We live in an unreal world, which is to say, one unhinged from the truth. One way to know what is right, is to know what’s wrong, the via negativa, if you will.
First, a man – which is to say, an adult biological male, for one must clarify such things nowadays – has entered the Catholic Church with the sacrament of Confirmation. All well and good. The difficulty, however, is that the man in question, Gio Benitez, an anchor for ABC news, is openly and brazenly married to another man – ad adult male – and his ‘husband’ was his sponsor. One scarcely knows where to begin. To enter the Church, to become Catholic, one must believe all that the Church believes – known as the actus fidei, the act of Faith, reciting the Creed. As well, one must submit o the Magisterial teaching of the Church, including her moral teaching, which has, from the beginning, condemned homosexual acts as ‘intrinsically disordered’. His Confirmation is at least illicit, a consequence of such a sacrament in a state of grave sin (cf., CCC, #2357, whatever his personal culpability, which is not our place to judge or discern). His ‘marriage’ is certainly invalid, and so may be his Confirmation, as he seems to have entered the Church under false pretenses, with little idea of what it means to be Catholic. Pray for them, and the priest involved in this scandal.
Then, the current number one country song in America is ‘Walk My Walk’, written by Breaking Rust, who don’t, or doesn’t, exist: It’s actually by ‘AI’, whatever what might mean. The accompanying video is also of AI images of fake country singers. A programmer? A program? Who’s really to be given credit, and remuneration? Whatever the source, the music itself ain’t composed by no person, to talk the talk. What this means for the future of music is anyone’s guess. How would one attend a concert by ‘Breaking Rust’? The author of the article, perhaps itself composed by AI, was apparently seeking an interview with ‘Breaking Rust’ – but how does interview what cannot be interviewed in any real sense?
Finally, for now, a woman, Gisella Cardia, has been charged in Italy for faking a Marian apparition. The woman seems real enough, but she allegedly brought a statue back from Medjugorje – itself ironic – which she claimed bled tears, and prophesied various disasters, ‘the destruction of Rome by an earthquake and the takeover of the Church by communism’ and so on. She – Mrs. Cardia, not Our Lady – also claims the charism of miraculously multiplying ‘gnocchi and pizza’. If so, she has a standing invitation to any of my get-togethers. The couple have pocketed a cool 365,000 Euros (in 592,254 in Canadian dollars), which is a good gig, if you can get it. Probably more than Breaking Rust will ever get in their own ethereal realm, even if someone’s profiting from that fakery.
Maybe all these stories are AI fiction. All I can say is that I know myself that I am writing this, and am happy to verify that for the reader in some way. But how would I do so in today’s digital world, short of said reader making the journey to visit my home? Perhaps it may all come down to that, living life locally, with live music and lived liturgy, in a little village where, to paraphrase the song from Cheers, everybody knows your name. Sounds all too lovely, and real.
One way or the other, the truth wins out in the end. Veritas vos liberabit.
