SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome everyone to Cortezia. This is a rather special uh event because we're going to be looking quite closely at um uh Magnifica Humanitas, which is the Pope's uh most recent, in fact his first um encyclical, and it is on artificial intelligence. It's on other things as well, but um it's primarily about artificial intelligence. So we're gonna do uh the round of all our panelists here, all who whom are, as you know, members of the uh Department of Religious Studies, Catholic Studies rather, at Sacred Heart University, well known to many of you. And um, we're going to examine, try to do a bit of a deep dive in the time that we have into some aspects of this rather lengthy, 40, I think 46,000-word um encyclical. So we can we're we'll be able to get somewhat into it, but of course, we can't go anywhere near a comprehensive analysis of it. Um, but here's some uh background before we do an initial round among the panelists for first impressions, before we come back to begin to look a little more closely at it. The encyclical is a first in in many ways, of course. It's a first for um an American Pope. Um, it's a first in some important respects in terms of its um presentation. Um, although uh Pope uh Francis was present for um discussion around La Datrosie at the time of its launch, he didn't uh participate in the way that Pope uh Leo did, who provided his own commentary in reaction to commentaries provided by a distinguished collection of notables who were um uh conscripted to respond to the encyclical, all of whom did so and did so well. Um so we have a number of, I said, firsts, including, of course, the first sustained, comprehensive analysis of AI and its implications. Now, there have been uh reports, documents, locutions, conferences, summits, and everything else on AI. The Vatican has been involved in this for quite some time, even going back to Pope Benedict XVI. So it's not new for the Vatican to address AI, but it is new to address it in so comprehensive and magisterial a way as an encyclico like uh magnifica humanitas. That's the context. It's also the first of his papacy. So it's a defining moment in the in the pontifical life of Lille. And so therefore, it has all kinds of implications. So I'm gonna go around uh the table now for the first impression response, and then as I said, we'll uh um circle around again and go into uh a deeper analysis. So, Michelle, do you want to give us your first impression of Magnifica Humanitas?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So, um, sure. As so many people have already pointed out, uh it's a powerful landmark encyclical in the tradition of Rerum Novlarum. Uh Leo uh positions his encyclical in the development of the doctrine of the principles of social justice, and he calls us to refute a culture of power, the Tower of Babel, and instead to embrace a civilization of love, to disarm AI, um, and to embrace that civilization of love which safeguards human freedom, human dignity, the common good. Um and he, you know, this, as you pointed out, you know, this encyclical forges pathways into AI and uh its impact on children, AI and uh just war theory, etc. But one of the things that struck me so much uh was the genius of inviting Christopher Olah to be at the presentation and to make remarks. And um I was struck by uh Olah's remarks about how these titans of technology are unsettled by some of the things that they uh it's finding in the construction of these AI models, um, uh things that uh mirror, structures that mirror human feelings of sorrow, grief, of joy, of satisfaction. And um I was particularly struck by some of the remarks following Leo's uh presentation of his um his uh encyclical by some of the titans of technology who said big technology is its own religion with its own theology. And so I think it is particularly important that Leo has positioned the Catholic Church as a moral voice in dialogue with these titans of technology and calls us to, as I said, disarm AI and to embrace and uh to insist on the truth of human dignity created in the image of God. So you know, we can talk about this more.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, I've got to Dan now for first impressions. Dan, you want to react?

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yes. So um, in addition to all the commentary about AI itself, uh which is of course very important, um, what Leo is doing here in a really interesting way, um, is setting out a framework uh for uh the development of doctrine and for the reform of the church. Um and this is in several ways, um, and he and this is threaded throughout the document. It's not only in the sections that are uh you know seemingly uh focused on this. So very early on in the document, he talks about the social doctrine of the church being a living corpus, uh, right, being something that is not uh simply kind of uh an old thing that you draw upon, but something that's continually developing. Um he lays out in his uh Apology for slavery, right, a real uh forward movement uh that was commented on by a number of scholars of slavery, not necessarily that tied into this, um, for its uh magnitude in terms of what it was doing. Um and then he comes out and says, um, in paragraph 89, living out justice in the church means purifying ecclesial relationships and structures of distortions that give rise to inequality, lack of transparency, and abuse of power. So, what Pope Leo is doing is saying that for the church to face down the secular authoritarianism that is uh enabled by um and in kind of this uh vicious circle with the technocratic paradigm, the church needs to reform itself and the church needs to move away uh from forms of authoritarianism that have existed within the institution. Uh, so I think that is something that nobody would have missed if it wasn't there. Uh, but I think it's incredibly important that it is there, and I think it tells us a lot about who Leo is um and where he's taking the church.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Okay, good. Charlie, I'm just trying to get first impressions first. We'll come back to many of the things that you're alighting on that are are deserving of greater examination. But I just want to limit myself to the first impressions here, Charlie.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

