August 2, 2026
Dear St. Rita Parishioners,
If you haven’t had a chance to read Pope Leo’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, I recommend that you take some time to do so. Not only does it present a clear overview of Catholic Social Teaching, but it also outlines the Holy Father’s view of the modern world, and it does not shy away from calling the world to conversion. Over the next several months, I am going to comment in my weekly newsletter note on the encyclical, because I think it is important that we Catholics challenge each other and the world to take seriously the words of the Holy Father. Generating conversation and reflection about these topics will help us to hone our understanding of God and the teaching of the Church, to clear out or resolve misunderstandings, and to spur us on to live our lives as faithful sons and daughters of God, for His glory and the salvation of souls.
Pope Leo begins the encyclical by cutting to the chase: with our technical capabilities, we can either build a new Tower of Babel or a “city in which God and humanity dwell together” (MH 1), which he will later compare to Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the return from Babylon (MH 7). His Augustinian roots, which have been prominently on display since his election, come through clearly here as well in this first line of the encyclical. In the early 5th Century, St. Augustine found himself needing to defend Christianity against the pagan claims that Christian irreligion (meaning their non-practice of the pagan, state religion) was the cause of the downfall and sacking of the City of Rome in 410 AD. His famous book The City of God is what resulted, and in it Augustine contrasts the City of Man, built on pride and self-love, with the City of God, build of love and obedience of God.
You may have seen a fairly recent essay by Msgr. James Shea of the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND called “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission”, in which he encourages and challenges modern Catholics to recognize that the modern cultural and religious moment has shifted profoundly, and so our mode of evangelization likewise must shift. Pope Leo’s image of constructing either the Tower of Babel or re-constructing the walls of Jerusalem (Cf. Neh 2-6) recognizes implicitly this great cultural shift that has taken place in the last 100 years. The implication is that we had something great, and it was lost because of sin and unbelief, and now we have the opportunity either to glorify ourselves with our technological domination of the world and all of creation or to glorify God, to love Him and our neighbor. This choice faces us very starkly now, and the extremely rapid pace of technological growth as well as seismic world events place the urgency of our response in the forefront of our minds.
In order for this urgency to have positive effect within us and in society, we must also, however, have a shared vision of where we ought to be going. This, I find, to be the more challenging task, not because we are necessarily dealing with believers vs. unbelievers (though that happens sometimes, even in the Church), but rather because it’s easy to agree on high-level goals and much harder to agree on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order practical decisions and conclusions about how to accomplish those goals. In addition, it is very simply difficult to keep up with all the changes. Fortunately, general concepts are much easier to incorporate into a shared vision, so that individuals can apply those concepts in their own concrete circumstances. This is, interestingly, a foundation for one of the great principles of Catholic Social Teaching (of which Pope Leo gives an overview in Chapter 2 of Magnifica Humanitas), Subsidiarity.
Before this, however, the Pope notes that humanity is created by God as something great. His emphasis on the dignity of the human person will be repeated over and over again throughout the encyclical, but it begins right at the beginning, and it gives us insight into his methodology and his particular concern. Gaudium et Spes(Joy and Hope), the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council, famously taught that “Christ…fully reveals man to man himself” (22), and this revelation includes man’s dignity as one created in God’s image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). Though God’s image in us was marred by Original Sin and our own, personal sin, Christ’s Love for humanity and for each of us not only reminds us who we were made to be, but it also restores to us the dignity we had in the beginning (cf. GS 22). By using this emphasis, the Holy Father echoes the words of the first Pope Leo (the Great) in a Christmas homily: “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition.”
Although many in this world have not yet been restored by Baptism to their original dignity and elevated by that Sacrament to share in God’s own divine nature, the image of God is still present within them, and disfigured as it may be, it is worth reverencing and loving: “Whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did to me” (Mt 25:40). This is exactly what Christ did for us when He came – not one was yet Baptized at that time – and He still came to love us, to restore what we had lost, and to elevate us to something even higher, namely union with God. Our approach to the modern world must reflect Christ’s approach, and the Holy Father bookends the entire discussion of AI and the modern moment with discussion of Christ, without Whom it is impossible to fully recognize or achieve the dignity with which we were made.
This emphasis and foundation is extremely important! A criticism of Catholic Social Teaching among faithful Catholics is precisely that it often appears reduced in praxis to social justice, excising and forgetting Jesus Christ. Part of the reason for my commentary is to ensure that that reduction does not happen when you read Magnifica Humanitas, and to intentionally situate Love of Neighbor as expressed in Catholic Social Teaching in Love of God, which is still the greatest commandment. Not only does the Church’s teaching on how to love God guide and inform what it means to love our neighbor, but God’s Love for each of us likewise teaches us how to love our neighbor, and this, too, is Christ’s command: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34).
Lastly, it is good to remember an important word from G.K. Chesterton in his book Heretics, “Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural.” This is true because of our fallen nature, and because what is natural (our humanity) is imbued with the supernatural in its very essence. Therefore, remember this whenever the encyclical mentions ‘humanity’ or when it focuses on making the world ‘more human’ or ‘more humane’. Such language is not, in the encyclical, an attempt to remove God from the equation, but rather to use language that is accessible to those who have already written off the Church as irrelevant and out of touch or who do not know that the Church is an “expert on humanity,” as Pope St. Paul VI famously told the UN in 1965. The Church is only an expert on humanity because She is the Bride of Christ, united to the Divine Word. Pope Leo notes this in paragraph 1 of Magnifica Humanitas, likewise quoting Gaudium et Spes 22, “Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is ‘only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.’”
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen