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June 2026 Newsletter
Issue #112
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and
decision-making.
The largest AI providers in the U.S. are:
- OpenAI -- Creator of ChatGPT, GPT-5, Codex, and Sora
- Anthropic -- Developer of the Claude AI models
- Google DeepMind -- Google’s AI division behind Gemini and AlphaFold
- Microsoft AI -- Provider of Copilot, Azure AI, and its partnership with OpenAI
- NVIDIA -- The dominant supplier of AI GPUs and compute infrastructure. Often described as the “backbone” of the AI industry because most large AI models are trained on NVIDIA hardware.
- Meta AI -- Developer of the Llama family of open-source AI models.
Miniloop
Statistics
Early this year, ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users, with 50 million paying subscribers.
Tech Crunch
In 2025, ChatGPT was handling more than 1 billion queries per day.
Tech Republic
At the end of 2025, more than 50% of new e-books on Amazon contained AI-generated text.
National Bureau of Economic Research
Some estimates suggest that up to 33% of newly created online content is now AI-generated.
The Washington Post
Finances
Open AI’s estimated value is reported to range between $300 billion – $800 billion.
Miniloop
By the end of this year, AI infrastructure investment will hit about $800 billion annually.
Wall Street Journal
AI infrastructure spending could reach $3 – 4 trillion annually by 2030.
Barrons
Controversy
Some of the most controversial issues around AI are not about the technology itself, but about its social, economic, legal, and political consequences such as:
AI-focused data centers can consume more than 100 megawatts of power each, roughly equivalent to the electricity use of 100,000 households.
International Energy Agency
Electrical use from leading AI companies’ infrastructure could grow from about 118 trillion watts an hour in 2024 to as much as 295 trillion watts per hour by 2030 — around 1% of the global electrical demand.
Arxiv
Cornell University
Entry-level job postings in the U.S. dropped 35% since 2023, with concerns that AI is automating junior professional work such as legal research, coding, and administrative tasks.
Tech Crunch
AI could displace 92 million jobs globally by 2030, even while creating new ones.
World Economic Forum
AI-generated audio, images, and video now make it easier to create convincing political propaganda, impersonations, scams, and fake news.
Tech Target
Researchers and labor groups warn that AI hiring, surveillance, and management systems can reinforce discrimination against workers and
marginalized groups.
Tech Institute
Artists, authors, musicians, and publishers have sued AI companies for allegedly training models on copyrighted material without permission.
Arxiv
Cornell University
Legal scholars describe AI copyright law as “urgent” and highly unresolved because generative AI systems rely on massive datasets scraped from the internet.
Arxiv
Cornell University
AI-generated art and writing have sparked controversy over plagiarism, ownership, and compensation for human creators.
Arxiv
Cornell University
Governments and companies increasingly use AI for facial recognition, employee monitoring, predictive policing, and behavior tracking. Critics argue this could expand mass surveillance and reduce
civil liberties.
World Economic Forum
Power may become concentrated in a few AI companies. Training frontier AI models requires massive computing power and capital, giving a small number of tech firms disproportionate influence over information, infrastructure, and labor markets.
World Economic Forum
AI could deepen economic inequality by concentrating wealth among highly skilled workers and large corporations.
World Economic Forum
AI is increasingly used in military targeting, drone systems, cybersecurity, and surveillance. Mistakes or misuse in AI-enabled military systems could directly threaten human lives.
World Economic Forum
Public Opinions About AI
51% of U.S. adults say they are concerned about AI.
Pew Research Center
56% of U.S. adults are extremely or very concerned about AI eliminating jobs. 57% also fear the loss of human connection.
Pew Research Center
66% of U.S. adults are highly worried about people getting inaccurate information from AI.
Pew Research Center
70% of AI experts are highly worried about people getting inaccurate information from AI.
Pew Research Center
60% of AI experts are extremely or very concerned about data misuse, and 66% say AI is being used to impersonate people.
Pew Research Center
55% of the public express notable concern about people not understanding what AI can do.
Pew Research Center
For more Justice resources, click here.
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Magnifica Humanitas
Magnificent Humanity: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
By Pope Leo XIV. The Pope's first encyclical speaks to one of the most urgent questions of our time: What does it mean to remain fully human in the age of artificial intelligence? Offers a Christian response to the rise of digital technocracy and power, showing how faith, reason, and the tradition of Catholic social teaching can guide society through rapid technological change. Drawing on Scripture, Church history, and the social teaching of the modern papacy, explores how AI is reshaping work, education, family life, politics, warfare, and public truth. While acknowledging the remarkable potential of AI, warns against systems that reduce people to data points, labor units, or instruments of control, and offers a hopeful vision rooted in dignity, solidarity, justice, and the common good.
