Can a Catholic AI trained on the Church’s documents help people encounter truth… or is conversation with a chatbot fundamentally disordered?

In this episode of The Faith & AI Project Podcast, Edmund Mitchell hosts a spirited (and surprisingly charitable) debate between Matthew Sanders (founder & CEO of Longbeard, the team behind Magisterium AI) and Dr. Marc Barnes (editor of New Polity).

The conversation started with a little bit of Catholic-internet drama: Marc published an essay titled “Delete Magisterium AI,” arguing that chatbot-style “conversation” is not a neutral interface—but a formative act that can subtly reshape how we relate to truth, authority, and even God. Matthew responded publicly with his own article, pushing back on the critique and defending Magisterium AI as a tool meant to point people back to sources, not replace teachers, pastors, or the Church’s living authority.

Instead of letting the debate spiral into side-takes and subtweets, we invited both men onto the podcast to talk it out directly, thoughtfully, and in good faith.

Marc argues that AI’s probabilistic way of answering questions forms the user over time, training us to accept “confident-sounding” outputs without a responsible person behind them. Matthew argues that seekers are already asking spiritual questions in a prompt bar, and that Catholics have a responsibility to build the digital continent with fidelity, humility, and real moral discernment.

They go back and forth on what formation actually requires, whether a machine can “stand behind” its claims, what responsible guardrails could look like, and how the Church should think about building tools without outsourcing wisdom, or replacing the shepherd.

If you’ve been wondering whether Catholics should delete tools like this… or learn how to build them…this conversation is for you.

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Episode Guests

Marc Barnes is the editor and primary writer for New Polity, a Catholic post- liberal magazine and press based in Steubenville, Ohio. He holds a PhD in Theology from St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, and serves as president of the Harmonium Project, a nonprofit devoted to urban revitalization in Steubenville. Formerly known online as “Bad Catholic,” Barnes writes with a Chesterton-tinged wit about the moral and spiritual formation embedded in modern life, especially in technology.

Matthew Harvey Sanders is the founder and CEO of Longbeard, a Catholic technology company building AI tools to make the Church’s textual heritage easier to search, study, and translate. He helped create Magisterium AI, a citation-forward “answer engine” that points users back to primary sources rather than presenting itself as a personality or spiritual authority.

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