Artificial Intelligence and the Catholic Church
June 10, 2026
AI is moving fast, and Catholic organizations are being asked to move with it without losing what makes the Church the Church. We sit down and get honest about where artificial intelligence can actually help parishes and ministries right now: operations, admin workflows, planning, and the behind-the-scenes systems that drain time and energy when staff and budgets are tight. If you care about Catholic church marketing, communications strategy, and doing more with less, this is the grounded starting point.
Then we pivot to the harder questions: generative AI art, Catholic imagery, and the deep nuance of iconography. A saint “looking right” is not the same as being right, and AI can create polished visuals that quietly miss symbols, tradition, or meaning. We talk about why human oversight matters more in sacred contexts, how to think about references and verification, and what kinds of creative AI content might be safer when it is clearly playful or surreal rather than pretending to be devotional art.
Finally, we draw a line around relationships. Discipleship is not information delivery, and no chatbot can substitute for prayer, presence, and real spiritual friendship. We also react to the rise of AI companion modes and why personifying tools can feel unsettling and unhealthy at a cultural level. If you have been wondering how to use AI with discernment while staying faithful to a Catholic mission, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend in ministry, and leave a review. Where do you think the real line is for AI in the Church?
Reach out if you need help with consistent, story-driven video marketing for your brand, agency, business, association, or nonprofit.
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Topics in This Episode
- (0:00) Welcome to The Backflip Effect
- (0:30) Why AI Matters for Catholic Orgs
- (1:43) Operation Wins for Parishes
- (2:48) Generative Art Meets Iconography
- (6:55) Discipleship Needs Real People
- (9:01) Reliable Catholic Chat Tools
- (11:00) The Danger of AI Companions
- (15:32) Discernment for Media and Marketing
- (19:10) Story Generator Demo Gets Weird
Transcript
Welcome To The Backflip Effect
Ryan Freng 0:00
Welcome to the Backflip Effect, the podcast that proves there’s a method to the marketing madness. Specifically, a method that involves clever video strategy and a dash of creative mischief. Now don’t be fooled by bland ideas or big budget fluff. Instead, we tackle real client questions and share how we’ve transformed businesses with strategies that actually work. Grab your headphones and join us as we explore the nitty-gritty of turning everyday marketing woes into story-driven success. Let’s get started.
Why AI Matters For Catholic Orgs
0:30
Today we’re talking about what AI means for Catholic organizations. And we don’t have a complete perspective in the sense of running a Catholic organization or the implications of morality in AI with certain things. But in the realm of marketing, in the realm of communications, I think I think we have some interesting perspectives about what it means. And I know that there’s churches, I think the USCCB has like a council, and maybe the Vatican has a council on AI. And I’m super interested in your thoughts too, because this is John and I talking. I don’t know how to start these things.
Operations Wins For Parishes
1:43
So there’s that side of it, but then the church side is wholly different because even with technology, the church and Catholic organizations have been very slow to adopt. However, there’s a lot of opportunity to do things faster, to have more creative marketing content, more video content, but it might be a little more interesting for a Catholic church than a normal business. Yeah. So I think that there are opportunities in a lot of the, we were just talking about taxes and accounting and things like that. I think there’s a lot of opportunities in systems and logistics and stuff like that. Um actually, probably a really positive opportunity for a lot of like parishes and small organizations that struggle to have enough budget for things and have enough staff. Right. Right? So you’re more expertise, yeah. Yeah. So I think there some of these tools could be really valuable there.
