In a recent creepy Handmaid’s Tale-style address, Pope Francis warned his followers about social media-induced brain rot. But that should be nowhere near his biggest worry. Though he doesn’t appear to realize it, he actually advised Catholics to develop the exact mental skills that have freed millions of people already from religious overreach in their lives.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 2/7/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! From introduction: Ryan Burge and his warm fuzzies about Catholicism.)
SITREP: Pope Francis warns Catholics about brain rot
On January 25th this year, Pope Francis delivered a speech to journalists. He did this in the super-creepy Paul VI Audience Hall—you know, the one with the grotesque, demonic-looking giant sculpture behind his throne.
This year is a Jubilee Holy Year for Catholics. In keeping with that sentiment, Francis and his royal court have set up all sorts of celebrations aimed at different groups. January 24-26 was the Jubilee of the World of Communication.
During his speech to journalists, Francis criticized people’s usage of social media. He advised that excessive social media use could lead to brain rot—or as he put it, “putrefazione cerebrale.” In addition to this warning, he told Catholics they needed to master critical thinking skills and discernment to improve their media literacy.
Perhaps more ominously, he also urged “courageous entrepreneurs, courageous computer engineers” to dominate social-media and journalism platforms. In his opinion, this takeover would prevent the corruption of “the beauty of communication.”
Pope Francis also wants countries that have imprisoned journalists to free them, “because the freedom of journalists increases the freedom of all of us.”
His apparent utter lack of self-awareness would be funny as hell in a Trump supporter’s Facebook posts. But in the leader of one of the world’s major religions, it’s shocking and deeply worrisome.
Brain rot: The word of the year
As Francis said in his speech, the Oxford Dictionary people have selected ‘brain rot‘ as their Word of the Year. Here’s how they define the word:
[T]he supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.
They also note that the term began seeing a lot of usage last year. But this isn’t a new word. Back in 1854, Henry David Thoreau used it in his book Walden. He wrote:
While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
The internet adopted the term to describe the deterioration of mental skills ascribed to excessive use of social media. Among other skills, a lot of people think that excessive usage causes poor attention span, decreased discernment, digital self-harm, and attention-seeking. Some people also poke fun at its definition by using it in a playful way to describe their own social media habits.
‘Brain rot’ as a snarl word
Of course, often the usage of ‘brain rot’ seen online looks more like a snarl word. People seem to fling the ‘brain rot’ accusation against anyone they don’t like. Snarl words are as beautifully simple as they are effective: Nobody even needs to define a snarl word. In the case of ‘brain rot,’ just its usage marks the snarl-er as morally superior and the snarl-ee as a mentally-ill, unthinking dopamine chaser who lacks a real life. (The trick is to be the first one to fling a snarl word, obviously.)
Here are two cases to illustrate my point. The first:
- Pro-trans tweeter: “An example of the absolute brain rot that has infected the anti-trans cult.”
- r/HonestTransgender: “Most online trans communities are brain-rot.”
And the second:
- Evangelical site The Gospel Coalition: “Gen Z, fight brain rot by reading [evangelical-approved] books.”
- r/ExChristian: “Christianity is brainrot.”
In each case, the person using the word is signaling affiliation with a particular ingroup—while criticizing the outgroup. The very term ‘brain rot’ should make our ears perk up for signs of tribalism, since one group’s snarl concept is often another group’s flattering self-image.
Knowing all this, Pope Francis’ two-faced support for communication and journalism starts looking absolutely hilarious. Francis and his fellow Catholic leaders don’t want freedom of speech. They never have. His mere use of the word ‘brain rot’ to indicate the kind of speech he doesn’t like tells us loud and clear what he and his cronies really want.
What they really want is for people to stop writing and saying stuff about them that they don’t like. More to the point, they want control over how people communicate and what they communicate.
Pope Francis’ idealized vision of Catholicism does not exist in this real world
Catholic leaders have never loved media literacy, critical thinking skills, discernment, or even courage. They have never, ever been on the side of any kind of free exchange of ideas.
