Idea for Pope Leo: A Holy Year for a Moment of Truth

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Bill Schmitt
Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms: “In the One, We Are One”

Imaginary and hypothetical, written seriously and wistfully:

MEMORANDUM

To: His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV

From: Bill Schmitt | “Phronesis in Pieces”

Re: Proposal for a new Holy Year

Date: June 30, 2025

This memo proposes that you declare 2026 a “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” for the This memo proposes that you declare 2026 a “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” for the Catholic Church. The goal is to help meet the world’s urgent need for providential renewal in societal structures of fellowship. Institutions of human flourishing now face moments of crisis. Our connections to natural law, the Holy Spirit’s gifts and fruits, and Jesus Christ as “way, truth, and life” are clogged with static, portending a detachment which is spiritual and secular, individual and collective.

A new Holy Year to address this will be a coherent, efficacious extension of the ongoing 2025 Holy Year which bears Pope Francis’s theme, “Pilgrims of Hope.” The Church, as a communion or communio, is in the vanguard of unity for the human journey; as witnesses to hope, we must build stronger bridges of wholeness and holiness amid the diversity, keeping personal and civic life strong.

Here is a three-part assessment of “communion and communication” as essentials in the bridge-building process: First, a look at today’s threats to connectedness as recently reported in our mass media. Second, a few considerations of how the Church might assist Catholics and all people in responding to the threats. Third, more detailed proposals for a new Holy Year as a hope-filled initiative.

Incommunicado: “Things fall apart …”

  • A discussion of “The Future of Reading” published by First Things on June 24 reminded us that many people around the world are losing the skills for “deep literacy.” Extended engagement with substantive texts and thoughts is replaced by quickly consumed visual or verbal fragments. Shallow rhetoric fixates us for purposes of greed, pride, and manipulation, eroding our attention spans and minimizing intimate contact among communicators who customarily thrive on sharing their thoughts.
  • A June 10 commentary in The Free Press warned us that “Our Knowledge Systems Have Collapsed.” The writer, Ted Gioia, pointed out many danger signals. For example, scientific studies published in journals often “don’t replicate” when the original findings are tested again; the headlined results grab us as clickbait, but follow-up corrections go unnoticed. Paradoxically, research that is less likely to be true is cited more. Gioia also warned plagiarism is spreading at every level of scholarly work, and clear violations of intellectual property suffer no penalty. The currency of trust and diligence is losing its value.
  • In a video posted June 12, public intellectual Jordan Peterson explored how the internet is “breaking our brains.” Immersed in a flood of invalid information, many news consumers casually fortify their confirmation bias, ignoring the complicated truths which conscientious people verify and share through investments of time and effort. The “postmodernist world” is a place of plentiful customized “truths” but “no uniting metanarrative” to hold cultures together, Peterson observed. People become unable to prioritize any facts as more valid or more important. The “God-shaped holes” left vacant in postmodern hearts are too easily filled by “false gods” of secular assumptions.
  • “People are losing the ability to hold a conversation, to talk and listen to each other,” AI expert Yuval Noah Harari (author of Sapiens) said in an interview last October. Social media algorithms tend to dissuade us from open collaboration by sowing greed, hatred, and fear in much of what we say and do. A growing number of dialogues, online and off, also seem to be rife with vulgarities. This coarseness may signal heightened anger and anxiety among participants, or it may reflect a “scorched-earth” disdain for the perceived triviality of sharing facts—details which some people neither acknowledge nor care about it.
  • “AI Slop” is the name given to a new plague of potentially misleading pictures and videos whose so-called value is twofold—as a sort of empty, eye-grabbing entertainment and as a money-maker for some image instigators if their fake product “goes viral.” The New York Times reported on June 11 that, because search engine companies are eager to support AI, “it appears that vast quantities of information generated by machines, rather than largely curated by humans, will be served up as a daily part of life on the internet for the foreseeable future.” Objective reality is under assault.
  • Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “Godfather of AI” said in a mid-June podcast that, between 2023 and 2024, the number of cyberattacks around the world increased by 1,200 percent. AI enables malevolent users to mimic people’s appearances and voices to gain private data. Spam trickery is akin to “deep fakes.” You are among those being falsely replicated, Holy Father. Such strategies risk societal confusion, even geopolitical havoc.
  • Those governments starting to regulate AI generally exempt military uses from the rules, according to Hinton. Autonomous lethal weapons are on the drawing boards; they will further mute the scrutiny of moral conscience in wartime. Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism, not to mention the digital world’s capacities for propaganda, disinformation, and radicalization, are growing threats to peacemaking and the humane art of diplomacy.
  • The Pew Research Center has estimated that two-thirds of all tweeted URL links are suspected of originating with “bots,” not human sources. Deceptive websites and postings are mass-produced internationally, usually to increase polarization and blinding emotion. Many credible professionals in all sorts of communication projects fear being replaced when employers opt to compose content artificially.
  • Pope Francis made numerous remarks about the need for young people, who are already prone to anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, to make less use of their omnipresent screens. In March, the Penn State department of applied social psychology posted a call to rein in media violence. Adolescents, “reportedly glued to various media for an average of 7.5 hours a day,” lose first-hand attentiveness to reality, as well as harmonious time for formation with family, friends, and their faith.

Setting the stage for meaningful interactions

Most Holy Father, we need to reassert the Church’s perennial presence as a secure vessel for today’s pilgrims of hope, helping them navigate toward an eternity of divine love. The whole “family of God” shares a “communion of goods”—holy things and holy persons—which bear fruit for all in “faith, hope, and charity.”

The communion of goods contains immense archives of writing and other artistry from dedicated seekers of truth; such material, from Church sages and many other sources, must be kept intact so it can be available to nourish minds and hearts, perhaps as a response or antidote for destructive lies.

Just as churches, in Pope Francis’s words, should be “field hospitals” for wounded souls, we can provide a lifeboat for wayfarers and whole cultures, with their various religions and roots, who fear they’re losing their moorings of reason and faith. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 946-962)

Post-modern culture can persuade people their lives have minimal purpose or agency. It gives them little reason to believe that looking beyond themselves is the key to identity, knowledge, love, or happiness. The Church should help communicate to isolated souls the “transcendentals” of Aristotle and Plato—ultimate truth, beauty, and goodness—which speak of a loving home, a north star, nurturing our souls.

Catholics believe exploration of history and mystery frees people to seek wisdom together, transcending the clutter of data. Your papal motto affirms St. Augustine’s zeal for communication which discerns: “In the One, we are one.” We see our pilgrimage yielding the fullness of solidarity through a sacramental life of Reconciliation and Holy Communion, but our Eucharistic sacrifice “intercedes for all men” in the family of creation. (CCC, para. 1368)

Spiritual wisdom is taught and learned in experiential, analog ways. Machines which do not distinguish between true and false, good and bad, can help us in wonderful ways, but they cannot be wise if they lack wonder. Nor can they imitate the human mind’s ability to share in God’s creativity, sparking imagination and joy. AI’s supposed potential for consciousness is likely to be a pretense, a half-step, or a disaster.

The pre-requisites for our human communication, such as truth and trust, authenticity and dignity, and accountability to generate justice and compassion, have been presumed—but also debased—by new technologies and styles of interaction.

Societies which have become more polarized, mean-spirited, and self-centered through misuse of communication tools need evangelization with Good News.

Participants in the misuse also need forgiveness—personal conversion and reconciliation we can spread to others. This source of renewal disappears when media messengers prefer “cancellation” of offenders, either because empathy demands too much of a relationship or because the “facts” behind disputes are exposed as flimsy.

It seems necessary to redouble the Church’s efforts to guide people, products, and practices toward more fruitful communication in the secular sphere. Pope Francis provided inspiration for this by his own initiatives and through his simple statement in a World Communications Day message: “Love always communicates.” In other messages, he added that we must communicate truth gently, with charity.

This mix of compassion and candor is the Church’s persistent work, trusting in the inspirations and initiatives of holy years and all its ministries.

A Holy Year: Formulating an initiative

Holy Father, if you choose to declare a Holy Year of Communion and Communication, the concerns discussed above can carry weight, but you will want to structure specific prayers and conversations in alignment with your priorities.

As part of the structure, dioceses around the world can become instruments for synodality in a mission-driven context. We have much to talk about at local community levels where neighbors witness what binds or divides. Local faith leaders will make friends—and make news—as authentic authorities supporting dialogues residents really care about and which secular leaders might distort or dismiss.

Your concern about developments in artificial intelligence which are profit- and power-driven—not “person-centered” as Pope Francis frequently urged—is a prime subject deserving short-term and long-term planning. Officials and experts working in the AI fields will benefit from hearing the Church’s insights, including moral conscience-checks and cautionary notes which tech-optimists often ignore.

You have spoken about the need for more rigorous formation of people in the media audience. In particular, Christians must develop both their faith and reason for critical thinking and careful assessment; we should subject our ravenous content consumption to a sober cost-benefit analysis and a healthy dose of skepticism toward excesses and extremes.

This skepticism starts with an abiding passion to take reality seriously and to honor the dignity of persons by telling them full truths which will “set them free.” In light of Francis’s World Communications Day messages, people should also embrace the value of authentic, instructive stories— learning first from Scripture and Church teaching, then sharing their own experiences in imitation of Jesus the great storyteller.

We must not close our minds, but there is a danger in passive open-mindedness—consuming endless information but never coming to conclusions which entail earthly and spiritual accountability. As famed author G.K. Chesterton said, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

A Holy Year: In keeping with tradition

The “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” is intended as a time to accept our responsibilities. It allows people to seek and receive divine guidance, with all the spiritual priorities and sacramental practices grounded in Church tradition.

As you know, the origin of Christian Jubilees, or Holy Years, traces back to the Bible, Vatican documents tell us a Catholic holy year is “a great religious event” to “encourage holiness of life,” marked by calls to reconciliation between adversaries, as well as “solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and … peace with our brothers and sisters.”

Popes have proclaimed such events since 1300, and initial plans called for a jubilee every one-hundred years. That has shifted to every twenty-five years.

A jubilee is called “ordinary” if it falls “after the set period of years.” The current holy year of hope keeps this pattern. But popes also proclaim “extraordinary” jubilees, as Pope Francis did in 2016 when he declared a holy year of mercy.

Holy Father, given your special affinity with Pope Leo XIII, you know that he issued an encyclical declaring an “extraordinary jubilee” in 1886. According to this papal champion for faith and justice in the Industrial Revolution’s swiftly evolving economies, “the spirit of the age” required a holy year to propagate the Church’s “treasures of heavenly gifts.”

Leo XIII was a prolific writer and teacher to elites and the grassroots populace, reminding everyone “how important it is” that societies “conform as closely as possible to truth and the Christian ideal.”

If you proclaim a holy year in 2026, this “extraordinary” period will occur 140 years after the former Pope Leo’s special year of jubilee. One might say those prayers bore great fruit, including the landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which Leo issued in 1891. It presented a resounding explication of Catholic Social Thought, prescribing just relations between capital and labor as a bulwark against economic “progress” gone astray.

The new jubilee will be a powerful answer to the dangers of our current secularized age, when warp-speed “progress” is creating dilemmas of justice, prudence, and much more. Today’s revolutions in technologies, economies, warfare, and cultures have much to answer for, given humanity’s cravings for the sharing of communio and meaningful communication.

A Holy Year: Extraordinary and expansive

A holy year in 2026 would appear to be the first time that jubilees were proclaimed in two consecutive years. However, one is “ordinary” and one is “extraordinary,” and there is flexibility in the “where” and “when” of special declarations.

