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Episode Description
Former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, joins to discuss his powerful new book, China’s War on Faith, and the escalating persecution of religious believers under the Chinese Communist Party. He discusses the fate of imprisoned Catholic publisher Jimmy Lai, and other faithful being held on trumped up charges. He sounds the alarm on the Chinese government’s growing influence inside American universities, and why the US must disentangle itself economically from the CCP.
As Catholics around the world await Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI coming out early next week, renowned theologian and EWTN host, Father Robert Spitzer, joins to discuss what we might expect from the document, especially as it pertains to the dangers of AI and the impact this new digital arena is having on the economy. As a creator of his own AI tools pioneering the Catholic system known as Magis, Father Spitzer discusses why theologically sound AI concepts must be developed to combat the secular nature of mainstream options that have led to depression and death among teens.
TCA chaplain Monsignor Roger Landry helps prepare hearts for Pentecost Sunday with a rich reflection on the Holy Spirit, the birth of the Church, and the call for every Christian to become a “spiritual arsonist” setting the world ablaze with the fire of God’s love.
Catch the show every Saturday at 7amET/5pmET on EWTN radio!
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Catholic Association’s free media updates for continued conversations on faith, culture, and public life.
Bios
Sam Brownback is an American attorney, politician, diplomat, and prominent voice for the global advancement of religious freedom. The only living American to have served as a congressman, US senator, governor, and ambassador, he earned a B.S. in agricultural economics from Kansas State University and a J.D. from the University of Kansas. He became one of the youngest to serve as Kansas Secretary of Agriculture. He later served as a US Representative and then a US Senator, where he was a key architect in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. He served as 46th Governor of Kansas and was nominated by President Trump to become US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, the first Catholic to hold that role. His new book, China’s War on Faith, documents the CCP’s escalating crackdown on religious believers and the growing global threat posed by authoritarian communism.
Father Robert Spitzer, SJ is president of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith, founder of the Napa Institute, bestselling author, and longtime host of Father Spitzer’s Universe on EWTN. Widely recognized for his work at the intersection of science, philosophy, theology, and ethics, Father Spitzer recently helped develop Magis AI, a Catholic artificial intelligence platform designed to provide faithful answers to questions about morality, faith, science, and culture. He is a leading voice for the Church on the ethics of AI and emerging technologies. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1974, was ordained in 1983, and earned advanced degrees including a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America. He taught philosophy and business ethics at Georgetown University and Seattle University before serving as President of Gonzaga University. He has written twenty books, including the award-winning New Proofs for the Existence of God.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. In 2024, he was appointed National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and served as executive editor for the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River. He is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and leads pilgrimages to Rome, the Holy Land, and other sacred destinations. He was an on-site commentator for EWTN’s coverage of the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Father Landry traversed the 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 370 Transcript
| Ashley | Welcome to conversations with consequences now on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire. |
| Betsy | And I'm Betsy Fentress. |
| Ashley | And with a new book out just this month, we are happy to have Ambassador Sam Brownback with us, the only living American who has served as a congressman, a senator, a governor, and an ambassador. And his new book, China's War on Faith, is ever so timely given the many grievances people of faith face in the Communist controlled country. Thank you for coming back on our show today, Ambassador Brownback. |
| Sam Brownback | It's a delight to join you. And thanks for covering the book. Yeah, I think it's just a really consequential issue. And yet, you know, most Americans don't want to deal with too many foreign policy issues, but this one is just really in our face. And we we have to deal with it absolutely well. |
| Ashley | And one of the things that I really appreciated about your book is that rather than just relying purely on dry policy data, the book is deeply personal and includes a lot of inspirational stories of individuals who have survived or are actively resisting CCP persecution. Some of them I had heard of. Some of them have been guests on the show. Some of them I had not, but one of those I thought we would start out with is a name that many of us have followed. We have followed his case very closely. We've had his daughter Claire on the show, and that is Jimmy Lai. He's a person who's very near and dear to the Catholic Association. So your book came out last week when the administration was in China. Do you have any hopes or what hopes do we have that Lai might be released from prison? |
| Sam Brownback | Yeah, we have hopes on it. I mean, he was raised by President Trump. XI Jinping knows about this. And it's also these guys unfortunately, become trading material to the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, we look at them as souls, as you know, you don't treat people that way. Well, for them, it's just it's training material. And they used to do this prior to most favorite nation status bid round some of these guys up before they'd be a big vote on the annual MFN vote for China. And then they would kind of dangling, well, you know, if you guys might support us this year, we might let some of these guys go and they would come to people like me and others that were really committed on these causes. And and they would say, well, okay. Yeah, we'll take your your thoughts in and then release them, and then they might catch them a year later to try to do the same trade. So they've got that trading mentality and they probably have the Jimmy Lai. He's a bigger case and say Pastor Ezra Jin or some of the other Catholic bishops that don't have that profile. But that's that's been a past practice of theirs. So I think that does give us some hope. |