These guys are no strangers to censorship. For centuries, Catholic leaders had an official list of books that their followers were forbidden to read. (Before that and almost from the get-go of their religion, they had unofficial lists.) The official list’s first entry was basically “anything by Niccolò Machiavelli” in 1559, but eventually thousands of books were added to it. (Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers seem to have read it on the down-low!)
While this official list was in effect, anyone who read or produced any of those books risked a variety of out-of-scope punishments including excommunication, fines, confiscation of personal property, and even Inquisitorial attention.
Pope Paul VI discontinued the list in 1966, but Catholics still—even to this day—ask if they’re allowed to read the books on it. And their Dear Leaders still try to dissuade those questioners from doing so. One of the major Catholic sites, New Advent, praises Catholic leaders’ censorship of forbidden books:
In general, it may be said that in the examination and prohibition of books, Rome displayed wise moderation and true justice, since it intended only to keep faith and morals unpolluted.
Once printing presses came into use, Catholic leaders worked with otherwise-secular government leaders around the world to regulate what could and couldn’t be printed on them. They wanted the final say in any book’s existence, whether it was about religion or science, or for entertainment or education.
One of the biggest tells regarding the United States’ founders’ intentions involves their insistence on civil liberties and human rights as the guiding lights of our government. No Catholic leaders—or the proto-fundagelical groups’ leaders, for that matter—wanted any of that stuff, because they knew it had the power to slap away their grabby hands and ignore their demands.
Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of association, it all destroys religious leaders’ power.
Journalists and communications are great—well, some are, at least, to Pope Francis
During the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, nobody in Rome dared speak or write anything critical of the Catholic Church. That’s why they began using what they called “talking statues.” These were just regular statues, but people used to sneak up to them and attach writings to them. These writings were often very sharply critical of Rome’s government, its most prominent citizens, and its Catholic rulers.
Eventually, these writings were called “pasquinades,” after the most popular talking statue, which Romans called Pasquino. Erasmus wrote some funny stuff for the statues—here’s one of his works. It’s about the luxury-loving Pope Julius II trying to enter Heaven with the wrong key:
JULIUS: What the devil is this? The doors don’t open? Somebody must have changed the lock or broken it.
GENIUS: It seems more likely that you didn’t bring the proper key; for this door doesn’t open to the same key as a secret money-chest.
Someone else wrote this one:
But I am that most famous Pasquino, and I make the most prominent men shiver. [. . .]
My persona was shaped in this way
By the blows I take from here and from there
For happily revealing their sins,
But as long as I have my voice I do not care,
Even if the rest of my body perishes,
I will continue to speak the truth,
And the people who are offended must deal with it.
Because if stupid people do not want to keep their sins to themselves,
Who is going to stop me from telling them.
No, Catholic leaders did not like free communication at all. They still don’t. They never have, and they never will. (Neither do the dysfunctional authoritarians of today’s evangelical groups.)
Criticism coming only from anonymous voices waves a major red flag at us. It tells us that critics don’t feel safe being open with their opinions. Usually, there’s a good reason for that feeling.
Translating Pope Francis’ speech about brain rot
When Pope Francis praises journalism, he means journalism that is friendly to both Catholicism and Catholic control-lust. When he praises communication, he means communication that helps Catholic leaders achieve their goal of controlling everyone on Earth.
Anything else is ‘brain rot’ that must be avoided by everyone and censored by Catholic leaders!
Similarly, everything Francis mentioned in his speech must be filtered through Catholic control-lust. Take this bit, for example:
[W]e need media literacy, to educate ourselves and others in critical thinking, in the patience of discernment necessary for knowledge; and to promote personal growth and the active participation of each person in the future of their own communities.
We need courageous entrepreneurs, courageous computer engineers, so that the beauty of communication is not corrupted. Great changes cannot be the result of a multitude of sleeping minds, but rather begin with the communion of enlightened hearts.