So, my first impression of this encyclical is that I love it, but it draws a sharp distinction between the way Pope Francis thought about encyclicals and the way Pope Leo is going to think about encyclicals. For Pope Francis, an encyclical was an album drop. Like Taylor Swift when an encyclical came out, we were now in the Laudato C era or the Fratelli Tuti era. This was a sudden and new set of concerns. For Pope Leo, he's been trying out this material on the circuit for a while. This feels more considered. We're hearing a lot of the things he's been emphasizing in the first year of his pontificate now unfolded, expanded, explained, and situated within the tradition. I want to echo Dan that for me, the most profound first impression is great comments on AI, but the clear for the theology wonks shifts of that word synodality from the doctrine of ecclesiology, how it functions for the church, into social doctrine. And I think that development is going to be really important for us as we move forward. Looking forward to talking about this with you all. It's been a highlight for my week, and I can't wait to dive in.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Well, exactly. And uh what will distinguish what we're doing from what many of the those in the secular media are doing is we'll be looking at it from a slightly through a slightly different angle or lens, which you've already uh identified. The secular world is not particularly interested in the theological substratum. They're not interested in the particular ecclesiological ramifications. I've been struck by the fact that uh many of the leading organs of the media have been concentrating in the business section on AI and the Pope's uh voice and why it matters and matters to them and to the governments. This is all very important, but it is a multi-layered document. And that's why we need to talk about it in in ways that you're not going to see in the public media. But before we do that, before we actually get to it, I want to get your reaction to the presentation itself, because this was also a significant departure from Vatican Protocol. So the Pope is in the I don't know if you've ever been in the Synod Hall. I've been in the Synod Hall. It's deadening. Um, you have these tiers, uh various prelates moving up uh up until you get to the uh to the top, where the Pope is at the bottom. It's not particularly welcoming. It's not the Synod Hall, but it's the Synod Hall in the Vatican, it's not the aula, the where uh Paul VI Hall, where the synod uh synodality event occurred. Different kind of a structure, very constricted. Okay, so you're there, and as Michelle rightly points out, you have the extraordinary presence of Christopher Ola, okay, um, who looks like a teenager as far as I could see, right? He's got the energy, the youthfulness, and whatnot. I think he's something like 30 and he's a multi-billionaire and whatnot. Interestingly enough, he was born in Toronto, he's a Canadian, which surprised me. I did not know that, right? And I was also struck by the fact that the Canadians were a dominant presence there. Cardinal Cherney is uh most likely the principal drafter of this document. Um you can see his voice in several things, including the footnote around slavery. That is a classical response to the residential and other issues that occurred following the conquest and the many issues that have arisen in terms of the Catholic Church's relationship to colonialism, uh, Catholicity, colon evangelization, and all these kinds of things. So we can speculate about all of this because in the end it's the Pope's document. It's his seal, it's his signature, right? Um, and he would never say something he doesn't agree with. But there are people who craft this, all right. And um, as the same with uh Lodato C, you know, just as a pop out of the head of Bergoglio. I mean, there are all kinds of preparations. I see um Cherney as significant a figure in this document as he was quite ostensibly in the creation of Lodato C. All right, so you have you have the panel, you have two women theologians, one originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but now currently at Santa Clara. And then you have the other one who's well known in Vatican Circles and in Catholic Theological Circles, period, and that is Anna Rowlands from the University of Durham. So you have two women there, okay? That's also unheard of. And then you have the Secretary of State, that's common. He's the number two, he's he's going to be there, right? You have the uh the uh DeCastri head of doctrine, uh Cardinal Fernandez, um, not surprising in a way, but that maybe speaks to Dan's point, about the ecclesiastical uh dimensions of this, that there it is, or ecclesiological rather, ecclesiological dimensions, other than just simply the social justice component, although they're obviously intertwined, right? And then you have the head of the Dicaster of Integral Human Development, which I uh Cherney, whom I think is is critical, and whose summary I think was uh sublime, uh, because he took, knew it so well, because I think he's one of the crafters of it, knew it so well and knew what to alight on in terms of the fundamental themes. Then you have the Pope. The Pope delivers it in English, and it's uh um it's not what I would have expected in terms of uh other addresses I've listened to, um, in the sense that he's always measured and methodical, and sometimes even automatic and certainly not um lively, but in this he was, in this he was, um, and um it seemed to me uh a wonderful uh opening to maybe a shift in the pontifical style that we're going to see now as he moves into his second year. But anyway, I'm talking for far too long here. Go back to the presentation itself. Were there anything, what struck you um coming from the women theologians, the uh dicasterio prelates, the pope himself, and of course Christopher Ola, who, by the way, is a self-confessed atheist, making it all the more interesting that he's working with the Vatican on this. Okay, Michelle, back to you.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Well, I'm gonna go back to what I said before. I mean, it would yes, it struck me that he had the women theologians, and I, of course, um, Dan, if you're right, in the development of doctrine, it's of interest that he has women there uh presenting with him. And so um I remain hopeful about that. But I I I focused a little bit more or was struck more by Christopher Olah and his comments, especially that number three comment, because that comment aligns with the whole issue of AI. It's talking about these internal structures that are unsettling to Christopher Olah, but not unsettling to somebody like Jeremy Nixon or some of the other uh Titans of technology who um who have been mute in response, really, to Leo's encyclical, or who have said the encyclical is quote, I'm quoting now from the business section of the New York Times, false doctrine to these Titans of technology, that it doesn't matter to them. That I I mean I could read several quotes where they're talking about feeling that not only can they create more of a human species, but even a god, that they can, and um, I could quote the papers, but I don't want to take up the time to do that. And these all come basically from the New York Times, the quotes that I'm reading. And that strikes, that struck me, Christopher Olas, and I so it makes it all the more important that Leo's positioning the church to have the moral voice in the development of these structures of AI. I'm hopeful of that. Um, but I am struck by these, you know, Ola and who he represents in Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

