Magnifica Humanitas, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the United Nations
There was a time when Catholics opened papal documents expecting to hear about sin.
You remember sin, don't you?
That quaint old concept involving personal responsibility, moral law, repentance, confession, judgment, Heaven, Hell, and all those other topics that apparently failed to survive the liturgical guitar boom of 1974.
Today, however, we have evolved.
We are enlightened.
We are sophisticated.
And so we now receive documents like Magnifica Humanitas, which appears to have been written by a committee consisting of three Vatican Felt Banner Fueled bureaucrats, two blue-haired, unmarried female sociology professors [with their cats], a United Nations consultant, and a guy whose entire theological formation came from a felt-banner workshop called "Journeying Together Toward Inclusive Flourishing."
The encyclical is ostensibly about artificial intelligence.
At least that's what the cover says.
But after reading it, I am fairly certain it is actually about everything except the thing the Catholic Church exists to do.
The Church was founded by Jesus Christ to save souls.
Magnifica Humanitas often reads as though the Church was founded by a coalition of Scandinavian public policy experts to improve workplace satisfaction metrics.
The document repeatedly warns us about technological domination, algorithmic power, digital inequality, labor exploitation, surveillance capitalism, environmental concerns, and the dangers of concentrated economic influence.
These are all legitimate concerns.
But after 245 paragraphs, one begins to wonder whether eternal damnation survived the editing process.
The average reader finishes the encyclical knowing a great deal about data governance and remarkably little about whether he is going to Hell.
That's a problem.
In fact, it's the problem.
Because the Church's primary concern has never been whether humanity achieves optimal social outcomes.
The Church's primary concern is whether humanity achieves salvation.
The saints understood this.
The martyrs understood this.
The missionaries understood this.
The Council of Trent understood this.
Apparently the modern Church has decided that the more urgent issue is ensuring ethical algorithm deployment frameworks.
The encyclical frequently discusses human dignity.
Human dignity appears so often that if it were a bingo card square, you'd win by page three.
Now, human dignity is real.
Catholics invented the concept before most modern institutions were busy inventing new genders.
But Catholic teaching traditionally grounded human dignity in man's creation by God and his supernatural destiny.
Modern ecclesiastical documents increasingly speak of dignity the way corporate HR departments speak of workplace wellness.
The result is a strange inversion.
The Church once taught that man possesses dignity because he is ordered toward God.
Now many Church documents seem to imply that God is important because He helps facilitate human dignity.
That's a rather significant reversal.
Then there is the familiar villain of every modern social encyclical: productive people.
The entrepreneur? Suspicious.
The investor? Potentially problematic.
The corporation? Presumed guilty until proven innocent.
The bureaucratic apparatus tasked with regulating all of them? Somehow always the hero.
One begins to suspect that the only institution modern Church documents trust less than multinational corporations is traditional Catholic families.
The underlying assumption appears to be that concentrated economic power is dangerous, while concentrated administrative power is compassionate.
History would like a word.
The twentieth century demonstrated repeatedly that governments can become far more destructive than corporations.
Yet somehow every modern solution still seems to involve more oversight, more management, more coordination, more regulation, and more enlightened experts guiding the rest of us toward a brighter future.
We've heard this song before.
It never ends with brighter futures.
It usually ends with shortages and committees.
Perhaps the most revealing feature of the encyclical is what it doesn't say.
There is remarkably little emphasis on:
repentance,
confession,
penance,
sacrifice,
sanctifying grace,
spiritual warfare,
mortification,
the Four Last Things.
You know—the actual Catholic stuff.
Reading the document feels like attending a conference entitled "Building a More Equitable Digital Future" only to discover halfway through that someone accidentally left a crucifix in the room.
And yet this is the tragedy of the modern ecclesiastical imagination.
The Church increasingly appears desperate to prove its relevance by commenting on whatever the world already cares about.
Artificial intelligence.
Climate policy.
Economic structures.
Global governance.
Digital ethics.
The world says, "Talk about these things."
The Church replies, "Excellent idea."
The world says, "Please avoid discussing sin."
The Church replies, "Excellent idea."
The world says, "Please avoid suggesting anyone needs conversion."
The Church replies, "Excellent idea."
The world says, "Please avoid claiming Catholicism is uniquely true."
The Church replies, "Excellent idea."
At a certain point one begins to wonder who is evangelizing whom.
The irony is that the Church possesses exactly what the modern world lacks.
The world does not need another institution discussing governance frameworks.
It has thousands.
The world does not need another organization issuing statements about ethical technology.
It has millions.
The world needs saints.
The world needs truth.
The world needs repentance.
The world needs Jesus Christ.
And if the Church forgets that mission in order to become the chaplain of the global managerial class, she may eventually discover that while she succeeded in becoming relevant to the world, she simultaneously became indistinguishable from it.
The Church was never commissioned to manage Babel more efficiently.
She was commissioned to call people out of Babel altogether.