Every single noun in that entire quote should be appended with “Catholic-approved.” They need “Catholic-approved media literacy.” They need “Catholic-approved education,” as well as “Catholic-approved critical thinking and discernment.” That will promote “Catholic-approved growth” and ensure “the future of Catholic-approved communities.”
Similarly, those entrepreneurs and computer engineers he wants so much are exclusively uber-Catholic faithful ones. They will create “Catholic-approved communication” and “great Catholic-approved changes” in “the Catholic-approved communion of Catholic-approved hearts.”
It’s appalling to see such intellectual dishonesty in any world leader, but in one so obviously preening over his moral superiority to others like this, it just looks ten times worse.
Freedom to and freedom from, Catholic-style
Pope Francis’ speech really reminds me of something Aunt Lydia says to a group of sex slaves in The Handmaid’s Tale:
There is more than one kind of freedom: Freedom to and freedom from. Now you are being given freedom from.
These slaves’ previous lives in America were marked by the freedom to do as they pleased, to say what they wished, and to make their own private, intimate decisions. Now in the Republic of Gilead, they were truly free! Yes, these sex slaves were free from all that messy individualism! Now they were free from the pressure of running their own lives, deciding who to have sex with, and when/if to procreate!
If this sounds a lot like how evangelical men describe complementarianism, it should. I distinctly remember hearing many men in Pentecostalism trying their best to make controlling their wives’ lives seem like much harder work than what those same wives faced every day. We women rolled our eyes at it, but we all thought Jesus himself had ordered that lopsided, unfair division of labor—so we dared not speak against it.
Catholic laity have a much different relationship with their supreme leaders than Pentecostals do. So many of them won’t care what Francis says. They will do as they think best. But it still matters that Francis is using this kind of language to describe the control he covets over all of our lives.
Catholic leaders’ record on journalism is just as bad
Nor can I take seriously Francis’ glowing praise of journalism and his calls for freeing imprisoned journalists. For centuries, Catholic leaders suppressed any journalist trying to call out their hypocrisy, crimes, and overreach. They did every single thing they possibly could to prevent their sex abuse crisis from reaching mainstream attention. Thanks to the journalists of the Boston Globe, of course, that story exploded into the news in the early 2000s.
And nothing has changed since.
Here are just a few stories of Catholic attempts to silence those speaking out against their abusive priests and overreach:
- 2019: A Nigerian nun and a Mexican journalist blast Catholic leaders for trying their best to suppress ongoing systemic abuse stories.
- 2022: Fervent Catholic legislators in Utah do their best to stymie sex-abuse reporting reforms.
- 2025: In January, Pope Francis finally dissolves a popular lay movement after a pair of journalists exposed its shocking abuse of members; in 2018, the movement’s high-ranking members (including a retired archbishop!) tried to sue the pair into the dirt to silence them.
I don’t think Francis really wants free journalists. They’d write all kinds of stuff that makes him and his extremely-lucrative business look bad. Catholic leaders can’t have that!
The internet might be the biggest threat in history to organized religions
Nor do I think Pope Francis likes the internet much. I don’t think most religious leaders do. Without strong censorship laws, all kinds of speech occurs online. Though religious people had a strong presence online from the get-go of Internet 1.0, the entire sphere tended to lean anarchist and solidly pro-science and pro-human rights.
And it still does.
Looking at the situation in retrospect, it seems to me that authoritarian religious leaders were caught completely unawares by the advent of the internet. It was something teens and college-age people used, not the fuddy-duddy old men in Catholic leadership. By the time they realized what was happening, it was far too late for them to rein in their own followers. They’ve been playing catch-up ever since.
(Vaguely related: Virtual-reality churches are on the rise.)
