“Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.” Matthew 10:16
One of the greatest challenges facing society today is the fact that we are increasingly entering what is has been referred to as the “post truth world.” We are seeing the emergence of deep fakes [1], [2], and photorealistic rendering engines and video augmentation techniques that can operate at video framerates [3], [4], [5], [6]. In the next decade it is likely that it will be possible for almost anyone to create photorealistic fake media, (e.g. text, news reports, photos, video and audio) that are capable of spreading falsehoods, misrepresenting the truth, and are very difficult to discriminate from authentic sources of media. The line between reality and falsities is already becoming blurry and as time goes on it will become increasingly difficult to verify the authenticity of a given piece of media. The problem of detecting fake media and authenticating true media should be of high concern for Christians because Christianity places a very high value on truth. Jesus is the “way and the truth and the life [John 14:6]” after all. The problem should be of particular concern to the institutional Church because communication of the Gospel for the salvation of souls is its number one concern.
Unfortunately, the institution of the Church has actively engaged in generating its own fake media in recent years. The most blatant example of this was the recent attempt by the Vatican communication office to misrepresent the contents of a letter written by Pope Benedict praising books written by Pope Francis [7]. The Associated Press made the following remarks concerning the blurring of the photo, “The doctoring of the photo is significant because news media rely on Vatican photographers for images of the pope at events that are otherwise closed to independent media.” The Catholic Church’s role is to act as a witness to the person of Jesus Christ who lived 2000 years ago. Maintaining the credibility of the Catholic Church as a witness should be of utmost importance to the institution of the Church. When the Vatican communications office releases a photo to journalists with an intention to deceive, the action erodes the credibility of the Church to act as a witness. Why should anyone trust a witness regarding a person who lived 2000 years ago, when they cannot even be trusted to release an authentic photograph associated with a current event? The credibility of the Church to act as a witness was eroded even further in light of the fact that a few months prior to the photo deblurring incident Pope Francis specifically released a message for the 2018 World Communication Day with the theme, “The truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). Fake news and journalism for peace. [8]”
Regrettably, the Catholic Church is facing a disinformation challenge even more problematic than fake media. At this point in time, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, up to its highest levels, is actively engaged in changing the teachings/doctrines of the Church with regards to Faith and Morals. Amoris Laetitia was a first official attempt at this, albeit performed in an ambiguous manner that provided some amount of “plausible deniability.” Later the more blatant but no less egregious example of this was the recent change Pope Francis made to the Catechism of the Catholic Church claiming the death penalty is “inadmissible” [9], [10], [11] despite long-standing Church teachings upholding the validity of the use of the death penalty by the state. If Amoris Laetitia can overturn long-standing teachings from Christ’s own mouth and upheld by heroic figures such as John the Baptist, St. Thomas More, and St. John Fisher, then there is no telling where this rewriting of Church doctrine will end.
This introduction of uncertainty and ambiguity into Church teachings has massive ramifications of the transmission of the faith. For example, how is one supposed to convince a child or grandchild of the infallibility and permanence of the teachings of the Catholic Church when the Pope and almost all the Bishops actively preach against or remain quiet regarding many foundational doctrines and teachings of the Church that touch our daily lives and form the basis of our Faith? The clergy make the problem significantly worse when they go so far as to officially codify their false teachings in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is kind of hard to convince a teenager or an inquiring atheist interested in the Faith that the Pope is infallible with regards to his teachings on Faith and Morals when he speaks “Ex Cathedra,” when you have to simultaneously tell them to ignore multiple aspects of Amoris Laetitia or even his changes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Inquiring minds such as these are not going to care about the fine distinctions we could argue over regarding the different levels of protection the Holy Spirit provides for different types of communications by the Pope. Even in our current time, there is an emerging trend among Protestants and now some Catholics to “deconstructing the Faith” [12] that is going to result in many people asking very hard, uncomfortable questions. I think many of us hate to admit it, but at this point it is very hard to make a rational, sound argument that the teachings of the Catholic Church still follow the law of non-contradiction and are timeless.
