St. Benedict the Moor Parish

“The risk is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.” — Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (¶100)

Two days after our celebration of Pentecost, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas — “The Grandeur of Humanity.” Addressed to all people of good will, it is a timely and prophetic word for our age of artificial intelligence, digital networks, and rapid technological change, and emphasizes many of the themes we prayed over on Pentecost Sunday and that I have been covered in the series in our Sunday bulletin titled “Christian Virtues in Conversation” over the past year. I offer this reflection as a preliminary guide for reading Pope Leo’s text. It is by no means comprehensive, but it ties together themes from the encyclical that I have encouraged our parish to reflect on. Far from rejecting technology, the Holy Father invites us to ask a deeper question: What does it mean to remain human when machines can imitate our language, our art, and even our empathy?

The True Source of Dignity: Ontological, Not Earned

Pope Leo understands that before we can discuss how to use AI well, we must understand who we are. The Pope grounds human dignity not in what we achieve, but in who we are — created in the image of the Triune God (¶48–50). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist as an eternal communion of love, mutual self-gift, and relationship. We are made in that image. Therefore, our dignity is ontological — it belongs to us simply because we exist, because God has willed and loved us into being.

“No sin, failure, humiliation or exclusion can diminish the profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being.” (¶52)

This is a liberating truth. In a world that constantly ranks people by productivity, beauty, or intelligence, the Church proclaims that the newborn, the elderly person with dementia, the disabled, the poor, even the criminal — all possess an infinite dignity that no algorithm can measure and no power can erase. Dignity is not a reward. It is a gift

The Transhumanist Temptation: Devaluing Limits and Vulnerability

Pope Leo directly critiques transhumanism and posthumanism — ideologies that promise to “enhance” humanity through technology, overcoming aging, suffering, and even death (¶115–117). On the surface, this sounds compassionate. But the Pope warns that these worldviews devalue human limits and vulnerability as mere defects to be eliminated.

Yet our limits are not mistakes. They are the very conditions in which love, courage, compassion, and hope grow. A world without suffering would also be a world without mercy. A body that never ages would never learn the gentle art of caregiving. As the Pope writes, “Humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them” (¶118).

The Quiet Danger: Losing Desire for Real Connection

This brings us to the Pope’s sobering insight about AI companions and chatbots. The real danger is not that we might mistake a machine for a person. The danger is far more subtle: we may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections. Real relationships are messy. They require waiting, forgiveness, vulnerability, and presence. AI offers a frictionless substitute — and over time, our hearts can forget what we have lost.

“What saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship that liberates, a communion that transforms.” (¶128)

Salvation does not come from becoming more powerful or independent. It comes from being drawn into authentic relationship — with God and with one another. Communion, not autonomy, is the goal of human life.

Truth as a Common Good: An Ecology of Communication

The Pope also addresses the crisis of disinformation amplified by AI. Truth, he insists, is a common good — like clean air or water, it benefits everyone and requires collective care (¶132–134). Democracy cannot survive without shared facts. Therefore, he calls for an “ecology of communication” built on three pillars: transparency (knowing how algorithms shape what we see), independent journalism (which the Church thanks for uncovering abuses), and digital literacy (teaching all of us, especially the young, to use technology critically and moderately) (¶137–138).

Disarming Words: Rejecting Polarizing Language

In a striking passage, the Pope urges: “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world” (¶214). Violent, dehumanizing language — even when used online — prepares the heart for real violence. Christians are called to speak the truth, but with charity, and to refuse the “war of words and images” that polarizes communities and nations.

The Incarnation: God Enters Weakness — The True “More than Human”

Transhumanism promises a “more than human” future through self-improvement. But the Incarnation reveals a different path: God Himself enters human weakness and transforms it from within (¶232). The Word became flesh — not superhuman flesh, but vulnerable, mortal, suffering flesh. In Jesus, weakness becomes the setting for salvation. This is the true “more than human”: not the absence of limits, but the presence of God within them.

Mary’s Magnificat: Seeing History from Below

Finally, the Pope holds up Mary’s Magnificat as the lens for interpreting our age (¶243–245). While the world measures progress from the perspective of the powerful — from data centers, boardrooms, and control rooms — Mary sings of a God who scatters the proud, lifts up the lowly, and fills the hungry. To see truly, we must learn to see from below: through the eyes of the poor, the migrant, the wounded child, the forgotten elder. That is the Christian perspective on AI and on all of history.