Read more.
For more Catholic Social Teaching resources,
click here.
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A Plan to Stop AI from Automating
Our Decline
A TED Talk, featuring Gina Raimondo, former Governor of Rhode Island and U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who says that the U.S. is on track to win the AI race — but hollow itself out in the process. In this unflinching look at the threat of AI-induced economic disruption and social unrest, she offers a concrete blueprint to prepare workers for what’s coming next. "AI is a 100-year technology and needs a 100-year response," she says. Watch now.
For more Justice resources, click here.
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The Uses of Idolatry
By William T. Cavanaugh. Offers an interdisciplinary argument that worship has not waned in our supposedly “secular” world. Rather, the target of worship has changed, migrating from the explicit worship of God to the implicit worship of things. Examines modern idolatries and the ways in which humans become dominated by our own creations. Sees in idolatry a deep longing in the human heart for the transformation of our lives. Argues that we all believe in something; that we are worshipping creatures whose devotion alights on all sorts of things, in part because we are material creatures, and the material world is beautiful. Turns to scriptural, theological, and phenomenological accounts of idolatry as inordinate devotion to created things. Through deep explorations of nationalism and consumer culture, presents a sympathetic but critical account of how and why we sacrifice ourselves and others to gods of our own design. Read more.
For more Justice resources, click here.
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Mending the Space Between: 7 Habits of Contemplative Justice
By William Blaine-Wallace. A call to action for individuals and communities, offers readers steadfast, collaborative ways to pursue justice grounded in contemplation and compassion. Constructs dynamic relational habits that enliven the inner and outer dimensions of faith and awaken passion for prophetic change. The habits―pray, behold, engage, bridge, host, remember, pause―evolve, each habit building on the one before. The result is justice-making that is less episodic, more constant, and expressive of a life well lived. Read more.
For more Justice resources, click here.
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The Dangers of Christian Nationalism: God Is Working Through A Body Not A Nation Today
By Michael R Hammond. Written for readers who want to think slowly and biblically, without being bullied by panic or flattered by slogans, and who wants to test confident claims by the Book itself rather than by pressure. Keeps the gospel central while exposing how borrowed covenant language can produce fear based living, crowd out Christ crucified, and quietly replace the mission of reconciliation with a national cause that feels holy because it uses
holy words. Read more.
For more on Religious Intolerance, click here.
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The Missing Ingredient in Every Peace Deal
A TED Talk, featuring mediator Hiba Qasas, who asks "What if the path to peace starts with self-interest?" After four decades inside some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, she has learned that most peacebuilding efforts get it wrong from the start. She makes a provocative case that conciliation shouldn't begin with empathy — and reveals how leading with shared incentives brought hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian leaders into active collaboration, even in the midst of war. Watch now.
For more Peace resources, click here.
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We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter's Reckoning with
American Christianity
By Kristin T. Lee. Asks if we can bridge the divide between identity and what we were told to believe. The author describes the breaking of her faith and the art of repair. Examines how immigrant churches often assimilate to Western theology, even as they offer spaces of belonging. Through storytelling about her upbringing in Asian immigrant churches as well as in white evangelicalism, wrestles with history, ancestral stories, and what it means to follow Jesus. Looks at what might it look like to expand beyond the scripts we've been given and bring our questions to God--as well as building solidarity with the marginalized. Read more.
For more on Immigration, click here.
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I Will Teach You to Change the World
Helps ordinary people develop the knowledge, strategy, and confidence to create real social change. Offers:
- Practical tools for taking action
- Strategic frameworks for understanding how change actually happens
- Training and courses for developing the skills needed to lead and participate effectively
Learn more.
For more Public Witness resources, click here.
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The Rising Cost of Dissent in America
A TED Talk, featuring former senior US national security official Miles Taylor, who shares a personal account that raises a broader civic concern: the growing cost of dissent in American public life. Drawing on his experience inside government and living the consequences of speaking openly, he says that the real threat to US democracy isn't the politicians or hard-liners — it's the two-thirds of Americans who don’t speak up. (Contains mature language.) Watch now.
