Recent trends in America point toward either tribalism or social disintegration. There is no neat solution to the problem. Still, the Church will be in a position to help mitigate it—not directly, through social engagement of some sort, but simply by being emphatically herself so she can once again be an object of strong and socially functional loyalties that transcend tribal boundaries.
I’ve commented before on how electronics now dissolve everything into images, video clips, and sound bites that can be reassembled into anything. That situation enables people to tailor their online world—which now forms much of their understanding of the world in general—to their own predilections.
The result is that we increasingly live in different worlds. Was the 2016 or the 2020 election stolen? Were the factual beliefs that motivated Black Lives Matter or the response to COVID well-founded? Is the big threat America faces Russia, China, fascism, or globalism?
No one agrees. Worse, fewer and fewer see any reason to view those who disagree with them as rational and well-intentioned. After all, isn’t it all just obvious if you look online?
A recent essay by music critic and historian Ted Gioia argues that this situation will soon become much worse because of rapid developments in AI that, he argues, will make it not merely difficult but impossible to determine whether photographs, videos, and other media productions are genuine or fake.
He mentions, as an example, people who deny that the Apollo moon landings were real. What happens, he asks, when all historical events become legitimately deniable, because evidence can easily be faked, so that everybody becomes that way about everything?
He notes there may be social or technological fixes for this—extended use of chain of custody procedures, for example. But who knows how effective any of these will be, especially now that no one trusts anybody to begin with?
It’s worth noting that, on the face of it, an end to reliable electronic sources of information would only put us back where we were for almost all human history. Since that is the case, why does the prospect of a reversion now seem such a disaster?
The reason is that our form of society has come to depend on such things. In the 1920s, technical advances in photography led to the great age of photojournalism. The combination of text, photos, newsreels, and video footage made possible a very persuasive mass presentation of a shared public reality. Through the ’70s, people watched Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” so they could see the world “the way it is”—as he assured them every evening—right there on their TV screens.
That seemed to open the door to a mass democracy of equal citizens, who would be able to discuss and resolve public issues reasonably because they would have a well-informed understanding of the world in common.
But then cable TV and talk radio multiplied journalistic outlets and spread dissenting interpretations that also seemed supported by videos, images, and soundbites. That tendency was then radicalized by ubiquitous photos and videos from smartphones and security cameras that could be posted online instantly.
These developments made it possible for anyone to check presumed authorities for accuracy, completeness, and bias. Many failed the test. To make matters worse, increased competition among established outlets put a premium on speed and pleasing partisan readers, while reducing the resources that could be devoted to any one story. Worst of all, the modern tendency to view reality as socially constructed—that is to say, constructible through the effective use of power—undermined commitment to objective truth in favor of political goals even among experts.
So, authorities lost authority. Attempts to undo that situation and to restore public trust in institutionally certified truth have so far failed. And now, Gioia says, the sole remaining anchor for shared public truth—the possibility of reliable public verification—is being yanked.
The remedies he suggests seem dubious because they have to do with buttressing the credibility of institutions based on abstract universal principles such as scientific rationality. In the absence of shared standards of personal integrity and respect for objective truth—which are hard to sustain in a liberal society that places ever more emphasis on success, power, money, and individual fulfillment—it becomes difficult to rely on such things.
But where can such standards come from? Conceivably, necessity could call forth supply. People would realize the problem, and social demands would shift in response. But the need for integrity cannot bring it into being unless underlying social cohesion makes that possible.
The postwar liberal demand for absolute universality no longer supports that cohesion. It would require grounded trust in large-scale formal institutions such as journalism, academia, and government bureaucracies. That trust has severely weakened and, Gioia implies, seems likely to collapse altogether.
The far more common basis for social cohesion is not formal institutions but stable and largely informal relationships in which honesty and loyalty can be evaluated and rewarded, in the usual course that promotes a society based on a stable local community. If that is lacking, society becomes tribal. It seems that we—like all previous societies—will have to accept some degree of localism and tribalism, along with the exclusion of outsiders these things imply, for the sake of social functioning.
That tendency can go to extremes in regions—like the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East, where very different peoples meet and mix—since extensive networks of trust are hard to sustain under such conditions. People there do not trust anyone except the people with whom they have particular personal ties. Since the West has rejected demographic stability in favor of mobility and radical diversity, we have grounds for fearing something similar.
The obvious possibilities for mitigating extremes under such conditions are a dictatorship that substitutes coercive social micromanagement for trust, which seems unlikely to work well, or widespread devotion to common goods tied to a shared sense of what is fundamentally real—in other words, through a religion widely understood as true and authoritative.
With that in mind, it seems that the potential role of the Church in promoting social trust will become more important in the coming years as the liberal order falls apart—as indeed it did during the Middle Ages, when it was central to the growing ability of European society to emulate the universal aspects of Rome but with less reliance on slavery and centralized military tyranny, fewer high-stakes civil wars, and more widespread political participation.
There is much standing in the way of making that role once again a reality. To start, we need to act as if the Faith is real and important. It will not order society unless it orders us. To that end, we all need to look in the mirror.
