Magnifica Humanitas and Problems with AI: Impatience, Authority, and Communication

By Fr. Olek Stirrat

The Barque of Peter has set its course with characteristic confidence under Pope Leo XIV, whose encyclical Magnifica Humanitas provides what appears to be the defining orientation of his pontificate. In many respects, his project recalls that of Leo XIII. Just as the latter responded to the social dislocations of the Industrial Revolution by defending the dignity of labor and the human person, Leo XIV confronts a res nova (a new thing): the emergence of artificial intelligence as a force reshaping human life. The challenge may lack the smoke and machinery of the nineteenth century, but it presents its own formidable questions concerning human dignity and agency. Indeed, Leo states with commendable clarity that his purpose is “to safeguard the human person in the era of artificial intelligence.”¹ For him, the distinctive feature of our present horizon is the unprecedented power humanity possesses, particularly over itself. One is reminded of C. S. Lewis’ observation in The Abolition of Man that humanity’s power over nature often proves, in practice, to be the power of some human beings over others. Against this backdrop, the present essay first sketches the contours of the contemporary technological horizon before examining three aspects of personal AI use that Leo XIV identifies as especially problematic: the ease with which results are obtained, the impression of objectivity that AI systems project, and their increasingly persuasive simulation of human communication.²

The Situation

The problem is that we have forgotten our names; we no longer know who we are. We have become, to borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, calculable persons. At the root of this “technocratic paradigm,”³ “lies a… post-humanist mentality that tends to regard the human person as an object to be manipulated or a resource to be optimized.”⁴ Everything has been translated, including people, into data and performance, to objects that need to be dominated and controlled for ever greater efficiency and exploitation.⁵ The problem is that we have taken our eyes off Christ and, like Peter, have begun to waver and to drown in the chaos of the world (cf. Matt 14:22–36). From this context Leo XIV begins in a Christocentric vein, analogous to John Paul II’s first Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis. In fact, Pope Leo XIV’s first quote in the whole encyclical was Pope John Paul II’s most oft-quoted phrase from Gaudium et spes, namely that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.”⁶ Pope Leo goes on to comment that “human persons are called to communion with God and ‘can fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving.’ Indeed their deepest vocation is to enter into the Trinitarian dynamic of love received and shared.”⁷ This Christocentric Trinitarian anthropology must frame the whole encyclical to be understood correctly.⁸ We must turn and look to the face of Christ, “to contemplate, in the face of the Son of God, the grandeur of humanity that shines a light also on the era of AI. In Christ, we are called to cooperate in the work of creation, rather than be disinterested observers of technological processes that limit our freedom and responsibility.“⁹ Leo goes on to comment that “even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history.”¹⁰

Technocratic Paradigm

The question remains, however, as to what our approach to technology generally and AI more particularly should be; for Leo says that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity.”¹¹ For the pontiff, “technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral.”¹² Technology is not simply a tool but a horizon.¹³ As Marshall McLuhan comments, “The medium is the message,”¹⁴ which is another way of saying that “the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”¹⁵ Thus, it is because the human person (more particularly, the human heart) is not neutral that technology, of which it is an extension and expression, cannot similarly be so. Thus, the moral standing of a person—the generosity or malice within one’s heart—is expressed in technology and affects it from within. As Leo states, “the use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom.”¹⁶ To put it another way, Neil Postman comments that “technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ‘ecological’. One significant change generates total change.”¹⁷ He goes on, “Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias.”¹⁸

The non-neutrality of technology is vital to understand because it reframes our whole approach. It is not just about our intention or how we use it that is of concern. We must consider what is gained or lost by the horizon that AI sets. We must consider all three aspects of the moral act—the object, intention, and circumstance, as presented in the Catechism¹⁹—and not just our intention.

To explicate the non-neutrality of technology, Leo adopts two biblical images, which provide an inclusio for the whole document, which are “the construction of the Tower of Babel (cf. Gen 11:1–9) and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem (cf. Neh 2–6).”²⁰ Leo critiques the tendency to build a tower of Babel in the following manner by considering that the builders of the tower of Babel want to

“Make a name” for themselves. It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, the project concealed a profound danger. It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused and people no longer understand each other. The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.²¹

Thus, two options are presented, for which a decision must be made since neutrality or lukewarmness will provoke God to spit us out (cf. Rev 3:16). The choice is between the temple or Babel; iconography or idolatry; religion or magic; right worship or false worship. There is no neutral stance. Thus, an examination of conscience must be had,²² similar to St. Ignatius’ two standards. This non-neutrality should not incite fear but excitement at an opportunity. We will now turn to Leo’s cautionary note on the personal use of AI, to build a city like Nehemiah rather than a tower of Babel.

