantor who prances around our altar and sings with an obvious homosexual twang.

I shudder to think of what new parishioners, especially young people, think about all this.

Peter Holtz

Hicksville, New York

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

I would ask Peter Holtz to look around the sanctuary the next time he is at Mass in his home parish. Are there really that many young people there — that is, young people not of Indian descent?

More than two decades ago, then-NOR editor Dale Vree addressed the very question of priests with indecipherable Indian accents (“Trouble Understanding Father’s Accent?” New Oxford Note, Dec. 2005). He wrote that in a Catholic parish in the area, the pastor wrote in the bulletin, “It has come to my attention that there are some people who have left because they have trouble understanding Father [So-and-So’s] accent. This attitude is unconscionable. With the priest shortage in this country, people should be on their knees praying, giving thanks to God that there are priests who are willing to come here and share their priestly ministry.”

Vree, who had been to Mass at the parish in question many times, commented, “Indeed Father [So-and-So’s] accent is hard to understand. However, in this parish there are very few children or teenagers. Much of the problem with the priest shortage is that Catholics nowadays have few children” — and they don’t encourage the few children they do have to go to seminary. “If parishioners don’t want to have large families, they should blame themselves for the priest shortage,” Vree concluded, “and not blame Father’s accent.”

Mr. Holtz is in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. How many seminarians does Rockville Centre currently have? Eight, according to its website, seven of whom are native sons (the eighth is from Nicaragua). Rockville Centre is the sixth largest diocese in the United States, with 133 parishes serving approximately 1.2 million Catholics. How can it survive with seminarians in the single digits? Simple: It must import priests from elsewhere.

Where will these priests come from? Easy: the countries with growing numbers of Catholic priests. Where are those countries located? According to the official Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2023 (the most recent edition), though the overall number of priests worldwide has decreased, two regions experienced an increase: Africa and Asia (which includes India). Together those two regions account for 61.4 percent of the world’s Catholic seminarians.

So, we can expect more African and Asian (Indian) priests in American parishes going forward — unless and until American Catholic families start producing more of their own priests. As for the indecipherable accents of these foreign-born priests, well, we’ll just have to get used to them if we want to continue having convenient access to the sacraments.

I Feel a Change Comin’ On

I want to thank the NOR for the role it plays in what I believe to be a change in our culture. In short, I think the woke, do-your-own-thing phenomenon is fading.

I teach part-time at the University of Maryland and The Catholic University of America (CUA), and I sense a change in generations. Five years ago, when I started at CUA, I asked my first class if it was customary to start with a prayer. A visibly bored young woman replied, “Some of the priests do.” I immediately directed them to stand, and we prayed. This year, I’ve encouraged students to lead the prayer, and I never lack for volunteers. At Maryland, the Catholic Student Center is doing “overflow” business.

My favorite — and best — undergraduate professor, John Lukacs, told me the Church would reach the point where she is smaller but stronger. On this, as on so many things, he was right. I feel it, and I see it in the number of seminarians in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.; the number of novices (in full habit and proudly so) on the CUA campus; and the number of young people joining the otherwise aged group at Friday afternoon adoration in my parish.

Keep up the good work. Pope St. John Paul II was right to repeat, as he often did, “Be not afraid.” You and your staff are in my thoughts and prayers, even when (on occasion) I disagree with an NOR writer!

William Nolte

Silver Spring, Maryland

Ed. Note: John Lukacs, of loving memory, was a Contributing Editor of the NOR.

Recently, my neighbor, a fellow retired priest in the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, began sharing with me his monthly copy of the NOR. I have been most grateful for his generosity, as I have found every issue to be thought provoking, informative, and most helpful in considering the many issues of the day with which the Church is dealing.

Rev. William M. Cawley

Great Falls, Montana

Ed. Note: The NOR has a Scholarship Fund through which gratis one-year subscriptions are sent to those who can’t afford them. To nominate someone, send your information and the recipient’s to NOR, Scholarship Fund, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706 or phone 510-526-5374.

It is time for me to thank you for the wisdom I have gained from reading the NOR. Every month I learn new vocabulary as I work through the variety of informative articles with my iPhone within reach, ready to search definitions.

I am a convert to Catholicism (in 1993, at age 55), and I have never regretted it. I was hired to teach in a Catholic elementary school, which, by God’s grace, led me to being a high school and Catholic elementary school principal and more. I have been extremely blessed through this journey, despite my many frustrations with the Catholic education system. I also have experienced great joy from the opportunity of being God’s servant in that same system.

Many times, as I am preparing to serve God in my capacity, now focusing on the professional development of teachers, I find helpful spiritual gems in features in the NOR. I find many of the letters in response to articles as informative, if not more informative, than the articles themselves. As I was preparing to convince fellow staff and priests of a virtues retreat I’d wanted to plan for Catholic Schools Week, I was intrigued by Matthew Gunn’s statement (letters, Nov.) that “the Book of Isaiah says virtue is a learned trait (cf. 1:17),” and I looked up the Scripture immediately. During my Adoration time that week, God challenged me to keep up the good fight and see this retreat plan through. I recognized God’s continued encouragement and guidance, and Gunn’s comment on virtue, as inspirations to strengthen my resolve.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write a letter to the editor of this publication. You make me all the wiser.

Carolyn Price

Bloomville, Ohio

To submit a Letter to the Editor, click here.