'MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS'

This is the first of six reflections on Pope Leo's first encyclical

The Deepseek logo and words reading "Artificial Intelligence AI" are seen in this Jan. 29, 2025, illustration. (OSV News illustration/Dado Ruvic, Reuters) (Courtesy photo of Dado Ruvic)

On May 15 of this year, Pope Leo XVI released a form of papal teaching known as an “encyclical.” Encyclicals are a letter addressed to the bishops in communion with him but often include all Catholics, Christians and people of good will.

At approximately 38,000 words and 248 paragraphs, there’s a good chance that most Catholics might not read the whole thing. But I’m willing to bet that if you’ve been on social media in the wake of its release, you might have heard something about it. Its Latin title, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”) might not draw you in but its subtitle “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” might. Here we have a pope, the successor to St. Peter the Apostle, speaking not solely about some ancient topic but about technology that is pervading every part of our lives.

Many of us might not sense how this technology is changing, well, everything but perhaps our children do. Artificial Intelligence is threatening to replace large swaths of the workforce, whether its call centers, the arts, middle management, administration, bank tellers or any number of areas, and real people are finding themselves both enchanted and frightened by what it can do.

Pope Leo gets this and, in a demonstration of the Gospel’s perennial relevance, he seeks to apply 2,000 years of the Church’s wisdom to today’s problems. For the next six weeks we’re going to reflect on some of the themes of “Magnifica Humanitas” as we hope to demonstrate that what the pope is saying is relevant to all of us.

Babel or Jerusalem?

Early on, Pope Leo stresses that “Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate, and protect our common home” but warns that “it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice.” He understands that our new technologies aren’t going anywhere and a retreat into the past is impossible: “the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology.” Instead, he proposes a biblical image that illustrates how humanity’s ingenuity can be used for ill or for good, a choice “between constructing Babel or building Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence” (9).

A careful examination of conscience

There’s a famous line in the 1993 film Jurassic Park that illustrates the blind pursuit of technological innovation without careful consideration of the consequences: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." If that summed up our state of affairs, Pope Leo invites us to consider the consequences of the technology we’ve created and how it impacts others, particularly the most vulnerable among us: “let us establish standard for discernment — the dignity of the human person, the universal destination of goods, the preferential option for the poor, care for our common home and peace — and let us translate these standards into practices such as responsible planning, the assessment of human and social impact, the inclusion of the most vulnerable, the promotion of digital literacy and guiding research and industry toward justice and peace” (14). As we’ll see in the coming weeks, these areas are not exclusive to the secular domain but, rather, areas where the Church’s teaching can and should impact the common good. It’s not a mistake that the secular press response to Leo’s encyclical has been overwhelmingly positive. Most people of good will recognize that there ought to be an ethical underpinning to how we use technology, especially as society has become increasingly unmoored from the sources of how we know right and wrong.

What is the Church’s role?

The recent Magisterium (that is, teaching authority) of the Church reminds us of the true role that the Church is to play in the wider culture. Pope St. John Paul II, in his 1990 encyclical “Redemptoris Missio” clearly stated that "The Church proposes; she imposes nothing. She respects individuals and cultures, and she honors the sanctuary of conscience" (39). Pope Leo continues that understanding of the role of the Church in informing, but not replacing, the state. “The Church does not claim to assume the functions belonging to the State. On the contrary, she esteems those who serve the common good and firmly acknowledges the responsibility that civil institutions hold within society.” However, he adds, “the mission entrusted to the Church prompts her to address the real suffering of the men and women of our time” (21). In doing so, Leo is taking up the prophetic office of the Church. In the Old Testament, it was the role of the prophet to stand as a check and balance on the power of the state. This would often mean telling the state what they didn’t want to hear and making them see what they didn’t want to see. In our baptism, we share in that difficult but necessary prophetic mission of the Church as well.

Leo is fearless in this role in telling those in power (and us) what we might not want to hear and making us see what we don’t want to see: “Therefore, when the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church — together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions — must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion” (27).

Leo ends the chapter reviewing Church teaching from the 19th century until today. This might not seem like the most interesting part of the encyclical but he carefully draws a line from our past until today with regards to Church teaching. As I read this section of the encyclical, I felt a great debt of gratitude for a Church that has constantly brought the voice of Jesus into conversation with today’s worries.

Tom Acemoglu is Pastoral Associate for Evangelization and Catechesis at St. Ambrose Church in Latham. He has 25 years of experience in parish ministry and has worked in the church for 18 years.