One of the founders of AI, two of them, um one from uh University of Montreal um is uh Joshua Binegal, and the other one is Jeffrey Hinton, um, originally from Cambridge, but um spent, I don't know, 30 years or so at the University of Toronto. And they both share Christopher Olah's deep apprehension. But you you don't hear from many of the others, like Sam Altman and many of the others. And when you do hear, it's either muted or just um carefully crafted not to offend, but they're not taking the poke seriously. So I think you're you're on to something there, Michelle. Really uh Dan, your reaction to the presentations.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

I mean, it's the new normal in the church. I mean, that's that's you know, again, one of my interpretations of what's going on with Leo's pontificate since the beginning has been here is somebody who was educated at Capitol Theological Union in the late 70s, early 80s around women, used to listening to voices like this, um, and who just simply by virtue of those experiences um and of having grown up in the post-Vatican II church um and engaged in ministry in that church, uh uh, you know, in the missions and elsewhere, he's somebody who is comfortable having those kinds of voices in the room and listening to them and taking them seriously. So I think this is one of the things, one of the gifts of this pontificate is allowing us to see uh as a church this kind of attitude taken to the center of the church, not simply something that we see in our kind of academic settings or um other settings. Um I think you know, you you mentioned Cardinal Fernandez's presence. And I think what's striking there is um almost simultaneous to this document coming out, uh Cardinal Fernandez uh issued an apology for the 2006 uh disciplining of Jan Sabrino, the liberation theologian. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Um specifically commenting that uh that his predecessors at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made errors in uh conducting that case. And I see that as connected to the encyclical because it's basically living out something that is articulated in the encyclical, right? Going on, and it's something that in the pontificate of Francis, clearly the that that approach had been withdrawn, but any sense of apology or restorative justice was very incidental, was very much like Francis met with somebody or made a personal comment to them or whatever, but it was not on this kind of systematic subordinate level. Um, so I think what we're seeing is a new culture emerging in the church on various levels, and that's what's really important is institutionalizing a cultural change in the church.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yes, I think that's very important to observe. Charlie.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

