Naming the Machine
Artificial Intelligence and the Human Person
Essay I: The Human Person in the Digital Age
Magnifica Humanitas, Rerum Novarum, and Human Dignity
The Church is correct to insist that technological developments be evaluated according to their effects on the human person. Technology exists for man, not man for technology. This principle stands at the heart of any serious Catholic response to artificial intelligence and remains as relevant today as it was in the late nineteenth century.
In his first major encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV takes up this question with deliberate reference to the legacy of Leo XIII. Read carefully and charitably, the document raises serious and necessary concerns. The Church speaks on these matters not to micromanage innovation or construct vast bureaucratic systems, but to defend the dignity of the human person made in the image and likeness of God. This essay approaches the encyclical within the broader tradition of Catholic social teaching and the Church’s historical response to periods of rapid technological and social upheaval.
Why the Church Speaks About Technology
The Church has never confined herself solely to the realm of the soul while ignoring the conditions of human life in the world. When technology reshapes patterns of work, family life, community structures, and culture itself, the Church has a duty to speak. Her concern is fundamentally anthropological. She asks not merely whether a new technology is efficient or profitable, but whether it serves the full flourishing of the human person created in God’s image.
This tradition of engagement flows from the Church’s conviction that every man, woman, and child possesses inherent dignity that no economic system, political power, or technological advance can grant or revoke. When that dignity is threatened by forces beyond the control of ordinary people, the Church raises her voice in defense of the vulnerable and in service of the common good.
Leo XIII and the Industrial Revolution
No previous document illustrates this principle more clearly than Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, issued in 1891. The Industrial Revolution had dramatically transformed Europe and the United States. Steam power, mechanized factories, and mass production created unprecedented wealth. Yet they also produced terrible human costs: dangerous working conditions, child labor, grinding poverty in rapidly growing cities, long hours with little rest, and the breakdown of traditional family and community life.
Workers, especially immigrants flooding into industrial centers, often lived in overcrowded tenements with poor sanitation and limited access to education or healthcare. Families were torn apart as fathers, mothers, and even young children labored in factories for meager wages. The sense of rootedness and human connection that had characterized rural and small-town life eroded under the pressure of urban dislocation and relentless economic demands.
Leo XIII refused to romanticize the past or reject progress outright. Instead, he offered a moral framework rooted in natural law, the dignity of work, and the principle of subsidiarity. He defended the right to private property while insisting that it must serve the common good. He called for just wages sufficient to support a family, reasonable working hours, and safe conditions. He rejected both laissez-faire capitalism that treated workers as disposable and socialist solutions that threatened legitimate property rights and family autonomy.
Magnifica Humanitas consciously positions itself as a successor to this tradition. Released on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, it attempts to apply the same principles to the digital age and the rise of artificial intelligence. Where Leo XIII addressed steam engines and factory floors, Leo XIV addresses algorithms, data systems, machine learning, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In both cases, the central concern is the same: powerful new technologies must be judged by whether they serve the human person or reduce him to a mere instrument.
The significance of this comparison extends beyond technology itself. It invites us to ask how the Church has historically responded to periods of profound disruption and whether similar principles remain relevant today.
The Church’s Practical Response
The Church’s teaching has always been accompanied by concrete action. During the Industrial Revolution and the great waves of immigration, Catholic institutions became lifelines for millions displaced by rapid change.
In Turin, Saint John Bosco saw the plight of street children orphaned or abandoned amid industrialization. He responded by founding the Salesians, creating oratories, schools, and trade programs that combined practical skills training with moral and religious formation. Bosco understood that boys and girls needed more than jobs. They needed formation in virtue, community, and purpose. His approach spread across continents and continues to shape Catholic education today.
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini brought that same spirit to the United States. Arriving in New York in 1889, she and her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart established schools, hospitals, and orphanages for Italian immigrants facing harsh urban conditions. Cabrini’s institutions served the sick, educated children, and provided stability for families struggling to adapt to a new world shaped by industrial forces. Her work extended across the country.
Countless communities of women religious built and staffed schools and hospitals throughout the United States. These institutions became anchors of stability amid dislocation. They educated generations of immigrant children, cared for the sick and dying, and created spaces where faith, learning, and human dignity could flourish even when economic systems treated people primarily as labor.
