The Anthropological Unity of Magnifica Humanitas

By John M. Grondelski
Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV's inaugural encyclical, is largely understood by the public as addressing artificial intelligence. The general public's view is that, like his namesake 135 years ago in Rerum Novarum, Pope Prevost intends to address the "new things" of the 21st century.
To quote Abraham Lincoln: "There is some truth in this. . ." But to continue his quotation, ". . .I am glad of it, but it is not WHOLLY true." (emphasis in original)
There are even those who want to spin Magnifica humanitas as a papal abandonment of "pelvic theology" in favor of "social justice."
There is far less truth in that.
While the pope sought to address "new things," good stewards know how to bring out of the Church's storehouse "things old and new." (Matthew 13:52) Yes, we need to address "new things." But we address them with the wisdom of old.
What is a more central point to Magnifica humanitas, however, is a more central anthropological truth: the human person cannot be replaced. The human person is non-substitutable. As Vatican II reminded us, the human person is the one creature on earth that God wanted for itself. (Gaudium et spes, 24)
The challenge artificial intelligence poses, on the practical level, is the likelihood of causing human unemployment by the technologization of work, especially basic work often branded as "entry-level." That especially threatens vulnerable populations: the young, trying to break into the job market; the inexperienced; and the untrained. If, a decade ago, a certain smugness told miners to "learn to code," today's hubristic reply might be "polish your barista skills."
Employment and unemployment are not just economic phenomena because work (as Pope John Paul II noted 45 years ago in Laborem exercens) is not just a cost factor. Employment is essential to human flourishing (which is a bigger and more important category than even economic prosperity, though they are not exclusive).
People need to work. A society that deprives people of work – in the name of a utopian vision or to maximize profits – is an inhuman society. And let's not allow some people to get away with downplaying that truth because they won't admit what they want is a society driven purely by economics. As in the old adage, these are folks who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
AI also poses a theoretical challenge. Ever since Plato – and especially since Descartes – there's been a temptation to think of the human person as a mind merely inhabiting a body. Contemporary transhumanism simply radicalizes that mistake by imagining consciousness detached from embodiment.

Christian anthropology insists instead that the human person is an embodied unity whose dignity cannot be reduced to information or computation. (Of course, according to certain early theologians, it was precisely that incarnational state that provoked diabolical rebellion). That some "transhumanists" have visions of minds detached from bodies dancing in their heads suggests that the theoretical threat continues.
The core problem is not technology: it's humanity.
Oren Cass captured this problem in his reflections on the common social-event question, "What do you do?" It typically functions, Cass observes, to pigeonhole people: doing X gets you special creds, doing Y is meh (except when the specially credentialled need food deliveries, plumbing repairs, or electrical work).
Very few ask the question from the standpoint of the Christian anthropological value of work, i.e., what does who you are find expression in what you do?
A crucial truth of Magnifica humanitas is the centrality and irreplaceability of the human person. Man is not just a thinker that a machine can replace. Man is not just a worker that a robot should replace. The encyclical asks the question: do you think that a person's qualitative distinction trumps his potential functional technological-economic substitutability? Is a person more than just a cog in somebody...