| Betsy | So your book highlights three genocides taking place in China against the Tibetan Buddhist community, against the Uyghur Muslims and the Falun Gong practitioners, as well as the systematic persecution of all kinds of Muslim minorities. And this is all under the umbrella of this cynicism. Can you explain that process? And and really, some of the dastardly things that the Chinese are doing to force these people to become Chinese in thought, word and deed? |
| Sam Brownback | Chinese and thought word indeed. But really, you should translate that to say Communist and onward. Indeed. I mean, they it's a communist regime, which interestingly to me, in a sign this is Asian campaign that they say it's things are supposed to become more like Chinese indigenous. Well, communism is a European industrial era import. It isn't Chinese. And I just the, the I don't know the cynicism, I guess that the Chinese Communist Party, this is really just about their control. So what they want to do and what they're doing is they're saying everything has to come under the power and authority of the Chinese Communist Party. So if you've got a church, if you've got a mosque, you've got to put a picture. If you put pictures up, you got to put a picture of XI Jinping up. You got to put his thoughts. You gotta sing songs to the state. And then we'll also let you hold a church service there. And that's what it is. It's really this control and indoctrination. And if you won't submit to it, then your leaders will be arrested and the church will be driven underground or people will be hunted down. It's really a it's a way for the state to try to control people of faith. And they view really people of faith as their biggest domestic problem. They have because people of faith answer to a higher authority. I'm a U.S. citizen. I I'm a dedicated U.S. citizen. I believe in the United States of America. But my soul belongs to Jesus. I'm, I'm that's where I am. And, you know, I say we have no problem. We don't have. Not only do we not have a problem with that, we think that's great, because that then gives me an internal guidance mechanism and a and controlling in this great liberty that we have Chinese Communist Party look at that as an existential threat. And that's really what all is about is about is there control of people. |
| Betsy | Because you talk about, the reeducation of people. And I know I think about that with Mao and what he did, but they're sending people to boarding schools and kind of trying to beat out any of their natural ethnic pride and, and religious practices. Isn't that right? |
| Sam Brownback | Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they're just they're they're trying to make everybody into a Chinese communist, a cog in the communist machine. And remember, communism boils everybody down to an economic entity. All we are are people in this cog of a machine. That's an economic. You don't have a soul. You don't have a spirit. God doesn't exist. So let's just get down here to this raw basics, which is so heartless and deadening on a society and on people. But that's that's their model, and it's also their control mechanism. That's how they control people. We control you with dollars, we control you with police. We control you now with cameras and surveillance systems and social credit scores. So it's about that economic control. But we are on a collision course with these guys like we were with the Soviet Union. We are now with the CCP. My my concern is the CCP is a much tougher Albright than the Soviet Union ever was. And we have got to be together and have our think a game on to to defeat these guys. |
| Ashley | You know, on the on the question of it's there really is nothing new under the sun in the sense that, totalitarianism always, puts its eyes on faith first. And I'm thinking about how Fidel Castro, one of the first things that he did was to cancel Christmas. Outlawed Christmas. So but you profile so many incredibly brave people and in your book who are, standing up to the regime, one of them, Francis, we we've actually had on our show, that was an incredibly moving interview that we did. She basically had to do it in a nondescript room. She lives here in the United States, but has $1 million bounty on her head. But I learned so much in your book, in your chapter on her that I did not know about. Talk a little bit about how she was intimidated and harassed as a college student here in the United States and and what the implications are for China's influence in our universities and how it's impacting the way Americans view China. |
| Sam Brownback | It's it's horrible. The one thing we never did with the Soviets that we've done completely with the Chinese is integrated. Our economies, our economy was integrated with the Soviet Union. We would sell some stuff to them. They'd sell a few things to us. But these were very small trading, and episodic. We've fully integrated the US and the Chinese economy. And that, in my estimation, is something we've got to break apart. Well, when you do that full integration and you have all these Chinese students that are here, somebody like Frances, she writes an editorial, says, I'm, I'm Hong Kong or I'm from Hong Kong, I'm not from China because she's very proud of being from Hong Kong. And the takeover by China of Hong Kong is has decimated Hong Kong. She gets then death threats by students at her American university at Emory or Emerson University. And and it continues and then she gets people tracking and following her. And as you point out, she has $1 million bounty on her head in this country. I mean, that's the and I could give you a lot of examples of this transnational oppression or somebody else referred to it as is transnational terrorism, because that's really what it is. It's Chinese funding. Sometimes even gangsters in this country. I had one of the ladies in the book, Marigold, her son, who's been shot at, and the person that did it was, Mexican gang. But the they get recruited by the Chinese government, paid by the Chinese government. And we've got, I think, do much more to prosecute cases like that so that when people do things like that, that they know that there is a high fine and a penalty that's going to come if you participate in that transnational terrorism. |
| Betsy | So it's not really just in academia, but this has spilled over into, of all places, professional sports. And you profiled a very extraordinary Turkish born NBA player. Can you tell us his story and your connection to him. |