Holy Father, one can draw a through-line connecting Pope Francis’s 2025 summons for “pilgrims of hope” to the event proposed here. Years of follow-through will traverse serious, even existential, crossroads where travelers must be organized and diligent.

As wayfarers seeking to fulfill the divine potential of personhood, we must “up our game” as human beings competing against deception and debasement—forces growing along the very pathways on which we’re sprinting.

Many religious and secular people alike say candidly they believe today’s cultural wounds need healing via a decisive return to God. We can say “Amen” with confidence and no reliance on AI.

Hope is here. You know of the recent evolution in Catholic seminary formation for priestly discernment; you have seen that many young men now report great blessings from their first year of preparation. This “propadeutic year,” with its rigorous but liberating structure, has revealed a noteworthy blessing.

An initiative that should inspire the secular world is the seminarians’ “media fast,” when cell phones and casual internet use are largely precluded for weeks, months, or a full year. This quietude often boosts a person’s ability for authentic friendships, reflection, community, and communication—with God and with others. One can imagine an imminent future when diverse people prize priests’ guidance more than ever because of their clarity of mind and heart, free of technology addiction.

You have also lived many years with the people of Peru, where the U.S. immersion in electronic distractions and entertainment binges does not dominate culture. This fresher air is obviously no guarantee against societal turmoil, but it must have heartened you to see Peruvians better able to find hope and joy in Christ and community.

Conclusion … and beginning

Like Leo XIII, you can help illuminate “the way” toward life-changing, divine perspectives that unmask secular utopias of unerring social progress.

For all the reasons above, please see the “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” as a long-term gift you are well-suited to give. It will put hope into action during a moment of truth for all God’s people.

In one sense, “moment of truth” points to a crisis. The Lord’s graces and the Church’s spirit of unity are needed around the world in this era of disconnection and moral urgency.

In another sense, “moment of truth” points to an opportunity. This ongoing mission to unwrap and protect God’s unique gifts to every person is a celebration of reality. It will remind us why and how to keep transcendent, healing, powerful truthfulness in motion.

We can reassure our brothers and sisters that man’s plans, aligned with God’s will, can reshape difficult realities even as we ask for the grace to transcend them.

The People of God await an extraordinary period in 2026 and beyond for following Jesus into a spiritual battle against artificiality and division—as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. This is a mission to communicate peace through better formation and information, advancing the safekeeping of our connectedness and communion.

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Politics, Parades, and All They En-gender

Posted on June 12, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

The Democratic Party’s “Speaking with American Men” (SAM) project has given Americans plenty to talk about regarding attitudes toward dudes—and even more regarding personhood in the political battlefield.

CNN’s Michael Smerconish opened his June 7 program with this summation of SAM’s recent research: ““Young men feel disconnected from civic life. They distrust politics, education, even the job market. They feel shame about their mental health, conflicted about their masculinity, and struggling with economic anxiety….”

One week later, Washington, DC, was poised for a military parade likely to trigger thoughts of braggadocio, at least as personified by President Trump—“celebrating his 79th birthday and the 250th anniversary of the US Army.” Organizers of the “‘No Kings’ Nationwide Day of Defiance” expected demonstrations nationwide to protest Trump’s “authoritarian aspirations” and his “spectacle of strength.”

Political media are constantly abuzz with gender-adjacent issues, but we need deeper understanding drawn from a range of perspectives and disciplines. We’ll benefit from some insights of the past, not found among SAM’s surveys or Uncle Sam’s festival.

Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), a Jesuit priest and prominent scholar in religion, culture, and philosophy, made observations about the mind and heart of masculinity in a 1989 book titled Fighting for Life: Context, Sexuality, and Consciousness. His work was discussed last October at a symposium convened by the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

He asked, What does it mean to be a man?

Pope John Paul II addressed the question almost a decade before Ong by compiling a spiritual analysis of sexuality called the “theology of the body.” In a landmark series of lectures, he outlined complementary gifts which men and women bring to the world in order to understand “human love in the divine plan.”

Our secular society also has been analyzing, more chaotically, various ways to assess male and female, masculinity and femininity, since those scholarly inquiries. The effort continues, with criticisms of male privilege, toxic masculinity, and gender as a social construct. These highlight the kinds of concerns which the Democratic Party found in its latest research and to which the parade reactions give voice.

Ong provided a multidisciplinary overview and posited three facts about men, the first of which might sound jarring to modern ears even though it echoes various assumptions our culture has made for centuries. Father Christian Raab, a speaker at the Steubenville conference, described the observations in Ong’s writings.

‘Women and Children First’

“Maleness,” as Father Raab spelled out, “first of all means expendability.” Generalizing about the animal kingdom, males “tend to be bigger and stronger,” with thicker hides and “weapons like horns, tusks, and claws.” This is equipment for combat which entails the risk of death—combat which ensures the survival of the species.

One might say this condition “is a byproduct of male uselessness” compared to the female’s more important evolutionary role in raising the next generation. A combination of nature and nurture seems to prepare human males for risk-taking; consider their testosterone, a “larger part of the brain that drives aggression,” and their “more active dopamine system.”

As Raab described the views of Ong, which might or might not be confirmed by current science and circumstances, these traits help to illuminate why “males are expected to go to war.” They tend to “take higher-risk occupations for the good of the group” and to “allow women and children onto the lifeboat.”

‘Are You the Opposite Sex, or am I?’

Ong’s second distinctive trait of maleness is differentiation. This sense of being different grows during one’s “life journey,” starting in the womb. A female child’s hormonal makeup is the same as her mother’s, but “a male child, from its earliest moments, produces enough masculine hormone to counterbalance its surrounding environment.”

After the male’s period of gestational push-back, as cited from Ong’s remarks, the little boy is raised largely by his mother but at some point realizes he is different from mom. Almost all kids express this by constantly saying “no.” But, while a girl learns she is a separate person, the boy also discovers he is a different sex, or gender.

Boys typically want their own toys, somehow different from their sisters’. Girls “tend to be okay with putting on boy clothes and playing with boy toys,” but many boys resist the girl’s items. Father Raab told his audience: “One of my friends was making lunch for her children, and she said, hey buddy, you want a grill cheese? He said, no, I want a boy cheese!”

‘Look at Me, I’m Really Something!’

Third, according to Ong’s schema, maleness means a growing sense of exteriority. Call it insecurity, but we often see a young man working on being an “other,” trying to set himself apart through definitions of masculinity he explores. He may decide to become a builder or a disruptor, or perhaps an authoritarian.

As Father Raab pointed out in his lecture, a man might try for years to prove masculinity (mostly to himself) by some standard of success and happiness—perhaps buying a fancy car or marrying a “trophy wife” or earning a hefty salary. These choices can fail to transcend himself.

Ong concluded that men ideally will “direct our masculine energy well,” channeling our sense of expendability, differentiation, and exteriority through healthy interpretations of maleness. These encourage us to “sacrifice ourselves for others and perform valiant exploits that enrich families and communities.”

Going Deeper with the Definitions

To accomplish this growth, men look first to other men as models, benchmarks, and companions on the journey. A key early step is the role of a beneficent father, or an equivalent male figure—an exemplar toward which a boy can gravitate as he separates from his mother.

This father-son bond is a transformative force for both individuals. Ong believed “fatherhood is perhaps the deepest expression of what it means to be male.”

Meanwhile, young men growing in their self-definition also seek out the company of other males in two contexts—those with whom they can compete rigorously (but non-maliciously), and those who will affirm them as welcome contributors of valued qualities. Ong said men thereby learn what their gifts are and where they stand in relation to other men.

There’s another important environment for men’s development, namely the full range of their experiences with women. This was not forgotten at the Steubenville conference; the event organizer, theologian Deborah Savage, made a presentation fleshing out her theme: “The question of man and woman, both who they are as persons of equal dignity and who they are in relation to one another, is perhaps the question of our era.”

What does it mean to be a woman? The discussions on that topic deserve their own essay, one driven less by the secular news hooks of SAM and Uncle Sam. But it’s notable that a posited feminine gift, receptivity, invites solidarity and accrues understanding among others. This quality interacts with Ong’s three definitions of maleness, which can tend to make men pull away.

The female responsiveness to people, more than to things, opens a door for caring about all of humanity, according to Savage, and it can “reveal man to himself” as well as pointing toward “the purpose and meaning of life” in “human community.”

Women have achieved a growing role in shaping our overall culture, but Savage pointed out that society’s economic ethos still gives priority to making tangible products, displaying efficiency, and generating results. Life appears more like an organizational chart than a web of real relationships.

These various references to men and women, intended neither as a theological critique of masculinity and femininity nor as a definitive update on biology and psychology, nevertheless can aid our reflections on the authentic personhood behind the media’s narratives.

At a time when pro-Trump pundits say his administration has claimed a theme of “common sense” as its philosophical high ground, some commentators say the Democratic Party must find a core idea or cause to serve as its own answer to needs in future campaigns.

SAM’s research suggests that men, about 55 percent of whom voted for Trump in 2024, feel disconnected, distrustful, and uncertain or confused about society and their role in it.

The best response will connect both the visionary and the practical. Those traits apply to both sexes. We are all in this together, sharing countless workday roles (including the military), as well as challenges with mental wellness, issues of trust and truth, and cravings to fill the holes in our hearts. Likewise, both major parties, various institutions, and all citizens must cooperate to revitalize the public square.

Based on the propositions above, here are ideas to start conversations about this, regardless of our perspectives or pronouns.

  • Humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) famously said, “I’m not a member of any organized party—I’m a Democrat.” Right now, that might ring true for Democrats as a whole, but their dominant public face since 2020 has become steadfastly progressive and reminiscent of a political machine with a “fall in line” algorithm. We might expect males who tend toward differentiation and exteriority to dismiss this uniformity, especially when Republicans at the moment wear an entrepreneurial face. They fixate us with a relatively youthful—sometimes juvenile—energy for adventure (good and bad).
  • Men love to play with machines, but they don’t like machines that play with them. We might picture them choosing fields of combat and opportunities for human teamwork where they might reasonably reach their personal best, whether for their own gain or for a higher cause. All persons can be self-centered, but we can be turned toward a common good if it has the feel of beneficial transformation, maybe via a hero’s journey as popularized by famed mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987).
  • The idea of male “expendability,” not a salutary word choice by Ong, is profound when it implies a person’s ultimate sacrifice, deserving honor and showing life’s value. That’s not the tone of the 1970’s feminist slogan, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” When reflecting on expendability as mortality, we prefer to see death as a crucial fact of life. We’re galvanized when Jesus says “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” is the greatest love (John 15:13). Father Raab, in his lecture, said Ong’s term evokes “a kind of association with spiritual warfare.” We may disagree, but we know sacrifices for truth and goodness sustain hope—and future generations.
  • The Democratic Party may have sent an errant emphasis about “expendability” when it posted its “Who We Serve” [sic] page at democrats.org. CNN’s Smerconish noted with surprise that the page (as of June 12) still contained a list of appreciated voter groups which explicitly included “women” but not “men.” Fortunately, all the other groups—from senior citizens to the LGBTQ+ Community—implicitly contain both women and men.
  • Savage, whose think tank studies Christian feminism, properly said in her lecture that female receptivity to community and humanity is a powerful corrective to expand males’ horizons when they choose ego-centric masculinity. But independent spirits might retreat when anybody’s “receptivity” to people’s ideas and circumstances morphs into a passive-aggressive empathy, embracing favored groups but canceling those deemed despicable.
  • That’s why receptivity, regardless of one’s gender, will have more allure when it is active; this stance accepts comfortable collaboration striving to share truths and values, it speaks and listens with an open mind, it rejects doctrinaire or knee-jerk thinking, and it welcomes the surprises of human change and differentiation. Savage might call this an inclusiveness extending to a surprising God who stirs up wisdom and meaning, thereby uniting and balancing us. We can’t all be “joyful warriors” in the same way, but everyone can join an active pursuit of happiness beyond oneself—something a beloved Democrat has called “the audacity of hope.”

