The idea of price gouging is one of these places where our ordinary moral intuitions and the typical economist view sharply diverge. (So are price controls, but that’s another, not-unrelated post!) Economists insist that, say, increasing the price of lumber in a city where there has been a natural disaster is not “gouging”; rather, it “signals” to lumber producers to produce more lumber or (more importantly) direct more lumber shipments to the area of greatest need. Now that I have an office in a business school, I can get more such ideas easily. Senator Warren used the example of the ice cream stand charging more on a hot day; a colleague noted that this is fair, because the business will in fact create more supply by hiring more employees, so the line is shorter. There is “more” ice cream - or more precisely, you trade off the higher price for a shorter wait in line (made even shorter because others will decide they’d rather do something else than get ice cream at that price). Another colleague noted that, in a market, basically all pricing is dynamic - that’s the whole point. We expect grocer to put berries on sale at certain times of the year, and to charge a premium at other times. Gas stations change their prices daily (or sometimes more often), and we might not like it, but we know why it happens. When Uber first introduced “surge” pricing, there was great outcry against the idea that “the same trip” might cost different amounts at different times - but now, we (I?) kind of accept that ridesharing fares will vary, in part because it is evidently the case that higher fares will mean more drivers come out.

These examples should indicate to us how much our sense of what “fair pricing” is involves custom. As we know, many places in the world even today don’t post prices in stores; the custom of a one-posted-price-for-all, according to Planet Money, was introduced by Quakers, who felt it was unfair that the same item was sold to different people at different prices. In the United States, posted prices became the standard in part because of the rise of the department store, which essentially “de-skilled” an element of the job of store clerks. As already noted, aspects of “dynamic pricing” are already seen in the widespread longstanding practice of discounting movie matinees or Christmas cards or “senior citizen days.” Of course, when it’s framed as a discount, consumers rejoice. As Hennessey’s response notes, there is no “Big Ice Cream” that somehow completely dominates the market; if one stand or chain does this, express your displeasure by patronizing the businesses who stick with standard pricing.

The varied examples could continue indefinitely, and they should make us aware that it’s hard to make blanket proncouncements about the danger or merits of any one model of pricing. But are there any moral principles by which we might judge the combination of custom and market? It seems to me we might (non-exhaustively) name two - like just war principles, they don’t translate exactly into an “answer” for any particular case, but they do offer guidance for prudential judgment.

The first is the underlying sense that pricing should not “take advantage” of another. Aquinas’s treatment admirably notes both sides of this: the seller should not take advantage of the buyer, but also the buyer should not try to take advantage of the seller. The notion of “taking advantage” is a tricky one, but possibly the most valuable to interrogate. All those used book “bargains” I got back in the day from sellers who didn’t realize a particular book was “worth more” - maybe I was taking advantage of some small-town used bookseller! But more relevantly, even the Yale finance professor Robert Shiller, in trying to defend the practice of finance, insists that a sense of reciprocity governed by the Golden Rule is necessary for financial markets to work - it doesn’t mean people need to be nice. It does mean that, if you would not want to be “taken advantage of” in this way, you should not “take advantage of” others in the same way. I leave it to more expert people to determine the extent to which today’s financial markets do or do not conform to Shiller’s ideal. But he’s right about the underlying sentiment: what’s fair is what you would expect if you were on the other side of the bargain.

The second principle is pricing that preserves the importance of what economists call “consumer surplus.” What consumer surplus indicates, in a simplest form, is the willingness of the market to provide a good or service at a price that is considerably cheaper than what I am willing to pay. This phenomenon is especially important as a kind of side product of mass production; in economic theory, firms produce things to the extent that they can sell the marginal unit at such and such a price. But if they sell at the widgets at the price on the margin - meaning the lowest price someone in a line will pay - then those in the line who would have paid more still get the widget for the lowest price. In a society of mass production, we are constantly “getting bargains” in the sense that producers charge a lower price than we would otherwise be willing to pay. It seems to me we often overlook the extent to which ongoing experiences of consumer surplus - that is, getting things more cheaply than you expect - is crucial to sustaining a sense of widespread economic prosperity.