In an overall sense, the internet far more often raises doubt in religious claims than it can ever settle. Persuading someone of religious claims is much easier in person—because evangelism draws so heavily upon techniques of emotional manipulation and bamboozlement. But the internet is always there. Religious people can browse it at their leisure in private. They can look up religious claims and see whatever evidence the claimants provide—and chew on it over the days to come. And then, they can go onto social media and discuss the situation with others.
Within seconds, one ten-year-old with a smartphone in his pocket can dispel a senior pastor’s most powerful manipulation attempts.
No wonder Catholic leaders want to keep their followers off social media as much as possible! By calling those interactions ‘brain rot,’ they hope to cast moral aspersions upon something that poses a real danger to their control.
Why Pope Francis is all of a sudden praising communication and journalism—and steering his followers away from social media
Pope Francis is only talking like this because he’s on the losing end of his religion’s culture war. He’s on the back foot here. He’s reacting amidst a state of loss rather than proactively creating a win state.
It’s not that Catholicism is in decline overall, even. It isn’t. Yes, it’s certainly undergoing rapid decline in places like Europe and North America. But in parts of the world like Africa, the Catholic population grows quickly enough to offset those losses. And even in the United States, as Ryan Burge points out, some states are seeing way bigger declines than others.
Still, it has to be panicking Catholic leaders to realize that in better-educated countries with better healthcare networks, decent human-rights protection laws, and more comprehensive social safety nets, Catholicism is collapsing. These days, nobody but a small percentage of Catholics even care what Catholic leaders say about morality, since those same leaders almost always seem to be either unmasked as child-rapists or caught covering up their cronies’ child-raping habits.
Regarding any control-grab made by Catholics, all anyone needs to respond is: “Your leaders censored speech, covered up child rape, and silenced the press for centuries.” Darth Cuddlebug Pope Francis can demand whatever he wants and claim whatever he likes. Reality doesn’t cooperate with him.
‘Brain rot’ isn’t actually the big danger Catholic leaders should fear most
Hopefully, it’ll reassure us to know that some scientists are sounding a cautionary note about demonizing social media. As one of them told The Guardian last month:
The first [component of this moral panic] is low-quality research that confirms our biases about technology. It gets immediate press because it’s consistent with our existing biases. It’s really easy to publish low-quality research that kind of shows a correlation, and then exaggerate it, because it’ll get attention and it’ll get funding.
Indeed, he hasn’t found support for claims that social media causes ‘brain rot.’ Last October, another researcher found that Zoomers often use social media to offset stress. In fact, their description of that usage doesn’t sound any different from how Boomers in the 1980s used to watch sitcoms after work to relax.
(Before 1960, Veg-Out was a weedkiller brand. But the term “veg out” as we use it today appears to have come into cultural use in the mid-1960s. The phrase found real popularity in the 1980s. By 1990, the phrase “vegging out in front of the TV” was as iconic as the 2010s “Netflix and chill.”)
But Catholic leaders have a very big motivation to demonize social-media use.
Decades ago, Catholic clergy crimes might never be known outside of the direct geographic area in which they occurred. Even then, only a small part of a church might know about those crimes. Rumors, similarly, didn’t travel far enough to matter. It took the internet to really get enough eyes on Catholic crimes to start holding Catholic leaders accountable for them.
If the internet had not come to be and if Catholic leaders held the same level of coercive power they had in centuries past, you can bet your favorite socks on this: Pope Francis would not care about freedom of speech and the press. He would not be sanctimoniously calling social-media activity he doesn’t like ‘brain rot.’ He most certainly would not be simpering about how valuable journalism is to the world.
Like his predecessor Pope Julius II, in that dystopian world Francis would be keeping his treasure-chest keys close to hand—and expecting them to open the Pearly Gates one day. Luckily, Pope Francis needn’t worry about heavenly accountability. All there is in reality is the earthly kind—and he’s just about completely immune to it.
NEXT UP: My goodness! Did I just spot a hardline evangelical claiming he doesn’t ever sidestep hard questions? Why yes, I sure did! We’ll see what he means next time. See you soon!
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