What are your favorite secondary texts on Vatican II? I'm working on two different Vatican II lectures in the next couple weeks and am happy for further suggestions

5yo: “Do you want to play queens?” Me: “no I don’t like playing queens” 5yo: “are you going to play just sit there?” #burn

The regularity with which Catholic institutions hide behind the value of religious liberty in order to suppress the value of the dignity of work and rights of workers is a scandal.

Debating whether I should get this for my car

Does anyone know when the Elise Ann Allen biography of Leo XIV will be published in English translation?

Taylor is an old friend and a long-time Lonerganiac. He’s an *excellent* person to have in this role: www.catholicnewsagency.com/amp/news/266...

Going over student journals from last Thursday's discussion about AI and embodiment: "I don't think I wanna put myself in a computer anymore. If I did it's not me in there only a husk of who I am."

A too online man came to Jesus and asked, “What must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus told him to keep the commandments, to which the man replied that he had. Jesus then told him to delete his accounts and stop trolling. When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he was based.

The worst part about getting Kpop Demon Hunters songs stuck in my head is that it does not establish a local Honmoon that suppresses my personal demons

We were talking today about embodiment and human persons. We started with an exercise on "if you could upload your brain to a computer, would you and why/why not?" This led, somewhat unexpectedly, to discussing whether they think there is bodily resurrection or just immortal souls (or neither)

Oral history of the film What About Bob? www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...

Best feedback on the AI and theology course so far: “Very thought provoking discussion. You’re going to give me an existential crisis”

hearing disturbing rumors that this will also pronounce Chicago-style pizza canon.

For context’s sake, my knowledge of NIN music is limited solely to Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt.

Nonzero chance the new Tron soundtrack is what finally gets me into NIN

One of my favorite things about teaching is how often class goes in surprising and unexpected directions.

After giving a talk on the Popes named Leo last week, I went ahead and ranked them: stephenokey.substack.com/p/lions-of-t...

Got my headlines mixed up and for a second thought Carlo Acutis won the US Open

You know what worse than virtue signaling? Vice signaling.

"The use of the State by the Church for its own purposes... has since Constantine been one of the most serious liabilities of the Church, and any historically minded person is inescapably aware of this." - Joseph Ratzinger

Ballpark 15 for me

Last year during a talk about the conclave to the ministry students, I said if an American was elected pope I would eat my sunglasses. Last night I gave a follow up talk on the history of Popes named Leo, and they brought a cake

Good piece from Tim Gabrielli on history of confession in light of some recent laws to require priests to reveal what is confessed to them in certain cases theconversation.com/from-public-...

Just a note: “religious education” is not the same thing as religious indoctrination, and we would actually be a lot better off with more of the former in our schools.

Make sure you wish @kevinjahern.bsky.social a happy birthday today!

Anyway a few people have perplexed God’s presence and love with whether someone is a good person, and that’s not really the thing going on, at least in a Christian context. As Augustine says in his Confessions, “You were with me, but I was not with you.”

I've been working on a presentation on the various Popes Leo for ministry for tomorrow night and I think I might turn it into a ranking for my substack (smash that like button if you want to see it)

Th kindergarten parent group chat is getting pretty (understandably) animated in advance of school mass tomorrow morning

loser activity.

I am very glad we conquered the croquembouche, and now I never need to make it again. The cream puffs are even more delicious when not welded into an unbreakable tower.

We finally succeeded at the croquembouche

From the 1987 preface to Ian Ker’s biography of John Henry Newman

I love minor league baseball

Will David Tracy's publics help me think through the purpose of higher education? And will that help me think about AI? You'll never believe the answer: open.substack.com/pub/stepheno...

"The darkness first takes our children who then kill our children, using the guns that are easier to obtain than aspirin. We sacralize death's instruments and then are surprised that death uses them." - Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, TX

Today in class we worked on creating an AI and tech policy for the course. A few thoughts on that experiment (so far): 🧵

For any Catholic educators, see this from the @setonhall.bsky.social Center for Catholic Studies: A virtual webinar for educators in Catholic institutions to learn about & discuss major questions surrounding AI and its impact on our work and the lives of our students events.shu.edu/event/41567-...

aaaand now I’m crying

I was at mass this morning at my daughter's school, and just cannot imagine.

Lord have mercy

I will watch Burn Gorman in anything (I've been watching The Offer, the show about making the Godfather, and it is pretty average, but Burn Gorman is a magnet)

The biggest emotional rollercoaster of my life was rejoicing with my children about Taylor Swift's engagement and then having to tell them that they would not be the flower girls

I’m assuming this is the history lesson in my daughter’s kindergarten?

I’m assuming this is the history lesson in my daughter’s kindergarten?

This is true; it’s also useful for comparing how the 90a and early 2010s thought about dystopian futures. The 90s version mostly puts it in the cursed earth outside the city; the 2010s is dystopian all the way down

prime directive loopholes

I generally design a new course with some sort of "thesis" for the class, but the one for this course is still a bit nebulous. I mostly think of it in terms of "would I teach a course on AI again?" In talking with a former student (who works with AI) about it, he said it seemed like a reckoning.

I don't usually share syllabi, but here's the one for my course on AI and Theology for our Honors program this fall. There is still some tweaking I need to do, but here goes. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

This bit from How I Met Your Mother pretty accurately describes my experience of KPop Demon Hunters www.youtube.com/watch?v=738O...

Pretty good deal on Facebook marketplace