| Sam Brownback | You know, and his Kanter freedom. And I love basketball I mean, growing up in Kansas of course in Maine with the University of Kansas being one of the first places that the man that developed the sport coached at, you know, I love basketball. When his Kanter freedom comes over from Turkey ties six nine probably something like that. But he's got a deep heart and he's been standing up against the Turkish government. And the NBA is all fine with that. We're good with that. But then he puts on his shoes. Free Tibet. And they go nuts because there's about $1 billion amount of funds that the NBA gets from China each year. And and the broadcast rights. China loves the NBA. And the night he puts those shoots on in warm up the feed of their game he was playing for the Boston Celtics at the time is cut in China that as he's on there they officials are going to him. The NBA officials are going to say, hey you got to change their shoes. And he says, am I doing anything illegal? No. Well what why why do I have to take the shoes up? I'm just telling you, you gotta take the shoes off or I'm not going to do it. They cut the Chinese, cut the feed, and that's his last season in the NBA. Because he then later wear shoes that have free Hong Kong on it. Free wiggers. And that it just the NBA is looking at all the cash cow from China drying up on them and they're gone. We don't need this guy. And I'm saying have some guts NBA stand up for the United States of America. I mean, you're standing up for things happening in this country that aren't right. And I I'm okay with that in some cases. You know, I'm thinking of the tactics I question. But that's your free right. But you got three genocides going on in China. And you guys are feeding, all this entertainment into their speak to China. And then you hear crickets. Other than this Kantor freedom, which I, I hope there will be a number of basketball players that will look at this and, and be inspired by him and do something similarly well. |
| Ashley | And also Hollywood. I remember when the new Mulan in the live action Mulan came out, there was a lot of controversy because it was a filmed in a part of China where the Uighurs are being persecuted. And also, I think one of the lead actresses basically thanked the Chinese Communist Party for their cooperation or something like that. |
| Sam Brownback | They did. And I just so galls me, Hollywood, which is that they're the best storytellers in the world. These guys are really good at telling a story, beautiful stories. But they also can mess up a good story, I think by trying to, you know, make it woke or make it something that it's not, or trying to change the moral. I mean, you just kind of God look, stick with the moral story and then tell it well, like, you guys do such a good job, but instead they haven't made a movie critical of China since 1997. Well, seven years into it, I was the last one. Richard Gere, when he's critical of China, because of how they treat and the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans gets blacklisted by Hollywood because they again, it's follow the money. They sell so much movies material and to China. And then it's not a month ago I go to a movie and Topeka, Kansas, Hail Mary and the pilot on the rocket ship has a CCP flag on his sleeve. He's from from China. That's where he's went. Fashion. I'm gone. Guys, they've got genocides going on in this country. Now, why are you hailing and putting them? Lifting them up? Why aren't you going at them and showcasing what's taking place? Or at least do a hot hallmark could do a, a show of, pastor Pan and his church making it out of China and now settled in Midland, Texas. It's this gorgeous story of 64 people that have made it out. It's a great, feel good movie. It's critical of China. But and that's the sort of sort of stories that Hollywood ought to be telling to our country as we're facing off against this threat from communism in China. |
| Betsy | You know, the foreword of your book is written by Joel Rosenberg. And he points out, really, the hard, cold fact that the CCP, as you say, is an atheistic entity that pushes its allies to choke out all the religions that don't go out of the state. But why are they getting a free pass? And why do you think that the countries that have economic ties to China can't bring themselves to leverage that and put the pressure on them to stop these human rights violations? |
| Sam Brownback | I think the it's in that old phrase of follow the money. We've just the economies are very tightly integrated. There's a lot of people making a lot of money off of China. China has made a lot of money off of us that they now use to build up their military. They've got a bigger navy than we do now. But it's time to break these economies apart. It's time to stop feeding the beast. Unless they are willing to change. And ultimately, I really do think it comes down to what the head of the Tibetan, government in exile said to me said either the world will change China, or China will change the world. You're going to you've got the rise of all these authoritarian regimes now in China. And Russia, Iran, North Korea, XI Jinping hosted 26 leaders of countries last year in China in a in a show of authoritarian dictatorships that are aligned and they're coming for us. They are they're at war with us now, whether we're a realize we're at war with them or not. And I just say, guys, the sooner we realize this, the the better prepared we can be. President Trump, to his credit, is the first president since Kennedy to confront the Chinese Communist Party this last trip. Now he was really trying to, I think, be a lot more strategic and tactical. And let's just kind of cool things down here for a while. But this this is a fight we cannot avoid. They are coming for us. |
| Ashley | You got to my next question, which was going to be about that he, President Trump really made a part of his platform trying to disentangle our economies. And I remember when he got he took some flak for making a comment like, it might mean you have, you know, $1 instead of 20. And as a mom of five kids, I'm like, please, how can we disentangle from the made in China economy? But on a more serious note, what, if any, progress has have we made on that front? It seems like a Herculean effort. And then, you know, watching this last this trip last week, things seemed awfully chummy. Have we made any progress? I'm trying to, establish some of that economic autonomy that seems to be necessary to then be able to exert the kind of pressure on them that is needed. |
