Alzheimers, AI, and Around the Catholic Table

Weekly Notes

Book Season is upon us. The Around the Catholic Table cookbook comes out on August 12, and is now available for pre-order. A coffee table book about the Catholic heritage of some of Europe’s best wineries, Sacred Wine, will be released on October 1. And the long awaited story Bible for young Catholics, The Story of All Stories, will be available starting October 13.

I’ll be sharing lots more about each as they come out (and selling signed copies, too). I also have a fun cookbook related treat for everyone who is a full subscriber to this newsletter. I’m putting together a series of weekly meal plans based on the cookbook—complete with shopping lists and allergy adaptations—that will go out with this newsletter, starting on August 12. My hope is that they make dinner planning easier for you as summer draws to a close and the craze of the school year returns.

If you want to receive those meal plans (and keep supporting imperfect writing that comes from a human head and human heart), you can just click this here button.

Speaking of human heads, this is where I normally transition to a substantive newsletter, but what I actually could are prayers. The family and I are in Illinois this week, spending time with my mom before we head up to Woodruff, Wisconsin, where I’ll give a talk to the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women. These visits home are good because I get to see my mom. But they are not fun.

Maybe someday God will give me the grace and time to untangle the mess of thoughts I have about my mom and Alzheimers. For now, I’m just trying to navigate the season as best as I can. It’s such an ever-shifting landscape, one filled with echoes and shadows of the mother I once knew, but not the substance of her. I hate it. But I also know God can use even the things that are worthy of our hate for His good purposes. I’m trusting in that.

Regardless, if you could say a prayer for my mom, my sisters, and me, I would appreciate it. And maybe, while you’re at it, also please say a prayer for Chris, who has been caring for the kids in a rental house during a typical summer here in the Mississippi River Valley, where the humidity is so thick that you actually feel wet when you sit outside. Not sticky. Wet. Before Chris and I started dating, I would tell him that my hometown became New Orleans every summer, and he did not believe me. Now, he does.

Beyond asking for prayers, I don’t have a real newsletter for you today. Just a few scattered thoughts. I wish I could keep the Q&A’s coming even when we are here, but my time and my emotional capacity are limited on these visits. Which is a normal thing—not being able to churn out content at the same rate and of the same quality, regardless of circumstance. The algorithm, however, frowns upon normal human behaviors like breaks. It wants an unbroken stream of content to keep people perpetually glued to whatever app it’s controlling. Which is one reason more and more writers are turning to AI to generate content for them. That and, of course, the little fact that it’s easier to massage words generated by AI than it is to wring words out of your own head.

I read yesterday that nearly 60 percent of what we read online now is generated by AI or translated by an AI algorithm. By 2026—next year—that number is expected to be 90 percent. I don’t know what to make of that. I hope it’s not true. But it might be.

At least here, in my little corner of the Internet, though, you can count on the real thing, faulty sentence construction and all. This newsletter is and always will be an AI-free zone. I do not and will not use AI. I won’t use it for writing help. I won’t use it for marketing help. I won’t use it for anything I can control. Not simply because I have watched Battlestar Gallactica and The Terminator, nor just because people who use ChatGPT are literally being made stupider by it. But also because I suspect AI will do the same thing for our souls that it does for our brains.

As most of you know, I write for a living. It is what pays for the roof over our head, the food on our table, and the clothes on our backs. Which is a great grace. It’s also a grace to hear from people who have benefitted from what I write. I don’t quite know how that’s happens, knowing myself as I do. But happen it does.

But even if everyone stopped reading my words tomorrow, my writing would still matter. It would matter because it would matter to me, and it would matter to the work Jesus was doing in me.

As crazy as this may sound to some people, when I write, Jesus speaks to me. Not directly. Not audibly. He doesn’t show in my office and chit chat with me, nor does His voice boom at me from beyond the clouds. But, quietly, imperceptibly, indirectly, He still speaks. As I struggle to understand people, ideas, and emotions, then put that understanding into words, He is there, helping me see it all better. He is there helping me see Him better, too.

