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

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

#201

Post by aarroyoc »

aubanel wrote: post #167
stratocumulus0 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a bit harsh! I go to mass every Sunday (in France) and rarely have political stuff. When there, it's most often about abortion or euthanasia (of course in a pro-life (or anti-choice) direction, "you shall not kill") But dull, empty homilies are (alas) very frequent.

The last time I attended a mass (Spain) it was about some people in the village that were not helping the church enough (with an activity they had to do but also I think there was some money involved) but it was a bit cryptic, so only the ones that were directed the message to could fully understand it.

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

#202

Post by graemep »

szszrk wrote: post #187
graemep wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere other than Germany where than happens?

In Germany it's not really true. AFAIK you pay those taxes only if you are registered follower of 3 main religions. You literally can opt out, they are a counter example. Poland is the one I experience it. Church is funded in multiple ways. At least 3 billion PLN a year from concordat deal from 90's. Priests have pensions and annuities. Churches pay no taxes on (heating) fuels. Schools pay for Religious Education cla…

I think tax breaks are different from direct funding, the same for payment for specific services at a reasonable price. For example the UK exempts virtually all religious bodies from tax, and its on the same basis as a huge range of things (e.g. amateur sports, equality and diversity, community facilities...). I would not consider that state mandated payment for services.

I do not know enough about the concordat or how Polish pensions work to comment on those. I would be interested but there does not seem to be a lot of information online (e.g. the wikipedia article is a stub)

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

#203

Post by sigmoid10 »

stratocumulus0 wrote: post #183
aubanel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit harsh! I go to mass every Sunday (in France) and rarely have political stuff. When there, it's most often about abortion or euthanasia (of course in a pro-life (or anti-choice) direction, "you shall not kill") But dull, empty homilies are (alas) very frequent.

Catholicism is different in every country, I would imagine that a church in a secular place such as France would contain itself a bit, because there's no societal expectation that anyone should follow its religion, and therefore the priests have to put in effort into making people stay. In Poland, where I grew up, the Church still holds a lot of power and prestige, and priests consider themselves to have authority ov…

It also varies inside countries. Some priests are simply more demure than others. The church as an institution certainly prefers the more radical conservatives as you go higher up the chain, but many low level employees that still talk to commoners do realize that these views are going to put off more people than they attract in developed countries. So in the long term they will only be left with a bunch of crazy radicalists and a silent majority that wants absolutely nothing to do with them.

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

#205

Post by embedding-shape »

charcircuit wrote: post #95
mindwok wrote: post #84

LLMs are amazing, I love them, but he is right. When it comes to interacting with your fellow humans, using AI just sucks the point and meaning out of life. If we wanted to know what Claude thought, we’d ask him. Don’t be a mouthpiece for AI.

>If we wanted to know what Claude thought, we’d ask him. You would be surprised how many people don't do this. It's very common for people to ask others questions that could be easily googled or clauded.

> It's very common for people to ask others questions that could be easily googled or clauded.

I'll admit I do this, asking people questions that could be answered by Google, and sometimes even if I know the answer myself, sometimes to make conversation, sometimes because I want to hear the person's perspective on it.

If I'd never ask questions I could find the answers to myself in some other way, I think I'd never ask any person any question, which sounds kind of boring.

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

#206

Post by junaru »

amelius wrote: post #171

The same pope who declared an influencer boy a saint? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/pope-leo-xiv-d... Let's be honest, the entire concept depends on advertising like nothing else.

> London-born Italian, who died in 2006, built websites to spread Catholic teaching and is credited with two miracles

In 2006.

I'll be honest calling him an "influencer" is disgrace and comparing the works of dying kid with leukaemia to ai is even more so.

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

#207

Post by falcor84 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #182
falcor84 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the money come from? Religious services are generally funded by donations, and these donations are usually done in the open, whereby (from what I saw) regularly attending and not donating the expected amount would put you in a socially uncomfortable situation.

The definition of a donation is that you don't have to give it. If you have to pay then it's either a purchase or a tax. But you know this of course.

I do know that, but I also know how donations can become an expectation.

Also, it's worth noting in the context of this thread, that people can use AI inference for free on many services, with payment only need for higher usage, and even then, if you don't care about expectations or inconvenience, it's trivial to abuse the free tier.

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

#208

Post by graemep »

falcor84 wrote: post #166
graemep wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere other than Germany where than happens?

If we look outside Christianity, what comes to mind is reading about the ultra-orthodox in Israel, and obviously about Iran.

I was thinking of Christianity as I was responding to a comment that used the word "church".

However, besides that, subsidies from general taxation are not the same as payments for a service received (i.e. going back to it being a "subscription service"), whereas something like the German system where the payment is linked to entitlement to services (if other comments here are accurate) can be reasonably characterised as a subscription service.

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

#209

Post by 1718627440 »

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…

> the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long ago.

There actually are, but they are famous homilies from famous Church Fathers rather then explicitly produced to be standard homilies.

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