Texts: Genesis 11:1-9, Nehemiah 2:17-18
Speaker: Joel Miller
When a pope wants to make a big statement, they write an encyclical. For a non-Catholic, such as myself, I have learned an encyclical is a teaching document / pastoral letter on a certain theme. It’s often quite long, more like a book. It’s meant to circulate, en-cycle-cal, among a general audience. This includes not just the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, but us. Everyone.
The previous pope, Francis, issued four encyclicals over his twelve years. This included “Laudato Si,” (“Praise be to you”), a phrase borrowed from his namesake, Francis of Assisi. Happy Feast Day Francis. It talked about the earth as our common home, warning against the perils of climate change, with a major takedown of unbridled capitalism. That same year, 2015, when Francis was touring the US, I remember The Onion putting out an article with a definitely-photoshopped picture of the pope in a grocery store with the headline “Pope Francis reverses position on capitalism after seeing wide variety of American Oreos.” Ah for the innocent days when fake news was funny.
The current pope, Leo, the first American pope, to my knowledge has made no public statements on Oreos. But he did issue his first encyclical earlier this year. If you were pope, if you were one of, if not the most influential spiritual leaders in the world, and you were going to issue your first big statement on a topic of concern, what would it be? What do you think – right now – is most deserving of a pastoral letter to the human race offering counsel and wisdom and caution and fatherly/motherly love?
Well, back in May, Pope Leo gave his answer. It’s called Magnifica Humanitas. “Magnificent Humanity.” Subtitle: “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”
I’ve never done a sermon / book report hybrid, but that’s pretty much what this will be. World Communion Sunday during a series on peace felt like a good time to hear from the pope. The fact that AI has occupied the headlines for much of the last month makes it all the more timely. How we relate with these increasingly powerful technologies has become one of the key questions of what it means to be human. And just in case anyone is wondering, Yes I actually did read the whole encyclical and No, I did not rely on any AI summaries!
So here we go:
The opening line of this long encyclical is this:
“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together” (p. 7).
The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 serves as Leo’s primary image of humanity gone astray. As the ancient story goes, it was a time when everyone on earth spoke the same language. The leaders decide to make a great name for themselves by building a massive tower to reach the heavens. Cooperation and collaboration are remarkable traits of our species, enabling us to build whole civilizations out of deserts and jungles. But the Tower of Babel illustrates the dark side of this: Concentrated, idolatrous power that enlists labor to grow ever taller, ever more god-like, into the heavens. In the story, the Lord sees this and says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” So, the Lord casts a vote for decentralized multiculturalism. God scatters the people, causing them to speak many languages, and thus no longer be able to build the tower. The unfinished Tower of Babel serves as a monument to Divine judgment on concentrated idolatrous power. Leo keeps coming back to this story a cautionary tale regarding ever more powerful technology.
But Leo offers a second biblical image for what a cooperative and collaborative society can become. For this, he cites the story of Nehemiah. A group of Jewish people are returning from exile and rebuilding the city of Jerusalem. It’s the same outline – people working together to build something, using the best technology of the day – with a very different purpose. In Nehemiah’s project, every household brings their skills and resources, and everyone benefits. When there is an outcry from those who are losing their land and struggling to have enough to eat, Nehemiah calls a great assembly of the whole people, restoring fields and homes to those who had lost them, ensuring everyone has the means to care for themselves. This assembly is the story that BREAD uses when we have our Nehemiah Action each spring – Working together to build a city that is a safe place for exiles and people of many languages to flourish.
Leo writes this:
“In light of these two images, the Holy Spirit challenges us today regarding our relationship with technology and the ongoing digital revolution. Scientific discoveries are talents entrusted to humanity so that they may bear fruit. Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate, and protect our home; but it can also divide, exclude, and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence” (p. 14).
Before focusing on the challenges of AI, Pope Leo uses an entire chapter, 33 pages, to summarize the “Social Doctrine of the Church,” otherwise known as Catholic social teaching. It’s kind of its own construction project. The foundation of it all is human dignity. On top of that, the structure keeps building out with the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice. These are rich, core, ethical teachings that really do build something like an infrastructure of a beautiful city. For anyone who sees the Catholic church as a socially conservative institution, they may be in for a bit of a shocker about what this official church doctrine teaches.
