Parents today are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, allowing kids online means exposure to content that threatens their mental health and their innocence. On the other hand, removing online access threatens to socially isolate kids from their friends and peer groups. What are parents to do?
We must remember that AI is not inherently evil. After all, if you go looking for funny animal videos, cooking tips, or sports highlights, it can fill your feed with content that brings happiness and laughter. But if you go with a darker purpose in mind, it can easily exacerbate those intentions as well. And those darker intentions have been around since humanity first left Eden. Ultimately, the problem with AI is the degree to which it makes feeding our sinful impulses so much simpler.
Calling pregnancy resource centers “anti-abortion centers” is a form of propaganda that attempts to portray abortion as normative and having a baby as an unthinkable option.
One obvious reason Americans are so interested in celebrities is that the media makes them so ubiquitous. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario: people get famous, which gets them in the news, which increases their fame, which makes them more newsworthy. A second is that many people live vicariously through the celebrities they follow. This phenomenon has become so pronounced in recent years that psychologists have coined the name “Celebrity Worship Syndrome” (CWS). They warn that “CWS is an obsessive addictive disorder in which a person becomes involved with the details of a celebrity’s personal life.”
Like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, many people, trapped in a shadow world of materialism and consumerism, cannot imagine that reality extends beyond our senses and shallow desire. Blind to the light of reality and the Gospel, they miss how God continues to reveal Himself in the world He has made. God has infused the world with His presence, with signs that point to Him and His love. He can be seen, for those with eyes to see, in everything from the beautiful to the tragic to the mundane.
We read of rising animosity against our Father and our faith, then we look at our capacities and ask, “What are they for so many?” We look at the spiritual, financial, and material needs of our day, then turn to our resources and ask the same question.
In response, consider the counsel of Pope St. Leo the Great (died AD 461): “Do not be put off by a lack of resources. A generous spirit is itself of great wealth, and there can be no shortage of material for generosity where it is Christ who feeds and Christ who is fed. His hand is present in all this activity: his hand, which multiplies the bread by breaking it and increases it by giving it away.” Will you put your “lunch” in his hands today?
About 15 years ago, sociologists coined the term “abusive boyfriend syndrome” to describe the increased risk to children who live in homes with an unrelated adult. According to numerous studies, these children were much more likely to be abused or even killed than children who live at home with two biological or married parents. Because of these findings, domestic violence prevention programs routinely teach parents, especially vulnerable women, that the single highest risk factor that they or their children will be abused is whether they’re living with an unrelated, unmarried adult.
God designed family in a specific way. The biological reality, that one man and one woman are required to make a child, points to the social reality, which is that children do best with a mom and a dad. This neither makes abuse inevitable for children in other arrangements, nor does it suggest that biological parents never abuse. In fact, child abuse can become tragically epidemic within certain cultures and families.
Our political culture is divided to a depth that raises questions about our national future. A former president of the United States and current leader for his party’s presidential nomination is either the victim of a partisan witch hunt or the perpetrator of felony crimes; one would think either scenario would move the political needle. As it is, it would seem that both parties are believing and doing precisely what the other party condemns them for doing. The depth of these divisions is unprecedented in living memory.
Dads are crucial. We’ve known this for a long time. For example, former president Barack Obama, despite advancing many policies that undermined the family, remained an outspoken voice on the importance of loving, involved fathers. According to all the evidence, he was partly correct. Kids need their fathers, but do best when their fathers are married to their mothers.
Should America get a divorce from itself? Twenty percent of Americans think so, believing Republican- and Democratic-leaning states should split into separate countries.
