Magnifica Humanitas: Leo Says the Catholic Church Has No Monopoly on Truth

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Magnifica Humanitas: Leo Says the Catholic Church Has No Monopoly on Truth
From praising false religions as “great spiritual paths,” to synodal discernment, and human dignity without Christ the King,
Magnifica Humanitas gives the game away.

Chris Jackson via Hiraeth in Exile substack [Emphasis - The Catacombs] | May 26, 2026

On May 15, 2026, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Leo XIV signed his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” The Vatican presented it publicly on May 25 as a major social encyclical for the digital age.

The title already gives away the disease.

Magnifica humanitas. Magnificent humanity. The grandeur of man. The splendor of the human person.

A Catholic encyclical on artificial intelligence could have begun with God, creation, original sin, the limits of fallen reason, the demonic temptation to “be as gods,” and the public rights of Christ the King over every human invention. It could have warned that modern technology becomes especially dangerous when placed in the hands of men who have rejected grace, law, nature, hierarchy, penance, and the last end of man.

Instead, we get the familiar postconciliar arrangement: Christ appears, but man remains center stage. Grace appears, but as a kind of elevation of human potential. Sin appears, but usually in the social, structural, humanitarian way. The Church speaks, but too often as a concerned moral partner of global civilization rather than the divinely commissioned teacher of nations.

That is the real story of Magnifica humanitas.

The encyclical denounces the reduction of man to data, performance, utility, and economic function. It warns that technology is never morally neutral. It condemns exploitation, trafficking, abortion, euthanasia, digital manipulation, autonomous weapons, and the commodification of the vulnerable.

But this document does something far more dangerous than repeat obvious moral concerns about Silicon Valley. It takes the crisis of artificial intelligence and uses it to reassert the entire postconciliar religion: human dignity without the social reign of Christ, dialogue without conversion, peace without Catholic order, truth without the Church’s exclusive divine commission, and historical “growth” that places the Bride of Christ under the judgment of modern moral fashion.

By the time the encyclical reaches its apology over slavery, the damage has already been done. The groundwork was laid from the beginning.



Babel Condemned by the Chaplains of Babel

The governing biblical image is Babel. Leo contrasts the tower of pride, domination, uniformity, and technological self-sufficiency with Jerusalem, the city rebuilt in communion and shared responsibility under God.

At first glance, this sounds forceful. The image is obvious enough. Silicon Valley really is building Babel with server farms, biometric databases, predictive algorithms, neural networks, digital currencies, surveillance architecture, and machines trained to imitate the human mind while the human soul is forgotten.

But the encyclical never escapes the world it condemns.

Leo denounces technological Babel, then reaches for the same vocabulary that built the ecclesiastical Babel after Vatican II: dialogue, pluralism, fraternity, shared discernment, human rights, multilateral institutions, synodality, integral ecology, the “civilization of love,” and the autonomy of earthly realities.

The old tower was built by men who wanted unity without obedience to God. The modern tower is built by men who want peace without the Kingship of Christ, dignity without baptism, fraternity without the true Church, and global order without the conversion of nations. Magnifica humanitas sees the technological tower rising and then proposes, as the cure, the theological vocabulary of the last sixty years of surrender.

It notices the machine. It misses the apostasy behind the machine.

The document warns against transhumanism and posthumanism, against the attempt to overcome human limits by technological power. Yet postconciliar theology has spent decades teaching modern man to think of himself primarily in terms of dignity, creativity, freedom, experience, conscience, dialogue, development, and historical becoming. Then everyone acts surprised when the same man, catechized in the religion of self-realization, decides that even nature itself must yield to his will.

The AI crisis did not fall from the sky. It came from a civilization that rejected God’s law and then discovered it could manufacture substitutes for providence, memory, judgment, imagination, authority, and eventually man himself.

The encyclical sees the idol’s face. It refuses to smash the altar.



The Missing Crown

The central absence in Magnifica humanitas is not a mere lack of religious language. Christ is mentioned. The Incarnation is mentioned. Grace is mentioned. The Eucharist is mentioned. Scripture is used.

That makes the problem worse.

Christ is present, but too often as the revealer of human dignity, the healer of social wounds, the guarantor of fraternity, the companion of humanity, the source of a more humane civilization. He is invoked as the divine sponsor of a better anthropology.

What disappears is Christ the King.

Before the Council, the Church did not approach social questions by asking how the Gospel could deepen mankind’s shared humanitarian project. She proclaimed that every man, family, law, ruler, economy, institution, school, court, and nation must submit to the reign of Jesus Christ.

[color=#71101s]Pius XI did not write Quas Primas so future churchmen could reduce the Kingship of Christ to a private spirituality, a liturgical theme, or a poetic symbol. He taught that the evils of the modern age flowed from the exclusion of Christ and His law from public life. No lasting peace could exist while states and citizens refused the rule of the Savior.[/color]

That doctrine should have thundered through any Catholic encyclical on artificial intelligence.

AI is not dangerous merely because it threatens human dignity. It is dangerous because fallen man, having dethroned Christ, now possesses instruments that amplify his rebellion. Pride, lust, greed, lies, surveillance, sacrilege and apostasy can all grow.

The problem is not simply that man may be reduced to data. The deeper horror is that man, already in revolt against God, now has machines capable of organizing the revolt with terrifying precision.

Magnifica humanitas wants ethical technology, responsible innovation, protection for workers, peace among nations, truthful communication, and safeguards for the vulnerable.

Under what King?

According to what law?

For what final end?

The encyclical keeps circling back to human dignity, fraternity, dialogue, integral development, the common good, and social responsibility. The old Church gave the answer that made the devils tremble:

Christ must reign.

Without that crown, every Catholic-sounding paragraph becomes unstable. The social teaching floats. The moral concern drifts. The humanitarian language expands until it fills the space where the supernatural order should be.



The Conciliar Machine Is Still Running

Chapter One tells the reader how the whole encyclical works. The Church “journeys” through history. She reads the signs of the times. She respects the autonomy of earthly realities. She engages science. She listens. She discerns. She allows history to become a place where the Spirit teaches her the humanizing power of the Gospel.

There is the engine.

This is the conciliar machine, humming exactly as designed.

The Church no longer speaks first as the divine teacher of mankind, commanding nations to repent, be baptized, submit to Christ, and enter the one ark of salvation. She appears as a pilgrim companion of modern man, a moral interpreter of human experience, a partner in global discernment, a religious voice within the wider conversation of humanity.

That is how Magnifica humanitas arrives at the astonishing claim that the Church “does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth,” because truth is “a good to be shared.”

There is no need to soften this.

That line is a disgrace.

The Catholic Church does not possess truth as a shopkeeper possesses inventory. She possesses the truth because Christ entrusted it to her. She guards it. She defines it. She teaches it. She condemns its counterfeit. She transmits it without corruption. She alone was founded by the Incarnate Word to teach all nations in His name.

The martyrs did not die because the Church was one sincere participant in mankind’s common search for truth. Missionaries did not cross oceans because false religions were fellow “spiritual paths.” The Fathers did not anathematize heresy because truth was a shared conversation. Popes did not condemn indifferentism because all parties held fragments of a larger religious mosaic.

“Mortalium Animos” spoke with the Catholic voice: unity comes by return to the one true Church of Christ, not by religious negotiation among competing communities. The Church does not learn revealed truth from history, from pluralism, from interreligious dialogue, or from the anxieties of modern man. She teaches because God has spoken.

The older voice exposes the postconciliar voice as foreign.

When Leo says the Church has no monopoly on truth, he gives the revolution its slogan.

More excellent points in the rest of the article, here.