Thus far the Catholic Church has existed over timescales of thousands of years. Imagine putting yourself in the shoes of a Catholic living one or two hundred years from now. They live in a world that features technologies such as artificial wombs in which the human role of mother and father and husband and wife have evolved far from what we think of it today (if these roles even still exists in any meaningful form at all). Their world could be filled with a wide variety of life-extending technologies that came at the cost of human experimentation on embryonic cells. A person in this world would not experience life, death, birth and relationships in a way that is anything like what know today. The Church of this world has conformed itself to this new world by inventing new Chardinian “sacraments,” to celebrate the transhumanistic life events and milestones that have arisen. Given that language and culture can change significantly over the course of a century, how is a Catholic in this world supposed to know what the “authentic” and “timeless” teachings of the Church even are?
As far as I can tell there is no official compendium of Catholic teaching that any of us can refer to in order to determine what the “authentic” teachings of the Catholic Church are. I have asked Catholic theologian Ralph Martin whether a compendium of Church teachings exists and based on his ambiguous response I feel it can safely be concluded that an official compendium of “authentic” teachings of the Church does not exist [13]. The closest thing I can find that approaches such a compendium is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, however, the Catechism is not considered an official compendium of Church teachings. Furthermore, a number of Catechisms have existed over the years and they are translated into a variety of different languages in order to communicate Church teachings to people all over the world. My understanding is that some of these Catechisms (e.g. Dutch Catechism) left Church teachings out and as a result are considered controversial. As far as I can tell what we call “Church Teachings,” actually are a set of ideas that come from a variety of source materials such as the Bible and teachings of the Church Fathers, Church Councils/Popes and maybe some Doctors of the Church. However, there is ambiguity regarding which Church documents produced over the centuries make up “official” Church teaching and what their associated authority is. Writings of the saints seem to play some unclear role in Church teachings and Catholic discernment as well. As I pointed out even the current version of the Catechism has changed the teaching on the death penalty in a fundamental way and thus draws suspicion to the validity of the Catechism. The fact that there is no official compendium of Church teachings is problematic from the perspective of fake media and a Church hierarchy antagonistic to the Church, because without an official compendium it is possible for theologians and the clergy to bend and reinterpret Church teachings into whatever they want over time with pernicious propaganda campaigns. Furthermore theologians and clergy can omit and include Church documents to suit arguments that advance a wide variety of contradictory viewpoints regarding what Church teaching is. For example, recently I asked a priest how Amoris Laetitia could for all practical purposes go against what I thought were the Church’s infallible teachings on divorce and remarriage. His response was that he was not so sure that Church teachings on divorce and remarriage were “infallible.” I was disappointed with this response. If no one knows which teachings of the Church are infallible or not, then effectively no Church teaching is infallible. The concept of infallibility has no meaning if teachings can arbitrarily be moved in and out of the category of “infallible” based on convenience.
The threats posed by fake media and propaganda efforts by the hierarchy represent an existential threat to the Catholic Faith. I would argue that this attack on Truth itself is the greatest challenge the Church has faced in its entire history. These attacks on Truth are far more destructive than the martyrdoms of the past because those prior attacks focused on killing the body. Heresies of the past focused on irregularities regarding subsets of Church teaching. The current attacks on Truth are aimed at leading to the destruction of the spirit and supernatural faith and undermining all credibility of the Catholic church to act as a witness to the teaching of Jesus. Thus far prayer is the only approach I have heard for dealing with this issue. However, I would argue that our Faith can be accompanied by works in this matter. I propose that the Church adopt a blockchain-based document management system to maintain a compendium of the teachings of the Catholic Church. In the event the Church does not want to implement such a blockchain we as the Laity should do it ourselves.
Most people are most familiar with the blockchain as the technology that enables cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. It turns out that this same blockchain technology could potentially be used to make documents which cannot easily be tampered with and provides the ability to establish the authenticity of the documents [14]. There are commercial software packages [15], [16], as well as some prototype open source software projects [17] that can be used to put documents such as the teachings of the Catholic Church on a blockchain. It is conceivable that blockchain-based document management systems could be used to capture documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Canon Law, the Bible, proceedings of Church Councils, Papal documents, and missals as well as the source materials for these documents. We would be able to capture the provenance of all of these documents as well as keep track of all of the translations of these documents. As time goes on and languages change it should be possible to track the provenance of all translations and rewordings of the compendium back to the original official compendium of teachings. The references used to elaborate on teachings of the compendium should also be tied to this blockchain.
