Your parishioners are using AI. Help them use it well.

During Covid lockdowns, I was lying on the couch one afternoon — pregnant with my second daughter, phone in hand, scrolling. My husband was across the room doing the exact same thing. And then I looked over at our two-and-a-half-year-old.

She had picked up her toy phone and was scrolling, imitating us. It gutted me. A few days later, she walked up to my husband, pushed the phone away from his face, and asked: “Why do phones even have to be alive?”

Your parishioners are asking a similar question right now, just with a new term swapped in: AI. 

They’re asking deeply human questions:

Is this good for my family?

Am I already behind — or is everyone else just pretending they know what they’re doing?

My kids are using this at school and I don’t fully understand it. Should I be worried?

What does my faith say about any of this?

Am I losing something I can’t quite name?

These are the questions sitting in the minds of the people who sit in the pews on Sunday, in the conversations taking place after Mass, in the group chats of your young adults and parents of young kids. People are confused. Some are afraid. Many are already using AI tools without being entirely sure they should be. And almost none of them know where to bring those questions.

That’s where you come in.

As a parish or ministry leader, you are uniquely positioned to open this conversation. Not as tech support or an expert with all the answers. But as a shepherd — the type of person your parishioners already trust to help them navigate hard, uncertain terrain with faith and wisdom. 

You don’t have to be a technologist to have this conversation. You just have to be willing to have it.

The fears are real and they deserve to be named

Before you can guide anyone through this, it helps to understand what they’re actually afraid of. 

There are a few worries that seem to consistently surface in conversations about AI in Catholic contexts:

“What if AI replaces things that are sacred?” There’s a real fear that AI will flatten or cheapen things that are meant to be deeply human: worship, prayer, pastoral care, spiritual direction, authentic community. That fear is a healthy one. Name it, don’t dismiss it. And take care to make sure this does not happen as you leverage AI within your parish activities.

“My kids are already using it and I can’t keep up.” Parents feel this acutely. Children are encountering AI in classrooms, on YouTube, in the apps they use every day. And many parents feel like they’re perpetually one step behind. They don’t need you to have all the answers about technology. They need you to remind them that their wisdom about their own children still matters more than any algorithm.

“Am I sinning by using this?” More people are asking this than you might think, and mostly in private. Is it dishonest to use AI to help write something? Is it lazy? Is it cheating? Is there something morally wrong with outsourcing my thinking to a machine? These aren’t absurd questions. They’re serious ones that deserve a serious, pastoral response.

Give families a framework, not a rulebook

When people are confused and a little afraid, they often want one of two things: someone to tell them exactly what to do, or someone to tell them it’s all fine and they have nothing to worry about. Resist both.

What families actually need is a framework — a set of principles rooted in their dignity as human beings and their faith as Catholics — that helps them make good decisions in an environment that will keep changing faster than any rulebook can keep up with.

In our home, my husband and I have landed on three principles, and I think they translate well for the families in your parish:

1. Don’t consume AI slop. This means being intentional about content: if it’s AI-generated art, AI-written text, or AI-produced video — especially the kind flooding Catholic corners of YouTube and Instagram — we opt out. There are real Catholic artists, real Catholic writers, real human voices worth supporting. Help your families find them, and help them appreciate what it means that a human being poured themselves into creating something. That matters. That’s different from what a machine produces in seconds.

2. Don’t turn to AI for life advice. Using AI to answer a practical question is one thing. Turning to AI for wisdom — especially when human wisdom is available — is another. I once uploaded photos of outfits to ChatGPT to ask for fashion advice, despite the fact that my mom, who has great taste and knows my face, my preferences, and my style, lives around the corner. AI is always available. But availability isn’t the same as wisdom. Encourage your parishioners to reach for real relationships first — a trusted priest, a mentor couple, a friend — before they reach for a chatbot. The ease of AI can quietly erode the habit of turning to people, and the habit of turning to people is one worth protecting fiercely.

3. Don’t let AI be creative for you. AI can help refine an idea or tighten a draft. But it shouldn’t be the one dreaming, imagining, or deciding. Creativity — the capacity to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist and bring it into being — is bound up with what it means to be made in the image of God. That’s not something we should be outsourcing. And when we do, we lose something. We lose the slow, effortful, deeply human process of thinking something through ourselves — and that process is often where the real growth happens.

These aren’t meant to be rigid rules with zero flexibility. They’re guardrails that help families feel grounded and confident when everything else feels like it’s moving too fast.

Point to the Church’s wisdom

One of the gifts of being Catholic in this moment is that we are not starting from scratch. The Church has navigated every technological revolution in human history — the printing press, the telegraph, radio, television, the internet — and she has always stood ready to help form the conscience of those using new tools. This moment is no different.

The Vatican’s document Antiqua et Nova offers a clear anchor for these conversations: human intelligence “is not primarily about completing functional tasks, but about understanding and actively engaging with reality in all its dimensions.” AI, for all its impressive capability, cannot feel. It cannot pray. It cannot grieve a loss, sit with someone in their suffering, or wonder at a sunset. It will never have a soul. It will never have wisdom. It will always be, at its core, a very sophisticated collection of data points.

Every generation has faced technologies that seemed to threaten something sacred about human life and community. Every generation has been called to use those tools wisely, in service of the common good and the glory of God. That long tradition of discernment is something you can offer your community. They don’t just need tech literacy. They need theological grounding.

The machine should help us be more human

The best framework I’ve found for talking about AI with families is this: a machine that stays in its proper place — like a microwave, or a dishwasher — frees us up to be more fully human. It handles the functional task quickly so we can return to the living.

When we let AI draft our communications, we stop thinking deeply about the person we’re communicating with. When we let AI answer our hard questions, we stop sitting with the discomfort that leads to growth. When we let AI generate our creative work, we lose the slow, sometimes frustrating, deeply rewarding process of making something ourselves. When we let AI be our companion we let the most important human habits atrophy.

As a parish or ministry leader, you come to this conversation with an advantage that no tech company can manufacture. You already speak the language of the human person. You already know what God wants for each of us. You already know how to sit with someone in their confusion, to point them toward truth, to remind them what actually matters.