Generative Art Meets Iconography
2:48
The place my mind first went is to media content and artwork. And uh I think that’s where we have to be judicial, yeah, more careful. Yeah. Um in I guess it’s that it’s the same in the secular world. You have to like evaluate the the photos and the videos that you’re getting. Yeah. Um, but I could make this comparison to one of the reasons that we’ve talked about the the value of being Catholics when you’re working with a Catholic organization, is that there’s these nuances of the story and nuances of things that like we understand and we get. And so when I’m having AI generate some image, like specifically with like Catholic or Christian imagery, there are some images that people are have generated that are floating around, and then you see somebody like you know talking about it, like, hey, this is clearly AI. Because there’s like nuances that it isn’t getting correct. Um yeah, iconography is is deep, yeah, and there’s a lot of specificity to the way things are done, even symbols, and like I have a little Bible holder that’s kind of like a home altar at our house. And what is it? Saint St. Michael medals? Um, no, no, no. I’ll I’ll look it up in a second. But I was like, I don’t know, are these fake? Like they look legit, and then I looked them up and they’re like, oh no, they’re this saints medals, and it means this on the front with all this Latin and this symbol and this on the back with this, and I was like, okay, good. Because I was like, when I was gonna buy it, I was like, uh this could be made up, it could be legit, I don’t know. But there’s all those nuances and kind of that deep tradition and history that yeah AI image generation kind of sucks at, right? Yeah, and this’ll get a little metaphysical, I guess, but like to whatever extent this the spirit is you know moving and working in the thing that has been created, um that’s not there with AI. Like, and it’s not there in the secular world either, you know, like an artist would say, well, the AI art is not as good or whatever, you know, and it might be lacking something. But I I would say even more so in the Catholic world. Like to what extent, I don’t know. This is I need I need like a hefty theologian to help, you know, parse this like a heavy one, like a yes, the heavier the better. Um you know, to what extent is the Holy Spirit, you know, present and working in this piece of media that you’ve generated to create some Catholic, you know, visual. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure the Holy Spirit can be active like through whatever tool. Right. Well, it’s like it’s like somebody using Photoshop, you know, to make vector art uh of some saint, yeah, or using AI to generative, you know, gener generatively create the art of the saint. Yeah. So you still you would have to control it. Yeah. You know, so maybe it’s not that different than other things. Like you have to know what you’re in this case, even more so. You have to know and guide the tool. I guess I care a lot more about the Catholic faith and how it’s portrayed than I do about most other things in marketing. So well, and I think it’s it’s much more easy for somebody to create something wrongly with generative AI than if we just gave somebody Photoshop, they’re not gonna be able to create like a beautiful image of a person that looks like an icon. Yeah, but with AI they could. And it could, you know, have lots of problems to it.
Discipleship Needs Real People
6:55
But so certainly the art is very interesting. And I want to reiterate the um just the the systems. So like the systems, it could be huge benefit to the organizations, but you know, what what do the churches have or what are the what do Catholic organizations sell, right? You know, monetizing the mission. What is the mission? Well, it’s typically discipleship. And aside from information, I don’t know that discipleship can or should come from AI. Right. Right? I mean, you could probably have a chat bot that could interact with you, but I don’t think that is good. Yeah. Well, there’s no spirit connecting with another spirit, you know, co-creation or sub-creation, as it were. So we talk a lot about this in uh our the small groups that I’ve been a part of, is that this is not um self-help or even uh or even group help in the way that like we are not here to like give advice like it uh in discipleship are you saying? Okay, like if you need uh a psychological help, if you have uh um a substance uh addiction and you need to go to rehab, like this group is not for any of those things. Yeah. Um yeah, we’ll talk and we’ll give some advice, but like, oh well, when my kids, you know, act up, you know, this is what we try to do, you know, whatever. But like the main thing is, yeah, it’s connecting, um, you know, connecting and praying together and like connecting on a spiritual level. Uh yeah, and you’re not gonna get that through there is not a spirit in air, or if there is a spirit, it’s not the one that you want. Right. Uh, yeah. Well, and that’s so that’s that’s the interesting thing.
