A Reformed response to Magnifica Humanitas
The Catholic church’s first official word on AI shows how much Catholic and Reformed Christians have in common.
Pope Leo XIV released his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25, a roughly 42,000-word document outlining a Catholic response to recent developments in AI. I had been eagerly anticipating this encyclical and spent much of the release day poring over the text. While there have been other Christian efforts to release statements about AI, this is the first comprehensive statement from the Catholic church.
The encyclical is arranged into five chapters along with an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction notes the anniversary of another encyclical that is referred to throughout the document, Rerum Novarum, written by Leo XIII in 1891 as a response to the industrial revolution. Just as the industrial revolution posed threats in the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIV identifies many contemporary threats to humanity posed by AI. The subtitle of the encyclical captures his chief concern: “On safeguarding the human person in the time of AI.” The introduction invokes two images from the Bible (a recurring image throughout the document): the construction of the Tower of Babel in contrast to the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. We are called to decide “between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.”
The breakdown
Chapter one reads like a literature review in an academic paper, outlining the Social Doctrine of the Church as developed in previous encyclicals, with special attention to Rerum Novarum. Chapter two sketches how the Social Doctrines of the Catholic Church inform the rest of the encyclical, including the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice. Chapter 3, titled “Technology and Dominance,” warns against the “technocratic paradigm” that reduces “creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system.” The language has strong echoes with Neil Postman’s Technopoly. Chapter 4 is titled “Safeguarding Humanity at a Time of Transformation” and focuses on the importance of truth and work as a common good. Chapter 5 is titled “The Culture of Power and the Civilization of Love” and deals with war and how AI is changing the nature of conflict. The encyclical concludes by reminding us of the incarnation of Jesus, what it means to be human, and a call to be wise architects who build a world for the common good.
The concluding paragraphs make an appeal to Mary that my protestant sensibilities would quibble with, but my wider Christian sensibilities can wholeheartedly embrace Pope Leo’s timely call for the church to be a witness to the gospel in the age of AI.
Points of appreciation
As a computer science professor, I was delighted to see a “special appeal to those who develop artificial intelligence” who “bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility” (something I regularly remind my computer science students). Developers are reminded to attend to the values that they embed into their projects “with due seriousness” and with “transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.”
It’s notable that many of the Catholic social doctrines overlap with Reformed principles. The Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity requires that the “role of individuals, families, local communities . . . should not be supplanted by higher-level authorities.” In a similar vein, the Reformed notion of sphere sovereignty recognizes that society is comprised of distinct entities like families, schools and churches which exercise God-given authority within their sphere. Both these principles would, in the words of the encyclical, resist “technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life.” In this context, both subsidiary and sphere sovereignty would look to the state to “ensure fair rules and effective safeguards” so that local communities and spheres are not shaped or controlled by large AI corporations.
In addition, the Catholic doctrine of the common good coheres closely with the Reformed doctrine of common grace which applies to society at large. The encyclical calls for a rejection of “algorithms that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination” and emphasizes the need to seek “the common good of all people.” The Kuyperian tradition has long recognized the need for principled pluralism – to work together in the public sphere among those of differing beliefs and to forge partnerships in service to the common good. Different Christian traditions ought to forge partnerships to have a more effective voice in the public square.
A shared Christian heritage going back to Saint Augustine aligns Catholic and Reformed Christians around principles of just war. Chapter 5 of the encyclical highlights issues like cyberwarfare and autonomous weapon systems, which make “war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control.” The Reformational tradition, which opposes a reductionistic view of created reality, would strongly resonate with the pope’s warning that “moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation.” A shared Christian commitment to peace and justice would join the pope’s calls for curbing the “technological arms race” and ensuring “robust protection for civilians.”
What was missing
While the encyclical does acknowledge good uses for AI, as a computer scientist, I would have liked to have seen more specific examples for the good uses for AI, things like medical imaging and drug discovery, reducing traffic accidents, increasing crop yields, Bible translation and environmental monitoring. While the encyclical emphasizes the doctrine of creation with respect to how humans were made in the image of God, there is little discussion about AI as part of the good possibilities in creation. I appreciated the inclusion of a special appeal to those who develop AI, but it would have been helpful to sketch some more practical frameworks for the design and testing of AI systems. What would it look like not only to mitigate the many risks surrounding AI but also to redirect it in ways that are more redemptive?
I would have liked to have seen more specific examples for the good uses for AI.
Beyond that, I have very little critique of the encyclical. I came away convinced that it did a good job of showing how two thousand years of Christian social thought are indeed relevant and crucial to informing some of the most pressing issues in the age of AI. I hope the issue of AI will provide an opportunity for Catholics and Reformed Christians to put aside their ecclesiastical differences and come together with a united voice for the common good. As one step towards that, the upcoming Wisdom in the Age of AI hosted at Calvin University has invited Paolo Bananti, “the pope’s AI guy,” to be one of our keynote speakers. In the end, all believers in Christ should reject the building of another Tower of Babel and join hands to work together to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in this age of AI.
This is a revised version of an article that appeared in the Christian Scholar’s Review blog on June 5, 2026.
Derek, thank you for this guide to the encyclical. It is hard for me (and others?) to find reliable guides to help us navigate in a world in which compassion seems to be at a minimum while ‘technopoly’ is grabbing hold of culture.
I am still a little suspicious of the Reformed (and others’) view that anything that humans come up with are part of God’s good creational potentialities that can be ‘redeemed’: some seem to me to be the result of ill-intent or power-mongering or Babel-building.
I think, however, that your placing of the debate in terms of classical Christian thought–Reformed and Roman Catholic–does us a great service in reminding us that we have indeed a ‘goodly heritage’ that we should not squander as we face complex topics and issues.
Thank you for your continued perceptive work for Christian Courier.
I wish that both the Pope and Derek would have addressed the environmental costs of AI. The “cloud” was one thing in terms of energy consumption, but AI is off the charts. Why does Creation itself always play such a poor second to the important issues that a new technology presents?