The foundation, human dignity springs from the story earlier in Genesis about each person being created in the image of God. Leo writes:
“Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth, or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love” (p. 52).
The emergence of secular laws protecting human rights are a society-wide affirmation of human dignity.
On this basement foundation, rests the next layer: The common good. Human dignity is not just an individual designation, but plays itself out in social, economic, and political relationships that allow everyone to flourish. This is the common good. The vocation of every person is to serve the common good.
To this is added the principle of the universal destination of goods, which is where the popes might start sounding like leftist communist hippies. But, of course, they’re just preaching the gospel. This is it:
“This principle (of the universal destination of goods) reminds us that the earth’s goods – soil, water, air, and natural resources – are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all, and that every person has an inherent right to the use of such goods, both now and in the future” (p. 63).
Private property is affirmed as “a means of protecting and managing goods so that they may better serve the common good,” and property, “is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods,” says Catholic social teaching (p. 64).
Subsidiarity is the idea that decisions are always best made by those most impacted.
Solidarity is the recognition that we are “part of a network of relationships that bind (us) to others” (p. 69).
And Social Justice is “characterized by the capacity of a social, economic and political order to allow everyone – particularly the weakest – to live a truly dignified life, without leaving anyone behind” (p. 73).
It is through these “noble principles” – dignity, the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice – that “integral human development” takes place. And by “development”, Leo says specifically, he means “the new name for peace, because it aims to eradicate the roots of injustice and conflict and create opportunities for a more dignified life for all” p. 39. The noble principles are the foundation of a courageous peace witness. They are, the pope says, the foundation for how to approach new challenges we face, like the emergence of Artificial Intelligence.
The next 100 pages, the second half of the encyclical are dedicated to more specific commentary on how relating with AI connects with politics, economics, education, parenting, labor, culture, transhumanism, Christian humanism, peacemaking and spirituality. But don’t worry, I’m well over half way done now. I’d like to lead a Sunday school class after Christmas that goes more in depth with this encyclical. Please join.
I will close with some quotes from the second half of the document.
“The principles of Social Doctrine offer a framework for understanding this new reality. In a world where data, computational resources and regulatory influence remain in the hands of a few, to speak of the common good means exposing this new form of epistemic, economic, and political asymmetry and naming the new monopolies of AI. To speak of the universal destination of goods means finding ways of ensuring universal access to both technologies and the education needed to use them. To speak of subsidiarity calls for protecting the ability of communities to make choices and corrections, rather than confining their role to mere oversight after the standards have been set elsewhere. To speak of solidarity obliges us to recognize the hidden, often exploited workers, who sustain algorithmic systems. To speak of justice requires questioning the global distribution of power that decides who in fact can train these models and who is merely subjected to them.” (p. 96)
Leo call AI ““A valuable tool that requires vigilance” p. 90
He says “Truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence” p. 117
He cites Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si to not “let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape personal, social, and economic decisions.” P. 85
Leo says: “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable” p. 160
He writes: “Christian humanism does not reject science or technology, but embraces them with gratitude and realism, and grounds them within a higher vocation. The creative intelligence of humanity is a gift that can alleviate suffering and open up new possibilities, but it must remain ordered toward the common good, justice, and care of the vulnerable and creation….Ultimately, the key question remains the one posed by Saint John Paul II: does AI “make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?” If the answer is yes, then we can recognize it as an opportunity to be embrace responsibly, on a path of patient, shared reconstruction, akin to the rebuilding of Jerusalem narrated in the book of Nehemiah. If, however, power grows while the heart withers and human bonds fray, then we are faced with a new form of Babel – a construction that is grandiose, yet fundamentally dehumanizing” (p. 110).
Pope Leo says: “I see in (Nehemiah) a striking parable of our own vocation, which is not to be passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling, but men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history – research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities – in order to rebuild what is collapsed and protect what is threatened. Like Nehemiah, we too are called to unite listening and courage, prayer and responsibility, so that, even when a technocratic mentality or partisan interests seem to prevail, the human city may become a more fitting place to live….for this is the way of Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, and forever” (p. 190-191).