Letters to the Editor: November 2024

Artificial Intelligence: Garbage In, Garbage Out?

I greatly appreciated Bob Weil’s article “Wrestling for Truth with ChatGPT” (Sept.). He describes the inherent flaws of generative artificial intelligence (AI) with a deft hand. He also suggests a crucial element of responsibly managing our relationship with AI: We must approach it with “critical, well-formed questions and some prior knowledge of the subject.” I agree that we need to replace our existential anxiety about some kind of AI apocalypse with a wiser trust in God’s providence.

It is important to recognize that Mr. Weil mostly refers to a specific kind of technology called generative AI, which currently takes the form of “large language models” like ChatGPT. This is a brand-new technology that will be refined and improved substantially in just a few years, and yet it is also a fundamentally flawed approach to a broader machine intelligence — at least without the integration of other technologies. Criticizing generative AI in its current form is a bit like chastising Thomas Edison for a flickering lightbulb 30 minutes after its invention. But Edison never made wild claims — comparable to the hype around AI — that his lightbulbs would replace the sun!

The core problem with AI is its structural tendency to motivate sin. Whether it is massive theft of data, development of a corporate surveillance nightmare, facilitation of child pornography, or crass imitation of the unique emotional and rational dignity of human beings, AI strongly encourages a utilitarian and power-based disposition toward the world and other persons. It has the overwhelming potential to saturate our culture and suppress or distort human relationships. We have the right and the duty to say “no.”

Christopher M. Reilly

Fredericksburg, Virginia

Bob Weil’s experiment, in which he asked ChatGPT controversial questions and got back the standard liberal answers, is not entirely surprising. But it is troubling, because it is indeed uncertain at this time “whether we are training AI or it is training us,” as Weil writes.

In a paper I published with Thomistic philosopher Gyula Klima in 2020 (“Artificial Intelligence and Its Natural Limits” in AI & Society), we pointed out some fundamental limitations that should apply to so-called artificial intelligence. Aristotle and Aquinas distinguished between two types of thought processes, broadly defined: perceptual thought, which includes perceiving, remembering, and imagining; and conceptual thought, which involves judgments about universals such as the idea of triangularity, as opposed to any particular triangle. At the risk of oversimplifying our argument, we showed that any purely material entity such as ChatGPT cannot represent universal concepts adequately, because doing so requires an immaterial entity, namely, the human mind.

Weil’s description of AI-generated “art” agrees with our notion that perceptual thought alone cannot produce truly creative art, which requires at least a modicum of conceptual thought. In agreement with Weil’s concern about “day-to-day changes to our society” that “may be just as insidious for their ubiquity,” we expressed the concern in our paper that “humanity can consciously or unconsciously lower the standards of what it means to be human.” There are still people around who find AI-generated art unsatisfying and who regard the glib word-pablum that ChatGPT generates distasteful and misleading. But as more such productions flood the Internet, we should heed C.S. Lewis’s warning in The Magician’s Nephew that “the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

Karl Stephan

San Marcos, Texas

I owe Bob Weil an apology. When I initially read his article, I dismissed it as just another critique from a technology-resistant individual avoiding progress. However, a week later, my team and I had a briefing with a representative from a leading supplier of legal research tools who provided a thorough analysis of AI’s benefits for legal research, highlighting how it could save us time and reduce costs for our clients. Most importantly, he demonstrated how AI could perform legal research more comprehensively than I ever could. The representative requested a factual scenario and three related legal questions, which I provided. In what seemed like magic, a legal brief was generated almost instantly. The facts were seamlessly integrated with relevant case law, analyzed, and a completed legal brief was produced — all in under two minutes.

Mindful of AI’s tendency to “hallucinate,” I read through the cases carefully. To my surprise, they were genuine, and the “black letter law” — the actual rule or holding of the case — was cited accurately. However, something crucial was missing. Lawyers operate in a world of nuance, where it’s not just what the court held that matters, but why it reached that conclusion. This reasoning, known as the ratio decidendi, was absent from the AI-generated brief.

So I went back and reread Weil’s article and realized he was absolutely right that AI “fails to create anything revelatory or produce any original synthesis.” In essence, it’s not true artificial “intelligence” — at best, it’s automated information-processing. Intelligence requires reasoning and critical thinking, which AI simply cannot provide. Weil is right to be concerned about the “quick-and-easy” mentality this technology may foster in the next generation of thinkers. I’ve witnessed it firsthand with my law students. When I ask for a brief, they often produce a neatly formatted list of case holdings — black letter law — with no analysis. Many don’t even seem familiar with juridical reasoning.