Reliable Catholic Chat Tools
9:01
And I think maybe if we could kind of put these things in different buckets, that’d be really helpful. So we have like um operations and business, like that can be systematized and helped by technology, be really useful. Even even like resources, so there’s there’s two, I think two Catholic AIs that are really good. Truthly, and then I don’t remember the other one. I just heard about it the other night. And it’s being used, excuse me, in like RCIA or for like teaching. Um, so one of my friends who’s a teacher uses that other one a lot, but it’s been trained on you know 2,000 years of church history or or beyond that with Jewish history as well, um, so that it has all kind of those nuances. So you can get a pretty good answer from that, and then you get the reference and you can double-check the reference, the catechism, a writing from you know, uh uh Ignatius or whoever. Um, and you can get pretty close to what the church teaches. Now, how that translates into somebody’s life, and then the discipleship, the the sharing of faith, the walking with somebody, I don’t think that’s gonna be possible with AI, nor should it be like something anybody seeks, because you know, as far as we understand it, that is just this creation of man, which could raise somebody’s heart and mind to heaven, but again, it’s not gonna have, you’re not gonna have that fellowship, you’re not gonna have that discipleship, you’re not gonna have that connection or that sub-creation that we can participate in um with another human. Yeah, so there’s a whole I mean there’s definitely a whole area that I’m thinking of with this where like it’s a it’s a tool, it’s not a person or it’s not relational.
The Danger Of AI Companions
11:00
And that’s that is an area where things are gonna be weird and you know get weird. So like I don’t I don’t know why, like, I like a lot of the stuff that Elon Musk does, and I like Grok, which is his AI, but the most recent iteration of it, they have this like companion mode. Have you seen this? No, there’s like two, and they’re like anime characters, and I’m like, wow, like, and not just because I’m not like not anime isn’t my favorite thing or whatever, but just like um, I think it’s like the pro level, maybe, but there’s these two like personalities, and they’re like these cartoon anime characters that are like you know, the the female character is like very objectified and sexualized, and like the male character is this brooding, you know, emo anime dude. Um that’s weird. That’s weird to me. I mean and I guess very Japanese. You’re like, am I am I old? Is that what’s going on? No, I I think there’s something that I’m just like I was starting to think I was all alone in here. I’m Annie. You got a name? There you go. I’m like, what? Ryan. Hey Ryan. That’s a solid name, you know. I’m like, okay. I’m into anime. I don’t like what was just happening there. Yeah. Yeah. Like it felt so like scandalous. Like where and so that this is are they supposed to be like my friend, or what’s the point? Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s just yeah, like oh my gosh. Um clip that, by the way. Oh, yeah. I’m like, we are that I don’t know if that’s the line, or if there were other lines, but like, I’m like, well, the naive cross the line. That like that’s that’s a line that we don’t want to cross as a culture. And it bothers me that like that’s mainstream, yeah. And Elon Musk and like Tesla, SpaceX, um uh the Boring Company, I can’t even think of all his brands. Those are all like amazing things. We’re like, oh, we’re going to Mars, we’re going to this, whatever. I even liked his philosophy behind buying Twitter. He rebranded it X. Some people don’t like that. That’s fine, but like I like this philosophy. He’s like, no, this should be like open, uh free speech, whatever. Yeah. I don’t like this. I’m like, no. We we should have relationships with other people, and then we should use tools. And this tool can speak to me like a person and make it easier for me to like, I don’t have this skill set, so I don’t even know how to ask a question about PHP coding or JSON or whatever. But I can just use regular language and like, how do I build an app, whatever, whatever, and it responds to me like a person. But the personification is weird. Yeah. And like we’re we’re it we’re attributing person-ness. Yeah. Yeah. You know, at the same time where we kill lots of people. Yeah. You know, like now we’re creating fake people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re personification here. And we’re connecting here, but we’re not connecting. Like, oh, and that’s that’s not healthy. Like, yeah, there’s uh what what’s that? The the Japanese have a term for the shut-ins essentially. Um, and they’ve you know they’ve had digital girlfriends forever in you know, some of these technologies, but that’s clearly not good. No, it’s clearly not good to seek the human companionship, personabil personability with non-humans, non-personableness, you know, like to have disordered uh relationships. Like again, I love anime, and I I can watch things that sometimes have you know some somebody inappropriate or whatever, but like that kind of creeped me out and gave me goosebumps. You’re like, stop talking to me. No, yeah. It’s like you’re like, yeah, it’s like would you if you met somebody in per in like I don’t want this sexualized animal anime character talking to me. Yeah. So I don’t interact with people like that. Yeah, it’s not a so what are we what a world we’re in?