Ease of Attaining Information and Lack of Patience

The first cautionary note Leo alludes to about AI is the ease with which information is attained. Everything today has become instant and immediate. We have become “a people who measure our lives in seconds.”²³ McLuhan warned us of this over sixty years ago when he stated: “commodity industries under automation share the same structural character of the entertainment industries in the degree that both approximate the condition of instant information.”²⁴ Jonathan Haidt more recently comments that “humanity’s greatest problems [are that] we are too quick to anger and too slow to forgive. We are also hypocrites who judge others harshly while automatically justifying our own bad behavior.”²⁵

Pope Leo states that “in recent years, psychological and psychiatric literature has documented with growing insistence how early and unsupervised exposure to digital devices and social media can negatively impact sleep, attention span, control of emotions and relationships, especially during the most vulnerable stages of life, at times with tragic consequences.”²⁶ The immediacy and thus lack of patience has deleterious effects upon humanity leading ultimately to a nihilistic tendency toward depression. Leo hints at this danger by saying that “the pervasiveness of digital media fosters a culture of immediacy and hyper-stimulation, which gives rise to fatigue, boredom and apathy concerning the effort required for seeking the truth.”²⁷ A remedy for this dangerous move is the importance of community life, since people don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless.

For Leo, this dimension of immediacy is closely connected with the breakdown in our capacity to pay attention. He comments that

the subtler forms of addiction linked to the “digital attention economy” should not be underestimated, since platforms and services are often designed to capture users’ time and attention, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weakening their inner freedom. When business models thrive on human weakness, the person is treated as a means rather than as an end; those who design or finance such systems bear a moral responsibility that cannot be ignored.²⁸

Feigning Objectivity and the Breakdown in Authority

The second cautionary note is the impression of objectivity that AI feigns. Leo comments that “there is also a subtler danger, for when AI systems present themselves as neutral and objective, they end up reflecting and reinforcing the stereotypes or ideological bias of their designers and developers.”²⁹ It imitates certain functions without possessing reality. “It is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.”³⁰ He goes on to comment that “we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings.”³¹ Just because it may look or seem intelligent, does not mean it is. Perhaps a better expression than artificial intelligence would be artificial information.

This is evocative of Eliot who asks the questions, “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”³² As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”³³ This dovetails with Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic of suspicion and the crisis in authority that both Hannah Arendt and Augusto Del Noce hint at as the primary sign of the modern age.

Simulation of Communication and the Breakdown in Human Relationships

The third cautionary note is the simulation of communication that AI purports. Leo comments that, “communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture.”³⁴ It is not a purely parallel world, but shapes from within people’s lives. Thus, the problem is not so much what we communicate, but the very form of communication. The first word we speak is the word of our presence, but what AI encourages is a disembodied absence, leading to a lack of true communication, which is a manifestation of the externalization of responsibility. When this occurs, “the exclusion of the vulnerable becomes cloaked in a veneer of neutrality and objectivity, against which it becomes difficult to raise objections. In this way, injustice goes unnoticed, and compassion, mercy and forgiveness — understood not as mere appearances but as real political actions — gradually disappear from view.”³⁵

The simulation of communication begins with the breakdown in corporeal presence. We are deeply embedded in each other’s lives through AI and yet awash in a sea of loneliness. The problem is the excarnate form of life that we are living; we are forever elsewhere.

The Remedy

Thus, as a remedy, in rebuilding our own cities of Jerusalem like Nehemiah, we must return to the incarnate Christ. Haidt comments that “humans are embodied; [an AI] life is not. Screens lead us to forget that our physical bodies matter.”³⁶ For Leo, the ultimate response is twofold, Eucharistic and Marian,³⁷ both of which imply an incarnational and sacramental worldview rooted in a Christocentric Trinitarian anthropology. The Incarnation is “at the heart of everything.”³⁸ The fact that the Word became flesh provides the authentic alternative to trans- and post-humanism.³⁹ He calls us to contemplate “God’s plan, living ecclesial unity by partaking of the Eucharist, building a world centered on the common good and praying in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary.”⁴⁰ Thus what we need now is “a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love.”⁴¹

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Fr. Olek Stirrat, born in Poland, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Adelaide. He was ordained in 2022 and is currently ministering in South Australia. Read Fr. Olek’s other WWNN essays.

1. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 2026), 229.

2. Ibid., 100.

3. Ibid., 92.

4. Ibid., 172.

5. Ibid., 43.

6. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 22: AAS 58 (1966), 1042.

7. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 48.

8. Ibid., 24.

9. Ibid., 233.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 4.

12. Ibid., 85; see also 104.

13. Ibid., 92.

14. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 7.

15. Ibid.

16. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 102.

17. Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 18.

18. Ibid., p. 13.

19. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 1750.

20. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 7.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 86.

23. Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future, (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 43.

24. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 382.

25. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York: Penguin Press, 2024), 209.

26. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 141.

27. Ibid., 139.

28. Ibid., 170.

29. Ibid., 102.

30. Ibid., 99.

31. Ibid., 99.

32. T. S. Eliot choruses from The Rock.

33. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, III (New York: World Publishing Company, 1962), 474 .

34. Leo Address to Representatives of the Media (12 May 2025): AAS 117 (2025), 681–682.

35. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 103.

36. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation, 206.

37. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 229.

38. Ibid., 231.

39. Ibid., 232.

40. Ibid., 229.

41. Ibid., 234.