A Call to Hope

Magnifica Humanitas is not a rejection of technology. It is an invitation to use it wisely, with our hearts fixed on what truly matters: the infinite dignity of every person, the gift of genuine relationship, and the hope that comes from a God who entered our weakness to make us sharers in His own life. May we, like Mary, become “weavers of hope” in this digital age — building not a new Tower of Babel, but the city of God, brick by brick, word by word, encounter by encounter.

-- Fr. Matthew Hawkins

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of discussing the Catholic notion of “cultural competency” with the Cultural Action Team (CAT) of St. Mary Magdalene Parish. The phrase "cultural competency" has become almost unavoidable in institutional life. These concepts are particularly important to us at St. Benedict the Moor because we are a mission parish that is defined by evangelization through inculturation.  
Dioceses, schools, and parishes are routinely invited to adopt frameworks that promise to equip leaders for ministry in diverse contexts. But if we receive these frameworks uncritically, we may find ourselves trading the language of the Gospel for the language of human resources — and losing something essential in the exchange.
 
The Church proposes something more demanding and more beautiful: that genuine cultural competency, understood through a Catholic lens, is not a skillset but a spirituality.
 
Our understanding begins with the Incarnation. When the eternal Logos entered human history, He did not arrive as an abstraction. He came as a particular person — Jewish, Aramaic-speaking, embedded in the rhythms of a specific people and place. This particularity is not incidental. It is the very mode of universal love. God's love for all people was revealed precisely through the scandal of one person, one culture, one moment in history. Any Catholic approach to cultural competency must begin here: not with demographic categories or diversity metrics, but with the mystery of God's enfleshment in the specific.
 
From this Incarnational foundation, two temptations come into focus. The first is over-categorization — the tendency, pervasive in contemporary cultural discourse, to reduce persons to representatives of their racial or ethnic group. This is the logic of Babel: identities multiply, fragment, and ultimately isolate rather than connect. The second temptation is the opposite: cultural amnesia, the false neutrality that pretends difference doesn't exist while quietly privileging dominant norms as universal. Neither path leads to genuine encounter. One reduces the person to a data point; the other erases the person altogether.
 
The Catholic vision charts a different course. Because every human being is made in the image of God, every person transcends any category we assign them. The Gospel does not flatten difference — it transfigures it. The model here is Pentecost: the Spirit did not erase the diversity of languages and peoples gathered in Jerusalem but sanctified that diversity into harmony. Each heard the mighty works of God in their own tongue. Unity was achieved not through uniformity but through something closer to a symphony — many voices, one eternal hymn.
 
This means that the formation of culturally competent Catholic leaders must be theological before it is technical. It requires immersion in the Church's tradition of inculturation, honest reckoning with the Church's complex cultural history, and the cultivation of cruciform engagement — a willingness to enter into genuine relationship with the Other even at the cost of misunderstanding and self-emptying. The cross, after all, is not only the sign of redemption; it is the model of encounter.
 
What emerges from this vision is a reframing of the entire project. Cultural competency, rightly understood, is not inclusion training. It is communion — the art of seeing in every culture a potential cradle for Christ, in every person a unique icon of the divine. That is a different aspiration entirely, and a far more demanding one. It asks not that we learn a new vocabulary, but that we undergo a conversion.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to be peacemakers in a world too often torn by violence. From the earliest centuries of the Church, some Christians have discerned a vocation to conscientious objection—refusing to participate in war or violence because of the Gospel's command to love our enemies.
 
In recent years, the Ben Salmon, No Just War Registry for Conscientious Objectors has been established to help Catholics bear public witness to the Gospel of peace. Named for a Catholic who refused to fight in World War I and wrote a powerful critique of just war theory, the registry allows individuals—especially young people—to formally declare their commitment to Christian nonviolence. This can serve both as a spiritual testimony and, if ever needed, a legal aid in the event of a future military draft.
 
As pastor, I affirm the right of Catholics to conscientious objection, which is supported by both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and statements from the U.S. Bishops. While the Church has long taught the criteria for a just war, it also respects the right of the individual conscience formed in prayer and fidelity to Christ.
 
If you—or someone you love—wishes to learn more about conscientious objection or would like to register their beliefs in accordance with the Gospel call to peace, please contact the parish office. We will be glad to assist in this process, offer spiritual support, and help you discern your path with integrity and courage.
 
Let us continue to pray for peace, and for the grace to be instruments of God's mercy in our troubled world.
 
Fr. Matthew