Also, the Church is hierarchical, so solid improvement requires good leaders. As it is, she often gives the impression of being led by peacetime generals in time of war. At a minimum, they need to be honest and reliable. Recent scandals involving lying and corruption, even at the highest levels, have been a real stumbling block. The Church cannot build social trust if her members have good reason to distrust their pastors.
More basically, our leaders must believe, and must be seen to believe, that the Church has something fundamental to offer that everyone needs and is not available anywhere else. Otherwise, she will seem just another tribe. If they try to maintain the Church’s relevance by enlisting her in secular causes rather than emphasizing her specific nature and mission, people will have no reason to pay attention to her. That will especially be true if the causes are hard to square with historic Catholic teaching.
At bottom, our leaders must view the Church as the homeland and family of believers, and not as a bureaucracy, NGO, or component of a larger social reality—for example, of a multi-faith global society oriented toward worldly well-being. She can unify a fractured society only when people make her a primary loyalty and not an add-on.
And that cannot happen unless she insists on her fundamental orientation toward something higher than any worldly good. She can perform her irreplaceable social role only if she views that role as subordinate.
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Nice piece. Surprised you didn’t suggest the Vatican News Service expands to become the world’s most trusted source of information?!
Totally agree that we need the Catholic Church to once again behave in coherence with her catechism and thus behave like the Catholic Church.
Bergoglio’s “Pastoralism” needs scrapping, where “Pastoralism” means being all things to all sources of Power.
The church through the Pope has to heal her own trust issues with her flock before being of any use for social cohesion in the world today.
The moral order is pre-eminent to the social and political orders. The reason why there is so much discord in society is that the moral order has been abandoned and, without a proper moral order, the social and political orders can not be rightly ordered.
If you want social and political concord, re-establish the moral order. Acknowledge that sin is real and proclaim the Truth – and only the Truth so help you God.
Amen!
With the exception of the pontificate of St. JPII, the Church in my lifetime has been far too incoherent, distracted, and fractured to exert any meaningful positive effect on societies, holy Catholic clergy and laity notwithstanding. Sad to say but that’s what the evidence shows.
We read: “More basically, our leaders must believe, and must be seen to believe, that the Church has something fundamental to offer that everyone needs and is not available anywhere else.”
So, this from the backwardist Pope Paul VI:
“…evangelization risks losing its power and disappears altogether if one empties or adulterates its content under the pretext of translating it; if in other words, one sacrifices this reality and destroys the unity without which there is no universality, out of a wish to adapt a universal reality to a local [synodal?] situation” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, n. 63).
With breakthrough advances in AI we’re presumably bound to experience decrease in certitude and increase in duplicity foreseen by Kalb. I say presumed unless some extremely effective safety measures are in place. Will there be an honest man to assure us measures are in place? Diogenes may be out there searching. At the angle of rotation our World is turning, that’s our challenge.
Again, it’s the Church that possesses the knowledge and the engines. So says Kalb, so says most of us diehard Catholics. Although where is She at now? Out to fight the climate wars, migration justice, identity equality, everyone.
Dr. Sriknath Gaddam’s idea of modern electronic mechanization is that it is first and foremost disruptive. So his little book on it is entitled The Future of Disruptive Technologies. See the last link PR NEWSWIRE.
I would suggest emphatically, this is a very serious issue in the nature of social and economy domination coming in the near future; it is NOT adequately dealt with through robot taxes alone -which is just timid and deceptive; and it requires ROBUST forms of intervention, direction and CONTAINMENT.
A robot showing up at yours home to vaccinate you and make sure you go out and come in on time, etc.
‘ Specifically, HELP Minority Staff asked ChatGPT to analyze job descriptions catalogued by the federal government for the entire U.S. economy and predict tasks that could be performed by AI and automation. According to the ChatGPT-based model, artificial intelligence and automation could replace nearly 100 million jobs over the next ten years, including 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants and 47% of truck drivers. In May, Dario Amodei, the CEO of the main competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic, warned that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, spiking unemployment to 10 to 20% in one to five years.3 In 2023, McKinsey estimated that AI technologies had “the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70% of employees’ time today.” Last year, Elon Musk said that, as a result of AI and robotics, “probably none of us will have a job… If you want a job that’s kind of like a hobby you can do a job. But otherwise, AI and robotics will provide any goods and services you want.”
The reality is no one knows exactly what will happen. There is tremendous uncertainty about the real capabilities of AI and automation, their effects on the rest of the economy, and how governments and markets will respond. While this basic analysis reflects all the inherent limitations of ChatGPT, it represents one potential future in which corporations decide to aggressively push forward with artificial labor. ‘
United States Senate
HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS COMMITTEE
Bernard Sanders, Ranking Member
Minority Staff Report
October 6, 2025
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/10.6.2025-The-Big-Tech-Oligarchs-War-Against-Workers.pdf
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/successful-ceo-guru-releases-new-spin-on-business-leadership-and-audios-of-his-entrepreneur-how-to-guide-and-savvy-disruptive-tech-prediction-books-301421906.html
Of course, the problems from distrust and tribalism are made worse where machiavellianism, enters. Consider the discussions in the recent CWR article by Francis X. Maier on the Kingsnorth book, Against the Machine -below in the final link.
