A friend recently told me of a Sunday Mass he attended in another city. “The priest was prepared,” he said. “He read his homily. It was well organized and seemed to have accurate information. But I felt that it was A.I. generated.” 

I am not sure what led my friend to that conclusion—probably some form of intuition or instinct. But his observation sparked my interest. 

A lot of “tech stuff” passes me by. I often say that I am too old for it. After all, I am almost 82. Still, the notion of A.I. and what it can and cannot do has fascinated me. So I tried a little intellectually narcissistic A.I. experiment. 

Over the past few years, I have written and published several articles on synodality. I got on ChatGPT and asked it: “What does Louis J. Cameli have to say about synodality?” In about a minute, I received a three-page report about my work. It was extraordinary, and did a better job at accurately summarizing my own work than I could have done. No hallucinations, no mixups and plenty of clarity. 

So, then, what about my friend sitting through what he thought was an A.I.-generated homily? Couldn’t it have been as good and accurate as my synodality report from ChatGPT? 

Pope Leo does not think so—and not just in his new encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.” At the beginning of Lent this past year, Pope Leo met with the priests of Rome and told them to resist the temptation to prepare homilies with A.I. A true homily, he indicated, is about sharing faith, and A.I. cannot share faith. 

That is certainly correct, but in my estimation, his assessment needs more development. I would also add that the questions and concerns are not just about ordained ministers preaching homilies. There is a much wider range of proclamation that belongs to those who engage in catechesis, spiritual formation and evangelization more generally. It is a concern that belongs to the whole church.

We need to look at the ways we communicate the Gospel to a world deeply in need of it. At its heart, that communication is the sharing of Jesus Christ, the Word. As we sort through the many and sometimes bewildering ways and means of communication in our technological age, I hold to the necessary and irreplaceable human mediation needed to proclaim the word. Why is this so?

This communication, ultimately, is not a message that shares only information, although that has its place. In the end, this communication is the sharing of a person, the person of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, this communication moves from a believing person who proclaims it to a believing person who receives it. It is a personal process from start to finish. 

But there is more that we can draw from our tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas used an expression that his Dominican order adopted as a motto. (The Second Vatican Council used the same expression to describe preaching.) It is “contemplata aliis tradere,” roughly translated as “to hand on to others what we ourselves have contemplated.” It is a thoroughly personal process. We find an echo of this kind of personal communication in St. Paul when he writes to the Corinthian community about both the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23) and the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3): “for I handed on [paradosis] to you what I myself received.”

The same dynamic of contemplata aliis tradere also animates the beginning of the First Letter of John:

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 Jn 1:1-3).

These words clearly demonstrate the movement from a multifaceted personal experience to proclamation. 

If we continue to explore the necessary personal element that accompanies the proclamation of the word, another dimension becomes evident. This personal element is not just generically personal. In fact, it is so deeply personal that it is intimate. What is proclaimed comes from the deepest realms of the one who proclaims, and it reaches out to the deepest parts of those who receive the word, summoning them to a full conversion of mind, heart and way of life. The one who proclaims does so intimately with self-disclosure, vulnerability and a commitment to connect deeply with others.

Although it is not often seen this way, when a priest preaches to his people, he engages in an act of intimacy. To their surprise and maybe to their dismay, I have reminded groups of priests that this is the reality. When we preach, we open ourselves and reveal ourselves at a deep level. Our people may not be able to articulate or to explicitly identify the inner life of their priests. Still, at least intuitively, they know if we really believe what we are saying, if passion for the Gospel truly takes hold of our heart or not. This is what it means to say that preaching or proclamation of the word is an act of intimacy.

Then there is an added twist. Intimacy suggests something private, quiet and, certainly, removed from public view. In proclamation, however, that is not the case. The word of God is destined to go out to the whole world. So, paradoxically, the proclamation of that word is both intimate and public in the widest range possible. Proclaiming God’s word means living this paradox. It is, moreover, a paradox that A.I. cannot sustain.

What does all this mean practically and pastorally for our proclamation of God’s word in a digital age that includes A.I. and a wide array of platforms? Remember that proclamation is not limited to ordained preachers but is something taken up by parents, teachers, catechists and lay evangelizers. What does this mean for all of them?

At a minimum, I believe it means that as God’s church, we must continuously assess whatever means we use to proclaim the word and determine its real capacity to carry the personal, the intimate and the public dimensions of that proclamation. None of this is reducible to sharing data or information, the stock in trade of A.I. and various forms of digital manipulation. It also means that we continuously remind the bearers of the word that A.I. can never replace their own transformed heart in proclaiming the word.