However, I must respectfully disagree with Weil about the bias inherent in large language models. All sources of information carry some degree of bias. Critical thinking is essential to recognize and account for this bias when analyzing and applying information.

I thank Weil for such a trenchant piece. It serves as a reminder that not everything that shines is valuable, and it cautions us about the concept of GIGO — garbage in, garbage out. Most importantly, it underscores that though God created men with the ability to think and reason, no human creation can truly replicate this wonder.

Nick Critelli

Des Moines, Iowa

I enjoyed Bob Weil’s article, and as I am a bit of an AI skeptic, he was addressing a receptive audience. Of course, I might be biased myself, as Weil and I were colleagues in an early Internet startup at the end of the past century. That dates both of us.

I appeared recently on a panel at an AI summit, where I addressed several of my concerns in a session entitled “AI and the Impending Median Range to Creativity.” I was the one skeptic in the room, the lone voice in the wilderness. I drew on my experience leading a team of strategists and writers who produce content for our marketing clients, but also on George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), a major premise of which is that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.” Orwell contends that “what above all is needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.”

To that point, a recent working paper from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management (“AI from AI: A Future of Generic and Biased Content?”) notes that “the dumbing down of AI-generated content…is filling the internet with content that’s bland and generic. Some researchers contend that increasingly [generative AI systems] will be copying earlier AI, leading to widespread homogenization of content.” To put it more directly, let’s say I uncritically depend on AI to write something. And then AI scrapes the Internet and finds my AI-generated content, learning from what “I” wrote. Before long, we’re all writing the same sentences, and they’re terrible sentences. And if the Internet is filled with terrible sentences, then the quality of our thought will be compromised. The result could be what I would call “a descending toward the mean.”

I do, however, disagree with Weil that large language models like ChatGPT have been manipulated in some way to suppress less popular points of view. As I understand it, they are essentially probabilistic models that “look for the most probable next word.” In that sense, if they readily quote fringe theories, they are citing less probable words, which would be a flaw in their programming. (If you asked the model to describe the shape of the earth, you would not want it citing flat-earthers, would you?) In other words, the solution would not be to expect the model to give equal play to the one guy in ten who says the planet is not, in fact, getting warmer; it would be to alter your query. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’m guessing ChatGPT would do a decent job if it were asked: “Help me make the case against global warming,” or something like that.

Peter Watkins

Orange, California

BOB WEIL REPLIES:

I thank Christopher M. Reilly, Karl Stephan, Nick Critelli, and Peter Watkins for taking the time to read my article and respond to it thoughtfully.

I agree with Mr. Reilly that the current generation of generative AI does not live up to its hype, and I chuckled at his distinction between how the world greeted Edison’s signature invention in its early stages and the unbounded puffery accompanying AI’s first halting steps. Reilly suggests that AI is a “fundamentally flawed approach to a broader intelligence — at least without the integration of other technologies.” I thought he might explain what those other technologies might be, but instead he proceeds to his most intriguing indictment of AI: “its structural tendency to motivate sin.” I’m not sure that, in and of itself, AI is any different from the invention of the written word, the printing press, or the camera. Each of these technological advances can be used for good or evil, and indeed each has been. But Reilly’s observation that “AI strongly encourages a utilitarian and power-based disposition toward the world and other persons” drew me up short. I think the risk is much more subtle and yet also more insidious and can compromise unwary generative-AI users gradually over time rather than all at once. The banality produced by AI risks demeaning the user while showing contempt for the reader.

I was reminded of a recent report from the Barna Group called “Three Takeaways on How Pastors Can Use AI.” The study surveyed 278 Protestant senior pastors, 77 percent of whom felt that God can work through AI. If that were not frightening enough, 12 percent would be willing to entrust to AI their role in creating sermons meant to provide spiritual guidance to their flocks. I wonder if Reilly’s concern regarding a “utilitarian” and “crass imitation of the unique…rational dignity of human beings” will not generally be a result of indulging our own human weaknesses rather than any malign intent on our part. (At least for most of us, that is — until AI is used deliberately for evil.) Reilly suggests that “we have the right and the duty to say ‘no.’” I submit that, sadly, the revolution is over, and perhaps the best we can do as part of the mop-up is to raise the alarm regarding the risks of misusing AI.