These efforts demonstrated the Church’s conviction that technological and economic progress must be met with moral vision and practical charity. The same spirit is urgently needed today as artificial intelligence reshapes entire industries and daily life.
While Catholic schools, hospitals, and charitable institutions did not arise solely because of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical helped articulate a coherent moral vision that supported and encouraged such efforts. Leo XIII did not simply diagnose the disruptions of industrial society. He provided principles that helped Catholics respond through education, formation, charity, and institution-building. In this sense, the Church’s answer to industrialization was not merely theoretical. It was practical, local, institutional, and deeply human. The Church’s historical response to technological upheaval was not primarily resistance but institution-building rooted in human dignity.
Human Dignity, Labor, Creativity, and the Image of God
At the foundation of all Catholic social teaching stands a clear anthropology. Every human person possesses inherent dignity because he or she is created in the image and likeness of God. This dignity is not earned through productivity, nor is it diminished by economic circumstance. It is received as gift.
Saint John Paul II developed this teaching powerfully in Laborem Exercens. He taught that human work is not merely economic activity. Through work, man participates in the creative action of God. Work allows persons to express their creativity, provide for their families, build community, and offer something of themselves to the world. When technology automates tasks or displaces workers, the Church rightly insists that solutions must respect this dignity rather than treat persons as obsolete data points.
Human creativity reflects the divine image in a distinctive way. God creates out of love and freedom. Human beings, made in His image, also create, not merely by remixing data but through imagination, moral choice, and personal initiative. Artificial intelligence can generate impressive outputs, but it does not create in this full human sense. It processes existing patterns. The deeper danger arises when societies begin to value persons primarily according to their data utility or productive output rather than their intrinsic worth.
Magnifica Humanitas at Its Strongest
At its strongest moments, Magnifica Humanitas reminds readers that the human person is not raw material for progress. We are not problems to be optimized or datasets to be harvested. We are persons with immortal souls, called to relationship with God and with one another. Technology finds its proper and noble place only when it serves this reality.
These concerns are real and increasingly visible in ordinary life. Across the country, families already navigate questions surrounding children’s screen time and formation, shifting employment patterns, and the preservation of local culture, community, and faith amid rapid technological change. The Church’s emphasis on human dignity offers an important moral compass precisely because it begins not with systems or markets, but with the human person.
A Modern Human-Scale Illustration
Consider a mid-career worker whose job in logistics or customer service is increasingly automated by artificial intelligence. After twenty years of steady employment, he faces displacement. In the best case, the Church and local community help him retrain, support his family during transition, and rediscover meaningful work that engages his gifts. In the worst case, he is left to navigate algorithms and bureaucratic systems alone, reduced to a statistic in economic reports. The difference between these outcomes reveals whether technology truly serves the human person or merely optimizes systems at the expense of persons.
Historically, the Catholic response to technological upheaval has not consisted solely of issuing statements or producing theories. It has involved the patient construction of institutions capable of sustaining human dignity amid social disruption. Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, parishes, religious orders, mutual aid societies, and local communities formed what might properly be called a Catholic civilization: a network of formation, charity, subsidiarity, and communal responsibility rooted in the conviction that persons are more important than systems. These institutions helped immigrants, workers, children, and families navigate industrial modernity without losing their faith, culture, or sense of human dignity. The challenges posed by artificial intelligence may ultimately require a similar renewal of local institutions, moral formation, and community resilience in the digital age.
This charitable reading does not require agreement with every formulation or proposal contained within the encyclical. Questions concerning prudence, authority, reception, and application remain and deserve careful consideration. Those questions will be addressed in the next essay. For the present, it is enough to recognize the central principle running through the document and the broader Catholic tradition from which it emerges: technology must remain ordered toward the flourishing of the human person.
Endnotes
- Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 2026), Vatican.va.
- Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor), May 15, 1891, Vatican.va.
- Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, nos. 15, 20, 34.
- John Bosco, Memoirs of the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales: From 1815 to 1855, trans. Daniel Lyons (New Rochelle, NY: Salesiana Publishers, 1989).
- Pietro Di Donato, Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960); Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “Mother Cabrini Biography.”
- John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), September 14, 1981, Vatican.va, nos. 4–6.