Lenten Theme: Catholic Social Wisdom – Foundations in a Digital Age

Lenten Theme: Catholic Social Wisdom – Foundations in a Digital Age

This Lent, as adults, let us reflect and meaningfully engage with artificial intelligence and emerging technologies through the lens of Catholic social teaching, encyclicals, and contemporary Catholic thought.

Using the See-Judge-Act method, together we will connect our lived experiences with Church wisdom, guided by key thinkers: Thomas Merton (technology and spirituality), Marshall McLuhan (media environments), Mortimer Adler (shared inquiry), Omar Arias Zurita (AI literacy), and Matthew J. Gaudet (AI and encounter).

Practice See-Judge-Act with media and technology, and reflect on how Joseph Cardinal Cardijn’s approach to the industrial revolution can inform our ethical engagement with digital innovations

today.

Catholic Social Teaching: Key Themes

• Human dignity: Every person is created in God’s image

• Common good: Society flourishes when all participate and benefit

• Solidarity: We are responsible for one another

• Participation: All have the right to contribute to community life

These themes apply to us in the Autonomous Revolution, which is the revolution creating digital innovations, offering us a path to live our faith meaningfully today, to see-judge-act with the guidance of the Spirit and a little help from other human beings.

Question: How does technology influence human dignity, community participation, and our responsibilities to one another in the digital age?

Over this Lent, I will use these Guides for Our Journey to help us grow together in faith and understanding.

• Thomas Merton: Technology and the contemplative life

• Marshall McLuhan: Media as extensions of ourselves

• Mortimer Adler: Shared inquiry and asking good questions

• Omar Arias Zurita: How AI works and reshapes society (AI literacy)

• Matthew J. Gaudet: AI through Catholic social teaching and “culture of encounter.”

• Joseph Cardinal Cardijn: The wisdom he shared with his people during the Industrial Revolution will have application to our Autonomous Revolution.

See: Our Digital Everyday

• Where do you meet technology and AI each day?

• Phones, TV, email, search engines, online forms, chat recommendations, in your car, at work, in your kitchen appliances, and network news?

• McLuhan: Media are “extensions of man”—they extend our eyes, ears, and memory

• Zurita: Understanding how these tools work helps us ask better questions

• What “extension or technology” do you rely on most?

Judge: Technology and the Heart

• Merton: Technology isn’t opposed to spirituality, but it can tempt us toward speed, noise, and distraction

• Gaudet: Does this technology foster real encounter—mind with mind, heart with heart—or does it isolate us?

• Cardijn: Does digital life help you become more attentive, compassionate, free? Or the opposite? And why?

• Adler/Zurita: This is “AI literacy”—learning enough to ask good questions about tools that shape society

Act: A Small Experiment This Week

• Choose one practice: tech-free meal, handwritten prayer, or period of silence.

• Notice how this affects your mood, prayer, or relationships

• Be ready to share with family, friends, and colleagues: What did you see? How did you judge? What will you act on?

Remedying the World’s Conditions: An Excerpt from Lumen Gentium

“The laity…by their competence in secular training and by their activity…vigorously contribute their effort, so that created goods may be perfected…for the benefit of all humans…Moreover, let the laity also, by their combined efforts, remedy the customs and conditions of the world, if they are an inducement to sin.” (LG 36)

“The Church needs all of its lay-folk, not the clergy, to bring the kingdom of God into the present-day world.” ~ Louis J.Putz CSC 1956