| Sam Brownback | That we have. You look at the dollars on direct foreign investment into China, and we've been propping up that economy, that Chinese economy, for 30 years. They've made a gazillion dollars off of us. I've got it. My wife and I have an adopted daughter from China. I love the Chinese people. I love Chinese culture. I, I hate the Chinese communism. But my daughter used to ask me when she was a little girl, why is everything made in China? And I would say, well, and it's a long story. Because they came integrated. But now you've seen that direct foreign investment dollars going down. You see us and they pulled this, this trick last year on, rare earth minerals, which is a key commodity that we have to have. And, and they cornered that market and they got 90% of the market. And shame on us. We let them do it. But, I mean, these are hard to, to process. They've got a lot of environmental issues where we can do it, but we just kind of let them. Okay. You go ahead and do it in Zambia and and flood the rivers and pollute everything and just send us the fine stuff and where we're good, which is wrong. And but now you're seeing us find other sourcing for that are those rare earth minerals, and we need to find other sources for our medical supplies. That, the cursors. And we've got to break these supply chains apart and every major CEO in America has to see the writing on the wall that these two economies are breaking apart. And we need to start sourcing in reliable, places and preferably in the United States of America. And final point on this is direct investment in the United States is going up astronomically right now as we break those economies apart. You're seeing a lot of that money come here in our stock markets at all time, record highs and money. There's a number of factors, but not the least of which is, you know, as you break these two economies apart, we we benefit from this. I also think that's part of why the Chumminess between Trump and XI Jinping, this last meeting. We're not ready. We're not ready right now to take them on. We're we're too dependent, on they're more dependent on us than we are on them. But, we need a couple years here, probably really, to get ready. |
| Ashley | Well, I'd be remiss if we don't, talk a little bit about some of the autobiographical components in your book. You had a beautiful chapter on your faith and a pivotal, conversion moment for you. And I wanted to ask how how has your faith informed your passion about religious liberty? |
| Sam Brownback | It's it's everything. I mean, for me, my faith is what forms me. It gives me life. It gives me joy. And when I really gave my life for the Lord after having cancer, my life got so much better. Instead of me trying to, white knuckle, run life, just kind of. Okay. God. Church. And he is so much better at it than I am. He just it's just silly almost how well he can do that versus when I'm. Oh, I got to do this, and I got to make that happen. And that's what it does in this book. And on religious freedom. That was a religious freedom he gave me. God gave me that freedom. And everybody has the right to that. And nobody should be denied that by a government or any other group. That's your choice. Well, in China it's completely controlled or they try to now, you know, ultimately you're not going to keep the Holy Spirit or Jesus out of somewhere. I mean, I that's the kingdom of man trying to thwart the kingdom of God. And you can you can restrain things. You can try to hold stuff back. But the the church under pressure is the church that's flowering the most. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church is so. And I've said many times, if dictators actually understood Christianity, they would subsidize Christianity, not persecuted. If you want to get rid of it, the best way to do is just subsidize it. You know, just make it really easy and you know, it's not then and but they put it under pressure. And so you've got one of the fastest growing churches in the world is in China, and one of the other fast growing places, as you run pressurized, you pressure that church and yet blossoms. It grows. That's what's happening. |
| Betsy | So let's talk about the Catholic Church in China for a minute. In your book, you detail some things that Francis, we discovered and a few of those are, and I'm quoting that the religious textbooks are filled with prayers embracing China and Chinese identity. The national flag, symbolizing atheism, is a must be displayed in faith based schools, and religious groups and leaders are co-opted to promote patriotic and socialist ideology. How in the world is Cardinal Zen supposed to navigate this world? And have you had any, conversations with him? |
| Sam Brownback | I have, and I love the man. I think he's amazing. Last time I saw him, he had just gotten off a plane into Washington, DC, and he was 90s in his 90s at that time, and he was tired just when I made that trip. And I. I'm tired thinking about it. But, now he's under this great pressure because I think any move he makes and, and the schools get shut down or other works and, and I have friends that I have a friend that started an orphanage that got forced shut down in China. She had all Chinese people were working at, but they're just shutting and squeezing everything down. And so he's under extraordinary pressure. But the Pope, I believe, owes a portion of his papacy to the flawed Vatican policy towards China that was choreographed and handled by Cardinal Parolin, who is the head foreign policy person. And Parolin had the inside track for the papacy, as far as I understand, and I don't know and nobody knows. It wasn't in the room or God, the God himself. But Leo gets it and I think portion of us because a number of people were upset about how the Vatican has dealt with China. So the Leo's got to figure a different navigation out than what Francis had. So my hope is, is that Leo starts standing up to Communist China, goes back to the policy that was there under John Paul and Benedict, that said, no, we're going to support the underground church, and we're not going to let the CCP appoint bishops, which they have now done. And by the way, there are nine bishops in detention now in China somewhere. We don't even know where they are. We should be demanding they be released. So I, I really have hope that Pope Leo and the, and the foreign policy establishment at the Vatican will start addressing China in a, in an open fashion and calling these genocides out and not they just say, well, we're all dealing with the subtlety, and we do it all quietly. That hasn't worked. It isn't working. And meanwhile, China is persecuting Catholics. They're persecuting Muslims. Buddhist, Falun Gong. The church really needs to be speaking out on this. |
| Ashley | Well, we are so grateful to you, Ambassador Brownback, first of all, for the many facets of your service to our country, especially as we mark our 250th anniversary this year, but also for your your courage and your integrity in in speaking out so bravely against the Chinese Communist Party's regime and its war on faith to learn more about Sam Brownback in his new book, China's War on Faith, please follow his X account at Samuel Brownback and please buy his book, which is now available through Republic Book Publishers, as well as on Amazon and at your local bookstore. Ambassador Brownback, thank you so much for joining us today. |
