Originally published in The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal’s editorial board is right to be wary of Pope Leo XIV’s embrace of government in his new encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Pope Leo’s AI Manifesto,” Review & Outlook, May 28). The Holy Father hasn’t upheld the long papal tradition of rejecting the false binary of the day.
In the 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII railed against certain abuses of industrial capitalism and defended the dignity of workers before turning with equal seriousness to the socialist response then on offer.
Forty years later, Pope Pius XI, in “Quadragesimo Anno,” criticized concentrations of capital amid the widespread destitution during the Great Depression, but he also criticized the totalitarian responses sweeping Europe.
In “Centesimus Annus” in 1991, Pope St. John Paul II named the errors of “real socialism,” and then turned to the potential risks of “a radical capitalistic ideology.”
Pope Leo could have confronted the current false binary of unfettered artificial intelligence versus unfettered government control of this technology. Yet “Magnifica Humanitas” is more likely to encourage those who would stifle progress with state power. As a faithful Catholic, I hope Pope Leo’s next encyclical restores the balance that befits such important moral documents.