Don’t worry, I’m not bringing back the old “Caught My Eye” feature. You have to listen to The Catholic Channel on Sirius XM for that. Just some links to early commentary and summations on/of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical:
a great and energizing hope born of Christian faith. That faith in turn underwrites a striking confidence in the human capacity to do better than we’re doing at present.
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What we often experience as a limit — “incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability” — is in fact where we learn what truly ennobles our humanity: “compassion, as well as a sincere concern for the needs of others; a generosity that can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure; spiritual experience and the worship of God.” Families that have come closer through the presence of a child with Down syndrome, psychiatrists who have helped wounded souls back to mental health, and those who offer exquisite personal care to the elderly weakened by dementia will all recognize the countercultural but humanizing truth Leo teaches here.
Arguments in the weeks and months ahead will likely center on the pope’s proposals for guiding and regulating the hypersonic evolution of AI. Several critical points that form the intellectual and spiritual scaffolding on which Magnifica Humanitas is built shouldn’t get lost in the policy debate, however. Like the point that human dignity is inalienable and inherent, not a benefice bestowed by the state or ascribed by socioeconomic status. And the point that, however confused our human condition, “creation bears the imprint of an original goodness” that we are to “bring to fulfillment.” And the point that “true progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen, and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.”
In contrast to today’s cacophonous public “discourse,” Leo XIV speaks in Magnifica Humanitas with an adult voice: a voice appealing to our highest aspirations rather than pandering to our worst prejudices or most virulent fears. That in itself is entirely welcome, and no small contribution.
AI-generated child porn is now one of the fastest-growing categories of online demonic debauchery. The most recent version of Anthropic’s AI, Claude Mythos, was not only able to hack into virtually any phone or computer in the world, during safety testing it was regularly able to discover it was under observation and act differently.
This is not a future problem. This is a now problem.
And, to paraphrase and borrow one: What’s wrong with AI? Me!
. . . he is asking us to begin with ourselves. The encyclical returns repeatedly to the following question: Does this technology “make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?” That question, first, is a personal one. How am I using AI in my own life? What habits is it building or eroding in me? Am I using it in ways that deepen my attention and my relationships, or in ways that outsource my judgment and thin out my humanity? We must evangelize ourselves before we bring this message to the world.
. . . the pope lays out the choice that humanity faces in stark terms: “If technology becomes the ultimate criterion, the human person risks being reduced to data, a cog in a machine or a commodity. If, however, technology is integrated with a wise perspective, it can become an instrument of growth, justice and fraternity.” More than anything, Magnifica Humanitas is an exhaustive account of what could happen if the world makes the wrong choice. As for the benefits of making the right one, Leo mostly leaves them to the reader’s imagination.
Hannah Brockhaus: Magnifica Humanitas: Pope invokes justice to combat ‘antihuman vision’ in AI
Courtney Mares: Magnifica Humanitas: Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Warns of Temptation to Build Future Excluding God