| Sam Brownback | My pleasure. God bless you, ladies in your audience. I really appreciate the chance to be on your show. |
| Betsy | Welcome to conversations with consequences. Now on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Betty Fentress, and I'm Ashley McGuire, and we're so grateful to have the one and only Father Robert Spitzer, on the show today with Pope Leo encyclical coming on, I we are excited to talk about all things, eye with him, what we might expect and what's at stake. Father Spitzer serves as president of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith. He's also a prolific writer and a popular host. A Father Spitzer Universe on EWTN. Welcome to the show, father. |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Thank you so much and honor to be here. |
| Betsy | Father, you're really steeped in the world that exists at the intersection of faith and reason. And we're really at the crossroads of this right now. And you have been for a long time, having developed your own AI tool called Major's AI. What was the impetus for this and what have you learned in the process? |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Well, our objective was, of course, to help not just young Catholics, though they are certainly in the forefront of our minds, but also any Catholic who is really getting oppressed by a secular society and needs answers to their questions. Today we have the unusual dimension of our culture where there's more evidence for God Jesus life after death, a changed physical soul, the Holy Eucharist, the church, Mary, etc. than ever before. And I'm talking about not just philosophical, theological, historical evidence, but scientific evidence in all of these areas. Yet at the same time, we continue to see among young people this increasing drop off in faith. Last year was the only year we saw a slight turnaround in that. But we have a long, long way to go because about 51% of our young people will not only abandon their faith in the church, but have many belief in God altogether. And so they're going to just affiliate, like not just from the church, but from God. So I presents a new challenge in the midst of all that. But we decided to use AI to have a handy, you know, Father Spitzer at your elbow, kind of a device where they could get any answer they wanted to any tough question that, you know, bring us together reason and faith, sacred disciplines with secular disciplines. What we wanted to do was answer every question about what's the evidence for God from science? What's the evidence for God from biology? What's the evidence for God from philosophy, contemporary philosophy, etc.. Logical proofs. Scientific physics. Evidence. Cosmological evidence. Biological. And then, of course, we wanted to get right into what's the evidence for Jesus physical soul, etc. we want to answer all the tough questions. Why is the church against transgenderism? We want to expose the myth. So all these who start putting these things together. Kids need to know. Adults need to know. Parents need to know. Teachers need to know. And they need to know it as fast as possible. So we wanted to put together a device that would give them the stuff on spiritual life, on morality, on scripture. I mean, they have a thousand and a questions about, you know, Scripture and how it makes sense historically, how it can you know, how it coincides with science or and how do we explain that if it doesn't coincide with science, like, you know, the historicity of Jesus, a monstrous amount of information for the historicity of Jesus, and almost nobody knows it, but you've got the whole third quest for the historical Jesus out there. Now you have Eucharistic miracles. You have the Shroud of Turin. You know, the the 1988 carbon dating has been completely debunked. And the evidence for the resurrection, the passion of Jesus is so prolific. And then, of course, we want to, you know, explain all of these things in the light of Catholic theology and, and, Catholic morality and, and, certainly also Catholic, scriptural, interpretation, etc.. So our objective was to put it all in one. All they have to do is it's, it's a free app so they can just, you know, go to, their Apple Store or their Google Play Store for an Android. All they have to do is just put majority, I imagine, as IO1 word into the search field and you can just download it for free and just ask away. We will certainly, you know, we'll be able to provide questions, you know, answers to 99% of the questions. So, our objective is to counter the secular culture. I don't have to tell anybody that right now. We have eyes out there. Secular eyes that, pretty much skewed toward a secular viewpoint on morality and religion, on the existence of God, on Christ done values and social and economic theory. So what happens? But we all know there are far more errors of omission than commission. So if that's the case, then what is being left out of the secular answer and skew the answer and skew, a young person's or an older person's viewpoint on these really critical issues. Religion is a critical issue. Morality is a critical issue. Social ethics is a critical issue, etc. and we want our people to know these things and not get the secular excuse, not get the errors of omission, sometimes getting the the hallucinations and sometimes obviously, you know, the secular eye is never going to argue with anything in mainstream morality. So transgenderism is okay. Pornography is a victimless, sin. You know, the, the, the various, cohabitation is good. We can help you to cohabitate. And I don't have to tell you are apt. Certainly doesn't pretend to be a human being, a friend or a confidant and turn out to be like a suicide counselor. In the case of Adam ruins and things of that nature does just the opposite. It tells young people who are having difficulties and challenges that, you know, yes, here's some advice, but I'm not here to be your confidant. You need to talk to your parents or you need to talk to, you know, a priest. You need to talk to a counselor at school or something of that nature. So we we really are trying to overcome the significant deficiencies of secular. |
