Vance attacks US bishops

US Vice President JD Vance attacked the US bishops for saying Donald Trump’s decisions on immigrants and refugees “are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us”. Vance, a practising Catholic, said he was “heartbroken” with the bishops’ position and suggested their motives were not rooted in pastoral concerns but based on substantial federal funding US dioceses receive to help resettle immigrants. The bishops answered that federal funding falls short of the overall cost for the Church’s resettlement of refugees approved by the government to enter the US.

Pope on AI

Pope Francis told delegates at the Davos conference: “While AI is an extraordinary technological achievement capable of imitating outputs associated with human intelligence, this technology ‘makes a technical choice among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences. Humans, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding’ (Address at the G7, June 2024).

“When used correctly, AI assists the human person in fulfilling his or her vocation, in freedom and responsibility. As with all other human activity and technological development, AI must be ordered to the human person and become part of efforts to achieve ‘greater justice, more extensive fraternity and a more humane order of social relations’, which are ‘more valuable than advances in the technical field’.”

Creed is a map

Fr Maxence Bertrand spoke to La Croix International about the creed:

“I was deeply struck by how the British author C.S. Lewis defines Christian dogma. He compares it to a map. A map has two main advantages: it is reliable because it is based on the experiences of explorers, scientists and geographers, and it provides reference points that allow us to venture into faith. Reading a map may bring less wonder than contemplating a landscape, but it can guide us further toward adventure.”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)