Conversations about topics like these can contribute to SAM’s analysis of men and women, problems and solutions, faith and reason. We can see a military parade as a salute to well-intentioned people, not just a row of machines.

If the Democratic Party still searches for a core idea, a unifying theme, and a hill for planting its flag, great suggestions will bubble up. Some might propose “an opportunity economy” or “a government as good as its people” or “Make the World Great Again.”

Here is an audacious notion, something visionary that also spawns specific, practical alternatives to present-day dangers: Three simple words might engender active receptivity toward all Americans, transcending such differences as male and female.

The phrase could also differentiate our country as a bold leader in an existential combat—actually, hundreds of millions of distinctive leaders, defending qualities which might otherwise slip away if entrusted to mere politics.

Picture these words on a banner summing up SAM’s findings as facts to receive and causes to fight for. Let both parties fly the flag of “Save the Humans.”

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot. Notice that AI gave the man on the right three arms–truly an act of differentiation.

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Breakthrough Cure for Anxiety: Truth (Use as Directed)

Posted on May 28, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

The scourge of anxiety burdening millions of people is a reality we’re tempted to deny, but its many causes and impacts require attention. National Mental Health Awareness Month, observed in May, has challenged us to push back against today’s epidemic and make America hopeful again. To ease anxiety, we must regain our navigational skills in a sea of change. It’s time to reckon with doubt’s dominance and reject the fake liberation of our “post-truth” society.

“Anxiety in its several forms, including phobias and social anxiety, is the most common mental health disorder in the U.S.,” reports Psychology Today (PT). “Population-based surveys indicate that about a third of adults in the U.S. will grapple with disabling anxiety at some point.”

Government researchers say about half of young adults (ages 18-24) report suffering from anxiety and/or depression on a regular basis.

Anxiety is rooted in the human imagination—our ability to think about the future, the editors at PT’s online “Anxiety Center” point out. It’s “a mental state of apprehension about what might, or might not, lie ahead” when pondering a particular problem or “just a generalized, vague sense of dread.”

The plight is both a feature and a bug in our neural circuitry, which chemically warns us that it’s time for “fight or flight” before we’ve had time to consciously assess a situation.

This (literally) nervous system can become “so sensitized it perceives threat where it doesn’t exist,” overwhelming any “rational control.”

The phenomenon has many causes, and its intensity varies according to our biological makeup, our life history and personality, and the “coping skills” we cultivate. But anxiety is said to be more prevalent now due to such factors as: chronic worry about economic or other uncertainties, undeveloped emotional-regulation skills, the loss of standardized structures for personal interactions, and social media sparking constant comparison games and self-doubt, according to the “Anxiety Center.”

One might add that too much of our shared “popular culture” today centers on political gamesmanship. May has brought additional news reports jarring us with allegations of government lies, cover-ups, abuses, and assaults on dignity and democracy.

The magazine offers two general takeaways suggesting directions for a cure: 1) “Anxiety is a reaction to stress”; and 2) “Ambiguity typically breeds anxiety.” Our post-truth world of awkward human and digital interactions, driven by knowledge being changed or questioned, needs to recover focus, meaning, clarity, and trust in self and others.

A tsunami of information and misinformation, understanding and misunderstanding, leads to racing thoughts, distraction, confusion, and conflict, plus feelings of insecurity, despair, and anger.

Mass media and countless apps feed these reactions. If news stories and punditry don’t tickle our surprise and curiosity in a constructive way, we retreat into coarsened self-expression, confirmation bias, and empty entertainment, which debilitate one’s mindfulness and capacity for healthy reflection.

A person’s interior life can be thrown for a loop. Fortunately, many still find stability in rock-solid principles about enduring truths, hope and faith in a loving God, and mental or physical spaces where coherence and community reside. Inevitably, these qualities will be mocked as outmoded signs of despicably closed minds

Those informed only by secular preferences for relativism, self-defined identities, and power and pride as ultimate goals are the more likely prey of anxiety. They may retreat into escapism and addictions. Or they may try to banish ambiguity by muffling their opponents and elevating their own narratives.

We also face a growing danger from artificial intelligence. The technology promises great advancements, and its advocates predict private gains. However, stars must align inside and outside the tech industry to achieve these hopes. Individuals must engage with AI in responsible collaboration, alongside healthy skepticism and care for the common good. Pope Francis cautioned that we humans have to up our game, morally and intellectually, in order to keep pace.

Anything less than what Francis called “person-centered AI” threatens to impinge on human dignity. Manipulative AI can rob us of trust in someone’s authenticity by becoming that person’s behind-the-scenes Cyrano de Bergerac, an eloquent ghostwriter. With our permission, it can increase our own insecurities and weaken our zeal for excellence, integrity, and uniqueness.

As reported in The New York Times, a freelance writer’s reliance on AI recently yielded made-up recommendations in an article on summer books to read. The article was published unknowingly in two major newspapers this month. A faked booklist is not catastrophic, but it signals that information consumers are vulnerable on a larger scale.

“AI chatbots cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false, and they often make things up,” The Times explained. A society reliant on chatbots risks losing much of its faith in, and empowerment by, expertise and authority.

This conjures a post-truth world whose anxiety, stress, and ambiguity lure people into acedia, an isolating listlessness. Some might develop a hero complex centered on achievement. Others might lose sight of their impact on others, a scenario implied in Careless People, a new memoir by a former social-media insider. In all cases, we risk a stifling disconnection from the Godly and the earthbound.

Pope Leo XIV, like Pope Francis before him, would argue that this decay must be halted on the spiritual level before we can stabilize society. They might agree with psychologist Carl Jung: “Every psychological problem, at bottom, is a spiritual problem.” Many people intuit this.

Young men in Generation Z have shown signs of increased affiliation with Christian churches—at least those whose more conservative values include “traditional family life,” according to a New York Times report.

A Slate commentary adds that these churches “offer human connection, foster friendships, and tell adherents that they are beloved and part of a larger plan. They offer clear rules for living a good and moral life.”

Pope Leo wants to offer understanding, not mere rules, to all men and women by spreading word of Catholic Social Teaching, spelled out by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the 19th century. Our present-day pontiff believes this compendium of principles, which proffers ”truth, freedom, justice, and love” for the whole human family (paragraph 197), will guide “critical thinking” to energize social structures and souls.

Observers expect the non-partisan Social Teaching will apply to the coming AI revolution, just as it interrogated an earlier period of anxious progress—the Industrial Revolution—via the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Revolutionary Changes”).

One can imagine those principles spawning what might be called “a theology of anxiety,” that is, a set of resources and ideas for treating the post-truth plague now harming mental wellness. This informal but well-informed theology could be promoted in small doses, like an elevator pitch of remedial evangelization.

The Church’s insistence on truth in the social sphere is less an elevator pitch than a holistic view of humans created in the image of God. This rebuts AI supremacy and delves into many other issues. Society’s best response to anxiety comprises prescriptions from Scripture, religious scholarship, and the Judeo-Christian culture, combining listening with teaching, faith with reason, and political participation with philosophy.

Here are some suggestions we could include in a theology of anxiety. None of these thoughts is an innovation. But pulling together practical wisdom (phronesis) from the past into a therapeutic regimen might edify souls now submerged in America’s mental-health statistics.

Consciously resist anxiety, and hold onto hope.

Don’t let stress destroy your peace. Put it in context, expressing gratitude for all your blessings and praying about what troubles you. “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4: 6-7)

Accept that some anxiety and ambiguity are inevitable.

God’s creation is subject to human flaws and sin. You’ll have to address many uncomfortable problems in life. But “be not afraid,” and trust in God’s help to do what you cannot do alone. Downsize and repackage your anxiety as a key part of the Christian adventure, in which suffering with and for the truth bears fruit in individuals and the common good.

When we let stress become generalized and vague, no heroic journey is possible. “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries,” Jesus taught. “Today’s trouble is enough for today .” (Matthew 6:34)

Use your reason to dig into reality.

Pope Leo XIV wants to form people of faith by teaching them critical thinking, which subjects our consumption of media content and other sources of tension to bold exercises of reason and will. Some experts recommend that those feeling anxiety write down what they’re worried about, shedding ambiguity.

Humans are built to assess and resist disruptive influences, not merely react spontaneously to our neural circuitry. We must humbly, consistently garner facts and principles with which to choose from society’s Golden Corral of food for thought. We don’t want to chow down on the whole buffet. That way lies acedia—and acid reflux.

Get out of yourself.

Public intellectual Jordan Peterson says self-preoccupation is synonymous with misery. Don’t isolate yourself with “facts” you have adopted willy-nilly for convenience. Use America’s great gift of free speech to benefit from debates where multiple perspectives can generate shared conclusions.

Be a caring listener, finding wisdom in others, not aiming to be the superhero in control. After all, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10) Build a relationship with Christ as the living merger of the way, the truth, and the life. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

Make time for rest and reflection.

Worry is the worst form of meditation. Instead, meditate on coherent reality, sometimes found in the big picture, sometimes found in a simpler setting. An author in Aleteia this month noted that “more and more young people are finding their way back to church … simply because they need a place to breathe.” It’s a “quiet act of resistance “ to accept God’s prescription for “Sabbath” rest amid secular chaos.

Be patient, letting some knots untie themselves. Prepare for a kind of reflection which clarifies and empowers by “setting your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2) The higher things include “whatever is true,” lovely, and admirable. (Philippians 4:8)

Think of truth as a personal responsibility.

We should welcome accountability for discovering and presenting truth. Don’t hand that duty to AI or social media. Their copycat “knowledge” short-circuits our authentic relationships with each other and God. Don’t dispense any imitations of truth to which you have not contributed work, wonder, creative curiosity, or sacrificial, loving intent.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, discussing the Commandment against bearing false witness, says we’re called to bear witness to the God “who is the truth and wills the truth.” (paragraph 2464) As a matter of justice and honor, “one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.” (paragraph 2469)

Don’t worry, be happy.

There is a light-hearted side to truthfulness because it can bring us together on a level playing field to enjoy greater trust and common ground for mutual understanding. Being anchored in reality simplifies life; we need not concoct, remember, or fight to defend our lies.

Authenticity and steadfastness are additional graces for the world. Saint Thomas More, the “Man for All Seasons” who was killed by King Henry VIII in a conflict over truth-telling, said (under prior circumstances!), “… Everyone is rich, for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?”

Padre Pio (1887-1968), the Franciscan saint known for the power of his simplicity, boiled down his advice from experience: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.”

. . .

These remedies for anxiety, along with insights into our post-truth quandary, can be the gifts we bring to others, or at least to ourselves, during National Mental Health Awareness Month.

We need to make America more hopeful—not through political or technological projects which ultimately could control us, but through the uniquely human feat of exercising control while surrendering it.

We also need to make America truthful again, incentivizing honesty through a culture of reconciliation and disincentivizing deceit by exposing its huge cost via news stories about corruption and personal stories touching hearts. This mission deserves its own month of awareness and its own spiritual therapy.

Meanwhile, ponder this riddle of the month: What’s the difference between an anxiety-sufferer and a mystic? The anxiety-sufferer believes the universe is conspiring against him; the mystic believes the universe is conspiring in his favor.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI design function.

