THE WASHINGTON POST picked up a story from the Religion News Service which struck me as the perfect Barbiefication of Christianity: Apple users can now download an app to allow you to “text with Jesus” — essentially, it is a front end to a generative AI model which has been fed the contents of the Bible and then filtered it to reflect respectable contemporary sensibilities. I confess that I haven’t tried it out. I broke the Church of England’s Alexa app by asking it “What is the true end of man?”, to which it responded with information about a film.

I’m sure that this one is vulnerable to similar attacks. But, even when it doesn’t, it responds with a kind of greasy superficiality: “Asked how he defined a good Christian, the app’s Jesus bot replied that such a person will ‘profess faith in me, but also follow my teachings and embody them in your life,’ and quotes a passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus teaches that the greatest commandments are ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.”

But no one asked Jesus how to be a Christian. They asked him how to be saved, which is not a question about your social position or the way in which other people look at you. Perhaps some contact with the horror of the world is available if you unlock the premium tier, where, for a three dollars a month, you can ask questions of Judas Iscariot or of Satan. Satan’s answers come garnished with cute emojis.

THE other interesting question about this app is what kind of ads it serves you, and what happens to your data when you use it. The Post also ran a story about a group of conservative Roman Catholics who had raised and spent millions of dollars buying from data brokers in the US information about the users of same-sex dating apps. This kind of thing is illegal in the EU, and, for the moment, in this country, too. Once in possession of these records, the group sifted them for records of activity near seminaries and then used other sources to identify the likely owners of the phones in question. The technique came briefly into the open in 2021, when it was used to out a prominent Catholic apparatchik, Mgr Jeffrey Burrill (Press, 30 July 2021).

But where to stop? There followed a flurry of stories in the right-wing Catholic press, showing, for instance, that there there 32 devices in the Vatican putting out signals from hookup apps. Then it seems to have dawned on people that this might be a subject best left unexamined in public.

“The group has spent at least $4 million,” the Post story said, “and approached more than a dozen bishops with the information. It’s not clear what impact the project is having on clergy who the data suggests have actively used a dating or hookup app on their phone. One of the two people familiar with the project said people may be kept from promotions or wind up in early retirement but not know why.”

A right-wing lawyer quoted in the piece justified the practice by pointing out that priests in the US could not now ride unaccompanied in a car with a child, presumably because it is important to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, or, of course, law suits.

THIS brings us to the diocese of Chichester.

The Sunday Times published a long piece about “Mr X” (Letters, 4 August), now known as “Henry”, who was abused as a choirboy in Chichester thirty years ago.

The story, as published, was black and white: “Henry was under suicide watch at the Priory clinic when the call from the Church of England came. It told him that a compensation offer of £158,000 for the abuse he suffered aged 12 at the hands of the head steward of Chichester Cathedral was being withdrawn.

“Instead, following a review by its insurers, he would receive £98,000. He had 21 days to respond. In a vulnerable position, and fearing an even lower offer, Henry accepted. Now, seven years later, Henry, 55, whose name we have changed, is still seeking justice from the church.

“The church is being engulfed in a sex abuse scandal, accused of ignoring complaints and dismantling an independent panel tasked with investigating cases.

“Senior figures in the Anglican Church say it is being torn apart over its failure to take responsibility for dozens of victims of sexual abuse, many committed by officers of the church, with new cases being reported all the time.”

This treatment of the story makes an interesting contrast with the original Independent Safeguarding Board report into the case, which seems to me to tell a story of bureaucratic incompetence as much as anything else. But it’s just an example of how these stories now write themselves, more or less — just remember that the Church is being “engulfed” and “torn apart”, and you can’t go wrong.