What happens when Silicon Valley’s values start shaping the Catholic imagination?In this episode, I’m talking about optimization, branding, algorithms, prayer streaks, Catholic AI, “frictionless faith,” and the danger of treating holiness like something that can be measured on a dashboard.This isn’t an anti-tech rant. It’s a plea for a messier, more embodied, more human Church — one where people still have faces, names, wounds, and time for one another.I just want to see her face.🤖Resources 🕊️Essay - Against Silicon Valley Catholicism: https://stanthonystongue.substack.com/p/against-silicon-valley-catholicism Issue V - Beware of Catholic Robots: https://www.stanthonystongue.com/margins/p/issue-v-beware-of-catholic-robots My Book, A Catechism of the Strange: https://www.amazon.com/Catechism-Strange-Stigmata-Relics-Miracles/dp/0829460683 My Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/anthonystongue 

Join my PatreonCheck Out my ZineOrder my BookIn this week’s Mass Prep, we look at Matthew 16:21–27: Peter trying to correct Jesus, what it means to actually follow Christ, and the strange call to lose your life in order to find it.

What if the spiritual life is less about finding God, and more about realizing that God has been chasing you the whole time?In this episode, we look at Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven, the conversion of Jacques Fesch, Jonah, the lost sheep, and the strange, relentless mercy of a God who refuses to stop coming after us.God Chases You Like a Dog (Essay)The Margins: A Catholic Zine Buy My Book, A Catechism of the Strange

Order my book here.Buy a zine here. In Matthew 16:13–20, Jesus asks Peter one of the most important questions in the Gospel: “Who do you say that I am?”This week, we’re reflecting on faith becoming personal, learning to recognize Christ, and the beautiful moment when Peter names Jesus—and Jesus names Peter.

Order my book, A Catechism of the Strange here: https://www.amazon.com/Catechism-Strange-Stigmata-Relics-Miracles/dp/0829460683 In this episode of Mysticism, Word by Word, we explore the Christian idea of becoming more like God through grace, where it appears in Scripture, how the mystics understood it, and what it looks like in everyday spiritual life.

In this episode of From the Margins, I’m talking about why I wrote Beware of Catholic Robots — my new manifesto on Catholic AI, prayer apps, digital spirituality, human dignity, work, and what happens when faith becomes optimized, monetized, and frictionless.We’ll get into Catholic AI companies, spiritual formation, AI and pastoral care, the gamification of prayer, ethical labor, and why the Church should remain stubbornly human.Get Issue V: Beware of Catholic Robotshttps://www.stanthonystongue.com/margins/p/issue-v-beware-of-catholic-robots

Order My Book, A Catechism of the StrangeWhat is the stigmata — and more importantly, what does it mean?In this episode, we explore the strange Catholic phenomenon of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ appearing on the bodies of saints and mystics. We’ll talk about St. Francis of Assisi, redemptive suffering, victim souls, “offering it up,” and why these mysterious wounds reveal something deeper about suffering, sacrifice, and union with Christ.This is also one of the central ideas behind my new book, *A Catechism of the Strange*: strange Catholic phenomena aren’t just curiosities — they teach us something about God, holiness, and the human soul.

Matthew 14 gives us two banquets, and two very different kinds of kings.Herod feasts inside a palace, surrounded by wealth, spectacle, and powerful guests. By the end of the night, John the Baptist’s head is carried into the room on a platter.Then Jesus gathers the hungry in the wilderness.No palace. No guest list. No VIP section. Just grass, hunger, compassion, and bread placed into the hands of God.In this Mass Prep, we explore what these two feasts reveal about power, Catholic leadership, luxury spiritual experiences, and the uncomfortable question of whether we sometimes look more like Herod at the banquet than Christ among the hungry.Every kingdom eventually sets a table.The question is what it eats.

Pre-order A Catechism of the Strange here: https://www.amazon.com/Catechism-Strange-Stigmata-Relics-Miracles/dp/0829460683 Catholicism is full of wounds, bones, dreams, incorrupt bodies, visions, relics, and saints who seemed to glow with the presence of God.But these strange things are not merely spooky trivia. They reveal something essential about the Christian life: grace does not simply forgive us from a distance. It enters us, transforms us, and conforms us to Christ.In this episode, I talk about why I wrote A Catechism of the Strange, how wonder helped lead me back to the faith, and what the strangest corners of Catholic tradition reveal about what every human person was created to become.

We live in a world that constantly tells us we need one more thing. One more book. One more devotion. One more answer. So on and so on. But in Sunday's Gospel, Jesus tells a different story. The merchant finds one pearl—and stops searching.In this week's mass prep, let's talk about what it means to stop shopping for God, why the Kingdom can't be mass-produced, and how Christ is the treasure that changes everything.