For more Public Witness resources, click here.
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Strangers in the Province of Joy: Practicing Radical Hospitality on the US - Mexico Border
By Mary Fontana. This is the story of America writ small―a nation founded by immigrants and its shifting, oft-contradictory attitudes toward them. Since 1978, El Paso’s Annunciation House has welcomed over half a million people: migrants and refugees, doing what humans have always done to find sustenance and safety, and volunteers seeking meaning and purpose. Through this chronicle of their individual journeys, exposes the forces driving global migration and challenges readers to confront the borders in their own hearts.
Read more.
For more on Immigration, click here.
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The Vatican and Women Deacons
By Phyllis Zagano. Makes a unique contribution to the debate on women deacons in the church. Reviews the history of the discussion from the early 1970s at a Synod of Bishops, the International Theological Commission and two pontifical commissions. Points out that that the Synodality took up the question and asked for a review of the research and that the issue is still open for resolution. Read more.
For more on Gender Equality, click here.
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Beyond Factory Farming: A Contemplative-Prophetic Approach to Food
By James Robinson. Looks at how can meals re-root us in the soils of creation and how can our foodways uproot and replace the desecrating system of factory farming. The contemplative-prophetic approach to food that is found in these pages weaves together religious, scientific, and culinary wisdom for our relationships with food, meals, and each other.
(Note: Available after June 24th)
Read more.
For more on Hunger, click here.
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Making a Life: Catholic Social Teaching and the Meaning of Work
By Kate Ward. Explores work not only as a paid job but as purposeful human activity, examining it through five lenses: purpose, care, food, art, and pay. Caregiving, often undervalued yet essential to every life, reminds readers that work extends beyond the workplace. Food and art reveal how creative and repetitive labor shape satisfaction, meaning, and sense of contribution. And pay exposes the persistent gaps between society’s valuation of labor and the real costs of living. Draws on the Church’s centuries-long reflection on work, justice, and human dignity, showing how its teachings speak directly to the frustrations and potential of modern labor. This first book devoted to Catholic social thought on work illuminates how communities and societies can better recognize, support, and value meaningful human activity. Encourages readers to rethink what work is for, who it serves, and how it can nurture human flourishing. Provides a compelling roadmap for understanding work as a path to both personal meaning and the common good. Read more.
For more Catholic Social Teaching resources,
click here.
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The Problem with Billionaires — and the Debut of True Net Worth
A TED Talk, featuring Randall Lane, chief content officer of Forbes, who oversees the magazine's signature list of billionaires, tracking the richest people on Earth. He says that he noticed that this listing prompts the ultra-wealthy to stockpile their money instead of spending it on the public good and debuts a new ranking — True Net Worth — that applauds billionaires for their philanthropy and rewards generosity. Watch now.
For more on Economic Justice, click here.
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A Better Chance
Through a national network of 200 member of prestigious independent day schools, boarding schools and public schools, identifies, recruits and develops high-performing middle and high school students leaders among historically underserved young people, producing generations of leaders in business, education, government, and beyond.
Learn more.
For more on the Educational System, click here.
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A Serenity Prayer for Justice
God, grant us the serenity
To accept that we cannot eliminate injustice
And suffering in the world
But the courage to stand against them
And the wisdom to forge a better tomorrow
Than the limitations of today.
Loving God, teach us
To live one day at a time,
To enjoy moments of joy
And goodness as they come
And to accept hardships, setbacks,
And days when progress seems impossible
As the inevitable product of doing ministry
And advocacy in a fallen world.
God of wisdom, help us take,
As those who walked this walk,
And fought this fight before us,
This sinful country as it is
While working to make it what is should be.
Trusting that “eventually”
You will make things right
As we participate in and surrender to your will.
That we may be reasonable happy in this life
And supremely happy with you
And the company of all in heaven in the next.
Amen
Dr. Lewis Brogdon
Executive Director
JustFaith Ministries
| | Important Dates This Month | |
Individuals Honored This Month | |
June 1st
In my empty cell, I experience a growing awareness of the communion of saints -- and of the possibility of a world where the vast chasm of violence and injustice enforced by torture and war is bridged and transformed.
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June 4th
The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.
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June 8th
If there is no friendship with the poor and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.
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June 12th
Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.
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June 28th
Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.
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June 30th
Dorothy was killed in El Salvador in 1980 with 3 companions by members of the military for her work with the poor.
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