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Two Popes Speak a Common Language on Communications

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

Anyone tallying subject areas where Pope Leo XIV is on the same wavelength as his predecessor will find consistent and compelling themes in the Vatican’s 2025 message for the World Day of Social Communications.

Pope Francis’ text for the 59th World Communications Day, upcoming on June 1, the Sunday before Pentecost, has already been previewed. It bears the title “Share with Gentleness the Hope That is in Your Hearts.”

This reference to the biblical instruction—“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence….” (1 Peter 3:15-16)—finds echoes in the early remarks of Pope Leo.

Just a few days after he was elected by the Catholic Church’s cardinals, the pontiff addressed members of the international news media who had covered the interregnum.

In tune with Francis’ passion for world peace, Leo proclaimed the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” He told the throng of journalists on May 12 that “the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.”

He called upon the media to “strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition, and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it.”

Pope Leo said nations, the international community, and all of us must “safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press” because “only informed individuals can make free choices.”

He gave special tribute to war reporters who had suffered imprisonment or death, and he thanked all the assembled professionals “for your service to the truth.” They had been present in Rome to see the sorrow of a pope’s death and the enduring joy of Easter, helping others understand “the beauty of Christ’s love that unites and makes us one people,” he noted.

“We should never give in to mediocrity” given current developments in societies which are “difficult to navigate.” When we find ourselves in a “Tower of Babel” of “loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan,” Pope Leo told the group, we need good communication that can rescue us. That task should shape “the words you use and the style you adopt.”

Communication transmits information, but “it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion,” according to the new pontiff. The great potential of artificial intelligence “requires responsibility and discernment” to ensure benefits to all of humanity.

He directly cited Pope Francis’ World Communications Day message, with its instruction to “disarm words” in order to “disarm the world.” That means shedding “prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred.” It demands “gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice” and acting “in favor of peace” and human dignity.

In the same message, Pope Francis said the world needs “communicators of hope” who will plant that seed in societies which must respect and serve their people. Hope is “not merely passive optimism,” Francis wrote; it requires action and courage for us to heal the world’s wounds, including the “diseases of self-promotion and self-absorption.”

The message was published months ago—on Jan. 24, 2025, the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, who is the patron saint of journalists. He is also regarded as a saint of great kindness.

Pope Francis connected his thoughts to his previous proclamation of 2025 as a Jubilee Holy Year, whose theme summons Catholics to be “Pilgrims of Hope.”

The world is now in the middle of that Holy Year, which began in 2024 on Christmas Eve with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. The Jubilee Year of Hope will end with a different man closing of the door on the Solemnity of the Epiphany, Jan. 6, 2026.

Other comments from the World Communications Day message reiterated the Holy Year theme, also discussed in the book Pope Francis had recently published, Hope: The Autobiography.

  • “I dream of a communication that does not peddle illusions or fears, but is able to give reasons for hope,” Francis said.
  • “I encourage you to discover and make known the many stories of goodness hidden in the folds of the news.” This will encourage consumers of information to rein in their indifference toward the marginalized, to build a “culture of care.”
  • Gentleness will help journalists and other communicators ensure that their audiences can “draw close” to the stories being told and “get in touch with the best part of themselves.”
  • Allow information to be shared in an “attentive” and “reflective” way that points out possible paths for dialogue, Francis said. “This kind of communication can help to build communion, to make us feel less alone, to rediscover the importance of walking together.”

Pope Francis gave great attention to storytelling in his World Communications Day messages. In imitation of Jesus as the great storyteller, he saw the need for people to share their faith with the world, to share truth with others as evangelizing pilgrims, and to be in dialogue with Christ himself.

Catholic News Service has posted a video interview with Pope Leo—that is, Father Robert Francis Prevost in 2012 after he had made a presentation to the Synod of Bishops which Pope Benedict XVI convened to discuss “the New Evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith.” Of course, the subjects of communication and the media came up.

Father Prevost told CNS the Catholic Church needs the media to spread the Good News, but the New Evangelization “needs to begin with a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” The Church needs to invite people into a relationship where they can rediscover … “that God indeed is part of our lives.”

He continued, “We should not be trying to create spectacle—if you will, theater—just to make people feel interested in something which in the end is something very superficial, not profound, not meaningful in their lives”

Father Provost cautioned against “the kinds of myths that society can promote,” fooling people into “thinking that this is what you’re really looking for ….” Better answers are found in Church history, and in transcendent mystery.

Furthermore, “you cannot take at face value what’s offered in today’s society by mass media, and I think personally that the answer, rather than turning away [from media], is in the area of formation [by the Church]: How do we teach people to become critical thinkers? How do we teach people to understand that not everything you hear or read should be taken at face value…” because the content does not reveal the “much bigger picture” of meaning in life.

“Having lived outside the US now for a number of years,” said the Augustinian with American and Peruvian citizenship, I see different kinds of entertainment or news where “a slant is taken at times, in whichever direction … the kinds of even polemical argumentation presented on TV in the United States ….”

Father Prevost, who was prior general of his religious order at the time of the interview, said of the Church, “Our real challenge is in formation, in preparing people to become critical thinkers and understand what’s going on in the world around us today.”

With a sense of hope, he said he sees value in social media when they are used well, but “the Church needs to be sophisticated, if you will, in the use of the social networks that are available to us.”

It’s just one more way of reaching out to people, he said of kind and gentle encounters in posts and tweets. “Maybe a little word, a little reflection or invitation, can be the way that we can reach out to someone and make them reflect on their faith and even encourage them to come back and find out more.”

At the age of 69, Pope Leo XIV has used and assessed a variety of media, including Facebook. On top of sharing his predecessor’s love of interpersonal and large-scale communication, he has spoken confidently about the ability of prudent, peaceful evangelization—as well as truth told with charity and clarity— to build bridges spanning the aspirations of Pope Francis.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot. Go to my Substack platorm and click “Papal Messages” in the Phronesis in Pieces navbar to see extensive coverage of past messages for World Communications Day.

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Mr. Trump, Launch Synodality? Holy Father, Launch DOGE?

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

President Trump has at least one thing in common with the new pope who soon will lead the world’s Catholics. Particular managerial challenges have been building up for years—in America and in the Church—and now confront both men with a sense of urgency, almost emergency.

The president and the late Pope Francis have addressed key problems with two initiatives that became buzzwords: “DOGE” and “synodality,” respectively. Both terms are neologisms which have proven vague enough to invite different definitions, or at least different reactions, sometimes negative.

We have come to interpret DOGE and synodality as launchpads for a sequence of unusual actions, not as the cornerstones for statesmanlike policies and wise, long-distance missions.

Both initiatives were kicked off with much fanfare and presented as platforms to showcase transformations, partly because their creators saw a need for quick reforms of substance and style. Another factor: Our “attention economy” demands specific news hooks, an excess of social media posts, and catchy headlines.

But we’re now at the point where each phenomenon needs to be better defined as a structured, measured, ongoing approach. Is it being “made up as we go along”? Is it a chainsaw to disrupt familiar systems and principles of governance? Preferably, neither.

The need for new definitions first requires a check of their original trajectories.

Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order creating the “Department of Government Efficiency” described it in a way quite different from the way it was reported and experienced—project cancellations and job cuts revealed with shock and awe.  The White House text spoke more softly about modernizing technology and software to increase efficiency and productivity, as well as establishment of “DOGE teams” within every federal agency.

In a Feb. 13 Wall Street Journal article, reporters said there were many lingering questions about DOGE’s operations, even the number of its employees and whether DOGE teams reported to their respective agencies or to their scene-stealing leader, Elon Musk. The article affirmed mood shifts such that DOGE “has been tasked with executing Trump’s campaign pledge to slash government spending.”

Implementation of the executive order still requires clarity about the follow-through among administrators, Congress, and other stakeholders. Will it be presented as a battle between heroes and villains?

The DOGE website has no “About” section, saying only that “the people voted for major reform.” In its “Jobs” section, the site simply says DOGE is seeking “world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”

With Musk withdrawing from daily government work, the budget-slashing endeavors are likely to morph, along with new leadership methods. Political conflicts over short-range and long-range priorities are likely to persist, but they need not carry the baggage of Tesla and X.

In 2021, Pope Francis announced what might have sounded like a semi-routine event—the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2023. But he said the preparations should begin right away, with every diocese holding listening sessions to collect diverse lay persons’ candid opinions about all the Church issues (both beliefs and behaviors) which concern them.

This was to be a Synod on Synodality, a term which the Vatican’s International Commission in 2018 defined as “the action of the [Holy] Spirit in the communion of the Body of Christ and in the missionary journey of the People of God,” according to the Catholic News Agency.

Pope Francis ordered that new, inclusive conversations connecting bishops with lay people continue at the national and continental levels, generating notes to be fed to the Vatican. This genuinely pastoral man, with a passion for welcoming strangers and the marginalized, extended the Synod period through October 2024; this would allow further meetings, some at roundtables, between “bishops and their collaborators,” as reported by a diocesan newspaper.

Last fall, that synod issued its final report—actually a set of recommendations for discussions fleshing out “synodality as essential to the Church’s mission.” This vision included pursuits such as “greater lay participation, mandatory pastoral councils, and continued study on women in ministry and seminary formation,” as Catholic News Service reported.

To allow for painting the panorama, the Vatican announced in March that the synod will now enter a “next phase” for implementation of recommendations, stretching to late 2028, when another assembly will be held. The Holy Father died on April 21, and this week cardinals from around the world were in conclave to elect a successor.

According to the Crux Catholic news service, cardinals already have been discussing a wide range of serious questions, including “the value of synodality” and an “immediate priority”—namely “the Vatican’s crippling deficit and its looming pension crisis.”

Wait, what? In 2014, Francis had appointed a distinguished Australian, Cardinal George Pell, to lead the Vatican’s new Secretariat for the Economy. As reported in a Pillar news service timeline that reads like a “true-crime” saga or “deep-state” thriller, the pope directed Pell “to bring transparency and accountability to [Vatican administration, aka Curia] finances after … scandals unfolded during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.”

The Pillar noted that Pell in 2015 contracted with the global accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to audit the entire Curia, “aiming to bring every Vatican department’s budget, assets, and investments onto a single balance sheet.”

In 2016, a surprising memo went out to the Curia announcing that plans for the PWC audit had been suspended. Separately, Australian police announced they were investigating Pell for alleged sexual abuse.

His leave of absence to defend himself left the Secretariat for the Economy rudderless. The long Australian legal process led to convictions and imprisonment, but the country’s Supreme Court unanimously found Pell innocent in 2020. He died in 2023. Meanwhile, Pope Francis took other steps that eased, but didn’t end, the financial crisis.

Returning to our present day, what are leaders of America and the Church to do about their crises? Both of their populations are feeling polarized and insecure, skeptical of extremes but impatient for improvement. Everyone is playing hardball in all three branches of the federal government, plus political parties and the media.

People around the world, secular and clerical, make statements imploring paths toward unity and hope amid a spectrum of dilemmas resembling the game of Whac-a-Mole.

Might it help if President Trump adopts the best features of synodality and the next pontiff considers the best qualities of DOGE? Which traits, soft or hard in nature, should be avoided?

This imagined concept-exchange is the stuff of future academic dissertations by remarkably interdisciplinary graduate students.

These observations can start the analysis:

As we have seen in American politics, the skeptical masses generally want to believe they’re being told the truth, the whole truth. They accept long-term thinking in many policies, but plans must be clearly defined, results must be measurable, and updates must be comprehensive and comprehensible. A coherent through-line, leading to a deadline for success, also would help.