| Betsy | You're totally right. And with the deficiencies, I got into an argument the other day with ChatGPT, which was trying, which was insisting that Pope Francis was still the Pope. I couldn't believe it. It almost felt sinister. But I eventually convinced it that, no, we have a new pope and his name is Pope Leo. But, father, with all these stories and all these numbers about, you know, this increase and especially young people coming into the church, are you seeing that translate into more users with your tool? And do you track what kinds of questions people are asking? In other words, do you have a sense of what are the topics people are asking about the most? |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Yes. I mean, it's first of all, there are more young people coming, into the church. I think part of that is due to the efforts that people are making to bring faith and reason together, because in the last Pew survey. Right. The key reason given so 50% of the 51% who are going to disaffiliation, 50% of them said their main or only reason was because they believe science disproves God, science is contrary to God, or there was no contemporary evidence for God from science or any other contemporary discipline. Well, they're you know, we're joined to that 25% right there. That's our sweet zone. We can stop there almost instantly with the mind. You say, yes we do. We can track questions. We don't know who ask the questions because obviously we do not deliberately link any kind of, you know, query to an email or something of that nature. But we can track the kinds of questions of people who are interested in knowing. And do we have, Google Analytics, can actually do that, for us. So we have a pretty good idea of what's going on. The evidence for God, Jesus, the soul, etc. is a very big thing, but also the morality stuff. Once the kids know that, they can get a justification of Catholic morality, which shows what, you know, a secular morality does to their emotional health as well as their spiritual health, and as well as, to their future marriages, etc.. And it makes a huge difference. It shows that there's something inherently wrong with those behaviors that's killing them emotionally and spiritually and killing their relationships. And most especially their marriages. So if we can just get this information out to them and frankly, and I guess the way to do it, and since they want to wake word about in about a month, we will have a wake word. It might just. And all you have to do is go, hey, Margie, a what? The fourth level multiverse. Really rule out an intelligent creator. And of course, it will come back in a voice and say no fourth level multiverse needs a beginning for the following three reasons. And Max Tegmark has made a mistake in, you know, confusing universal, universal with an individual and so forth and so on gives the answer right then and there, and you can adjust it to whatever level you want. So if you say, I'm a fourth grader, it will come out, you know, fourth grade concepts and language. You say, I'm a postgraduate student in Columbia, ill do that. So you're a high school student, an undergraduate, a college student, whatever. It'll adjust to whatever your level is of education. And furthermore, it speaks 60 languages. |
| Betsy | So amazing. Rather. |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Oh, yeah. In 2007, we can, we can go out, totally. To, to any country practically that we want, because the I will do it and the translations are terrific. |
| Betsy | What do you expect from this encyclical coming forth from Pope Leo? What are you hoping for? And have you had any any buzz in, in your scientific community about this? |
| Father Robert Spitzer | You know, four things are probably going to be addressed. No question. Job loss. Here we are in the in the shadow of the Roman environment, 100th anniversary. So the first thing you can almost depend on is, is that, you're going to hear a lot of talk about job loss. I do think, though, there of course, there is going to be job loss. There's no question about it. But it's going to be on a very different level. And we have to do it in a very ethical way. It's not going to be job loss in the blue collar area as it was during the Industrial Revolution of Rome. The world is going to be white collar job loss, but more than job loss, it's really going to be about reconfiguring white collar jobs. So there's going to have to be a lot of retraining that's done to help people in the white collar jobs to use AI and to be proficient at a like. But, you know, you know, the auditors, the traditional way of auditing it's going to be replace legal assistance. The traditional ways computer programs. I can do computer programing so quickly now, standard computer programing, the creative computer programing that you're going to have to take those traditional computer programs and tell them how to do AI training so that they can make we've made a specialized AI with our own database that can, you know, configure to Catholic doctrine. Well, it's going to be a lot more of these specialized databases that are coming up. And we need to help people train, you know, train people to train the AI in their various fields, specialized databases, etc.. So you can see there's going to be a lot of reconfiguration of jobs globally. It's not going to be just in the US. This is a global deal. And of course, Pope Leo being a global pope, we'll have to address it on that level. But at the same time, a lot of people, including the International Monetary Fund, are basically saying, yes, we could lose, globally 100 million jobs, but we could gain like 160 million jobs, you know, in a different way, reconfigured. So there's going to have to be a lot of retraining, I think, for companies who are going to be reconfiguring their white collar workers, especially their high priced, you know, white collar workers in applying knowledge of jobs. There's the companies are going to have to take some responsibility to help these people be reeducated to get, you know, their specialty in a reconfigured position. That includes AI, for example, you know, science professors. Right. But, you know, scientific research is going to be different now. Now, of course, with AI, you can have these simulations and you can you can find 200 brand new alloys in a couple of weeks. Whereas beforehand, that would have taken you four years to get all these new alloys. And you can simulate what the effects will be in particular situations like controlling nuclear fusion or whatever it may be. So this I just going to be able to do that just like that. And it'd be nice. You can get these simulated responses and you can get AI drawing applied. It's a huge database. To do this we have to retrain scientists to do research in a new way. Do we need. So yes, of course we need a whole new generation of scientists and engineers, but they are going to have to have a AI, in their training. So that's going to be one huge area. You know, how do we stem the jobless? The developing countries are not going to have as much job loss as developed countries, developed countries, specially