Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies • Hacker News Board

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#151

Post by intellectronica » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:51 AM UTC

tomhow wrote: post #128

intellectronica wrote: post #4

[flagged]

This is exactly the type of comment we're trying to avoid on HN. Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It…

I'll accept your perspective and try to learn from it.

However I think that the comment is relevant, and you can see from the replies gathered before it was flagged that it did spark a relevant discussion.

Reminding that the speaker is a spiritual leader and not an authority on the use of technology is not a sneer and and not an ideological statement. In any context other than religion, which I understand is sensitive, a statement of that sort would be considered a contribution to the discussion, not an ideological battle. And that's precisely the problem - censoring a discussion about the relevance of religion to the matter is the ideological act.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#152

Post by stratocumulus0 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:52 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #48

No priest will feed sufficient context about their community into the context window - even if they were skilled enough to do so, unless the model was locally hosted, doing so would be a violation of their vows of silence. Good homilies are written with the particular community in mind. If it were more effective to write a homily for a generic public, the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long a…

I was raised Catholic and even though the last time I've been to a church could have been in 2019, I don't remember any priest who wouldn't just gloss over the religious content for the day (copied from an online source), itching to share his politics and the most recent ragebait he's got from Facebook at the end.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#153

Post by gverrilla » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

How long until the church publishes their official SOUL.md?

create-homily skill?

jesus mcp?

/request-transfer-to-Servants-of-the-Paraclete

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#154

Post by soderfoo » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:55 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #132

solatic wrote: post #48

No priest will feed sufficient context about their community into the context window - even if they were skilled enough to do so, unless the model was locally hosted, doing so would be a violation of their vows of silence. Good homilies are written with the particular community in mind. If it were more effective to write a homily for a generic public, the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long a…

You have a lot of faith in the qualities of average priests.

To be fair, faith is the crux of Catholicism.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#155

Post by Tade0 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

allovertheworld wrote: post #41

The mind virus will not stop spreading, making corporations do your critical thinking is not a good path. People will become dependent on a subscription service for everyday life.

Yesterday I when I was googling something it hit me: I wouldn't know how to find anything without a search engine.

We're already reliant on big tech regarding what information is presented to us and LLMs are just the next step in that direction.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#156

Post by tokenless » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

rgblambda wrote: post #109

Not defending the use of AI, but plenty of people who grew up going to Mass on Sunday know that priests often recycle old homilies, deliver lazily written homilies or homilies that were clearly pulled from the internet, or just skip them if they couldn't think of anything that week or are running late for something. Absolute worst was when an intelligent priest put in incredible effort, only for it to go over the hea…

Yokels! lol

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#157

Post by tomhow » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

intellectronica wrote: post #151

tomhow wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the type of comment we're trying to avoid on HN. Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It…

I'll accept your perspective and try to learn from it. However I think that the comment is relevant, and you can see from the replies gathered before it was flagged that it did spark a relevant discussion. Reminding that the speaker is a spiritual leader and not an authority on the use of technology is not a sneer and and not an ideological statement. In any context other than religion, which I understand is sensitiv…

The phrase “supernatural woowoo” is clearly against the guidelines I cited, as is age-old cynicism about the validity of religion or intellectual merits of anyone who believes in it. We're here for intellectual curiosity, not the same old predictable thing.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#158

Post by tokenless » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

Betelbuddy wrote: post #82

The Pope will change his mind with Claude Opus 5.2

If the Pope doesn't start spending every waking minute in a CC terminal he will be left behind and lose his job. /s

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#159

Post by accidentallfact » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #96

vasco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vatican has really smart people in there, regardless of how you feel about the whole thing. I recommend anyone interested in the topic to give a read to: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... "ANTIQUA ET NOVA Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence" I was quite impressed at how much they "get it".

I read the other day that the Roman Empire never fell. Its emperor is the Pope. Which is an exaggeration, but makes you thinking. This institution still has a ton of power.

It fell, (quite violently, in fact) in the third century. The rest was pretense.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#160

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

h33t-l4x0r wrote: post #100

solatic wrote: post #48

No priest will feed sufficient context about their community into the context window - even if they were skilled enough to do so, unless the model was locally hosted, doing so would be a violation of their vows of silence. Good homilies are written with the particular community in mind. If it were more effective to write a homily for a generic public, the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long a…

Well maybe they just need to start recording confessionals. Just imagine what Gemini 3.1 could do with 1M tokens of that stuff.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been three minutes since I shit posted on HN, and my greentext stories are famous on 4chan. Also, after lunch today I send 300 emails to Jeffrey Epstein using my work email and signed with my real name. What a great guy!