Discernment For Media And Marketing
15:32
So the I mean And this is this is the Catholic title in the podcast. I love it. Well that’s the question is like, so then should we use AI? Well, yeah, well, we can make the same argument about the internet, you know, like should we use the internet? There’s a lot of horrendous things in the internet. Um we’re in the world, not of the world, you know, but like what we’ve been able to do, you know, what Bishop Barron can do through Word on Fire and through all the connections that they can make, there’s a lot of good that can happen there. We can see our Pope give an address, you know, real time. Yeah. Through the you know, just quick connection or whatever. But but then there’s also the the yeah, the the downsides, and it’s like, so you’ve got to figure out where that where that line is. Obviously, don’t use weird companion uh mode in uh AI. But again, that’s where I’m like, I I think with art as well, we need to be discerning within the Catholic world realm to just like there’s something different to me there. Um and again, this maybe would be scandalous for other artists, you know, who are like you know, artists in their own right in the secular world, and they might say the same thing, you know, and say, well, you you know, it’s the same for all of art. To me, I’m like Catholic art, you know, yeah, is different in a in a fundamental way. Well, and as we’re ideating this, and I’m gonna I’m gonna do the good Rudy, who’s like a little furry animal. Oh, and I found a good, I did, okay, I did just think of a good example. There are some fun ones. There might be problems with the imagery, but have you seen the um they’re like AI generated videos where they’re like uh if um who is it? Like if if Samson had uh social media or something, yeah. And they’re like, hey, uh, I just knocked down the temple and uh I’m headed out right, you know. Yeah, they’re kind of funny. Maybe that’s the thing, is like those are meant to be lighthearted. Right. And it’s uh it’s this surreal content or surreal art versus like there’s not a lot that I feel like you could use AI for in the art realm or creative realm to advertise a Catholic organization. Now, for instance, like that, if you if you have like Bible stories or something like that, it might be fascinating to see, yeah, like show me Samson if he was an Instagram influencer, you know, uh thousands of years ago. Like that’s super catchy and interesting. Um, and it doesn’t run up against like, okay, well, we have our iconography and the style, and you know, we’re not cannibalizing or bastardizing that, we’re creating something wholly new. It’s like this content, kind of like an animated film, that promotes you tell unique stories about saints or biblical figures or something like that. So that’s cool because I was thinking, I was like, you can’t really use it a lot to advertise, but if you’re if you do some creative content like that, I think you could you can come up with a way to make something. And then if you’re if you’re again, if you’re guiding the content in a really discerning way, I think it could work. You know, like if I wanted an image of a peaceful, serene lake, you know, for the a background of some cover that I am like sure creating, is that problematic in the Catholic world? No, I don’t think so. I will I’ll look at it and be like, is there anything weird in this photo?
Story Generator Demo Gets Weird
19:10
You know? Like weird hands. Yeah. All right, let’s see what good Rudy does. Snuggles and smiles when you came back. Now, what shall we imagine today? Ooh, how about a story with a brave little bunny hopping through a magical forest, or maybe a silly fish swimming in a sparkly ocean, or a zooming spaceship with a goofy alien? What kind of story do you want to hear, my friend? Tell me a story of heart and hearth, of home in the holes in the hills, and going on adventures with wizard and dwarves. Ooh, yes. A story of heart and heart, home in the holes in the hills, and adventures with a wizard and dwarves. I’m Rudy, your cuddly red panda pal, and I’m so excited to spin this tale for you. Let’s make it super funny. First, let’s create our main character who lives in a smuggly home in the hills. What do they look like? Are they a tiny creature with a fluffy fur? Or maybe a wee person with sparkly eyes? And what’s their name? Oh, and what does their cozy little home look like? Big round windows, a mozzarily, or maybe a chicken puffing out coppy smoke. You tell me. He’s got curly red hair and a beard and freckles, and his torso is a little longer than his legs. And he lives in a mount called Horeb. And he lives in a mount called Horeb. How mystical and cozy. Oh yeah. So our main character is a wee fella with curly red hair, a bitchy beard, and freckles sprinkled across his face like tiny stars. His torso is a bit longer than his legs, which gives him a came out of the water.
