Pope Leo XIV’s May 25 encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas tells the world it is about “Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” but some of its most interesting and important contributions are about Catholic social teaching.
Magnifica Humanitas is a social encyclical, and Pope Leo consciously places it in continuity with Rerum Novarum.
That continuity is important because it helps us understand how doctrine—including social doctrine—develops and changes.
As Pope Leo observes in his much-noted words about slavery, there are moments of “growth” in “the Church’s…understanding [of] the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards.”
Before we get to continuity and development, we also have to deal with one other important fact Leo leaves no doubt about—Catholic social teaching is doctrine.
“When some objected that the Church should not waste energy on worldly matters, but instead focus on communicating the message of eternal life,” Pope Leo writes, we should recall the simple lesson that a serious reading of Scripture and the Tradition affirms. The “proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people.”
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With thanks to Flashes of Insight and Steven Millies, where this article originally appeared.