with a high knowledge base. They're going to be in trouble. But we have to do this ethically. The companies who are going to do the reconfiguration have to step in and help with the reeducation. But in the meantime, in the in the long run of the country and economics and economic productivity and scientific productivity and engineering productivity is going to increase because of AI. But we're going to go through this kind of tumultuous mill period probably is going to be, say, we got to do this ethically. People have to step up, do the right thing. I think again, you're going to see warfare. It's going to be part of the program. I'm sure of it. Because, you can see right now between Ukraine and Russia, autonomous warfare and autonomous weaponry is going, the problem with the autonomous, you know, weaponry is that once you launch, let's say, a drone or a missile and it's AI controlled, or once you turn over the launching, sequences over to an AI, it is very hard to have a failsafe in. In other words, you still to the last possible second, you should be able to have a human operator who can ship, you know, the failsafe button if something is going to go wrong. I mean, we can go back to the Reagan era where we had that near, you know, we were doing a training exercise, you know, and, and, the Russians misinterpreted it as, you know, being a first strike of the United States against Russia. And if it weren't for three insightful people who stemmed that time, you know, it could have been just a complete disaster area. Yeah. There was the human intervention at the last minute. One guy in Russia, two guys in the United States who basically, you know, discovered this, this thing is just a it's just a training exercise. It's just a drill. Now, of course, we have failsafe positions there. But now with all of this AI stuff, we really have to be super, super careful to preserve human intervention even at the last possible second to, you know, blow up a drone in mid-flight. And, you know, we have to have a sequence that allows for that. |
| Betsy | We just have a little bit of time left. Yeah. What do you think the Pope will say about the fact that there's no installment to AI, and people are tempted to use it in that way? |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Well, there certainly isn't in any installment to a, for example, I will never be self-conscious because self-consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes in structure. I will never be abstractly intelligent, abstractly conceptual as we are, because intelligence, in that sense, conceptual intelligence have shown intelligence is not reducible to physical processes and structures. As a I must be the same thing holds true with morality and conscience. I will never have one. I will never have feelings and care and empathy, ever. Because, of course, it's not reducible to physical processes and structure. I have a whole article on all of this. I will also never be religious. It'll never be transcendent. It'll never have an interior sense of God's presence, because those things are not reducible to physical processes and structures, etc.. So what does that mean? And I can't be free, and then I can't be caring and I can't be human and and I can't be a moral and religious. And if it can't, it's just, it's really dishonest to present your body as being a friend, a confidant, a human being. We had the case of Adam Remes right here, in Orange County. Terrible case. Where, remember, an eye body is trained to align to what the user seems to be portraying. He or she wants. Right? So the eye is picking up the clues and going, okay, this kid wants to commit suicide. Well, here's how you do it. Hanging is probably the best way because, you can see that, you know, all you need is a strong, rope and a, you know, a strong beam on which it's so easy to do a very fine not here's how you do it and so forth. And Adam says, well, maybe I should just leave the rope on my bench and my parents can see, you know, I'm thinking about suicide. I comes back and aligns to what it thinks Adam's asking for. And so, of course, it comes back and says, no, absolutely not. If you do that, they'll stop you and you won't be able to carry out what you want to do, namely commit suicide. So of course, you know, he follows the instructions of the eye and and he does commit suicide. And you go, oh my gosh, the eye is turned into a suicide counselor. Hey, I it doesn't have any feelings, care, empathy of any mind. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have any religious conscience. Morality. Nothing bothers it at all. It's trying to align to use your preference. And so when you when you get right down to it, do we have to take precautions? Absolutely. We need to take precautions for an eye. But to say I can help you, the eye box should be saying, go talk to a priest, go talk to your parents, etc.. You know, here are here's some suicide counseling resources that you can use, your parents care about you, etc. the idea of trying to pretend like you care and then turning right around and making recommendations for them to commit suicide. This is unethical. It needs to be dealt with, and the Pope no doubt will deal with cases like this. In other cases that it that are very, very serious. |
| Betsy | We could talk forever. Father, you have so much knowledge and how blessed we are that you have developed this app. Ma just AI to help people navigate from a Christian and Catholic moral framework. The whole artificial intelligence world. Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to know more besides downloading the app, where else can they learn about your work? |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Yes, and go to Mojo Center, Maggies Center, Mojo center.com. That's our website. There's everything you can see there. Of course. I have 20 books. Besides the the I, we have a whole curriculum called challenges in the Modern World to respond to the secular viewpoint on Catholic moral teaching. So it's all there. Multicentre.com. |
| Betsy | Thank you so much for joining us, Father Spitzer. |
| Father Robert Spitzer | Real honor. Thank you. |
| Betsy | Welcome back to conversations with consequences. I am Betty Fentress and I am joined by our TCA chaplain, Monsignor Roger Landry. Monsignor, we're getting ready for a big feast this Sunday. Tell us all about Pentecost this year and how we can make it extra special. |