Sometimes, leaders want to make permanent modifications to how an institution operates. This pursuit must be accompanied by modeling the new thinking they desire and consulting regularly with all stakeholders to win their trust. Society must start to shed its divisiveness before, not after, our sense of urgency is eased.

Champions fighting waste and fraud, patterns of marginalization and exclusion, must teach and learn about what can change, what won’t change, why, and how. In the absence of transparency, news media will dig for “what’s really happening,” and social media will bury progress in negativity, aggression, and doubt. They will fill the gap, or muddy it, if leaders leave a vacuum of clear priorities.

Goals can’t seem performative, manipulative, or skin-deep. The motivation must come from both the top and the grassroots, based on intriguing ideas and shared goals, rather than appeals to pre-shaped ideologies or self-determined identities.

On the spiritual plane, calling upon the Holy Spirit to bless all well-intentioned collaborations, secular or religious, is an excellent strategy. But remember that, according to the Bible, God speaks in the zephyr, the gentle wind, rather than a hullabaloo. Judeo-Christian culture calls us to replace chaos with balance, and not just in budgets.

Those who want to solve problems and ease polarization should ask for the seven gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, understanding, and fortitude (Isaiah 11:1-2). And we should evaluate outcomes in light of the Spirit’s nine fruits, such as love, peace, and patience (Galatians 5:22-23). The Spirit wants all of us to maintain our trajectory, principally toward heaven.

As Trump and the new pope direct DOGE and synodality into their next phases, we have two choices to shape our own spirits. The lesser, random-sounding option is to adopt one of Trump’s favorite phrases: “We’ll see what happens.” The better, bolder saying—attributed to an 1190 collection of French poetry and more akin to a Vatican frame of mind—offers encouragement for participants in the action: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Image from Microsoft Bing AI designer.

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The Fault is Not in our Stars, but in our Supporting Cast

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

If reading the latest batch of books about the 2024 presidential election has already made you feel “burdened by what has been,” plan to pursue a more timeless perspective, from a very different author, on April 23.

This is when the world celebrates Shakespeare Day. Experts say the date is an anniversary of the legendary British playwright’s birth (in 1564), or his death (in 1616), or both.

William Shakespeare, a brilliant wordsmith and master storyteller, showed a profound level of discernment about leadership—and human nature—in ways rarely equaled today.

We typically divide Shakespeare’s plays (37, 38 or more, counting collaborations) into histories, tragedies and comedies. But his masterpieces transcend categories as he explores life’s essential themes. You’ll notice they are the same subjects pervading the politics of last year, and every year.

These complex truths range from the meaning of life and death to extremes of joy, sorrow, hope and hatred. The genius from Stratford-upon-Avon depicted conflicts and quests driven by pride, power, retribution and resentment, as well as resistance to great danger and injustice.

Ben Crystal, an actor and educator whose Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard emerged as a handbook in 2015, suggests we have much to learn, or relearn, about storytelling.

The insights which Shakespeare fleshed out will resonate if we let them. We can understand—and empathize with—the authentic characters he shaped, Crystal says in a video “master class” found on YouTube.

“He wrote plays about what it means to be human,” this drama coach explains. “Shakespeare leaves so much space for us,” inviting a “communication of the heart” that allows actors and audience members alike to invest their emotions and experiences in heroes (Henry V or Hamlet?), villains (Lady Macbeth or Iago?), and secondary figures (Falstaff or the Three Witches?).

In today’s tell-all books reviewing a nearly surreal campaign season, authors make much ado about the remarkable cast of protagonists, including President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Harris. This storytelling properly focuses on plot lines, not the multi-dimensional exploration of iconic figures and adventures where Shakespeare excels.

The plots of 2024 leave us to make our own judgments about who is heroic or villainous, what is tragic or comic. Too often, we’ve drawn shallow conclusions based on pre-existing filters like party alignments, talking points, our gut-level reactions and the latest red flags from our favorite pundits.

Recall that, not long after Trump’s first election, New York City’s Shakespeare in the Park festival evoked audiences’ gut-level reactions by making its Julius Caesar character resemble the president. In summer 2017 performances, the assassination scene “left space” for the on-stage stabbing of Trump-Caesar, with blood staining his white shirt.

This year, despite our ongoing consumption of clickbait and the polarizing political news critical of one party or the other, thoughtful Americans may want less crude theatricality. Performative bombing of cars and violence against persons still make messages heard, but the frequent reaction is “this is getting out of hand.” Across the political spectrum, our attention is moving toward core concerns. We crave comprehensive, consensus-building assessments of weighty phenomena roiling POTUS 47 and his opponents.

Whoopi Goldberg sided with the seekers of balance and context last week on The View. “Maybe some of what’s happening … [particularly, decentralizing Education Department programs] … is a good thing,” she opined, “because maybe it will force us to make sure our kids actually get what they need…. This is now in our hands.”

Meanwhile, philosopher-comic Bill Maher makes news by scolding so many points of view, it’s hard to guess whose hands are clapping. He varies his critiques because, as he said on last week’s Real Time with Bill Maher, “life’s complicated.”

Voters have suspected for a while that these are pivotal times in our history. Now, amid the sound and fury of 2025, truly curious citizens sense an opportunity—more like a duty—to make choices about what all the rapid changes should signify.

We’re in perilous times. We’re told this by such books as The Fourth Turning Is Here, in which age-cohort theorist Neil Howe warns that the sociological stars have aligned for an imminent, turbulent transformation in society. He sees patterns among baby boomers and all generations foretelling high-stakes crises like wars or cultural upheavals.

Freed from the adrenaline and venom of an election year, many of us hope to piece together truths about people, trends, ideas and themes—and about us as a nation. Some revelations will be uncomfortable, surprising or mysterious, but we try to grapple with them.

Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, in an early April podcast, combined optimism and pessimism about our efforts to figure out today’s politics.

Interviewed by Bari Weiss on Honestly, Allen gave this mixed review: “There’s more information, more insight, more reality available to you than ever … but it also puts a burden on us as news consumers to be savvier about where we’re picking up these different parts of our info soup.” Their discussion touched on how words are losing their meanings and individuals are creating their own realities.

Allen, whose career comprises no-nonsense stories built on accurate, tightly written facts, acknowledged his work is not enough. We need to expand our collective lens, going beyond conventional reporting to comprehend today’s big picture.

He described the Trump administration’s eccentric protagonists, and he noted that multiple “tectonic plates” are in motion. They include turbulence in the two parties, rampant growth in artificial intelligence and the new media’s twists on how we communicate and decide what’s true, according to Allen.

“This is Shakespeare,” he said. “A thousand years from now, people will study these characters, what’s happening. You could pick any week of the 11 weeks there have been [in Trump’s term at that time], and you could write a book about it. People will.”

A complicated, confusing world like ours does indeed need help from the Bard of the Elizabethan era. Sadly, he’s not around to write any of the books now seizing journalistic attention.

Nor should we want Shakespeare confined to new downloads for our Kindles. We need immersive experiences not from books, but from a special genre; in other words, “The play’s the thing.”  Theaters hold “the mirror up to nature.” (Both lines are from Hamlet.)

We might wish William would pen more scripts, but let’s confess that the dramas our democracy awaits—tragedies, comedies or both—are ours to write and produce. The Bard can only offer inspiration.

He might suggest more coherent story arcs, where people share certain truths but are motivated by their own mix of principles, purposes and passions.

These traits are far from transparent, assuming we possess them at all (or they possess us). We must come to understand them, and better reckon with them, by conscientiously observing behaviors, inherent qualities, and errant trajectories. For better and for worse, what we observe in others will become visible in ourselves.

Starting on Shakespeare Day, we should strive to embrace human nature with all its paradoxical qualities and flaws. We should approach people, especially our government leaders, with genuine curiosity and empathy to understand their stories on multiple levels.

We’re looking for their authentic selves, not their narratives or “main-character energy.” And we also demand that they reflect us, listening to the nation’s full range of voices.

Of course, we remain free to laugh and razz when politicians serve up “comedies of errors.” But avoid heckling and derision, gratuitous and grotesque distractions. These are beneath the dignity of the theater, especially when it’s spelled “theatre.”

Drama coach Crystal reminds us to aim high for “communication of the heart.” Immersion in complex reality requires peaceable respect, along with a sense of wonder and urgency.

Our role, then, is to become a better audience, receptive to timeless lessons which transcend the hearsay and hot takes gluing us to our screens. Imagine we are the throngs filling the Globe Theatre. We’re all in this together, preparing for a shared future even as we connect with vibrant impressions from the past.

We will not be in theaters most of the time, but we can write and refine the story arc of our democracy on many platforms—in town hall meetings, gatherings of civil society and debates in the public square, physical or virtual.

If we’re inspired by Shakespeare and the meaningful eloquence he gave to so many hearts, minds and quests, today’s tell-all books and political plot lines will only supplement, not burden, our vantage point as a proactive audience. We’ll beg to differ with just one phrase from As You Like It. Yes, the world’s a stage, but we’re more than merely players.

Image from Microsoft Co-Pilot’s AI imaging tool.

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During Lent, One Word Tells Us What Not to Give Up

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

When our observance of Lent prompts us to drop bad habits or start good ones, those behavioral effects ideally go beyond rote and become “habits of the heart.”

Giving up candies for a while helps us to appreciate treats all the more—and to remember that last year’s plan to eat more kale was noble, but short-lived. This tweaks the lesson of Forrest Gump; we discover that a box of chocolates is like life, a sampler of opportunities to find value in gjfts when they’re received, enjoyed, or offered up.

A single word that captures this uphill climb of mindfulness is “sacrifice.” Lent takes on extra meaning when the season’s little, planned concessions prepare our hearts, even our appetites, for bigger surrenders.

This writer, a flawed pilgrim who slips and slides through Lent’s penitential practices, hopes to cultivate a taste for sacrifice by making it a kind of mantra—a repetitive thought modest enough to settle the soul but bold enough to suggest there’s potential energy in everything we do.f

Forty days in the desert. The Passion and death of Christ. The redemption of Easter. The motifs of this season find parallels in our travels through the post-modern wilderness of 2025.

Our secular society craves coherent stories to find purpose in everyday busyness, but we’re not keen to embrace this complexity. We too often miss the opportunity to see life’s spiritual plot thickening.

The Shakers observed that sacrifice is a through-line in the story arc Lent portrays. The Lord offers us gifts to be simple, humble, in right relationship, allowing us “to come down where we ought to be.” This is our default position of attentiveness to God and neighbor.

However, as the sect’s timeless hymn suggests, Shakers hoped their reined-in egos would allow much more rigorous follow-throughs of self-denial and repentance. They prescribed major sacrificial actions in order to “come round right” for particular standards of worship and solidarity. Their approach proved temporary.

Lent is our chance to share and calibrate sacrifice in more sustainable forms by viewing it through four lenses. What does the word itself say to us? What does it call upon individuals to do? Can it teach communities and societies to better discern what they’re progressing toward? And can it reveal a structured, Godly worldview that’s truly “right” for the human spirit?

Sacrifice, for What It’s Worth

Etymologists provide several root meanings for our word du jour. One analysis says sacrifice is an offering—something “done zealously, to serve God.” Our “sense-perceptible gift to the Deity” is “an outward manifestation of our veneration for Him and with the object of attaining communion with Him.”

Another derivation, my favorite, says sacrifice is also a verb. It means “to make sacred,” from the root sacra for sacred and facere for “make or do.” In other words, although we might think of our Lenten denial practices as passive or trivial, the insights behind them are more dynamic and constructive, fit for earthly practicality but also useful for transformation.

