Magnifca Huamanitas is many things, the majority of which I’m not qualified to address. In this brief reflection, I’ll limit myself to a few areas with which some of my own work overlaps, offer a critique, and then consider what this encyclical might lead someone like me to do.
I think that Pope Leo is right to frame most of his arguments with reference to the construction of two cities: Babel and post-exilic Jerusalem. Leo does not quite put it in these terms, but both cities represent human attempts to regain proximity to God. Babel, however, strives for control whereas Jerusalem moves toward faithful service and worship. Both endeavors entail transformation. Babel calls for an increasing homogeneity and technical expertise that could ultimately dominate and channel divine power. Jerusalem also calls for a transfigured humanity, but one imbued with moral purity, ideally the result of the presence of God quite literally dwelling amongst his people in the temple. Such a humanity would be transformed into the kinds of image-bearers who care for the earth and for one another while basking in the presence of divine love without shame.
Leo is at his best when he criticizes the use of AI to further the aims of Babel, especially where human transformation is concerned. Paragraphs 112–117 offer clear critiques of trans-and post-humanism. Leo decries the desire to surpass limits and, ultimately, bodies, noting that “finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others” (122). Further, “it is one thing to integrate technology within a human-centered, relational vision; it is quite another to be guided by an outlook that devalues human limits and promises a purely technical form of ‘salvation’” (117). The echo of the Narnian Mr. Beaver’s sage advice is just within earshot: “when you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”
One can also note that the penitent and worshipful vision of God across Scripture and in several deuterocanonical works transforms the beholder. However, the visio dei never results in disembodiment. Nor does it yield anything less than lips cleansed with coal from the altar of God or bodies suffused with the pure light of a divine glory whose ultimate expression is the limitation and agony of the cross. Leo writes: “when we embrace the possibility of transcending ourselves through God’s grace, we do not deny our nature, nor do we become less human…. What saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship that liberates, a communion that transforms” (128). The two narratives of transformation offer pathways to divine life that might, from afar, appear to be commensurate in some measure, especially in their attainment of eternal life. The Pope does us a service when he very firmly states that they are not and never will be.
Nevertheless, Leo is not against the use or development of AI. While this is not necessarily wrong, it does lead to some apparent inconsistency in his calls for action. It his duty, I think, to point out the ideal moral uses of technology, yet his gestures in this direction tend to remain vague and aspirational. Occasionally, statements like the following appear: “It is not enough for artificial intelligence to make us more efficient or connected; it must also serve to build a universal human family, with shared rights and duties, where digital proximity becomes a real opportunity for encounter and mutual care” (187). A noble sentiment, but Leo has already, to his credit, pointed out that AI is not a neutral tool. It reflects the beliefs of its developers and has been developed with almost no transparency or regulation. One would have to build an AI from the ground up with Leo’s moral constraints in mind for this vision to materialize. I do not think that, in its current state, AI can be used to foster the good toward which Leo would like the world to direct itself.
Be that as it may, the final sections of Magnifica Humanitas are its most inspiring. In his account of “building the civilization of love,” Leo addresses the fact that while our world is beset by evil, Christians “view history in the light of the crucified and risen Lord, to whom the Father has given ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Mt 28:18)” (210). Following a quote from the Return of the King (because this Pope is, in short, a mensch), he writes: “The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization” (213). Amen.
I’d like to reflect for a moment on what such bulwarks might look like. Nothing I say here is new, but it may be worth repeating. When I finish reading a piece of writing like this encyclical or Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine, I’m eager to fight back. Lately, I wonder whether–in addition to the development of prayer and faithful daily life–it’s time to start forming small groups of people dedicated to meeting together in person to read and talk and pray. Groups devoted to meeting in person stand a better chance of resisting the trance-states, as Martin Shaw describes them, into which our devices so deftly inveigle us. Such groups, of course, already exist; and, at some level, I am simply describing aspects of church life. Still, it may be time for willing churches to begin devoting more resources to the active pursuit of remaining human. What’s more, perhaps there should be a loose association of such groups across the world. We cannot all move to Paul Kingsnorth’s farm. But, as Pope Leo reminds us, we can contribute to the civilization of love in our homes and neighborhoods.
Image Credit: Joseph Mallord William Turner, “View of London from Greenwich” (1825)
