Following Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical entitled Magnifica Humanitas, Father Dave welcomes back friend of the show and ethicist Dr. Charles Camosy to discuss humanity in the age of artificial intelligence. Dr. Camosy teaches moral theology and bioethics at The Catholic University of America.
They discuss how Pope Leo XIV builds upon Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical addressing the Industrial Revolution in 1891. “I encourage people who are interested to actually read Rerum Novarum as part of trying to understand this new encyclical,” Dr. Camosy begins. “Here’s an interesting quote from the opening paragraph of Rerum Novarum that could have been written today. It says, ‘The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it —- actually, there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.’ Sound familiar?”
“I do think that it’s very important to say there is a particular moment to name here [in 2026], and we need to move on it. Thank God we have Pope Leo XIV to help us do that,” he says. “We need an opportunity to slow down, think carefully about this, and let our true values be the guiding factor here — not how fast we can do something, or how much we need to compete with another country or another company.”
LISTEN: Breaking Down the New Papal Encyclical on AI: ‘Magnifica Humanitas’
They unpack the encyclical’s focus on the beauty and worth of the human person. Dr. Camosy says, “The world tends to believe that humans have dignity only in terms of what they can produce. The phrase I can’t stand is [describing someone as] ‘a productive member of society.’ That is not where our value comes from. Our value comes from being made the image and likeness of God…It comes from who we are, not what we can do.”
He argues that artificial intelligence is going to surpass humans in efficiency, but that does not impact our worth. “I was at two meetings with [artificial intelligence company] Anthropic when they invited a bunch of religious scholars and leaders to San Francisco to talk about these kinds of things. What these [AI] models can do and what they will do in the future are just extraordinary,” Dr. Camosy says. “People think, What’s the point of being human? Is humanity about to be abolished, or at least transcended by AI? The only way that could possibly be true is if we have a totally wrong understanding of what makes us valuable.”
“That’s where theology comes in, and that’s where I think the Church really has something to say that people want to hear,” he continues. “We matter in ways that AI models can’t, regardless of how powerful they become when it comes to these other kinds of technical and computational things they do.”
LISTEN: Examining the Ethics of AI With Dr. Charles Camosy
In interpreting Magnifica Humanitas, Dr. Camosy underscores that Pope Leo thinks we can still use AI within a proper context. “A lot of people think, ‘Well, there’s just no way to [use AI], you have to cast it in the fire.’ That’s actually not for Pope Leo’s position on this. He thinks you can use it to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, but you have to be so careful that you’re not doing it to build a new tower of Babel,” Dr. Camosy explains. “[In the story from Genesis] they build a tower to the heavens to surpass God through their own efforts and glory. God, of course, topples the tower, scatters the people, makes them all speak different languages.”
“The Holy Father suggests that we have to use it in a project that identifies with the prophet Nehemiah, who came back to build the walls of Jerusalem after it had been destroyed. He worked with God — and within the parameters of God — to build the new Jerusalem,” Dr. Camosy says. “[We are to] use AI intentionally, with the right reason, with the right understanding, and not in this race to the bottom where we just go as fast as possible. We take our time and decide what we’re doing very intentionally.”
