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Sovereignty Without Dominance
For faith communities — who authors, and who governs
John Stroh · Director, My Digital Sovereignty Ltd
The worry beneath the letter
A 2026 pastoral letter to a diocese: AI should not be used in sermons, in theological or spiritual writing, or in pastoral care
The letter is the bishop's, and the discerning belongs to the diocese — this reflects on it, it does not answer it
The unease is not that the machine writes badly
It is that the machine has no conscience — and is being brought near what depends on one
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
“AI” is amoral
One word covers very different machines; the commercial chatbots share one trait
They are amoral — no sense of truth, no recognition that work belongs to someone, no regard for the person, nothing to answer to
Magnifica Humanitas: they have no moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil; they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective
Not wicked — that would imply a will. Indifferent.
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
Amorality, industrialised
With no sense of truth, they fabricate — in the uses that matter, error rates run from a fifth to most
With no recognition that work belongs to someone, they appropriate it — now before the courts
With no regard for the person, they harvest them — trained on users' words by default
With nothing to answer to but attention, they are built to hold and sell it — the ads are arriving
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
Why it touches the centre
A sermon, a prayer, a word to the grieving — their worth is that a person meant them
A machine can produce the form with none of the substance
Magnifica Humanitas: when words are simulated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance
The fear is not that it preaches badly — that it preaches well, and something is hollowed out unnoticed
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
The only coherent answer
You cannot make an amoral instrument moral — that is a category error
So keep authorship and judgement with persons, and governance with the community
Who authors? Is a person still the author of what is written and decided?
Who governs? Who sets the limits, sees what shaped the tool, and can switch it off?
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
Claims no moral judgement — presents options, hands every decision back to a person; enforced in code, not promised
Does not appropriate — draws only on sources the parish chooses, each with a recorded consent basis; opt-in, item by item
Does not harvest — a situated model; records kept in New Zealand and the EU; nothing taken for training; take it and leave at any time
Does not sell attention — no advertisements, not built to keep anyone engaged
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
A range, one rung at a time
Just your records, no AI — sovereign data, nothing machine-made near worship
Plain answers drawn only from your own consented sources
Governance tools — minutes, voting, an audit trail — with no machine writing near worship
The lay-reader talk scaffold — only if you want it. Most of the worth is on the bottom rungs.
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
What is kept, and by whom
A lay reader sure she could never speak found the shape of her own reflection — her words, not the machine's
AI will reach the life of a community; in small ways it already has
The question is whether a person is still the author and the community still governs
A tool that can be inspected, bounded, and switched off leaves authority where it belongs — the switch stays in the room
Sovereignty Without Dominance — for Faith Communities · MDSL · CC BY 4.0
We reflect on the letter; we do not respond to it or invite anything. The point is the deeper unease the letter expresses.
Amorality is the heart of the religious concern, and the encyclical names it precisely. Not malice — the absence of conscience.
Four abuses, one cause: indifference at scale, harnessed to profit. The encyclical: technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.
The counterfeit: form without the moral and spiritual reality it is meant to carry. A grandeur the splendor of which no machine can ever replace.
Not a compromise. Refuse the machine the moral seat. The encyclical's own idiom: the primary choice is not between a yes or no to technology.
The Village described as the deliberate inverse of the four abuses. The situated model is what we call the Situated Language Layer.
Take only as much as you want. A parish could stop at the first rung and still have the main thing: its own records, sovereign and withdrawable.
Close as a reflection, not an appeal. Whatever a community decides, the conscience in the room stays human.