This blockchain-based compendium of Church teachings should have a number of features. For example, as time goes on and languages change it should be possible to track the provenance of all translations and rewordings of the compendium back to the original official compendium of teachings. The references used to elaborate on teachings of the compendium should also be tied to this blockchain. There is also a need to discuss who has the authority to make legitimate additions to the compendium and how those additions are authenticated. The purpose of the papal ring was historically to act as an authentication mechanism for wax seals on documents. The impression of the papal ring on a wax seal indicated to the receiver the authenticity that a document came from the Pope. Papal Bulls were similarly sealed using a lead seal. Historically these papal rings are also ceremonially destroyed upon the pope's death to prevent the generation of forged documents during the sede vacante period before the next papal election. We need to look at using modern encryption/blockchain technologies to implement the digital equivalent to the papal ring/wax seal for the blockchain-backed compendium of Church teachings. We must begin thinking of other features a block-chain enabled ledger of Catholic teachings should have. This compendium would be a highly trustable source for clergy, laypersons and scholars. It would also provide strong evidence of the unchanging nature of Catholic teachings.
Interestingly one of the biggest problems this project would face is the actual compilation of the teachings of the Catholic church into a coherent compendium. Ordinarily this is what the Church hierarchy should be responsible for. However given the current state of confusion emanating from the Church Hierarchy it is not clear they would actually be up to this task. We are faced with a chicken-and-the-egg problem. No compendium is officially complete and valid without the blessing of the Church hierarchy. The way to approach this issue may be to simply have lay scholars take their best attempt at it and place the resulting compendium on a blockchain-enabled document management system. Or taking a step back, the laity could start by simply placing known documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Bible on the blockchain in the hopes that starting such a project would inspire the hierarchy to get involved.
By placing the teachings of the Church on a trustable blockchain ledger, the “authentic” teachings of the Church would be preserved for future generations in a verifiable manner. An interesting feature of the Vatican is that it adopted radio shortly after the creation of Vatican City for the purpose of spreading the communications of the Pope [18]. Recently the Vatican sponsored a Hackathon for finding technical solutions to global challenges [19]. Likewise, an effort by the clergy and Laity to begin work on taking the teachings of the Catholic Church, forming them into a coherent compendium and placing it on the blockchain would be a great service to the Church. Given the Church has a 2000 year history, it will also be necessary to consider methods to future-proof this blockchain from attackers and adversaries. For instance the blockchain used to preserve the integrity of the compendium of Church teachings should be robust against attacks enabled by quantum computers that could come online in the next decade. In the past the Vatican has maintained observatories for observing the cosmos. I would argue that in a post-truth world the Church also needs to invest in technologies to protect and preserve the trustworthiness of the Gospel message and preserve the credibility of the witness of the Catholic Church. The creation of such a blockchain-based ledger would also send multiple messages. This verifiable ledger would communicate to those inquiring into the validity of the Faith that Church teachings have nothing to fear from deep inquiries into their provenance. The creation of such a blockchain would also send a clear and resounding message to members of the hierarchy interested in subtly changing Church teachings over time signaling the futility of their efforts. I think it is fitting to end with the following excerpt from Cassiodorus’ Institutes rule book for monks in the medieval period tasked with copying religious texts:
“Despite what can be accomplished by physical work, I have to admit that what pleases me most (not perhaps unjustifiably) is the work of the scribes if they write correctly. By reading through Scripture they instruct their minds and by writing they spread the beneficial teachings of the Lord far and wide. A happy purpose, a praiseworthy zeal, to preach to men with the hand, to set free tongues with one's fingers and in silence to give mankind salvation and to fight with pen and ink against the unlawful snares of the devil. For Satan receive as many wounds as the scribe writes words of the Lord.” [20]
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References
4. E. P. Enhancement, "Stephan Richter; Hassan Abu AlHaija; Vladlen Koltun," arXiv:2105.04619, 2021.
20. Cassiodorus, "Cassiodorus Institutiones Book 1, Ch 30".
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