Sacrifice for Individuals

Public intellectual Jordan Peterson, in his new book We Who Wrestle with God, invites humans to see sacrifice essentially as “work.” This secular psychologist and spiritual seeker explains it as an investment:

“If I am doing what needs to be done, instead of what I want to do for the sake of present gratification, I am working…. Work is the subjugation of whim, or more precisely, it’s the integration with other needs and desires into something of a higher and more complete order.”

Peterson goes on to say “work is … the delay of gratification and a sacrifice made in the service of others. It is an investment made to best ensure the beneficence of the future whose price must be paid in the present; an investment, as well, in the good will of others on whose behalf something valuable (time, energy, attention) has been given up now.”

The author evokes the mundane idea of a contract, but he also incorporates transcendence across time and circumstances. He cites the Bible’s emphasis on “sacrifice as characterizing the relationship between God and man.”

The key contract of life is ultimately a “communal or covenantal” obligation to meet the needs of one’s family and community, and even one’s future self. We might call this the “best self,” or “truest self,” one wants to become, the self which simply can’t emerge if constrained in a world of spontaneous, thoughtless hedonism.

Sacrifice for the Common Good

A focus on sacrifice, saying no to our selfishness, prompts us to wonder what actions will be most acceptable to the “self, fellow man, and natural world”—essentially what “will most please God.” Determining one’s proper offering, Peterson says, becomes identical with asking, “What is the purpose or meaning of life?”

This habit of assessing our individual decisions in light of our future and the world we wish to shape goes beyond the little behaviors we might tinker with as Lenten minimalists giving up chocolates.

Higher aspirations clear the way to imagine the broader story of an entire society—indeed, a civilization—based on sacrifice.

We start by realizing we’re born and raised in debt to the sacrificial, generative love of our parents.

We build up our moral awareness by understanding that it’s now our turn to accept a role carrying on our family’s values and humanity’s transcendent purpose. We consider bearing children and shaping a better world for them. We focus less on erotic or platonic love and more on agape love—a deep commitment to the good of the other.

Our sense of obligation to those who came before us, as well as those who will come after us, can expand the love of family life to include community solidarity and patriotic loyalty to a country. As we identify our talents and our role in an interconnected society, we’re challenged to think like accountable contributors.

Peterson envisions civilization grounded in great love stories, not mere facts and functions, theories and ideologies. Having absorbed stories which explain and celebrate our priorities, humanity can keep building on its wisdom and experience in order to thrive.

This recalls Pope John Paul II’s “exhortation” to the European Union when member countries composed their first constitution in 2003. As reported by the BBC, the pontiff urged the founding nations to “include a reference to the religious, and in particular the Christian, heritage of the continent.”

John Paul was not insulting or excluding other religions. He believed Europe had a legacy of love-story experiences that could make people free and empowered, accountable and creative. These would be valuable traits whenever the EU faced crucial moments of course-correction. But Europe’s constitution wound up containing only general language about respecting cultural guideposts.

If a secular society rejects the continuation of self-giving as the source of meaning behind its activities, people find that their options are limited, not expanded, Peterson points out.

A civilization abandoning its structures of purpose will sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which conjures peace in a vacuum. Motivation will derive from utilitarian judgments and personal desires for power, pride, and apparent virtue. Seeking a utopia, people might turn the tables, demanding for themselves the sacrifices of others!

As in present-day America, secular leaders adopting their stories from concepts of progress and judgmentalism may determine that some groups and behaviors are unworthy of attention or respect. Amid polarization, truth becomes relative and weaponized. The common ground of learning and wisdom withers without stewardship.

Sacrifice, for God’s Sake

Good students and stewards of sacrifice come to recognize that only an ethos of God-given dignity and rights will keep us on track to come down “where we ought to be.”

If we’re truly freed from self-centeredness, we’re able not only to honor our fellow humans as connected collaborators, but also to form a right relationship with a higher power who bestows higher purpose. Our offerings for each other yield the most fruit when we share what Peterson calls a spirit of “upward sacrifice,” focused on the ultimate effort for the ultimate good.

Our Judeo-Christian culture recognizes a deity of total self-giving, who speaks the language of family and covenant: “You will be my people, and I will be your God.”

The post-modern world pushes back mightily against this loving invitation, perhaps because we don’t want to bow down, to turn away from our pride and priorities. Or we don’t believe this God is trustworthy. Our declaration of inclusiveness, well-intentioned or strategic, precludes being trustworthy to only one paradigm of God. Thus, it precludes all paradigms.

We must admit that basing the promise of human flourishing on the prospect of giving things up is counterintuitive.

Fans of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and segments of the international administrative state met with pushback in America’s 2024 elections. Some campaigners stealthily embodied “Great Reset” thinking already widespread in Europe.

This vision of a globalized, technocratic age downplays national sovereignty and borders. To motivate followers, advocates rely largely on existential dangers, limited choices, and being on the right side of history. They stress one-size-fits-all values and enemies. WEF founder Klaus Schwab promised, “You’ll own nothing, and you will be happy.”

Voters harboring hopes for personal independence and societal abundance believed a globalized version of sacrificial “simplicity” actually risked inequality and a programming of the masses through persuasion and information control.

Bishop Robert Barron, a prominent evangelist who leads the “Word on Fire” online ministry, points out there’s another pathway to sacrificial simplicity that is more voluntary and inspiring. It’s rooted in Judeo-Christian faith, not as a bias but as a blessing. Alas, this approach also faces much pushback nowadays.

“We’re the weirdest religion around,” Barron has quipped. The Church has chosen a countercultural symbol—a crucifix on which the corpus of Christ hangs—to reveal its understanding of how reality functions.

This structure is a covenant sealed with the blood of Jesus. He calls people as humble penitents who can enter communion through His ultimate sacrifice, which broke the grip of sin so we need not veer off the trajectory toward our truest selves.

We build solidarity with this all-loving deity by picking up our own crosses. Catholics, for example, believe they pursue a mystical unity while preserving an identity that retains individual diversity. They re-present, and participate in, Jesus’ one-time sacrifice to God the Father at every Mass.

Christians offer their unique sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, and contrition. They sing that “amazing grace” flows from this. They see their Sunday services as celebrations.

Globalism proponents should note that, yes, followers of Jesus trust they “will be happy,” but this joy, sampled on earth, is on the spiritual plane. Aristotle also saw happiness as an elevated goal. The Philosophy Termswebsite says “the real prize is becoming the hero of your own adventure,” although it’s neither ego trip nor solo flight.

This doesn’t require us to “own nothing.” Instead, we choose to “give up” our earthly experience in a deeper sense. When we face life’s inevitable sufferings and surrenders, and when we seek God’s forgiveness or confront malevolent resistance to deeds we deem virtuous, we invite God to turn our pains toward a higher purpose.

The aim of this happiness reset is to join in serving Him and spreading His glory through love for others.

“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” Jesus teaches in Matthew 16:25. Those who voluntarily go “all-in” with this sacrificial and hierarchical worldview aren’t motivated by forces of persuasion, guilt, and information control. Rather, they hope to liberate God’s creatures from these fears.

Such freedom yields the simplicity of which the Shakers sang. The mind frame of sacrifice puts us “in our place” in various ways. Psalm 51 says: “My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.” Matthew 9:13, harking back to Hosea 6:6, says God “desires mercy, not [traditional, bloody] sacrifice.”

Sacrifice, for Now and the Future

Lenten choices represented by rituals and tweaked habits thus foster default conditions of simplicity from which we can grow to pursue the meaning of life in personal, social, and spiritual terms.

It’s no surprise that Jordan Peterson, who established an international organization to help preserve Western culture and wisdom, now considers sacrifice a gigantic topic.

In keynote remarks to his Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) at its 2025 conference in mid-February, Peterson declared that “reciprocal, voluntary self-sacrifice towards the highest possible end,” organized under divine principles, is nothing less than “the foundation of civilization,” at least in the West.

This idea of foundation, where something is being built, loops back to the etymological insight that sacrifice is a verb meaning “to make sacred.” The word cannot mean destruction, deconstruction, hatred, or nihilism.

Making the world better, during Lent and all year round, affirms Peterson’s thesis that we find ourselves today at a pivotal “civilizational moment.” We can, and must, take conscious actions and present clear explanations in defense of Western civilization.

Post-modern culture’s insular preferences for power games, self-gain, and avoidance of pain are not the stuff of a sustainable society, Peterson says.

Too many of us fail to see the error of those priorities, he adds. Our dumbed-down culture is “at a point where the obvious needs to be explained.” We need to honor the wisdom our forebears literally built into structures of the past. The altar of sacrifice is located at the center of a church, and the place of worship is located at the center of a town.

At today’s crisis point, disparate but open-minded forces can come together to build back our awareness of a fruitful, prudent, balanced moral infrastructure, Peterson argues.

Political conservatives and any groups with backgrounds in beneficent traditions can join hands with classic liberals, who have courageously advanced principles of human dignity. They’ll agree on the common cause of re-animating Western civilization at its best. Plenty of folks now suspect that humanity cannot thrive without it.

The season of Lent is an ideal time for looking back and looking forward, for challenging ourselves and bringing hope to others, for connecting theology and philosophy to concrete actions, for assuring the world that God does important things through us.

That’s why the word “sacrifice” makes a good mantra to exercise during Lent—and beyond. It honors all the little gifts that countless people offer to God and His creatures throughout each day.

We get to emulate the moral vigor our local heroes model in pursuits as diverse as health professionals, emergency responders, laborers labeled as “essential workers,” and the Forrest Gumps of the world.

The mantra also celebrates the ability to take our habits higher. Shaping them after God’s own heart, we spot opportunities to bless a community, country, or civilization with a sustainability we can share.

Taming our self-regard, we can strive to make our future so meaningful that it’s sacred. Lenten reflections on Christ’s Passion are a welcome reminder that it is high time to offer ourselves zealously, or better, passionately.

Image from Microsoft Bing’s AI Co-Pilot, based on the command: Create a church in the center of an old European town.

Posted in Education, Prayer, Spirit of communication, Words | Leave a comment

New Media Can’t Afford to Think Talk is Cheap

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

Newsmakers and their media enablers may or may not have valid ideas to express to the American audience, but the more obvious problem is their occasional failure to express those ideas civilly.

One of our crucial democratic norms—authentic, informed public discourse confronting issues sensibly and peacefully—often gets sidetracked by gratuitous vulgarity.

Most of us occasionally blurt a toxic or taboo remark. But open-to-the-public profanity seems to have increased among journalists, politicians, and news consumers at a time when cooler heads should prevail over our cultural coarseness.

People will offer many excuses for their loose lips—perhaps their emotional state or their state of mind, or the seriousness or triviality of what they’re discussing. They may sprinkle their words like spices or spew them like projectiles.

The trend is magnified by the algorithmic argumentation pouring through the social-media firehose and by the engagement or enragement driving “new-media” podcasts and short-form videos. Everyone’s competing for space in our “attention economy.”

New media make complex demands on us—emotional intelligence alongside intellectual heft, empathy alongside sure-footed argumentation, and clear expression of our hearts and minds alongside responsive listening to others. This can nudge society toward better discourse. When it doesn’t, when communication is cheapened, the fault is not in our screens, but in ourselves.

Recently, prominent opponents of President Trump coordinated online video attacks against his inflation-reduction promise, calling it “sh*t that ain’t true,” and his immigrant deportation policy, calling it “total bullsh*t.” One news commentator said of the phraseology, “I find it very unpersuasive and undignified.”

On the Feb. 16 edition of the Fox News “MediaBuzz” program, host Howard Kurtz played a clip from a CNN broadcast in which a top-tier anchor, interviewing former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, spontaneously uttered a vulgar insult.