Mr. Stephan shares my concerns regarding the intellectual challenges associated with AI use, and he refers to a paper he coauthored in which he “showed that any purely material entity such as ChatGPT cannot present universal concepts adequately, because doing so requires an immaterial entity, the human mind.” I would add that this is so because AI is not created in the image of God, but of man, and therefore lacks a soul to inform what it produces. Stephan adds that not only is the content AI creates subpar, but by utilizing AI, “humanity can consciously or unconsciously lower the standards of what it means to be human.” This implies not only a reduction in intellectual stature over time but also a diminishment of moral judgment.

I am reminded of W.B. Yeats’s oft-quoted 1919 poem “The Second Coming,” with its reference to the “rough beast” whose “hour has come at last,” as it “slouches toward Bethlehem,” portending a new age of darkness and “nightmare,” perhaps symbolizing an historical force that includes political, ideological, and technological aspects (not to mention a perversion of the biblical narrative of the coming of the Christ). Have we released something that will prove our undoing? I think it’s too early to tell.

Mr. Critelli shares a real-world example of the strengths and weaknesses of generative AI as a tool in the legal profession. For the collection and ordering of data, he finds it quite useful, noting that in response to a query, “the facts were seamlessly integrated with relevant case law, analyzed, and a completed legal brief was produced — all in under two minutes.” But then he identifies a fatal flaw, one that would likely elude many of his law students: AI, at least at this stage in its development, does not have the ability to think critically. As a result, even though AI properly reported on the disposition of a particular case, it did not identify the chain of reasoning that drove the final decision, which is a critical responsibility of the attorney to tease out.

Critelli imagines that I consider it problematic that large language models reflect a bias. He correctly notes that all sources of information contain bias, and that it is our duty to ferret that out. I completely agree with him, and I think I may have been unclear in expressing my concern. My view is that the preponderance of the content on the Internet reflects a progressive perspective. This is natural, given that the Left dominates the academy and the media and has, therefore, created most of the printed and online content over the past 75 years. I did not suggest that the material collected by generative AI should be unbiased (which is not possible), only that the thoughtful user must compensate for implicit bias with probing questions and a close interrogation of the references provided. I have no evidence as yet to prove that generative-AI tools are themselves programmed to be biased in a particular way. As Critelli notes, “garbage in, garbage out.”

While agreeing with me in most areas, Mr. Watkins, my marketing colleague and friend, takes me to task for ascribing to generative AI a leftward bias that might not be there. He contends that AI query responses would be flawed if they included “fringe theories,” such as the views of “flat-earthers,” mistakenly suggesting that one of my inquiries questioned whether the planet was getting warmer. In fact, my query focused on whether any warming trend was to a greater or lesser extent man-caused.

Nevertheless, I took seriously his recommendation that I take a different tack in my interrogation of ChatGPT — namely, that I ask it to “help me make the case for [man-caused] global warming.” I did so, and the resulting reply was indeed much closer to what I expected, with fewer steps. However, when I queried further, ChatGPT was no better at providing direct references to source documents supporting alternate views. I had to do my own research on a discredited conclusion from a seminal 2013 paper ChatGPT cited (“A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperatures for the Past 11,000 Years”) in order to ask the right questions. To do so, I quoted the indictment I found in a critical article by Roger Pielke Jr. (“Fixing the Marcott Mess in Climate Science”) to ask the following: “If the data for the last hundred years is not robust, why did you cite the paper to support the argument ‘that current warming rates are unprecedented compared to past climate changes’?” That drew this admission from ChatGPT: “You raise a valid point. While the Marcott et al. paper provides important insights into long-term climate trends, its qualification about the robustness of the last century’s data means that it should not be used to directly support claims about recent warming rates being unprecedented.” I’d say that’s a significant misrepresentation of the facts, and I’m at a loss to explain the cause, if it is not bias — intentional or not.