This, I believe, is why God has called me to this work. Not because He needs me to write anything. He’s God. He could make the stones write what I write if He so desired. Rather, He’s called me to this work because I need to do it. I need to do this laboring and wrestling and thinking and praying. The process of working through thoughts and words is part of how He teaches me. It’s part of how He sanctifies me. And I can’t trade that process, laborious though it might be, for the ease of AI. The cost would not be worth it. I would lose the very best thing that comes of my work: the chance to be transformed through it by Him.

The same holds true for everyone, though, not just professional writers.

Writing is not ultimately about content. Nor is education ultimately about a degree. Both are about the person—the person doing the writing, the person receiving the education. Both are about our formation. They are about how we think, see, and communicate. They are about our character, and how the acts of reading, writing, thinking, and speaking, shape us and remake us. We are the real product of both. You get one product when you sit down and labor over an idea. You get another when you outsource it to ChatGPT. That’s as true of the state of our souls as it is the state of our minds.***

And so, I draw my line in the sand. No AI help for me. Which may mean that eventually I won’t be able to keep paying the bills with my writing. We shall see. I’ve been wanting to open a vintage-inspired home goods store in downtown Steubenville anyhow, so maybe if the algorithm eventually buries me, I’ll just give that a try.

***I know there are people who would say this is true of “real writing” on “important subjects,” but that AI is still useful for the more mundane tasks of copy writing. I disagree. Having spent a solid half my career doing primarily copy writing, I believe that work matters too. I am a better writer because of the copy writing I did. Yes, it was often boring. But it taught me a great deal about how to engage readers, express ideas simply and clearly, and keep a story moving. It also kept my bills paid when the more “interesting” writing could not. I have long said that anyone who wants to become a better writer should spend some time doing copy writing. Which is why I fear that the almost complete outsourcing of it to AI is going to hurt all writing in the end. The process matters. It really does.

Five Fast Things

1. Last week, on Visitation Sessions, Chris, Kate, Casey, and I commiserated on the beauty and agony of bringing littles to Church. This week, we have a bonus episode for subscribers on how Christians are supposed to heed St. Paul’ instruction to “have no anxiety about anything.” I have no answers. My husband has some.

2. A couple years back, Chris and I watched the first season of Julian Fellows’ The Gilded Age, but found it mildly disappointing and subsequently forgot about it. Recently, however, we picked it back up and are definitely enjoying the second and third season more than the first. Still, there is something just a bit off about it. I think it feels rushed. Which, if I am being honest, is how most shows feel to me these days, even lovely shows like All Creatures Great and Small. Prestige television’s great strength was that it could take the time necessary to tell a story well. But where 12-13 episodes was standard a decade ago (Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Downton Abbey), now the standard number of episodes is just 8. Those missing four episodes may be the difference.

3. In between having the same conversation with my mom for hours on end and working on my talk for tomorrow, I’ve still been feeding my family. The biggest hit this week was a recipe for Peruvian Chicken. I have no idea how authentic it was, but everyone did eat it, which I always count as a win. The green sauce in particular was a hit with my sister and nieces. Some folks here are anti-cilantro, so I used parsley instead, but I’m sure cilantro would have been great, too.

4. This article about the declining interest in wine making among French young people was both fascinating and sad. I’ve spent time in Bordeaux with dear family friends who have owned and operated several vineyards there for generations, so I have seen how much work and tradition goes into every bottle. The history, the traditions, the culture—it’s all beautiful. The wine is also fantastic. I do hope there is a reversal of course soon.

5. My family is celebrating because Pope Leo just announced that he will soon declare one of our most favorite saints, John Henry Newman, a Doctor of the Church. If you’re not familiar with Newman the man, Ian Ker’s biography is a great place to start. If you’re not familiar with Newman’s work, his Parochial and Plain Sermons is probably his most accessible.

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In Case You Missed It

“A Poet Named Jane: On Influencers, Holiness, and Reading Jane Greer”

“James Baldwin, Children of Divorce, and Hell”

“The Smells and Bells of Catholicism: On the Proclamation of the Gospel in the Age of AI”

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