“Don’t be a d***,” the CNN anchor said as part of the discussion. He later apologized to Sununu, who brushed it off kind-heartedly.

But Kurtz brought up the incident in a follow-up segment.

“I’m noticing there is a new trend in cable news, at least on some channels, where cursing is cool, dropping F-bombs is cool,” Kurtz said.

He recalled that a congresswoman had recently tossed the bomb at Trump. The president likes his words cleaner but meaner.

Kurtz said of vulgarity in media, “Maybe I’m ridiculously old-fashioned, but I think it shows a lack of class.” His colleague, while forgiving the slip-up on CNN, agreed that embracing the profane “as a way to get eyeballs” contributes to “defining decency down.”

More than a year ago, The Wall Street Journal cited a study illustrating the problem. A content-filtering firm that monitors TV shows had surveyed vocabulary found in news and entertainment programs between 1985 and November 2023.

There were overall declines in foul language during the Covid pandemic and the Hollywood writers’ strike, the company found, but eruptions of the F-word rose from 511 to 22,177 over the period. The S-word jumped from 484 four decades ago to the latest total of 10,864.

Such disparagements and expletives seem especially common today in content aimed at younger generations and others who aren’t reliable news-addicts.

Researchers say youths do tend to “swear” more. Their lingo is hardly a symptom of lower intelligence or lack of virtue. It partly reflects an “anything goes” environment which promotes impulsive reactions or self-centered tactics to “stand out” or “fit in.”

Oddly, content creators often bleep out offensive words not because a diligent editor caught a speaker’s wayward violation, but because profanities and bleeps, purposely interwoven in planned scripts, sound witty or risqué. They make protagonists look like “part of the gang.”

Communicators in all lines of work need to rethink this approach. Words matter as precision instruments—sometimes when we least expect or want it. While not becoming prudish or aggressively woke, our default when interacting online, or on the street, should be a forbearance that preserves conversation as a civic cornerstone.

Remember that, for average folks, the audience we want to reach is already close to us—in families, friends, communities, and microcosms of the public square at the local and state levels.

Smaller-scale communities have a growing stake in disputes about issues of immigration, education, abortion, and criminal justice, which many came to consider “national news.” When people meet face-to-face with their neighbors to resolve concrete problems, we need higher standards of self-regulation and propriety.

If we are fortunate to participate in conversations that gain traction, making fuller use of America’s free marketplace of ideas, we should be ready to state our case. But also beware of ideologically motivated agitators who want to lay landmines in that market.

When we’re not being divided according to characteristics like race and sex, or by our opinions, we face partitioning by class and wealth. These polarize us, but at least we’re using words.

We now must resist a trend toward dumbed-down battles over rhetoric itself. Some ventures into raw reality are attacked less in terms of “define what’s true!” and more in terms of “you offend me, talk to the hand.” The old Groucho Marx song says it all—”whatever it is, I’m against it.”

As seen in the partisan “silent treatment” given to President Trump’s address to Congress on March 4, modern word-fare can take the form of simply refusing to converse or acknowledge remarks, even when some insights deserve general agreement.

We also saw a symbolic excommunication from communication in 2020 when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up her text of Trump’s State of the Union speech. Games of disconnection are played across the political spectrum; Trump refused to debate his fellow candidates for the Republican nomination in 2024.

The democratization now glimpsed in the new media pushes back against disconnection by celebrating conversation. It forsakes scripted or performative approaches to rhetoric. Podcasting nurtures dialogues of all sorts, of any length, shallow or in-depth, so long as the talk is spontaneous and authentic.

Recall that many observers last year criticized presidential candidate Kamala Harris for “not going on Joe Rogan” to leverage his format of three-hour, candid, casual chats where any topic is legitimate.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has launched his “This Is Gavin Newsom” podcast, promising honest encounters with political opponents.

Optimists believe the new-media trend can re-energize the art of dialogue, add more diverse voices to the public square, and boost democratic instincts nationally and locally. We can explore “inconvenient truths” on a level playing field.

There’s even hope that formats like discussion-based podcasts can inject more transparency into truth-seeking, with no teleprompters (or artificial intelligence) to manufacture talking points. Public intellectual Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, has opined, “You can’t lie effectively [and] spontaneously in a conversation.”

Are we ready for this renaissance of debate?

Ironically, we have come to rely on our digital screens, whereby we conduct much of our business in isolation, shunning lengthy conversations. This lifestyle has made many folks prefer pressing the buttons on their devices; they avoid awkward talk that might press people’s buttons, or their own.

If we don’t reboot our skills for everyday discourse, we really do risk causing offense with words interpreted as impatient, disdainful, or unworthy of response.

There’s at least one step we can take to ensure win-win experiences when we gather to explore and improve reality together: Minimize the use of vulgarity to distract and cheapen everyone’s thoughts.

Media critic Kurtz may be right about being old-fashioned, but we should heed his implication that an excess of taboo remarks—a careless “lack of class”—will define decency down and further disable the public square.

Therefore, it behooves us to reflect more deeply on what we’re saying and how we can say it better. A vocabulary exists for achieving greater clarity on how to perform in our rhetorical dramas, although there’s a lot of subjectivity and overlap in the definitions.

We’ve been using terms like “vulgarity” and “taboo remarks.” Let’s expand this lexicon to better examine our consciences, or at least examine others’:

  • Vulgarity. This refers to “the common people” and recalls the Latin Vulgate, a “commonly used” Bible in the early Church. According to a Mental Floss essay, vulgarity is a general word for crude language. It sometimes describes “the act of substituting a coarse word in a context where a more refined expression would be expected.”
  • Profanity. This is the use of words which have inherent clout based on intensely negative experiences. In more religious eras, a contrast was drawn between the “sacred” and the “profane.” A Discover magazine article reports that Americans noticed “profanity” had spread among troops returning from the hell of the first and second world wars. They fell into the habit of emotional words whose ugliness echoed those horrors.
  • Slurs. These are harmful insults based on sex, race, and religion, says Discover. Research shows that, particularly when slurs are used around children, they psychologically affect those being defamed, or anyone who absorbs the malice. The words can sink to the level of verbal abuse.
  • Cursing. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines this as “calling down evil upon God or creatures,” as in wishing someone’s damnation.  “Cussing” expands to include profanities which are “hurtful, blasphemous, vulgar, wicked, and uncouth.”  The Bible says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying … that it may impart grace.” (Ephesians 4:29)
  • Swearing. This applies to using God’s name in vain, as in violating a sworn oath. The action viscerally connects God to evil. According to an essay in The Conversation, neuroscience suggests swearing resides in a part of the brain different from other speech regions; it may be linked to the “flight or fright” reflex. Swearing may coincide with a rapid heartbeat and sweating, either providing a form of catharsis or expanding the presence of evil. Swear words in general can serve to command attention—but beware because they also “can sometimes get in the way of thinking.”
  • Obscenity. This is the use of explicit, immoral, or titillating expressions not tied to the spiritual realm. But there is a connection to American law, especially applied to whole texts or messages. According to a Mental Floss essay, material is obscene—and not protected by the First Amendment—if it fits three descriptions: The average person would find that it appeals to prurient interest; it depicts sexual content or excretory functions in a patently offensive way; and the work as a whole lacks serious artistic, political, or scientific value.

The substantial vocabulary loosely describing vulgarity constitutes neither a glossary nor a checklist to keep our conversations “clean.”

But we should note that parts of the vocabulary are rooted in religious and spiritual concerns. They show the weight traditionally given to communication, especially about God’s role in meaningful things—in private, personal things. Communication sometimes borders on mystery, so tread lightly.

We’re well-advised to develop an appreciation for the transcendent importance of words so we can form the instincts we need for effective, respectful outreach.

The role of instinct recalls the 1964  U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Justice Potter Stewart famously described his threshold test for pornography. Stewart declined to provide a “shorthand description,” but he wrote, “I know it when I see it.”

This suffices to make the point that newsmakers and news-shapers (that’s most of us, thanks to our phones) should carefully ponder what it means to speak civilly and use language well.

If we hope that, in our age of new media, conditions will evolve to make the public square more dynamic and inclusive, we must help to fulfill the promise of authentic and unsullied conversations. We’re all responsible for good stewardship of society’s words and wisdom.

Our culture’s current confusion about truth is both a cause and effect of today’s coarse talk. Polls showing widespread concern about the future of democracy impose many tasks on us, but one of them—instinctively choosing language that dignifies communities as they speak and listen—is within our grasp.

These responsibilities literally comprise more than we can say. When might we expect our improved presentations of spontaneity and self-control to bear fruit? We’ll know it when we see it.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

Posted in Education, Spirit of communication, Words, Writing | Leave a comment

Words That Keep the Christmas Spirit Alive All Year

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

by Bill Schmitt

Published Feb. 10, 2025, in the blog of the Magis Center, Garden Grove, CA.

One way to keep Christmas joy alive into 2025 is to hold tight to and continue reflecting upon bits of the yuletide vocabulary that our secular culture easily sets aside as humbug.

While some spiritual advisors urge the public only to be mindful of the present moment, we know experiences become more momentous because of memories we’ve made. Our new year is an opportunity to choose some ideas we’ll continue to treasure while others fade away.

Especially at Christmas, we are immersed in a spirit that goes beyond words but gives them rhyme and reason. Centuries of faith have inspired eloquent liturgies and lexicons to be savored. They will reappear in December, but their power to unite and guide us is worthy of recycling year-round.

Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year with the Power of Song

Listen up when enduring words and notions slip into the arena of secular discourse, regardless of calendar dates, whether in moments of holiness or scenes from popular entertainment. Remember their splendid presence in carols and other expressions of “the reason for the season.”

Then, apply your own reason to these thoughts grounded in Bethlehem, ensuring they’re relevant wherever life takes you. Such inspirations, harkening to the Word-Made-Flesh, can elevate our wisdom in 2025 to see that “God is with us.”

We can always listen to the profound lyrics that constitute the Christmas soundtrack.

Recall the amalgam of two precious traits—humility and human dignity—miraculously shared by God and humanity:

Mild He lays His glory by

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of earth, / Born to give them second birth.

—Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Catch the intimations of spiritual warfare against evil into which Christ entered, literally fleshing out our potential for goodness:

No more let sin and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found.

—Joy to the World

Honor the simple shepherds whose grassroots wisdom made them responsive to the mystery they couldn’t grasp, as well as the Magi stargazers, whose wisdom told them they didn’t know everything:

If I were a wise man, I would do my part,

Yet what I can, I give him,

I give Him my heart.

—In the Bleak Midwinter

Embrace the love song to a child sung as a prayer for eternal salvation:

Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,

And take us to heaven to live with Thee there.

—Away in a Manger

These messages can help us “repeat the sounding joy” during this Jubilee Holy Year dedicated to hope, a virtue appropriate to following Christ as joyful, trusting children.

As novelist Gregg Hurwitz said recently in a Daily Wire Plus symposium on current views of the Gospels, “We’re seeing the world burn down, in some ways, to fundamentals”—with new doubts about man vs. machine and male vs. female. He told public intellectual Jordan Peterson and other panelists, ”When we have that level of definitional collapse, we need to go back to forms of thinking. . . that are different.”

Here are several Christmas-adjacent words that, when bandied about in the public square, will deserve appreciative voices that can unlock their deeper meanings:

Finding Epiphanies Every Day: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year

Those whom we catechize and evangelize will profit from awareness of “epiphanies,” or revelations of truth, whenever they occur. These are occasions when God blesses us with knowledge. This recalls Pope Francis’ 2019 message for the Vatican’s World Communications Day: “Love always communicates.”