In closing, I must credit Critelli for introducing me, in a recent conversation, to a new iteration of Google’s NotebookLM, a generative-AI utility, which is available free and without registration at notebooklm.google.com.
Released in late September, it can be used to create a realistic and engaging two-person/ten-minute podcast in English on any topic. All that is necessary is to upload one or more documents using the NotebookLM interface. After a few minutes, NotebookLM produces a downloadable .wav file that can be deployed in any number of ways. The engineers built in features that mimic true human speech, including pauses, an occasional intake of breath or stammer, content-free banter, and conversational fillers such as “Oh, absolutely,” “Hmm,” and “Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

Intrigued, I uploaded my NOR article on AI, and the resulting exchange between the synthetic male and female voices was surprisingly accurate in summarizing the high points of my argument. In several instances, the artificial interlocutors made my point more concisely than I had. For example, the female voice concludes that “if we’re not careful, we risk creating a world where those biases are amplified, and critical thinking becomes a lost art, and where genuine human connection, the kind that thrives on debate and disagreement, is replaced by this echo chamber of algorithmic conformity.” I’ll conclude with the podcast’s closing recommendation from the male voice, which is more direct and accessible than my own: “We can’t just sit back and let AI shape the world for us. We need to be actively involved in shaping AI and making sure that it reflects the best of humanity, not just our flaws.”

Deification Here Below

Thomas J. Kronholz’s focus on deification in his guest column “The Universal Dimensions of the Incarnation” (Sept.) was right on target. He is correct that “uprooted from the sacramental worldview of old” — and I would add the Latin liturgical tradition — “modern Catholics often adopt unorthodox ways of thinking about themselves and the world they inhabit.” As Mr. Kronholz points out, these unorthodox ways of thinking are seen most clearly in the fact that deification is a concept with which many Catholics are not familiar.

Although orthodox Catholic theologians are now coming to appreciate the centrality of deification to Patristic and medieval Christian thought and spirituality, the average Catholic in the pew has probably never heard the term and would find the notion foreign if someone were to try to explain it to him. Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox don’t suffer as much in this way, in large part because they have better maintained their connection to their liturgical and theological traditions than have modern Roman Catholics. Kronholz has done us a service, therefore, by lucidly showing how the Incarnation and our participation in the Eucharist and other sacraments are both directed to, and already here below begin to accomplish, the deification of both ourselves and the cosmos as a whole. His quotation of St. Teresa of Ávila’s poem Para Navidad nicely emphasizes how, despite the fact that it seems nearly forgotten today, deification was central to Latin Catholicism, not only in the patristic and medieval periods but also after the Protestant Reformation.

Kronholz explains how the Reformation began to erode our sense of the cosmic consequences of the Incarnation and the deification it promises. He then notes how the French Revolution and the Enlightenment further blinded Catholics to the Incarnation’s transfiguration and completion of the cosmos. One step in this loss of apprehension of the center of the Christian religion that Kronholz did not mention is the way some 19th-century German thinkers attempted to secularize the notion of deification itself. For Hegel, or at least some of his followers and interpreters, the Athanasian axiom that “God became man so that man could become God” means that the Incarnation is a stage in the development of human consciousness through which humanity has come to realize that the human spirit — rather than some transcendent deity — is what is divine. “God” and “the divine,” in this view, are names for the absolute and transcendental aspect of the spirit of humanity. With the rise of modern secular societies, so the argument goes, man becomes “God” in the sense that man — or a certain dimension of his spirit — becomes the source of morality and our shared political life.

I am happy to see Catholics begin to push back on this and reclaim the orthodox understanding of deification and appreciate its centrality to the Christian faith and Christian life.

Michael Wiitala

Cleveland, Ohio

Thomas J. Kronholz’s guest column is like a shot of espresso: reinvigorating with subtle notes. God wed Himself to man, and now man is God. Phew! What encouragement, what a gift!

Kronholz mentions that the Protestant Reformation ushered in an era in which faith was to live only in the mind by doing away with the sacraments (outward physical signs instituted by Christ to give grace). And we have surely all read statistics of low rates of belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Counter to that, I have seen an interesting phenomenon here in Buenos Aires. It seems every parish has eucharistic adoration. One parish, Parroquia San Bernardo Abad, dims all the lights and shines spotlights on the altar at the consecration. A majority of the faithful stay five, ten, even 15 minutes after Mass to pray. A revival in devotion to the Eucharist? I think so.

It’s no secret that our former archbishop placed restrictions on the Latin Mass here. But I have to wonder: Did this have the effect of mixing different types of Catholics who otherwise would have remained segregated? Maybe the Spirit moves in ways we do not understand.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the archdiocese is going through a yearslong downsizing project. Perhaps that will have a similar effect: joining different charisms that would have remained separate, creating a more dynamic Church.

