This is Corpus Christi Sunday- we are so blessed to be able to receive Jesus’ Body, Blood, soul, and divinity in the Most Holy Eucharist. Let us avail ourselves of Confession, as needed, so that we are always in a state of grace!

This week is the annual Emmaus Convocation at St. Vincent Archabbey and College in Latrobe- the Bishop meets with the priests and deacons, there are talks from a speaker, and some even find time to go to a Buccos (Pittsburgh Pirates) game! Please pray for us, I will keep you in prayer each day. There will be no weekday Masses on June 24, 25, and 26. On Fri., June 27, there will be 7:30 and 9:00 Masses.

Thanks to the Knights of Columbus who cooked a large number of delicious hot dogs for Father’s Day- after the 11 a.m. Mass there was good fellowship, and it was a highly caloric event!

Happy summer solstice! June 20th is the longest day and shortest night of the year- 15 hours and 9 minutes of daylight! Summer has officially begun! Hmm…. I wonder if any Jaws movies will start showing up on TV as we approach July 4th….

Currently (I found out some people aren’t aware of this), every Tuesday and Friday there are two weekday Masses, one at St. Bartholomew, and one at Notre Dame. Canon Law prescribes, as well as +Bishop Persico’s directives on pastoral planning, that when one priest has more than one parish, there is to be only one scheduled Mass on each weekday. With all the funerals, with two separate offices, with two thriving youth / young adult groups, with sick calls and home visits, with parish life, this rule is designed to help the pastor carry out all of his responsibilities. I was encouraged to do this when I arrived, but I waited. After speaking with leadership at both parishes, starting on July 1st, the weekday Mass schedule will be adjusted as follows: St. Bartholomew will have Mass on Tuesday (5:30 p.m.) and Thursday (7:30 a.m.), and Notre Dame will have Mass on Wednesday (9 a.m.) and Friday (9 a.m.). The weekend Mass schedule remains the same.

On June 11, 2025, +Bishop James Conley, the Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, penned a very thought-provoking, and disturbing, article, which was published on The Catholic Thing website. I hope that all of us, especially children, can get out and enjoy the summer and not be glued to computer, phone, or TV screens! Here is the article:

Is It Time to “Smash Your TV?”

Professor John Senior, my godfather and one of the professors of the famed Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, was a master of hyperbole. He once hinted to us, his students, that we should just go home and smash our television sets. Perhaps he didn’t mean this literally, but he suggested that this was something we should consider. I know of at least one fellow student who took him at his word and dropped his 19-inch Motorola black and white television set out of the window of his fourth-floor dorm room onto the concrete alley below.

Today, the lightweight plastic screen would barely make a sound when it hit the pavement. But in the 1970s, the dozens of sealed tubes (this is why some still call the TV “the tube”) exploded with a thunderous noise. It was so satisfying. So cathartic.

TV was a relatively new technology at the time; it had taken a generation or so to begin to realize what it was doing to us. Instead of being active, seeking, critical engagers with the real world, filled with wonder and joy, we were becoming lazy, slack-jawed, and flat-souled accepters of an often false or incomplete mediated version of reality.

The sound of a TV exploding on the pavement helped mark a new phase of life for us. One in which we made a commitment – a commitment deeply related to our faith (I converted to Catholicism through influence of the IHP) – to refuse to allow this technology to shape us in these negative and distorting ways.

Today, we are faced with a similar problem, but on a wildly greater scale. Artificial Intelligence and related technologies will now be able to use our reliance on screen-delivered mediating technologies and throw us into something close to total confusion about what is real and what isn’t.

Deep-fake videos are now often indistinguishable from real ones. Soon, you won’t know whether you are in a Zoom meeting with a real person or with an AI-created chatbot who looks just like a real person. Voices can now be faked to the point where even family members cannot tell the difference. “Proof of reality” is going to become a thing.

Two generations after John Senior, I wonder: do we need to do the equivalent of “smashing our TVs” once again? I also wonder if, this time, the ideas and call of Pope Leo XIV might be our inspiration for doing so.

The Holy Father has certainly made it clear that one of the reasons he chose his name was to signal that he would be like Leo XIII, a pope who helped the Church and world respond to the massively disruptive Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. Today, our Holy Father understands we are in the midst of another technological revolution, one that promises some good things but is likely to raise our passivity in the face of distorted reality to levels never seen before.

What would it look like to “smash our TVs” in 2025? Fewer people are even watching what we might think of as traditional television. But “cutting the TV cord” doesn’t automatically mean less screen time. Our many other screens have, if anything, led to even more time looking at screens. This is especially true for young people, but I myself often feel this way about my phone and computer screens.

Last week, Clare Morell released her new book, The Tech Exit. It’s geared toward parents wrestling with these matters, especially for their children, but it can be read with profit by virtually anyone. Morell argues that screen-time limits and parental controls aren’t making a big enough difference to stem the tide and, therefore, a more radical approach is needed.

Indeed, she suggests we may need to fast with a “screen detox” and, at the same time, feast anew in supportive communities with alternatives that embrace real-life responsibilities.

Here’s yet another way for the Church to be the Church. Our parishes, schools, and other communities should be places that support individuals and families in precisely these ways. We should not just be offering a “no” to harmful technologies. We need to offer a broader “yes” to the “really real,” embodied, the kind of genuine encounters John Senior called us to back in the 1970s.

These communities should facilitate the reading of paper books (both individually and in community), create opportunities for sacramental and prayerful encounters with God and the saints, chances to experience the won-der of God’s Creation, and, yes, even regular opportunities to be bored and daydream.

The Catholic Church must exercise a prophetic role today when it comes to AI. For if she doesn’t, who will? A case in point, on June 5, the bishops of Maryland released a succinct and timely pastoral letter on AI calling on Catholics to harness the use of these emerging technologies by placing the fundamental principle of the dignity of the human person at the forefront. Tied to the feast of Pentecost, the Maryland bishops invoked the Holy Spirit and called on the faithful to ponder and pray about these emerging technologies.

It’s not clear what Pope Leo the XIV will offer us for navigating the waters of our new technological revolution. But I wonder if he may see our current and coming disruptions as providing us, not with merely a thorny problem, but with a positive opportunity. Much like Neo in the movie The Matrix, I wonder if – faced with a culture intoxicated by the “blue pill” of artificial unreality fueled by a technocratic paradigm – we may consciously make the countercultural choice of the “red pill.”

As we lose faith in our mediating and even lying screens, we may be provided with a cultural moment to turn back to the reality of vibrant, local, immanent communities – thriving with the embodied energy and vitality of the Holy Spirit.

Getting there, however, may mean smashing our TVs.

First Martyrs of the Church of Rome, pray for us. Father Miller