The Challenges of Magnifica Humanitas

I The Church Facing the Challenge of Artificial Intelligence

Leo XIV’s encyclical appears at a particularly critical moment in contemporary technological history. Seventy years after the term “artificial intelligence” first appeared at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, and following several “AI winters” marked by disappointment and disillusionment, recent advances in generative systems have brought about a spectacular breakthrough. The computational power of modern computers, combined with the discovery of so-called “transformer” architectures in 2017, has made possible the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs), capable of processing natural language with unprecedented efficiency. Many already see this as a revolution comparable to the invention of writing, the printing press, or the industrial machine.

The fundamental issue is therefore far from being a mere technical innovation. One is reminded of the myth of Icarus, which already told of human ambition fascinated by its own power: thanks to the technology invented by Daedalus, man believes he can free himself from his condition. But Icarus, intoxicated by the new possibility of flight, loses all sense of proportion, flies too close to the sun, and brings about his own downfall. Contemporary transhumanism often reinterprets this myth in reverse: where ancient culture saw a warning against excess, our era readily celebrates “the successful Icarus,” convinced that no limit should remain insurmountable.

Just as Leo XIII had to confront the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution in Rerum novarum, Leo XIV is thus called upon to shed light on a new revolution that is at once industrial, cognitive, and cultural. The massive investments made by the United States, China, and major technology companies show that AI has become a matter of global power. Even if some still doubt the economic viability of this new digital economy and fear a massive speculative bubble, all signs point to AI profoundly transforming work, education, research, the economy, and even the way humanity understands itself.

II The challenges of transforming the world of work:
a revolution comparable to the Industrial Revolution

The first challenge concerns human labor. Since Rerum novarum, the Church’s social doctrine has regarded work not only as a means of subsistence, but as an essential dimension of human dignity. Yet artificial intelligence is upending this relationship to work.

For the first time in history, a technology no longer merely replaces human physical labor but directly affects certain intellectual functions: writing, translation, diagnosis, programming, documentary research, legal analysis, graphic design, and music composition. Automation no longer concerns only the repetitive tasks of factory workers; it now extends to skilled professions and knowledge-based occupations.

The social consequences could be considerable. Many fear the emergence of a society where a few owners of technological infrastructure would concentrate wealth while a large portion of workers would become economically marginalized. Tensions comparable to those arising from the industrial revolution of the 19th century could then reappear in new forms.

Several observers are already raising the risk of “cognitive dispossession” of the worker: humans would no longer be active participants in their work but mere auxiliaries of algorithmic systems over which they no longer have control. The issue is therefore not merely economic. If human work loses its creative, relational, and personal dimensions, then a part of humanity itself risks being undermined.

It is understandable why the Church now insists on the need to maintain the primacy of the person over technical and productivist logic. Technology cannot become the measure of man. Man is worth more than his economic utility.

III Financial and Political Challenges:
The Concentration of Technological Power

AI also represents a colossal financial and geopolitical challenge. The sums invested in this field are reaching unprecedented levels. The world’s major powers now view artificial intelligence as a major strategic tool.

But this concentration of power raises unprecedented questions. A few private companies now possess a capacity for cultural, economic, and political influence that even governments sometimes struggle to control. Personal data, digital infrastructure, and computing power are becoming the new instruments of power.

As early as 1990, Michel Schooyans had foreseen this development in his article published in the NRT : “New Powers of Man and Political Institutions1". He had already demonstrated that science is never neutral: it can become an instrument of domination when integrated into economic and political systems seeking to organize society through technical control over living organisms. The issue at the time—Father Schooyans was then considering bioethics—was presented as a matter of governance over humanity.

IV Cognitive challenges:
the temptation to reduce thought to calculation

AI also raises cognitive challenges of considerable scope. Generative systems produce texts, images, reasoning, and analyses that sometimes give the impression of true intelligence. Many people consequently come to equate human thought with mere algorithmic information processing. But reducing thought to information processing risks gradually altering our own understanding of human intelligence.

The danger is twofold. On the one hand, overestimating the actual capabilities of machines; on the other hand, and even more profoundly, underestimating human intelligence itself. A culture dominated by algorithmic logic could accustom humans to fragmented, rapid, automated thinking that is dependent on digital systems.

Antiqua et nova had already pointed out that human intelligence cannot be equated with computational power. Man is not merely an information processor: his intelligence is embodied, relational, open to truth, goodness, beauty, and God.

Younger generations are, in fact, beginning to express a sense of unease or weariness in the face of these ubiquitous technologies. Several American universities have seen hostile reactions when AI is presented as the inevitable future of education. Many have a vague sense that the widespread use of these tools will transform not only the content of knowledge, but also the very structures of attention, memory, and reasoning.

