Abstract. An old student joke in Rome—whether someone could become a Jesuit without baptism—developed into an inquiry into legal validity, institutional membership and the authority to use “S.J.”. I reconstruct that development through a dialogue with an AI assistant, checked against the Latin and Eastern Codes, Jesuit proper law, institutional reports and canonical scholarship. The decisive opening was the distinction between an unlawful admission and an invalid one: canon 10 gives grounds for questioning whether every breach of Catholic eligibility…
Latest writing
An Unfinished Reflection on a Candlelit Tour of Oxford’s University Church of St Mary the Virgin
Abstract
The candlelit tour of Oxford’s University Church of St Mary the Virgin on 30 October 2026 brought together the history of the university, Christian controversy, religious memory and the responsibilities of learning. This article reconstructs the Revd Canon Dr William Lamb’s account thematically, retaining its architectural details, historical figures, personal recollections and movement from the church to Compline and the Old Library. Seven photographs supply inscriptions for transcription, translation and comparison. The account is examined through institutional histories, primary…
Building a Rule-Based Generative Design System in WordPress
Abstract
This article examines how redesigning my personal WordPress website developed into a generative visual identity. Its central question is how typography, colour and composition can vary while recognition, readability and maintainability remain dependable. Drawing on the conversation, screenshots, reversals, original source and recorded checks, I reconstruct how that question emerged. Missing tags first required distinguishing content from display logic; oversized photographs challenged my association between importance and scale; and excessive colour variation led me to propose coherent palettes for…
Are We Publishing Knowledge or Certifying Human Authorship? On AI-Assisted Theology and the Authority to Decide What Counts
Abstract. This essay examines how theological journals distinguish legitimate AI assistance from the substitution of human authorship, especially when argument and prose develop through sustained human–AI dialogue. Beginning with a practical comparison of submission policies, I reconstruct the objections, documentary checks, mistaken readings, and exchanges that transformed the inquiry into a question about scholarly authority. The analysis distinguishes the value of a contribution, the justification of its claims, the allocation of credit, and eligibility under a journal’s rules. It argues…
The Life I Imagine in Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), or Falling in Love with a World I Cannot Enter
Abstract
This essay examines how my repeated viewing of Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle developed from an attraction to its architecture and visual balance into a question about romantic attachment to Sophie and the life imaginable around her. Reconstructing an extended conversation with AI, I follow several revisions: the limits of stylistic labels, a detour towards exhaustive visual analysis, the shift from comfort to imagined companionship, and the distinction between genuine feeling and reciprocal relationship. Close readings of selected images…
On Gattaca (1997): Deception and Forgiveness, or When Moral Certainty Gives Way…
Abstract
Beginning with the romantic aesthetics of Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997), this essay follows an inquiry into deception that gradually becomes a question about the authority, limits and revision of moral judgment. It reconstructs a dialogue with AI through the objections that changed its direction: genuine achievement does not settle the morality of its means; a life shaped by deception cannot simply discard its history; and forgiveness can presume a guilt that has never been established. Close reading of the…
Wright’s Fallingwater, the question of privilege and the conditions of a good life
I have remembered Fallingwater since I was very young. Long before I could explain its plans or structure, Frank Lloyd Wright’s house above a Pennsylvania waterfall had become an image of what architecture might make possible. I admired its forms, its setting and the elegance of its photographs. I also imagined a life inside it. There would be friends who appreciated the house, an evening worth remembering, and time to read and think. I pictured sitting by the fireplace with…
What Human Effort Means When We Think (Alone or With AI): A Historian’s Question About AI, Originality and Creativity
A recent conversation with two people who have backgrounds in history turned to AI, creativity, and research. One of them told me that they had never used AI for writing. In explaining their position, they attached importance to human effort. I asked why that effort mattered so much. They said that they needed to think about it further. I do not want to turn that unfinished exchange into a settled philosophy on their behalf. What stayed with me was the…