The Call AI Cannot Hear: A Catholic Understanding of Discernment

This is going to be part of a larger series of essays exploring humanity and how to live a life well in the midst of artificial intelligence (AI).

In my previous essay, I introduced the idea of vocation and how even if someone loses their job, their calling from God cannot be taken from them. To discover our vocation though, we must become attuned to hearing God’s voice in our lives. How does one do this? Through a process called discernment.

There is an old IBM quotation, taken from a 1970s training manual:

“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”¹

And yet, people and companies increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) to make decisions for them. An AI system can only evaluate the information made available to it through its training, instructions, tools, and the context supplied by the user. It does not inhabit the situation, understand every unspoken circumstance, know the user’s heart, or bear responsibility for the consequences of its recommendation. Its output is also shaped by the assumptions and priorities of its designers, including the guardrails governing what it may recommend. These limitations do not necessarily make AI advice useless, but they make it dangerous to treat that advice as authoritative.²

It is remarkably easy to provide an LLM with a collection of facts and ask, “Should I do X or Y?” The model may produce a persuasive answer, but it cannot pray, examine its conscience, recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit, or determine what God is asking of a particular person. Pope Leo warns in Magnifica Humanitas against using AI merely to receive answers rather than engaging the intellect and understanding what one is trying to learn.² The question, then, is not simply whether AI can help us evaluate a decision, but whether we are still truly making the decision ourselves. Discernment is necessary both to determine when AI is an appropriate tool and to prevent that tool from becoming a substitute for prayer, conscience, prudence, and personal responsibility.

Discernment is much more than simply making a decision. It is walking with God through prayer, and listening for His voice to hear where He is calling someone. One of the most prolific writers on discernment is St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius developed a system of discernment of spirits, taking the advice of St. John and St. Paul to test the fruits of the spirits to determine if they are of the Holy Spirit, or what St. Ignatius calls, the “Evil Spirit.”³ ⁵

Now, this may sound like discernment of spirits is some sort of spiritual battle, but in reality, it is simply taking note of the interior movements of our heart and soul when praying over a particular calling. This was developed by St. Ignatius during his convalescence, after taking a cannon ball to the knee. Bored, St. Ignatius asked for romance novels and stories of knights to read, but the only two books in the house were, The Life of Christ and a copy of the lives of the saints. Begrudgingly, St. Ignatius read these, but often took to daydreaming. During this time, he would imagine life as a wealthy noble, winning the hearts and hands of princesses and winning glory across the land. However, he often found these left him feeling hollow and longing for more. Conversely, if he imagined his life as the saints, serving Christ and the poor, he found himself feeling quite content and fulfilled.⁴

When do we use discernment? Career choice, determining if someone is meant to be our spouse, and even determining if we are called to the priesthood, religious life, married life, or single life. Often it will be heard in conjunction with vocation, as in, discerning one’s vocation. But spouses can also use discernment when deciding if they are called to have more children, or figuring out a major change that will affect their family. The ultimate goal of this practice is to determine where God is calling us.

Discernment is not merely a process of data evaluation. It is an exercise of faculties of the imago Dei.⁶ It uses our intellect and will to determine what our vocation is and act on it, not simply receive instructions passively. St. Ignatius had no search engine or LLM to tell him how to form the Society of Jesus or help the poor. He had two books, a shattered leg, and the movements of his heart. It was his own interior attention to his heart and soul that showed him the insight that emerged—that imagining a life of glory left him hollow, while imagining a life like the saints left him content and fulfilled. This was not the result of a data analysis conclusion. St. Ignatius would then go on to develop and grow that interior attention, through many years of prayer and suffering, into the most influential discernment framework in the history of the Catholic Church, the Spiritual Exercises.⁴ ⁵

In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius defines two terms, consolation and desolation. Consolation is defined as feeling a particular closeness, or the soul moving to God, whereas desolation is feeling distant or separated and the soul moving away from God. While both may come with feelings of joy, happiness, or sadness and anger, these emotions are not their defining characteristics—the person’s closeness and relationship to God are.⁵ He also writes about three times when an “election” is made—that is when a person makes a discernment and decision during the Exercises. The first time for election is when God gives direct, divine clarity. This is the rarest, and involves an immediate, unmistakable movement of the will by God. The second time involves consolations and desolations. It is the most common and occurs when “much light and understanding are derived through the experience of desolations and consolations and discernment of diverse spirits.”⁵ The third time is during quiet rational deliberation. There is no strong spiritual movement, and the person simply reasons carefully and methodically before God.⁵ Attending these consolations and desolations over time is the direct antithesis to what most people are doing when asking an LLM to make a decision for them.

This second time of election requires the human person. It needs a person’s memory, attention, patience, interior life or the ability to introspect, and an ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit. AN LLM cannot be in consolation or desolation. It has no soul to move.² ⁵ An AI system making these decisions operates in exactly the space St. Ignatius deems dangerous. It speaks to imagination and appetite without possessing any ability to discern whether the movements it encourages the person toward God, or away from Him. It tells you what is probable given your prompt, optimizing output to fit your input framing. If you were to tell an LLM that you’re thinking of selling your belongings and living a life of austerity and prayer in service to the poor, but also thinking of pursuing a successful career as a merchant, it could tell you the better option is to be wealthy, or it could romanticize the austere lifestyle of living simply for others. In either case, the model would be drawing upon patterns in how human beings describe happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. It would not be discerning whether either path constituted God’s particular call within that person’s life.²

The Church has always understood that we are not merely thinking machines. We are rational creatures made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with intellect and will, and called into a relationship no algorithm can enter.² ⁶ When we hand our deliberation to a machine, we are not simply being inefficient. We are abdicating the proper exercise of the very faculties through which God speaks to us and through which we respond to him.⁶

Our occupation may change a dozen times. Our vocation does not. But Vocation can only be heard by the person who has learned to listen and developed though prayer, attention, and honest self-examination, the interior life that discernment requires.

AI can process your data. It cannot hear your call.

That work remains irreducibly, beautifully, and permanently yours.

Works Cited

1. IBM. “AI Decision-Making: Where Do Businesses Draw the Line?” IBM Think. Quoting an IBM training manual from 1979.
2. Leo XIV. Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Encyclical Letter, May 15, 2026, nos. 97–105 and 145–146.
3. New American Bible, Revised Edition. 1 John 4:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:19–22; Galatians 5:22–23. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011.
4. Ignatius of Loyola. A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of St. Ignatius. Chapter 1.
5. Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Translated by Elder Mullan, S.J., nos. 175–177 and 313–317.
6. Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997, nos. 1700–1706, 1730–1734, and 1776–1782.