V The specifically human stakes:
humanity reduced to performance

Behind these developments lies an even deeper question: what is humanity? Artificial intelligence does not merely transform tools; it alters the way humans understand themselves. The transhumanist dream of an enhanced human, freed from biological limitations, increasingly tends to view vulnerability, dependence, aging, or even mortality as mere technical flaws to be corrected.

In “The Theology of Gift Put to the Test of Transhumanist Perfectibility of Man2,” Odilon-Gbènoukpo Singbo shows that this logic profoundly transforms humanity’s relationship to itself: life is no longer received as a gift, but viewed as a programmable and perfectible material.

Yet Christian tradition affirms, on the contrary, that vulnerability belongs to the truth of humanity. The human being is defined neither by performance nor by efficiency. He is a relational being, called to communion, filiation, and self-giving.

This is why Christian discernment regarding AI does not consist in pitting man against machine, but in defending the wholeness of the human person. The greatness of man lies less in his power than in his capacity to know, love, contemplate, and enter into relationship.

VI Spiritual Issues:
the “Passover of Technology”

These questions ultimately lead to a decisive spiritual issue. A society fascinated by the performance of machines risks gradually forgetting the contemplative, moral, and spiritual dimensions of human existence.

Antiqua et nova already warned against a civilization in which the machine would become the implicit model of humanity. A culture dominated by algorithmic efficiency could lose the sense of gratuitousness, silence, contemplation, and even truth.

This concern echoes a very ancient intuition of the Christian tradition, particularly in St. Augustine. For him, the encounter between Christian faith and ancient culture consists neither in rejecting culture nor in absolutizing it. He speaks of a true “Passover of culture.”

In De doctrina christiana, Augustine takes up the biblical image of the “spoils of the Egyptians .” Just as the Hebrews carried with them the riches of Egypt during the Exodus, Christians can take up the intellectual, philosophical, and artistic riches of human cultures to place them at the service of truth. The sciences, the arts, and technology are therefore not condemned in and of themselves. But they must be purified and reoriented.

This reorientation presupposes precisely a Paschal passage. Culture must cross the Red Sea. It cannot save itself. It must accept being judged, purified, and surpassed by a truth that does not come from itself.

Leo XIV directly takes up this Augustinian perspective when he contrasts Babel with Jerusalem: “the first choice is not between a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to technology, but between building Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem” (n. 9). The Pope urges us to avoid “the Babel syndrome” (n. 10).

In The City of God, Augustine already shows that a civilization can be extremely refined and yet spiritually sick. Rome represents immense political, legal, and technical power; but this greatness remains ambiguous when it closes itself off from the truth of God. Technical progress never guarantees moral progress.

Culture is no longer literary and artistic; it is technological and “artificial.” AI is undoubtedly a remarkable product of human intelligence. But the question remains Augustinian: does this power lead humanity toward greater truth, communion, and wisdom, or does it risk, on the contrary, feeding the illusion of a humanity that has become self-sufficient?

The “Passover of culture” is today the “Passover of technology”: the latter must undergo a conversion. It must recognize that it is not its own end. Human culture finds its fulfillment neither in power nor in total mastery, but in that which transcends it and yet draws it in.

For Augustine, this center is Christ. Not as an external limit imposed on culture, but as an inner truth that guides and fulfills it. Christ does not abolish human intelligence; he gives it its proper measure and its true purpose.

VII A new stage in the social doctrine of the Church:
in response to the changing times

Magnifica Humanitas thus appears as the culmination of doctrinal work undertaken over several years by the Roman dicasteries. The encyclical does not condemn artificial intelligence as such. Rather, it seeks to shed light on contemporary choices from the perspective of an integral Christian anthropology.

The Church cannot be content with an external or purely moral view of these technologies. It must first understand the phenomenon in all its breadth: its promises, its dangers, its likely irreversibility, and the anthropological transformations it entails.

The stakes are immense: the transformation of work, the financial and geopolitical concentration of power, the evolution of ways of thinking, the redefinition of what it means to be human, and the spiritual crisis of contemporary culture.

Bruegel, in The Fall of Icarus, depicts the moment when the Promethean dream vanishes into the indifference of the world. Icarus occupies almost no space in the painting: only his legs still emerge from the sea, while the plowman continues his work, the fisherman carries on with his task, and the ship sails toward the horizon. Fascination with technical power can make us forget what is essential: the concrete truth of the human condition, work, relationships, fragility, and attention to reality. At the same time, as humanity contemplates its own technological power, it can become blind to the silent decline of its humanity. Leo XIV’s encyclical is truly welcome!

Alban Massie s.j., Emmanuel Tourpe