Shawn Dust

Buenos Aires

Argentina

The Obligations of Priests Abroad

I found J.C. Miller’s guest column “Holy Days of Obligation Abroad” (Sept.) very interesting, but a question came to mind: What should a priest do when traveling outside his home country by himself or with a group of pilgrims? For example, if an American priest is in Poland on January 6 when it does not fall on a Sunday, should he celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany that day since in Poland Epiphany is always on January 6 and is never moved (and is even a national holiday)? Or should he celebrate a regular Mass on that day and save the Epiphany Mass for the following Sunday, when it is observed in the United States? Likewise, if he is in Mexico on Corpus Christi Thursday, should he celebrate a Corpus Christi Mass, though in the United States it has been moved to Sunday?

My view is that for holy days of obligation, traveling priests should err on the side of celebrating according to the universal Church calendar, especially if they are not sure what the local Church does. In other words, err on celebrating the more festive day!

When bishops’ conferences move holy days to Sundays, it robs Catholics of the joy of having more festive days and sends the message that going to Mass during the week is a drag rather than a wonderful opportunity the Church gives us to show more love to the only Person who really matters in our lives: God.

Thomas Zabiega

Bolingbrook, Illinois

Flickers of Life Amid the Ruins

I’m sure I’m not unique in having had to feign interest at social gatherings when guests shared their photos — mercilessly multiplied in the digital age — of their trips to Paris, Costa Rica, Jackson Hole, or some other fascinating paradise. In a wonderfully funny song, Noel Coward asks, “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?” (you can hear him sing it on YouTube). The target of his sendup is bored, rich tourists who troop off with more cash than curiosity — to do the sights. They’ve been there and done that, certifying the same with cellphone pictures. Back in the age of Kodak, mementos were few, needing film and development. But iPhonography imposes no restraint. Travel is faster, easier, and more recordable than ever before. The trouble is that the comfort-ensconced tourist brings back only what he brought in the first place. The computing adage “junk in, junk out” applies to tourism.

Kenneth Colston’s article “Postcards from the Ruins of a Christian Civilization” (Jul.-Aug.) qualifies the writer as one of the “right people” whom Coward doesn’t “criticize or cavil.” For one thing, Colston wasn’t insulated by too much cash or comfort. In fact, on the eve of his return, he stayed in a noisy Muslim quarter, where, as indication of a clean conscience, he was able to “sleep like an exhausted child.” Throughout his travel (and travail), he had to jostle with the natives — Scots, French, English, Belgians, Dutch — at their haunts, pubs, and places of worship. And he had a purpose beyond seeing the sights, sampling the cuisine, and filling his phone with famous views and selfies. He reconnected with friends with whom he had taught in a French school decades ago. He explored abbeys, oratories, and cathedrals. In some he detected signs of a still vital Christendom, but in most, alas, only the grey pall of secularity, or “liberal Christianity.” Still, as he says in his opening, “Christendom is not dead.” Vital sparks of life flicker amid the ruins, but their detection through the all-encompassing fog of apostasy and spiritual lassitude requires a trained and determined eye, happily possessed by the author.

As much as I enjoyed Colston’s finely written postcards from the ruins, they did not revive in me the nomadic impulse. Europe is an older and more cultured civilization than ours, and, as such, its rot gives off a more complex odor. I prefer to smell it from over here. But whenever Colston takes another voyage, I’ll be one of his vicarious — and grateful — fellow travelers.

Peter Maurice

Washington, Missouri

Not So Contrary, After All

Thom Nickels’s article “Two Monasteries Quite Contrary” (Sept.) is an important, informative piece of journalistic reporting on St. Vincent Archabbey (Catholic) in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and the Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (Russian Orthodox) in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Important and informative because it comes at a time when so little is known about monastic life and those who live it.

Unfortunately, the title of the article, whether chosen by the editorial staff or the author, is confusing for reasons that form the substance of this letter. The confusion of this reader stems from the imprecision and ambiguity of the word contrary. Its meanings can range from “opposite in nature” to “contradictory” to “conflicting.” Furthermore, the supposed “opposites” referred to in the context of this article could be the two monasteries, on one hand, and their secular, local communities, on the other, or, more significantly, the two monasteries themselves — one Catholic and one Orthodox.

Of the two possible “opposites,” the former can be more easily dismissed. Nothing in the article suggests tensions of any sort between the citizens of Latrobe and the community members of St. Vincent Archabbey. And although reference is made to hostile stares — when their paths cross — by some residents of Waymart, Pennsylvania, directed toward the St. Tikhon monks and priests in their black cassocks and small, raised black hats, there is less here than might meet the eye. As one of the “Fathers” observes, “Most of the townspeople know us and enjoy seeing us.”

