By David G. Bonagura, Jr.
Catholic Schools Week, like other events and feasts of the Church’s year, has two dimensions. One recalls the event itself: in this case, the multitude of blessings that Catholic schools offer to the faithful and the communities that surround them. The second is external: the forces that surround, or even threaten, the event. For decades, clergy and Catholic educators have constantly felt the threat of an imminent reality: the closure of schools due to low enrollment, a sign of unfaithful times.
To this decades-long threat is now added a new and seductive one: the massive availability of artificial intelligence (AI). The main concern is not what schools will do to prevent students from using AI to do their homework (although this is a serious problem), nor the fear that young AI experts will no longer need schools (they will). The issue is deeper and touches the core of the mission of Catholic schools: will AI and the associated pressures change the nature of Catholic education?
The more technology develops, with AI as its latest iteration, the more disconnected we become from ourselves and from natural realities. Technology, and the ideology of progress that drives it today, deceives us into believing that we are powerful masters who press buttons to satisfy our desires. Education, under this influence, serves as technological training. Technological devices are tools; human beings are reduced to users of tools whose function is to contribute to the nation’s economic growth.
Catholic schools reject this instrumentalized view of education—although today’s visitors may be confused to see even young children glued to Chromebooks and constantly taking digital assessments—.
Catholic schools do not exist to teach students to harness artificial intelligence or any other form of technology. They exist to cultivate holy intelligence in their students.
Happiness, Aristotle wrote, is the end of human life, a sentiment that most people, religious or secular, affirm. But where is happiness to be found? Illuminated by the Gospel, St. Augustine clarified that «God is the source of our happiness, the end of all desire» (The City of God X,3). Catholic schools exist to lead students to God, so that they may be happy and learn to direct their desires toward heaven.
Intelligence refers to the capacity to understand. Artificial intelligence is the computer simulation of human intelligence. In reality, AI does not understand; it calculates and predicts based on the data it contains in its system. Certainly, its scope, speed, and power are remarkable. But AI is, at its root, precisely that: artificial, that is, man-made and therefore a tool of its creators.
Holy intelligence understands things in the light of God. Catholics see all realities—natural, mathematical, historical, scientific—as having a place in the seemingly unlimited order that God has created and arranged «with measure, number, and weight» (Wisdom 11:20).
Catholic schools certainly teach students to acquire skills that the world demands: arithmetic, writing, reading, typing. They also teach essential knowledge: geography, history, science, religion. But Catholic schools do more than this. They orient all these realities within God’s salvific plan. Some fit more easily than others—the evil and suffering are the proverbial square pegs—but all have a place, even when the «why» is beyond our full comprehension.
Holy intelligence is not innate. God grants it through Baptism; it is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. But holy intelligence cannot function properly without cultivation, a task, as has been said, of Catholic schools. By teaching their students the faith, the truths of the world in the light of faith and, above all, to pray, Catholic schools form the mind and heart of children to know the Truth that sets them free.
Freedom from the disorientation generated by a technological world that prohibits notions of God and objective truth is one of the greatest fruits of Catholic education. Holy intelligence discerns truth from error, as well as the way to use new technologies for good ends. The addictive power of technology and instant access to evil have enslaved so many, young and old. Holy intelligence remains free, in part, because it knows to avoid these temptations.
Today holy intelligence is not only something that must be developed in students. It is a virtue required of Catholic school leaders, who must resist the siren songs of «progress» and «keeping up» that demand reforming curricula around AI. Leaders must maintain firm confidence in the Catholic vision of education, which boasts 2,000 years of success. Catholic education exists to form disciples of Jesus Christ through the formation of students’ minds and souls. Traditional academic subjects and Catholic religion, not technological tools, are the means to achieve this goal.
In presenting Catholic schools to today’s parents, who are almost all disoriented and unsure how to respond, pastors and educators can offer this technological policy (because all schools have one today): «We do not allow AI; our students use HI —holy intelligence. Through this divine gift, students learn the truth that is God, for in Him alone is happiness to be found.»
As more parents and children burn out from an artificial life, holy intelligence becomes more attractive. If Catholic schools can demonstrate success in cultivating HI while rejecting AI, they may also find a solution to that other threat: low enrollment.
About the author
David G. Bonagura, Jr. is the author, most recently, of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today, and translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning. Adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and the Catholic International University, he is religion editor of The University Bookman, a book review journal founded in 1960 by Russell Kirk. His personal website is here.