So one quick comment, because I think Dan and Michelle hit the nail on the head around what was going on with that presentation. But I just want to think about the image for a second. When we teach the Catholic intellectual tradition at Sacred Heart University, we share that this treasure trove of knowledge and ideas, they're relevant for life, whether you believe what the church teaches to be true about God or not. If you look at that image of AI being across to casteries, so these questions about social doctrine, work, and life matter regardless of your subdiscipline. If you look and see representatives from all over the world, but also not the types of bodies you would expect to see up in the synod hall, and you see the presence of a self-avowed atheist from the heart of Silicon Valley, you see an image of the church proving it is commitment to its commitment to in-person dialogue, which is synodality, its commitment to talking to the world and not building a wall between the church and the world, and that social doctrine is of interest regardless of one's theological positions. And I think that statement of the image in our era of spectacle and quick shots of a camera spoke thousands of words in addition to the lengthy encyclical.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I think that that's right, and uh not to belabor the point, but I've been making this several times in our program. Style is substance. And what you saw here is indicative of a way of thinking and direction that we must pay attention to. And clearly all of you did precisely that. One of the things, uh, and I want you to talk briefly about this, if you don't mind, one of the things that struck me, and I and it's not surprising, is of course that he he builds on the history, right? So he goes back to 1891 and he takes us through what is basically both a canvas and a compendium of Catholic social doctrine. So if you were coming at this as a professor or as a student trying to figure out what is Catholic social teaching, you couldn't do better than the first sections of this encyclical to give you a healthy grounding in that tradition. Then he moves forward. But here's something that's also interesting, and it may come from years of serving as an external uh for doctoral defenses for several universities. I always pour over the footnotes. And the footnotes here are very interesting. First of all, you you expect, and rightly so, you're not going to be disappointed, that he quotes from his illustrious predecessors. This is what popes do, and it's the continuity, and it's important. It's not just a tradition, it is uh constitutive of papal writing, right? But then you look for other sources. What other sources is he relying on? And three of the most interesting, I think there's one by uh a mayor, an Italian mayor, but pretty well they're all ecclesiastical, they're nearly all pontifical, they're nearly all references to either addresses, texts, apostolic exhortations, or whatever, including, of course, the Second Vatican Council. Fair game, fair game. He's splitting his argument, right? But then there's Victor Franco, right? And there's Hannah Arendt, and then there is what to be is both wonderfully striking and surprising. Tolkien. Okay. And I want to just uh uh quote this because I want your reaction to this. He qu he says at one point that 20th century Catholic author J. R. R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, obviously drawn from the trilogy, described our responsibility in this way. And I quote, It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. End of quote. The civilization of love would 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. I think it's a very important passage in the encyclical. What do you think, Michelle?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

