Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Progressives rightly treat the Catholic Church’s conservative attitudes towards medical innovations—such as IVF, contraception and abortion—as regressive and puritanical. Yet, when it comes to other technologies, the Vatican gets a pass, if not praise for applying similar logic—even when there is less theological justification.
Pope Francis has decried video games, as did a predecessor Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, playing into unfounded concerns about its culpability for mass shootings. In 2019, Francis lent support for weakening encryption when he called for a “balance” between privacy and protecting children from predators.
The same year he said nuclear power should not be used until safety can be guaranteed on a trip to Fukushima—ignoring the unique circumstances of that accident, the impossible goal of “absolute safety” and the widespread over estimation about its risk.