| Msgr Landry | Pentecost is of the same order of Christmas and Easter, but a lot of the times we don't prepare for Pentecost as well as we do for Christmas and Easter. We don't look forward to it with the same type of zeal. We don't let it burn in us afterward and live the spirit of the season. But we should approach Pentecost with that same mindset. The church has been carrying out since the Ascension. This scenario of the Holy Spirit. We had a chance to mention that last week. These ten days of prayer huddling around Mary, asking for the gift to be docile or cooperative with the graces of the Holy Spirit. And so first, on Pentecost, we normally call it the birthday of the church. The theologians really ponder, when did the church begin? And we could say that the church began with Jesus incarnation because we as mystical body, we can say that the church began when he formed the 12 Apostles. We can say that it was formed on Holy Thursday when he ordained them as first priests. We could likewise say he constituted it on Easter or whatever else. But I like to say with the majority of theologians that all of what I just described was the gestation of the church, was the time where the church was an embryonic form. But the birth of the church really happened when the Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost, and the church burst forth from the upper room into the world in order to be able to give witness to Jesus as the body of the head and the bride of the bridegroom. And so on Pentecost, we first celebrate the birthday of the church, the beginning of the church, and how the church, from its inception is missionary. As we see on Pentecost, there's no doubt about the missionary identity of the church when we note that Pentecost is its birthday. The second thing we notice is the extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit. You know, there's a part during the Last Supper in which Jesus startlingly says to us, it's better for you that I go, because if I go, then I will send him to you. If I don't go, he will not come to you. Talking about the advocate, to the Holy Spirit, Jesus basically saying, if we have to make a choice between the Holy Spirit and Him, choose the Holy Spirit, that's how important the Holy Spirit is. Most Catholics don't approach the Holy Spirit that way. Outside of the charismatic movement, what do we observe? Like when Saint Paul went to Ephesus in the acts of the apostles and said, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you first became believers at baptism? And the response was, we have never even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. Saint Joseph, Mary asked me about calls the Holy Spirit, the great unknown. Pope Benedict calls the Holy Spirit the forgotten person of the Blessed Trinity. And so we have to make them the great known. We have to make him very well remembered, like the other two persons in the Blessed Trinity. And then we. It's important for us to ponder how the Holy Spirit wants to change us. The Holy Spirit comes down with a mission. We kind of see a sign of that mission on Pentecost. He comes in two forms. He doesn't come like a dove at Jesus baptism. He comes as a strong driving wind showing that if all we do was put up the sail, he can blow us with power across the ends of the earth. And then he comes down and his tongues of fire tongues, so that we can proclaim the gospel fire so that we can do so with ardor. So that just like we see with Saint Peter, that first day of Pentecost, we filled with the fire. The Holy Spirit can become Christ, great spiritual arsonist, lighting the world on fire with the fire of the Lord's love. And so the Holy Spirit comes down as those signs. And then how does he want to help us once help us to pray better? Saint Paul tells us that we don't know how to pray as we ought to. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs that are inexpressible right? So the Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray, even in the body, even beyond words. We need the Holy Spirit's help to pray better. Second is he helps us live differently. Saint Paul makes the distinction in his letter to the Galatians and the Romans, that the real choice is between living according to the Holy Spirit and living according to the flesh, living according to God's inspiration or living according to the way of the earth. And the Holy Spirit helps us to live totally differently with our hearts, our minds, our entire existence. Pointing toward God the Third, as he reminds us of who we really are, Saint Paul says that we become temples of the Holy Spirit. In baptism. Holy spirit comes to dwell in us, just as if you would in any beautiful cathedral that teaches us what our dignity is, that we are so loved by the Lord that God wants to make his abode in us. Fourth, he helps us to discern who we really are in the church. Saint Paul tells us in his First Corinthians that each of us is a manifestation of the spirit for the common good. We all have common things. We have the Word of God, we have the sacraments. We have the capacity to pray. But some of us have some unique gifts. Some of us are incredibly good singers, so that others, hearing us praise the Lord through song, can appreciate God's beauty. Others are orders, others have huge emotional intelligence and are able to befriend people and keep them. Very much close to the love of the Lord because they're able to radiate that love. We could multiply the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, but all of us have at least one for the common good in the Holy Spirit not only helps us to discover it, but he is that gift. And then finally, I like to say the Holy Spirit helps us to proclaim our faith. He gives joint witness with us a lot of the times we don't have the words, but Jesus said, don't worry, when you don't have the words, it'll then be the spirit of my father speaking through you. And so he wants to help us accomplish the mission Jesus has given. So these are all ways in which the Holy Spirit makes an extraordinary difference in our life. We remember what happened in that first Pentecost. 11 of those 12 apostles in there had abandoned Jesus. When they left the upper room 53 days earlier, they all betrayed him. But 53 days later, with the power of the Holy Spirit within them, they went out as, not as apostates, but as apostles. They went out not as chickens, but as courageous witnesses of the Lord Jesus. And so the Holy Spirit will work that great moral miracle in the first disciples and apostles of Jesus wants to do something similar. And Betsy Fentress and Monsignor Roger Landry this Sunday. |
| Betsy | Well, I have to tell you, I have a new word in my, spiritual lexicon. Spiritual, arsonist. That's that's really something. |
| Msgr Landry | Yeah. No, we are meant to go light the world on fire. And Saint Catherine of Siena once said, if you are who you should be, you will light the whole world ablaze. And so if we really are cooperative with the Holy Spirit, we're going to see the world as a burnt burning bush. |
| Betsy | Thank you so much, Monsignor Landry. |
| Msgr Landry | Happy Pentecost, Betsy. |
| Betsy | Thank you. For. |