So you pulled out the quote that uh one of the quotes that most struck me. Of course, he's citing Tolkien, who's a wonderful Catholic author. Um and it connects to the five steps that he outlines in his encyclical for the ways that we can step by step individually take responsibility for the building of this new Jerusalem. Um, you know, uh the words we use, what does he say? Um, how we can build peace through justice, um, take a position, take the position of the victim, um, develop a uh cultivate a healthy realism, and of course the last one, dialogue. But he's talking about how we individually can't just say, well, this AI is bigger, I'm I have no power over it, someone else will have to make the decisions. He's saying that we as individuals have responsibility working together as individuals collaboratively, but these are the five steps to build that civilization of love. And, you know, he's going back to uh Namaya, building, rebuilding the new Jerusalem, of course. And so um I think that that's a really critical piece of of the encyclical, speaking to all of us, not just to heads of state, not just to those in charge, but to those here on the ground. These theologians hear me as uh, you know, just one of the participants, if you will, but these are the things that we can take responsibility for.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Very good. And he did now, of course, the encyclico is addressed to all men and women of goodwill, too, isn't it? Um that phrase civilization of love, is that Paul VI or John Paul II? I can't, who is it, Dan? Paul VI, I thought it was Paul Six. Okay, going to you, Dan, following up on Michelle's comment.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Yeah, I mean, I I I I was struck uh that also he's brought Steven Spielberg into the Papal Magisterium. Um right, uh, with it with his um film allusion to uh Schindler's Lis. Um and also in the same sentence, uh Pablo Picasso's Guernica um comes into uh the magisterium. And again, both of these are very weighty uh meditations on the horrors of the 20th century, specifically the 1930s and 1940s. Um, and I think you you know, you see a threat, and and Tolkien, uh, to go back to you know Lord of the Rings is obviously haunted by that also, right? Uh that book is you know is very much uh connected uh to those discussions. So um, which also connects us to something we haven't mentioned yet, which is the uh way in which the Pope Leo's fixation on war and peace is playing out in this document, um, particularly his uh renunciation of just war theory, at least as it's been elaborated thus far, calling it outdated, uh, which is quite striking coming from the Augustinian Pope, um, but which is um again building on this idea of development um and on Pope Francis's similar renunciation of capital punishment, uh, which Leo himself has also articulated, right, as no longer being applicable in the way that um the church may have thought it was in the past, uh, due both to technological changes, uh, but also to the church's continual moral discernment on these issues. So he's bringing to bear this kind of ecumenical set of sources, both in terms of discipline and in terms of uh background, um, on these issues that are clearly of great importance to him and have been great priorities for him in his public-facing commentary and articulating them in a systematic way.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yes, uh just a just a minor point, not a not a point of correction, but a point of clarification. The Schinder list reference, I'm sure, is to the Spielberg film, but the Spielberg film is built upon the work of a Catholic Australian novelist, Kennelly, right? And uh Schinder's arc is the foundational work that from which the Schindler's comes. And again, you have that that uh just looking at it in the broader terms of the Catholic literary tradition, uh, you have both Tolkien and Kennelly present there, if if not by not by name, certainly in the background. Uh Charlie, do you want to react to uh Dan and Michelle?

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yeah, I do, and I want to do a little bit of a deep dive on the Tolkien reference. So right ahead. It appears in the context of opening up the question about war, war-making, and AI. And I think the reference to Tolkien and a quotation from Gandalf on personal responsibility is incredibly intentional. A reminder for those not following the development of artificial intelligence, is we often talk about anthropic, open AI, and Google as the major frontier labs. But one of the most significant technology companies for military work is called Palantir, named after an item from the Lord of the Rings, because Peter Thiel, one of the founders of Palantir, is a major Lord of the Rings fan. I do not think it is in any way outside of intentionality that a reference to Tolkien appears in this document on artificial intelligence to remind all the Catholic nerds that noticing AI as the ring of power is precisely the right response in 2026, as noticing nuclear weapons as the ring of power was the right response in the 20th century when other developments of just war doctrine happened around our capacities with technology. I second wanna add that that quotation from Tolkien reminds all of us that the small and individual things we do in the face of imaginably large, complex systems are super important. And if there's going to be a magnificent humanity that works with, alongside, and through artificial intelligence, it's gonna necessitate that we don't lose sight of the small, the insignificant, the important everyday things. It's not our job to master all the tides. It's our job to recognize that the principle of subsidiarity calls us to care for how things are happening both in our common home and in the homes in which we live, our own personal shires.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