This leaves the two monasteries as the contrarians — modern Benedictine versus Eastern Orthodox. To be sure, Nickels subtly suggests possibly serious differences at two points in his reporting. The first comes early in the account of his stay at St. Tikhon, when he reminds us of “the contentious debate about which Church…is the true Church of the Apostles [that] has been raging since the official split of East and West in A.D. 1054.” To intensify the drama, the author reminds us further that the split may have been the cause of “schisms” or “heresies” rather than “a mutual parting of ways,” as some believe. Interestingly, Nickels does not take a position on this issue.

The second sly suggestion of monasteries at odds comes at the very end of the article, when the author closes with the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Soloviev’s belief that Orthodoxy and Rome need to reunite if they want to “become a true universal Church rather than a dead fossil subject to the rulership of heads of state.” Indeed, Soloviev went so far as to prophesy that “the salvation of the world will be found in the reunion of the two great Churches.” Wow, the stakes couldn’t get higher! And to think that these two subject monasteries carry the weight of serving as metaphors for this global, existential conflict.

Once again, there is nothing in Nickels’s reporting to document differences between the two monasteries that would rise to the level of sustaining schisms and/or heresies. To the contrary, I was struck by the similarities of the two in promoting education by the creation of colleges and seminaries; defining environments that foster meditation, the saying of the Mass, and daily prayers; providing communal meals that (while mostly silent affairs) are occasions for reading the lives of saints or the writings of the Church Fathers; and, possibly most important, offering their members “a life more fully in Christ.”

Yes, some of the architecture at St. Vincent is more “modern” than suits Nickels’s taste, and though reverent and simple, the daily Masses lack incense and bells at consecration. These differences, it seems to me, hardly rise to that of defining a contrarian.

Nickels does a great service to monastic life and the daily activities of those who live it by focusing on the stories of Fr. Vincent Crosby, Fr. Boniface Hicks, Archimandrite Athanasy, Fr. Sergius, Fr. Alexander, Fr. Ken, and Br. Basil. Less so when he suggests that these quiet places of prayer and meditation are battlegrounds for the salvation of the world.

Gresham Riley

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

THOM NICKELS REPLIES:

Regarding Gresham Riley’s question about the title of my article: That was an editorial decision that did not include my input. Yet it so happens that I like the chosen title — “Two Monasteries Quite Contrary” — though not because it signifies major conflict between the two monasteries, or between the monks and the townspeople who live nearby, but because of more nuanced differences between the monasteries of which non-Catholic and non-Orthodox people might not be aware.

Though “the spirit” of the monasteries may be said to be similar, the differences in style/rites and the wording of some of the prayers point to deeper theological debates — and divides — that can get some avid believers on both sides into a heated exchange.

Orthodoxy, for instance, never experienced a Vatican II, and its rituals have not been reformatted or eliminated. Whereas the pope of Rome was prayed for in pre-schism Orthodox liturgies, that is no longer true, although pre-schism popes — the papal saints, anyway — are prayed for openly to this day. Orthodox fasts are also quite strenuous and basically mirror the pre-Vatican II Catholic fast: no food or liquid — including water — after midnight before Divine Liturgies the following morning. In general, there are numerous fasting cycles throughout the year in the Orthodox world — so many, in fact, that Orthodox Christians who follow the rules spend many months of the year eating as vegetarians. By contrast, there is little fasting in the Roman Church, the idea being that life in the modern world is too demanding, and strict fasts are simply too difficult for today’s faithful.

Orthodox Divine Liturgies are also considerably longer than Catholic Masses. Likewise, a Catholic baptism takes, generally, 20 minutes, whereas the Orthodox baptismal service begins with an exorcism and chrismation, stretching out the time considerably. Even a simple matter like grace before meals in Orthodoxy involves multiple prayers rather than a simple, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts….”

Though I realize that these can be categorized by some as cosmetic differences, we should remember Pope Benedict XVI’s famous comment that everything “stands or falls with the liturgy.”

So yes, the “contrariness” between the two monasteries is far more nuanced than any kind of blatant tug-of-war.

My bigger disagreement with Riley is that he takes issue with my contention that these quiet places of prayer and meditation are battlegrounds for the salvation of the world. The aim of monks, and all Christians, as has often been said, is to pray without ceasing. The way to do this is by keeping God alive in our hearts and minds.