According to the video in the INTERESTING ENGINEERING article, Robots may replace 600,000 humans at Amazon warehouses by 2033, leaked report claims, Oct. 22 2025, second link, “Humans will work alongside robots and humans will have to learn to evolve.”
Amazon claims that the leaked information is being misconstrued/misinterpreted.
In related affairs, robot expansion will lead to arguments against liberalized immigration. The elite are becoming more fixed in their “preserve our heritage” obsession/worries.
BERNIE SANDERS
AI Could Wipe Out the Working Class | Oct 7, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dthbi4lzO58
INTERESTING ENGINEERING
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/amazon-may-replace-human-jobs-with-robots
FUTURISM
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/aws-outage-amazon-fired-workers-ai
NY TIMES
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/technology/inside-amazons-plans-to-replace-workers-with-robots.html
NY POST
https://nypost.com/2025/10/22/business/amazon-aims-to-replace-over-half-a-million-us-jobs-with-robots-report/
NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/22/nx-s1-5581370/amazon-wants-to-use-robots-to-avoid-adding-over-500-000-new-jobs
ENGADGET
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/new-report-leaks-amazons-proposed-mass-automation-plans-144822790.html
CWR/Kingsnorth
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/10/06/against-the-machine-is-a-penetrating-critique-of-the-tech-heavy-culture-of-illusions/
Who’s paying attention.
Are they talking about a loss of 500,000 jobs ONLY; or do they mean the emplacement of 500,000 humanoid robots.
A 500,000-strong humanoid labour force at Amazon could be turned into an army of humanoid soldier robots at the click. Just from Amazon. So if they mean Amazon merely wishes to achieve a humanoid labour force of say 250,000, it still follows that companies can combine their forces partially at any given time and there could be produced a combined military force of 2,500,000 at the press of a button.
5,000,000? Where does it stop.
There could be other multi-function robot styles, it doesn’t have to be singularly humanoid.
Is that what they are talking about but not saying it.
How are these humanoids to be equipped when they become soldier battalions. How will they be equipped during non-military operation.
What would “robot tribalism” and “robot trust” be or look like.
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/278652893/superintelligent-ai-could-end-humanity-tech-icons
https://time.com/7327409/ai-agi-superintelligent-open-letter/
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-leading-political-figures-ai-experts-call-for-superintelligence-ban/
https://superintelligence-statement.org/
Bill Gates who said that AI would result in “humans” being “not needed for most things”, echoes Yuval Harari who claims that “humans” would become “useless”.
LIFESITE has an extensive coverage of the Yuval Noah Harari individual, an unabashed homosexualist who is propped up by a particular supremacism and is a protagonist for it.
Every so often the techies have a slip of the tongue. In Gates’ recent interview at CNBC, he admits that there would have to be a proliferation of nuclear reactors in order to produce the energy needed for siting AI.
He couches the proposition in the idea that it would be to prevent the inflation of energy costs to the average community.
See the video in the first CNBC link, AI is the biggest technical thing ever, dated yesterday.
To mention, Gates is constantly on the lookout for publicity opportunities.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/10/28/bill-gates-ai-is-the-biggest-technical-thing-ever-in-my-lifetime.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/bill-gates-on-ai-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things.html
Yes, I think it is extremely important that the institutional/hierarchical Church in Rome regain the trust of its members and clean up some of the evil in its own house before it proclaims itself as the solution to the ills of the world. Jesus Christ is the answer and always has been. I love Holy Mother Church but fear we are straying. In all honesty, I cannot say that I am confident in the current leadership. The last dozen years or so have been brutal.
Trust in the Church is a complex issue that came to mind as I read the article. A critical question that each of us should ask ourselves is, “Do I trust the Church?”
The answer, for many, may be difficult. My personal trust has become heavily guarded, particularly towards the human element of the Church’s hiarchy. I am wary of Rome’s ability to unequivocally uphold the truth. Too frequently, instead of communicating clearly, they have chosen to equivocate, confuse, or avoid stating what the Catechism and Tradition have held for nearly 2,000 years.
We have seen too many instances where leaders — from priests and bishops to archbishops, cardinals, and popes — have covered up grievous sins. The Body of Christ has been forced to endure the burdens of heresy and sin unnecessarily, as if our own individual struggles were not already overwhelming. St. Michael, pray for us.
The Church isn’t just the clergy and prelature. However there is something wrong in that part of it. The Weaklands and McCarricks were spectacular failures who never met with any sort of temporal justice.
If you stepped on a ship embarked on ocean going voyage and found the Captain and Officers were distracted by chasing their white whales, some were drunkards and practitioners of sodomy, others seemed unable to raise a sail, use a compass or sextant-and some were just indolent and lacking any sort of vigilance-would you not be discomforted when the skies grew angry and the waves started to batter the ship?