Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice convenes panel to reflect on Magnifica Humanitas
Panelists discussed the treatment of Catholic social teaching in Pope Leo's inaugural encyclical along with other themes.
As a way of gathering initial impressions of Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, the UK-based Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice convened a panel of scholars to offer assessments via Zoom on June 4.
Magnifica Humanitas was released on May 25 and takes as its theme the preservation of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Panel chair Anna Rowlands of Durham University (UK) noted in her opening remarks that the encyclical has been positively received both within the church and among nonbelievers.
Rowlands described human dignity “as a foundation and not merely a principle” of the encyclical. She observed that Catholic social teaching (CST)—the body of church doctrine concerned with human dignity, solidarity, and other elements of the common good—is presented as an “act of discernment” throughout Magnifica Humanitas.
Rowlands added that the encyclical integrates the Vatican’s two previous texts on AI—Antiqua et Nova and Quo Vadis, Humanitas?, both published earlier this year—into a social and theological point of view that “bring[s] into sharp relief questions of goods, temporal and spiritual.”
In addressing questions of “inequalities of power” and “the profound interconnections between the crises and the opportunities that lie before us,” the encyclical “returns the human to the center of the conversation,” she said.
Nicholas Hayes-Mota, assistant professor of social and theological ethics at Santa Clara University in California, praised Magnifica Humanitas for its “comprehensive reinterpretation of the history of Catholic social teaching as this extremely dynamic and evolving tradition.”
Hayes-Mota observed that two of the encyclical’s five chapters are about Catholic social teaching, providing “an essential synodal interpretation of Catholic social teaching” rooted in “a vision of the church as a synodal body” that discerns and decides together. This synodal interpretation is “not only embraced and incorporated” within the encyclical, he added, but “becomes applied to the world.”
He referenced paragraph 10 of the document, which invokes synodality as the church’s “offering” to the world, thereby providing a framework for “a deliberative democratic vision.” The church and the world become “mirror images of each other,” he said, in that both are called to become “synodal bodies.”
Hayes-Mota explained how chapter 2 of Magnifica Humanitas summarizes the core principles of Catholic social teaching. He singled out paragraph 22 for the way it presents Catholic social teaching as developing through the “many voices” of our time, which implies a church that learns as well as teaches.
Paragraphs 86 through 89 represent a “hugely significant move” in that they affirm that the principles of Catholic social teaching “apply within the church itself”—something that has been previously contested within the church’s magisterium, he said.
“There is more work to do to create a church that embodies its own social teaching,” he continued. Pope Leo XIV has moved the church in this direction by “mak[ing] subsidiarity the guiding principle of the church’s own governance and pastoral life,” he added.
Dr. Samuel Tranter, research fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, spoke from an Anglican perspective about how “Leo’s letter is very much the treatise we need for our time.”
Tranter framed his remarks around three key words: courage, creatureliness, and care. He quoted poet W. H. Auden’s definition of poetry as “the clear expression of mixed feelings” and linked this to the ambivalence of technological development, which can be marked by sin even as it is made in service to love and justice.
Since no contemporary pope would want to “prolong the conflict” between science and faith, Leo expresses gratitude for human ingenuity throughout the encyclical, Tranter said.
Central to Magnifica Humanitas is “the irreducible value of our humanity” that “must never be replaced or surpassed,” he added.
“The world construed by Magnifica Humanitas is strange and beautiful already” without the inundation of technology, he said. In attempting to inspire people to retain their humanity in the teeth of technological onslaught, Leo is effectively saying, “Don’t give up your birthright for a mess of pottage,” Tranter said.
Tranter observed that the future of work is another of the pope’s major concerns. While “tech optimists” say that the “disruption” caused by AI will eventually die down, this is “not much consolation,” he said. The church’s responsibility in the meantime is to be “pastoral and prophetic.”
Describing Magnifica Humanitas as “a toolkit that can be applied to this moment,” Tranter singled out Leo’s invitation to become “weavers of hope” in the document’s conclusion.
“With hope comes agency, or the freedom to act,” he elaborated.
Meghan J. Clark, a professor of moral theology at St. John’s University in New York, characterized Magnifica Humanitas as “dense” and “not something that lends itself to a quick read.”
Building on Hayes-Mota’s comments, she spoke of the encyclical’s “repositioning of what Catholic social teaching does” by framing it as a process of “shared discernment.” She cited paragraph 45, which speaks of “a harmonious, though not always linear, development” of social teaching within the history of the church.
A common critique of Catholic social teaching is that it’s “too optimistic,” Clark said. This has led some commentators to claim that Magnifica Humanitas “does not talk about sin enough.”
She pointed to paragraph 176, in which Leo asks for pardon for the church’s complicity in the practice of slavery—what he terms “a wound in Christian memory”—as recognition that “the church should have known better.”
“Nobody is let off the hook,” she said. “The moral criteria that matured [throughout history] has been there all along.”
Magnifica Humanitas “moves us into being able to analyze the world around us in a way that’s more integrated,” she continued.
Leo joins his predecessors Benedict XVI and Francis on “sounding the alarm on efficiency and economic development” with the document, Clark observed.
“We have seen a cult of efficiency emerge” in recent years that “eats away at that sense of self,” she said. She quoted from paragraph 112 of the encyclical: “When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.”
There is always a risk that people “will stop mattering” in periods of rapid economic and technological change, she said. She emphasized that privileging labor over capital and people over profits “has always been central for Catholic social thought.”
In a world where “we’ve armed everything” from the war on drugs to the characterization of cancer as “a battlefield,” Magnifica Humanitas represents Pope Leo’s “call to disarm,” she said. ♦
Michael Centore
Editor, Tomorrow’s American Catholic
Notes and Events
In light of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood on Sunday, it is worth revisiting paragraph 234 of Magnifica Humanitas, which begins: “The spirituality that we need is a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love.” I (Michael) was kindly invited to offer a reflection on Sunday’s readings for U.S. Catholic; those interested can find the text as well as video reflection here. I’m also pleased to share a related essay on praying the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours for Emmanuel Magazine that is available here. Special thanks to Emmanuel editor (and TAC contributor) Michael E. DeSanctis for his openness to the piece and valuable editorial assistance!
Join TAC podcast co-facilitator Patrick Carolan tomorrow, June 6, at 9:30 a.m. ET as he presents “Franciscan Renaissance—The World is Our Cloister: Reimagining Our Way Forward as Human Family” for the Franciscan Circle of the Companions of Francis and Clare. The link to join the presentation is here. The Franciscan Circle is a diverse interfaith gathering of clergy and laypeople who seek to journey in mind and heart with the witness and wisdom of the saints of Assisi, Francis, and Clare. To learn more, we invite you to listen to our podcast episode with Franciscan Circle founder Br. Mark D’Alessio from April, available here.
Pope Leo has already left his indelible mark on the global blackboard. He has handled with mastery and perspicacity a controversial topic which all have been recently pondering in diverse cultures and regions. Catholics are now at the cutting edge of a fundamental conversation that will impact the future of the species on this endangered planet.
It was a treat to listen to the community wisdom unfolding in the conversation between Mark, Michael, Patrick, and Barbara. Riveting, engaging, refreshing.particularly in the context of the futuristic leonine encyclical.