And that's thank you for that um uh deep analysis. It's most welcome, and I think is absolutely uh bang on, particularly when you look at the look at the large Tolkien canvas. But the um the issue of war and peace obviously is in the background. The monetization uh that comes from AI in terms of working with the military industries all over the world, um, primarily in the United States, but also in Russia and even in my own country here in Canada, where there is significant growth in the um uh war industry, right? As people work to secure protection and sovereignty and everything else. It's a mad world and it's a mad response, and it will, of course, fail. And that's what the Pope is is saying. So, how do you build or inject hope into this frenzy for security and for this obsession with ownership? There are no direct references to Putin or to Netanyahu or to Trump, but they're they're there everywhere. Um, the way they govern the manner of their own uh drawing on the Augustinian argument, the phrase, the libidio dominante, there is this tremendous need or uh lust for power. Uh, it's so evident that you can't possibly deny it. But he doesn't name names, um, which is characteristic of encyclicals, um, but he moves he moves us forward by identifying or diagnosing the malaise. And the malaise is not just national, it's international. So it it's it's rather it's um it's global. It's a global malaise. And one of the things that struck me, and this is a sharp, indirect criticism of the Trump administration, is the collapse of international alliances, the downgrading of the UN, the downgrading of the International Court of Justice, the breaking down of all the alliances that are structural points of connectivity in the globe. The Pope is very alarmed by this. And it may be that he's going to be one of the few global leaders left who's actually independent of these state uh machinations by these um pseudo-dictators. So, how how does uh drawing on Charlie's observation that you know you build on the ground, you do your thing, right? You build a culture of hope towards a civilization of love over against a culture of war. All right, people can be hopeless about this, right? They can say, Oh my god, what am I gonna do? I live in a you know small town in New Jersey, and here we are. How do I stand against these potent forces? It's the same question that uh Gandalf faced, and all of the characters in Lord of the Rings and in The Hobbit. Um, uh, it's the small figures over against the mighty powers, right? And that's not too different from Jesus and the disciples themselves. Okay, so is there a passage that I mean, uh clearly uh Charlie has gone into some depth on this with regard to the Tokyo reference, and Dan is looking for the ecclesiological resonances that would suggest to the development of doctrine. Um, is there is there a particular passage that struck you that you want to talk about? Something that you think, well, uh arresting. I mean, some of them we've alighted on, but something in which you would like to go into greater depth.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Michelle So um, I mean, there were a couple, but but perhaps uh number one, ten. Finally, I would like to employ the expression, quote, to disarm, which is close to my heart. And to disarm does not mean to reject technology, but prevent it from dominating humanity, freeing it from monopolistic control, opening it to a discussion, debate, making it human-friendly. Our task is not only ethical, but technical. Um, and uh, you know, that that whole quote about disarming, and he's used that phrase before. Yes, he has peace be with you, a disarming peace, right? And he's repeated it a number of times, and it and it is so connected to developing a civilization of love and to disarming a culture of power, but it requires, you know, as he points out, um it means not only an ethical uh but a technical response that is that we have to um be uh competent, if you will, in this technological world to be able to speak to what is happening and to speak to it with a moral voice. Um and that whole idea of disarming, which actually in some way makes one one's disarm, makes one vulnerable in a sense, but he's talking about it not as a vulnerability really, but as a strengthening of oneself, uh, of a strengthening of us. Uh uh and I think for him, a strengthening of the church's moral response to this, but our individual responses as well. I don't know if anybody else wants to comment on that disarming.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

But I think you're right about disarm. I think you're right. He he has used the term before, he mentions it as a as a disturbing term. He says some of you will find this disturbing, but it's uh it's like a mantra. He goes back to it on more than one occasion. So I think you're right in in uh centering that out, Michelle. Dan, what do you think?

