Agentes Veritatis
How easy it is in every age to focus on crafting an appearance. To a certain extent this is human, and there is nothing wrong with having a public and a private persona. It would be wrong to wail against the fact that in our own age this has different means and media.
It can also be an important aspect of art, to create an appearance for the purpose of the impression it evokes. This is part of human culture and can be used to steward truth rather than obscure it.
What is more dangerous to the human community, and to the human person, is when the appearance or witness we create is fractious of personal and communal integrity, when witness works against truth as a personal and as a common good.
If truth sets us free its opposite enslaves human persons and the human community.
This is what the 8th Commandment is all about…
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
The eighth commandment against false witness isn’t a mere prohibition against the human freedom to lie. It is not merely don’t do this thing (that you nonetheless have the freedom to do).
Rather, it is God’s own self-communication about how to live in his image and likeness, to be free rather from the selfishness of sin and to be able to act with the freedom to love. Lying, self-deceit, intentional deception of others, fractures our relationship with God and with our neighbor. It dis-integrates us and our human family.
False witness is often exercised in the name of what seems a freedom: a desired convenience, a material gain, a certain comfort, a guilty pleasure, a promotion, an advancement.
After all don’t we deserve that recognition that might set us apart?
Unfortunately, the self-deceit required to deceive others causes confusion and blindness to God’s will, for them and for us.
The Word of God Incarnate, the Messianic life of Christ, becomes a distant ideal of admiration rather than a lived experience of redemptive love. When we create false personas or tell ourselves lies long enough to justify sins we want to hold onto we carry this self-deception into the public sphere. This compounds confusion about who and what we are rather than reveals it. This can be bitterly broken by front page revelations of the true lives of public figures we thought we knew.
What would our front page look like? Would it be so much better?
We traded our truth, our reality, for something that was sell-able. It looked great, it may have brought rewards, but it was built upon shifting sands rather than truth, rather than Christ. It was built upon a hope, an illusion of self. We traded the truth for an appearance we thought necessary.
But, who is our trading partner? And what have we traded?
Our trading partner: not God. What we have traded: our very selves.
Thus we lose ourselves, our soul is lostdo we understand what it means to lose the soul or have we become comfortable with this experience because it is all we know?, we trade it for things that expire, things that leave us worse off, things that undermine our peace, our capacity to love, our capacity for true joy.
To live for the temporal is to live as addicts because the temporal can’t satisfy beings with eternal roots. We become addicted to the temporary affirmations and pleasures of the World, making the temporary into the eternal. We trade the infinite for the momentary, the horizon shrinks into a fixed digital framework of information. We see every new movement like AI as the next thing that might save us. The excitement is dizzying and distracting.
Putting the pursuit of the eternal in the temporary and finite leaves us spent, hungry, seeking even more temporary stimulation but at the same time knowing that this craving is a bottomless pit, it can’t be met. We click, we swipe, we scroll.
Where is it? What is it? I know I am seeking something deeper, but what?
We still try to meet it, we can’t put it down, we may go to politics, to hatred, to porn, to drink, to drug, to more digital intoxication, a mix of all. It began with a small lie about ourselves, we sacrificed a truth. It started with a sin against the 8th commandment.
Can we see where we began? Can we see how we are maintaining it daily?
In Magnifica Humanitas we are reminded that truth is a common good (MH 131). But it is lost completely as a common good without personal commitment to truth, a life of integrity in living the 8th commandment, especially in the context of the greatest commandment to love God and neighbor.
The disciple’s first duty of truth is not public but interior: the truth of one’s own heart, freedom from self-deception. This is essential to relationship with Christ, who is the Truth.
This guide reveals a three-fold path to becoming, in a sense, agents of the truth, a people who can bear witness to truth as a common good, who can make it concrete, not as a sophisticated ideal but a lived and shared experience.
Step 1 — Awakening
See the truth about yourself: name and renounce self-deception, the lie each of us tells himself.
“If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”
At its root lies a deeper and often unrecognized “sickness”: the fact that “modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself.” Consequently, people believe that they can construct reality, and that whatever best suits their claims corresponds to what is true.
Becoming a disciple of the truth begins with an admission, not an argument. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you one thing you have refused to know about yourself — a habit of mind, a flattering story, a small dishonesty you have made comfortable — and lay it before God in the sacrament of penance. The aim is integrity without duplicity: one honest self before God, the people you love, and the people you meet.
Step 2 — Commitment
Once conversion begins, choose truth daily — in speech, records, promises and work — through repentance and fidelity in ordinary life.
“I am the way and the truth and the life.”
“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’”
Our first task is neither to demonize nor idolize technological tools, but to utilize them on the basis of a fundamental principle, namely that truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence. We must therefore promote an ecology of communication.
This is a fundamental issue because every technology shapes those who use it. Educating people about the use of AI, then, involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used.
Truth dwells in the small print of a day: what you say, what you record, what you promise and what you deliver. Make a nightly examen in truth — where did I bend the truth for comfort today? What did a tool or a platform lead me to assert without verifying? Whom do I owe a correction? Stay in relationship with Christ, who is the Truth, in prayer and the Eucharist: a life of honesty is sustained by him, not by willpower.
Step 3 — Sacrifice
Renounce falsity at its costly points; the truth liberates and sends — witness begins in a life of integrity, then guides AI use, social media, communications and public commitments.
“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Disinformation did not begin with AI, yet today it finds a powerful amplifier in AI. The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives. This problem has both cultural and moral dimensions, since the quality of public communication depends directly on social trust and, in turn, shapes it.
Yet vigilance and transparency remain first and foremost a grave responsibility for the Church herself, and we must not wait for others to compel us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
Liberation has a price: sometimes a correction of the record, sometimes a refusal to publish what flatters you, sometimes bearing the cost of an uncomfortable truth about yourself. Before you post, share or sign anything, apply the rule of Nehemiah: does this build the city or the tower? An agent of faith is expected to be countable for truth first in his personal life, and then in every use of AI, every social channel, and every public commitment.