Wired for Peace

Wired for Peace

Faith, Technology, and the Nonviolent Imagination in an Age of AI

Let’s begin with this thought:

Think about the last thing you looked at on your phone before you started reading this blog post. Maybe it was a news headline that made your stomach drop. Maybe it was a message from someone you love. Perhaps it was something you can’t even remember now—something an algorithm chose for you, sliding past your thumb before your brain could decide if it mattered.

That’s the world we live in. And today, I want us to sit with a question that might feel uncomfortable: Are we in charge of that world—or is it shaping us more than we realize?

We’re going to spend the next few minutes looking at artificial intelligence. Not as a distant sci-fi concept, but as something already woven into how we work, learn, connect, and even pray. And we’re going to ask whether our faith gives us something real to say about it—and something real to do.

I want to walk us through three steps. We’re going to see what’s actually happening. We’re going to judge it honestly through the lens of the Gospel. And then we’re going to act—not with fear, but with purpose.

See—Understanding Our Digital Reality

Before we can respond wisely to anything, we have to see it clearly. And right now, most of us are living through a technological revolution without fully grasping what it’s doing to us or to those we love.

The late Marshall McLuhan—one of the sharpest thinkers about media we’ve ever had—gave us a phrase that might be the most crucial sentence in this talk: “The medium is the message.” He didn’t mean the content of what we watch or read. He suggested that the technology itself—the platform, the format, the way information reaches us—changes how we think. It reshapes our attention, our relationships, and even our sense of what’s real.

And now artificial intelligence is becoming one of those media. AI is already deciding what news you see, helping students write papers, assisting doctors in diagnosis, and yes, people are even using it to help them pray or reflect on Scripture. Think of all those “prayer apps” many parishes are asking you to sign up for, and they contain AI. It’s not coming. It’s here.

But here’s what we have to see honestly: AI also concentrates power in the hands of a very few companies and governments. It spreads misinformation at a speed unimaginable ten years ago. And it tempts us—subtly, constantly—to outsource our own moral thinking. Why wrestle with a tricky question when a machine can give you an answer in three seconds?

Mortimer Adler, a philosopher of education, spent his life asking what it means to honestly think—not just react, but reason and reflect. If he were alive today, I think he’d ask us this: What kind of thinking habits are we forming right now? Are we still capable of sitting with uncertainty, of wrestling with complexity? Or have we trained ourselves to expect instant answers and instant gratification?

And we can’t ignore the justice dimension. Globally, the benefits of AI are not being shared equally. Vast inequalities already exist—and AI has the potential to deepen them. There are entire communities, entire nations, that are being “left offline,” excluded from the new knowledge economy that is reshaping the world around them. 

Progress in technology does not automatically mean progress in humanity.

So that’s what we see. A world hungry for connection, yet drowning in conflict—in our speech, in our politics, in our digital lives. A world where powerful tools are available, but the wisdom to use them well is lagging far behind.

Judge—Interpreting with Faith and Conscience

Now that we’ve looked honestly at the landscape, let’s bring our faith into conversation with it. Not to condemn. Not to reject technology outright. But to discern—to ask what God is calling us toward in the middle of all this.

A Belgian priest, Joseph Cardijn, developed a method that’s been used by Christians for generations. It’s simple, but it’s powerful: See. Judge. Act. Cardijn taught young workers—people living in the thick of complex realities—to look at life “as it really is,” bring it into honest dialogue with their faith, and then act “as it should be.” That’s precisely what we’re doing today.

So what does faith say?

First, it says that peace begins inside us. Thomas Merton—the monk, the writer, the man who somehow managed to be both deeply contemplative and deeply engaged with the world’s suffering—wrote powerfully about what he called interior nonviolence. He believed that true peace isn’t just the absence of war. It’s the presence of something quiet and intentional in our own hearts—a willingness to be still, to be self-aware, even when the world is screaming at us to react. In our distracted, notification-driven lives, Merton’s vision feels almost radical. Silence, in a digital age, is an act of resistance.

Second, faith says that truth matters—and that we have a responsibility to protect it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who stood up against Nazi tyranny and ultimately gave his life for it, understood something we need to hear today: the Church’s voice must be one of integrity, even when—especially when—the truth is under pressure. And in the age of AI, truth is under enormous pressure. Algorithmic bias can distort information. Deepfakes can fabricate reality. For Bonhoeffer, courage isn’t optional. It’s discipleship.

And then there’s McLuhan again. He observed that every new medium “amputates” something in us while extending something else. Technology gives us reach—the ability to communicate across the globe in an instant. But it may also numb our empathy. It may make us faster without making us wiser.

So the question faith puts before us is not “Can we build powerful technology?” We clearly can. The question is: “Can we become more human through it?”

Faith calls us to shalom—that rich Hebrew word for peace that means right relationships. Right relationships among people. Between humanity and creation. And now, between technology and the human spirit. And authentic prosperity, in the eyes of faith, isn’t just economic. Catholic Social Teaching points us toward something called the “common good”—the idea that genuine flourishing isn’t something we pursue alone. It’s communal. It’s shared. And any technology that serves only the wealthy and the powerful is failing that standard.

Act—Cultivating Nonviolent Wisdom in a Digital Age

This is where it gets practical. Faith without action is just words. So what do we actually do?

First: Foster attentive presence.

Take Merton’s invitation seriously. Pause before you post. Pause before you consume. Pause before you let an algorithm decide what you think about next. Silence—absolute, intentional silence—is an act of peace in a world designed to keep us reacting.

Second: Use technology to build solidarity.

Cardijn’s vision wasn’t to retreat from the world—it was to transform it. We can use AI and digital tools to amplify marginalized voices, advocate for digital justice, and ensure that the benefits of this technology reach the people who need them most, not just those who already have the most.

Third: Educate for ethical discernment.

Following Adler’s call, we need to reclaim the art of thinking clearly—not just using AI, but questioning it. This isn’t just for experts or technologists. It’s for all of us, especially our children and young people. How do we teach the next generation not just to use these tools, but to think critically about them?

Fourth: Witness to nonviolence online.

Bonhoeffer’s courage calls us into digital spaces—not to avoid them, but to transform them. Refuse to dehumanize others, even in the heat of a virtual argument. Refuse to share what you know to be false, even when it feels satisfying. This is what nonviolence looks like in the twenty-first century.

And fifth: Pursue integrative prosperity.

True success—for businesses, for parishes, for communities—means designing or using AI for social good. Health. Education. Creation care. Ethical innovation isn’t a nice add-on. It’s the standard.

Let me close now….

Let me leave you with this. Peace is not a program we can install. It’s not an app we can download. It’s a presence we embody—one that begins in contemplation, grows through community, and radiates outward, even through our technologies.

If we are made in God’s image—and I believe with all my heart that we are—then even in this weird world, we are called to be mirrors of divine peace. To use every new tool not for control, but for compassion.

The technology will keep advancing. That’s not going to stop. But what we bring to it—our conscience, our faith, our willingness to choose love over efficiency—that’s entirely up to us.

A Question to Carry With You

The next time you pick up your phone—before you unlock it, before you scroll—pause for three seconds and ask yourself:

“Am I about to connect—or am I about to disappear?”

And then choose.