The Pope Wrote About This Moment. It’s Worth Reading.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but Pope Leo XIV just released his first encyclical–Magnifica Humanitas–on the moral and human implications of artificial intelligence in our time.
It isn’t alarmist or reactionary. It’s more like the Church doing what she has always done: looking at the world as it actually is and offering something we can’t seem to manufacture on our own: wisdom.
What dawned on me was the history behind it. He signed it on May 15th, the exact 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the landmark encyclical Pope Leo XIII wrote at the height of the first industrial revolution. Same name, same date and from what I’ve read, that wasn’t a coincidence. The world is changing faster than it can understand itself, and the Church is stepping up and providing the guidance we look for in a Pope.
That struck me as intentional.
I don’t know about you, but during and after COVID, it felt like people were deepening friendships with strangers online while strangely growing distant from our own communities. Two years after the craziness started settling down, the after effects are still with us.
Now that the faith debates are blowing up in online forums, Christians of all denominations are diving deeper into their own faiths and asking important questions. We Catholics especially: we know what we believe, but when someone actually challenges us on it, a lot of us freeze up, get defensive, or just change the subject.
That’s the whole reason I’m building Paxello. I’m part of a men’s Lectio Divina Bible Study group at my parish, St. Patrick’s in Southern California. We meet regularly and dig into scripture together. We read Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. John Bergsma, The Church Fathers, and the Magnificat each week for scholarly perspective. We really trying to sit with the upcoming Gospel before Sunday comes around. It’s one of my favorite things I do each week.
And one thing that keeps coming up in our group is how Jesus himself responded when challenged. He didn’t argue when challenged. Instead, he responded with questions.
“Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9) “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15)
Long before anyone called it the Socratic method, Scripture shows God teaching this way. Why? Because questions reach the conscience in a way that arguments never can. They reveal to us what we actually believe, what we love, and (more importantly) whether we’re ready to receive the truth.
That’s what I want Catholics to be able to do. Not win arguments or shut someone down, but actually lead them somewhere. And that takes practice, the kind most of us never get (at least in a fun and entertaining platform)… until now!
That’s Paxello.
It’s encouraging to have a shepherd who’s paying attention.
If you want to read Magnifica Humanitas for yourself, the full text is on the Vatican website. It’s long but surprisingly readable.
And if you want to practice being ready for the conversations happening right now, please join the waitlist.