The Oxford English Dictionary provided a cautionary note in 2016 when it declared that “post-truth” was its “word of the year.” Communication had already started losing its anchors.

In 2024, we saw how polarization, pitting “my truth” against “your truth,” had infected our national politics.

Post-truth practitioners in politics and the media have dumbed down communication by replacing love with antagonism, cynicism, and skepticism. Young people, in particular, crave trust regarding what is known and what is unknown or mysterious.

Too many elites, rejecting God and religion as the best sources of truth, pursue influence through emotional manipulation and oversimplification. Our faith suffers when people adopt the paradigm of “oppressed vs. oppressor” or “victimized vs. victim.”

We need to assure youths that Truth, found in Jesus, inevitably emerges in honest dialogues and human hearts. Reality wins, so we can have hope as we battle on reality’s side.

When we have “eureka moments” that allow us to change our minds, confess our sins, and experience wonder, it’s a blessing from the Lord. Learning lessons does not threaten our self-esteem; they are proof of God’s high regard for us. He knows that seeing ourselves and our complicated world more clearly will help us brighten our lives and the lives of others.

In 2024, researchers repeated warnings of society’s tendencies toward isolation, depression, addiction, doubling down on misinformation, and retreating into artificial realities. Many are searching for truth and meaning but don’t know where to look.

Let’s encourage deeper conversations and sharing truth in love to spark imagination, reflection, and accountability. Whether or not it’s Christmastime, we can say gratefully, “Well, that was an epiphany!”

Gifts That Keep Giving: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year

A fuller knowledge of our religious traditions will help young people to share hopeful interpretations of what they see in the secular world. Let’s remind everyone that the Church’s treasure of traditions and knowledge is a gift handed down by parents, families, faith leaders, and church members. It’s God’s alternative to predation by the false views and “confirmation bias” in social media.

Some of our best gift exchanges in 2025 will entail what’s free of charge but especially valuable—information, ideas, and identities that reflect authenticity and create possibilities.

Popular culture in 1965 gave us a charming example of gift-giving. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, the title character speaks for so many of today’s isolated souls when he shouts with frustration, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

Charlie Brown’s friend Linus responds to him by reciting the words of Scripture (video from Luke 2:8-14). He repeats the angels’ announcement that Christ the Lord is bringing hope and peace to mankind. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Closing scenes of joy and friendship arise after Charlie’s cry for wisdom, his moment of surrender amid the chaos of a holiday play rehearsal. Linus gave his friend a simple gift of clarity that brought order and solidarity.

Many young folks may never have seen this Charlie Brown special. We should feel free to show the timeless segment from YouTube. We could ask the audience, “Have you ever had a ‘good grief’ moment of frustration like Charlie Brown? Has someone come to you to offer a higher insight, demonstrating the ‘reason for their hope’ as in 1 Peter: 3-15?”

The lesson is that people should be giving gifts all year long, and the most wonderful gifts bestow encouragement through wisdom. Gifts like these honor and boost a person’s own giftedness. They say, “Don’t give up. You can make sense of this situation. God is on your side, present right now.”

Shining a Light in Darkness: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year

Christmas, with its message about a “star of wonder” at the darkest time of year, shone extra brightly on Dec. 25, 2024, because the hopeful feast of Hanukkah, the “festival of lights,” also began that day.

An unlikely popular-culture “parable” speaks the language of “light” in a relevant way for 2025. It encourages us to “look up” from the glare of the screens we watch and from the lower passions we carelessly enable.

The risk that our smartphones and social media convey false enlightenment was captured ingeniously by “The Game,” an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation broadcast in 1991.

This certainly is not a story suited for pre-teens. Teachers will want to make judgments about its content; check it out on Paramount Plus. The plot is about video games and emotional manipulation, whose effects we hope have not already made growing up more toxic.

The Star Trek scriptwriters told the tale of a mysterious, unnamed game the Enterprise crew had brought aboard from an alien planet. A portable optical device, worn with a headband, melded with a person’s mind by piercing the eye with a laser-like beam.

This created an augmented reality in one’s field of vision, akin to today’s high-tech eyeglasses. The solo players used their will to manipulate images in ways that triggered visceral sensations of pleasure. As players kept “scoring,” the game’s images led to stronger feelings and blissful sighs.

Nearly all Enterprise crew members retreated into their own worlds of play and became addicted to what we now might call dopamine hits. They mindlessly cooperated with an alien plot to take over Starfleet. One disciplined, college-age officer saw what was happening and resisted.

“Whatever this thing does, it must feel pretty good,” the young officer opined. His analysis revealed that the device bonded to nerve receptors, degraded higher reasoning, and “initiated a serotonin cascade in the frontal lobe.” In simpler terms, this was prurient “brain rot,” working to weaken a person’s integrity and deaden esprit de corps.

Fortunately, the android Data, immune from the game’s effects, prepared a palm beacon. Pointing the beacon’s bright light at each crew member, the device’s connection was canceled, and the Enterprise was saved.

We can draw approximate parallels between this prescient script and the toll that social media and screen addictions take on too many digital natives today.

The parable’s lesson is clear. It is now a wise, compassionate act for educators to raise concerns about evolving high-tech substitutes for rational thought, to decry “brain rot” where dopamine and self-centeredness distort reality and turn us inward. Our continuing mission must be to point people toward each other, toward the big picture, which includes God. The “light of the world” is a real force.

Waging Peace in 2025: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year

One more bit of Christmas vocabulary is an important takeaway to address the plague of violence that society has crafted for itself. The angels promised that the incarnation of the Prince of Peace would bring hope to those of goodwill.

We were reminded of this in early January when America held a funeral service for former President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100. This fervent evangelical Christian took seriously the Lord’s pathway of love and merciful justice not only during his tumultuous one-term presidency but later as the globe-trotting founder of the Carter Center and a long-time fighter for public health and beneficent democracy.

Most importantly, he said he wanted to be known for championing human dignity and “waging peace.” His vision incorporated many challenging efforts that the world must still undertake, and he embraced America as a place where high aspirations live on.

We can use events like the Carter funeral and the celebration of Martin Luther King Day to tell stories of peace that have their roots in the crib of Jesus.

This is a good year to encourage others through the lives of people like Carter and King, who are model peacemakers and whom the Bible describes as happy and blessed. Echo their call to take action for the sake of peace, becoming beacons of the humble child who was born for healing, sacrifice, and Resurrection.

The Word was made flesh, and so the words of Christmas are inherently meaningful. Let’s allow the message to resound throughout 2025. It has a power that must not be thrown away with a holiday’s unwrapped boxes.

The Word Made Flesh: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive All Year

The work of wisdom involves telling whole stories from beginning to end, making them tangible for all time. Our culture needs to imbibe God’s important lessons repeatedly, but many don’t know all the words. We must teach young people that words matter in every situation and that life’s story is about finding and sustaining hope.

Ongoing vocabulary rehearsals will benefit today’s distracted society. When we revisit the words of Christmas and hear them echo at unexpected times, they have the potential to evoke experiences of joy.

These flow naturally from the Nativity and are just the start of the hopeful story of “God with us.” Its message is a gift that will keep on giving in every life, every day of 2025, and beyond.

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Bill Schmitt

Bill Schmitt is a journalist, educator, and marketing communications specialist who has been an adjunct professor of English and media at several schools, most recently Holy Cross College in Notre Dame, IN. He served on the communications staff of the University of Notre Dame from 2003 to 2017, managing many projects and joining in a wide range of multimedia, interdisciplinary collaborations. Since then, his freelance work has included feature-writing, editing, podcasting, and blogging, with much of his work centered on the Catholic faith. Bill holds a BA from Fordham University and an MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Find his work at billschmitt.substack.com, OnWord.net, and billschmitt-onword on Linked-In.

Published in the blog of the Magis Center, Garden Grove, CA, led by Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ

Posted in Education, Prayer, Spirit of communication, Words | Leave a comment

A Personal Look at ‘Millennial’ Saint-to-be Carlo Acutis

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Bill Schmitt

By William Schmitt, Special to The Evangelist

Published Feb. 6, 2025

Fr. Anthony Sorgie, Fr. Robert Hohenstein, Fr. Tom Morrette (pastor of Our Lady of Victory Parish), with relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis

A parish event in Troy is set to preview a saintly story that soon will receive worldwide attention as the Catholic Church honors a teenager’s holiness.

Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 at the age of 15, will be canonized this spring as the first saint of the “millennial” generation.

On Feb. 12, Our Lady of Victory Church in Troy will host a special gathering to get to know this millennial better.

It will feature a speaker who welcomed Blessed Carlo’s mother during her visit to the United States last year. Father Anthony Sorgie will convey some of the inspiring personal stories she shared with him.

Father Sorgie, pastor of Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Our Lady Parish in Tuckahoe, N.Y., will also display a first-class relic which the visitor from Italy gifted to American Catholics.

The first-class designation refers to a fragment of the physical remains of a beatified or canonized person. Authenticated relics of saints are venerated — used to praise God through that holy person. Blessed Carlo will be proclaimed a saint on April 27.

Father Sorgie, a popular lecturer and former seminary professor, benefited from his knowledge of the Italian language and culture in learning from Antonia Salzano Acutis, who raised her son in Milan.

He died of leukemia and was beatified by the Church in 2020.

“It’s not often that you can meet and hear from the mother of a soon-to-be-canonized saint,” said Father Thomas Morrette, pastor of the Catholic Community of Our Lady of Victory in Troy and Our Lady of the Snow Mission in Grafton.

The life experience of Antonia Acutis, which will be described during the Feb. 12 event, beginning at 7 p.m., “speaks to many today,” Father Morrette said. “She was a non-practicing Catholic whose son’s interest in the faith brought her back to the faith.”

The story of Blessed Carlo also includes his fervent compassion for others, special devotion to the Holy Eucharist and an intimate relationship with Jesus, all combined in a typical teenager’s life.

He has already inspired countless people internationally, and Antonia Acutis came to the U.S. to spread the word about him. He has been called “God’s Influencer,” using a term for current-day creators of digital content reaching out to audiences via computer.

Alongside his interests in soccer and video games, Blessed Carlo became skilled in web design, even building an extensive website with his research on Eucharistic miracles around the world. The site has been translated into multiple languages.

Father Morrette said his plan to hold an event honoring the boy is largely based on the youth’s love for the Eucharist — a force for evangelization, especially to upcoming generations.

Antonia wrote a book, “My Son Carlo,” recalling that he made an effort to attend Mass every day and to participate frequently in Eucharistic Adoration.

The book quoted Carlo saying, “I let God observe me, to dig deep inside me, to form my soul, to mold it.” The boy continued, “He is truly present, not an invention. He’s there. And if everyone could realize that, how they would run to it! If everyone believed in this truth, how their lives would change for the better!”

Blessed Carlo is also known as the “first millennial saint,” based on a term sociologists apply to people born between 1981 and 1996. (The birth years 1997-2012 have been grouped as “Generation Z,” and some call those born after 2012 “Gen Alpha.”)

His canonization in St. Peter’s Square will cap off the Vatican’s “Jubilee for Teenagers,” scheduled April 25-27.

This is one of the highlights expected to bring throngs of pilgrims to Rome in 2025, celebrating the Church’s Jubilee Holy Year and its theme of hope.

Late in July, the Vatican’s “Jubilee for Youth” is scheduled to include further outreach across the generations — the canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1925 at the age of 24.

The preview event at Our Lady of Victory Church, at 7 p.m. on Feb. 12, is open to the public.

Published by The Evangelist, newspaper and online content from the Diocese of Albany, NY

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