SPEAKER_03 35:13

So I'd I'd like to highlight paragraph 134, which is the paragraph of the Hannah Arendt uh quote that you mentioned, is uh, but it's about um communication and democracy um and the information environment. I think it's pretty important on several levels, and it's very interesting the coincidence of this uh coming out the Monday after public Catholic and uh Lord of the Rings super fan uh Stephen Colbert was kind of summarily uh dismissed from his platform in the US. Um, but where he says the search for truth is an essential element of democracy, uh, which is itself a means of contributing to the common good. Questions about what is true, if questions about truth lose their appeal, pragmatism takes hold, this contempt of what appears useful or effective, then democratical life is weakened. There's several things going on here that are really interesting, one of which is just the utter um assumption of democracy as the kind of ideal normative uh state um of uh political life, which is something that uh Catholic thought has only absorbed fully in the last 75 or so years. Um and um I thought that was very interesting. It's very interesting that Jacques Maritan is not cited in this uh encyclical, given that his shadow is present um in quite a few places, including here. Um but what's what's interesting too, to connect to what I said before, then I'm gonna stop because I know we're short on time, and I want to make sure Charlie gets a chance to speak, is um that he then connects us a few paragraphs later to this uh ecclesiological point where he says the Christian communities too are called to commit themselves to transparency and communication. And he says, um, we must not wait for others to compel us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Uh, so there's this constant back and forth going on that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Just before we get to Charlie, um uh I want to ask you, because I know you you teach courses uh in which people like Marshall McLuhan surface. Um there's no mention of some of the great Catholic and other thinkers wrestling with technology or technologism over the last century. There's no reference to Heidegger, Jacques Elul, Merton, or um particularly Marshall McLuhan, because McLuhan's notion, as you know, of narcissist narcosis is critical to how technology in captures us, enslaves us, right? So we don't even know what's happened to the human sensorium after the new technology's been introduced. So there's no mention of that, which which kind of surprised me since AI, of course, is the consummate technology right now. Do you have any uh reason why you think that might be the case? Or was he just drawing from uh from official papal documents uh on this matter?

SPEAKER_03 37:53

This thing's already pretty long. And like I said, there are people like Maritan who are pretty obviously behind this who aren't cited. So it's just like, you know, that they're all you're you're dealing with with, you know, he talks early in the text about human limits, right? Yeah, that they're working within human limits of page length and citation and who you're talking to. And but um, as I also said to somebody, given that this is an online pope, in a sense, we were all consulted.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Yeah, like Spielberg and uh Tolkien will be happy, is because they actually get mentioned. Uh Charlie.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

I think the one thing I want to make sure we talk about is the way in which the apology for the church's complicity in the history of slavery is couched in contemporary terms. What Poplio does when bringing up slavery in the encyclical is not allow us to look away from the forms of human trafficking and violence that are currently the economic and material substratum on which is built the mining of rare earth minerals and the construction of data centers and the creation of this artificial intelligence that we often think happens in a literal cloud and not in a cloud that's powered by energy that at present is mostly fossil fuels and uses a strong and large amount of water, though not the amount that is discussed in the public discourse, but is also something that starts to enslave the passions and the mind. An algorithmically constructed culture is one that it's very hard for us to focus, it's one where it's difficult for us to engage in sustained conversation with one another, and it's one where we look away from some of the contemporary violences against women. I was extraordinarily struck that within an encyclical and artificial intelligence, there were multiple appeals to thinking about human trafficking as a modern form of slavery that we see in paragraph 175, and attention to the lives of women around the world that are so often forgotten in our massive discussions about how the global order is progressing. I think by situating those two ideas within this development not only of the church's social doctrine, but what I hope professional theologians will notice has been a fundamental theological change in how we construe the human person in relationship with the church's magisterial teaching office, I think those claims about slavery, which themselves violate conscience, I think are really important. And to note, as Dan has pointed out in all of our discussions on Coraclesia about Pope Leo, we're seeing an overt, clear flagging. Doctrine develops, baby. This is a church on pilgrimage in history, not just going to a dead set of pre-trained answers to questions. Sorry, can't get an AI pope.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

I mean, this is a good way to wrap it up. I mean, so much to discuss, um, so much to reflect on. And perhaps we can come back some to some of these ideas. Let them percolate for a while. There's so much in the document that is not going to go away. And it'd be very interesting to track the reactions. I know Michelle has been talking about it, some of the things that appeared in the business section of the New York Times and elsewhere, to track the reactions. And uh, Dan, since you're part of the reaction anyway, people are constantly going to you for a commentary, keep an eye on the various ways and shifts of uh response to the encyclical when some of its ideas, particularly its more radical ideas, begin to upset people. All right. It's easy to dis oh, this is the Pope, we expect this from a Pope or whatnot. But what happens when you begin to really think about it and the consequences that come from it? I said earlier, and I I and you've given the three of you perfect evidence of this. This is a both a canvas and a compendium of Catholic social doctrine. And uh that is a remarkable source. Um we'll look forward to future conversation about this. We have to wrap up now, but we'll look forward to future conversation about this because, as Charlie says, there's just simply so much to talk about. Thank you very much, and we'll see you soon.