From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Economic-surpluses.svg

From these examples, one can see that it would be in the firm’s self-interest to increase their producer surplus - produce things more cheaply that people are willing to pay a premium for. Brand-name sodas and shampoos are like this (which is why Aldi or Suave are so much cheaper!). But in fact, what they’d like to do is raise the price to whatever maximum each buyer is willing to pay. At the extreme, this means firms would like to charge rich customers more - and they do have ways to do this, like different trim lines of cars, for example, or different airline seats, or different price packages at Disney. The idea of charging rich customers more seems like it should be appealing to Senator Warren!

And certainly dynamic pricing will extract money from rich people. The dynamic tolling lanes in northern Virginia, where one might have to pay $40 or $50 for a commute day, are not going to be a big sacrifice for the millionaire lawyers and lobbyists. But as “efficient” as the variable, traffic-based “dynamic tolling” is, the niggling sense of the moral problem creeps into the picture, too: what’s going on here in these so-called “Lexus-lanes” is not simply squeezing rich people, but squeezing out poor people - OR squeezing them much more tightly, if they have no way around the cost. $40 for them matters more than $40 for the rich person - a point that economic models willfully ignore, to their discredit. In other words, the reduction of the consumer surplus, while it may hit rich people in a higher absolute quantity, will impact both the actual budget and the quality-of-life of the poor person much more.

I think there is something good - something fundamentally egalitarian - about posted fixed prices, even if those prices are somewhat tiered or offer “discounted” periods to incentivize having people in a restaurant at 4pm. But if what sellers aim at is ruthlessly eliminating consumer surplus by “optimizing” pricing, what you will ultimately do is squeeze the people who are already the most squeezed - and further promote a sense of a society like the above-mentioned experience of stratified Disney or the plane: some people sit up front, have status, and enjoy everything, and some people are herded into whatever spots are left. Yes, there are economic arguments for differentiated price model that do make sense. But let’s not forget that pricing customs also affect our day-today sense of who belongs and who is prioritized in a social order - and also involve the exercise of power that allows some to “take advantage” of others.

There is much we can learn from Peter, and it is important that we interpret today’s gospel in light of the ‘big picture’ of Matthew’s narrative, which portrays the early followers of Jesus as what one scholar calls an “egalitarian brotherhood with the living, present Christ at its head.” (See Nau, 146). This is in no way to diminish the praise Peter receives from Jesus, who describes Peter as the “rock” (v. 18) with the “keys” (v. 19) to the kingdom. But one thing to note right away is that these verses are unique to Matthew’s storytelling. Matthew’s version of this encounter expands on Mark’s (Mark 8:27-30) and Luke’s (Luke 9:18-21). What Matthew adds in three verses (v. 17-19) has been the subject of many debates in Christian history. Catechesis in the Roman Catholic tradition tends to see in these verses the establishment of a Petrine office and a focus on papal authority and apostolic succession, which has understandably led to complex debates about authority and disunity with Protestant believers. These verses have also led to considerable debate within the Roman Catholic Church, debates that are ongoing, especially in synodal conversations about women’s full participation and whether these verses credibly limit ordination (as understood today) to men. Both are important threads to pull on, as ecumenism and feminism raise important questions for all Christians, but these are not my focus today. Instead, I find myself reflecting on Peter’s discipleship and what it might mean in my life.

Three aspects of Peter’s witness inspire me today. First, Peter’s legacy inspires me to speak up when I have questions and to be comfortable expressing doubt or uncertainty if something seems wrong. Arlo Nau describes Peter as “irrepressibly vocal,” which is another way of saying he is a loud mouth. In Matthew’s gospel, Peter appears frequently as a spokesperson for the disciples and is shown as a natural leader. Notable quotables from Matthew:

• “But Peter said to him, ‘explain this parable to us.’” (15:15)

• “The collectors came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’” (17:24)

• “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” (18:21)

• “Then Peter said in reply, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (19:27)

• “Peter said to him, ‘Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you.’” (26:33)

Peter wants to understand, presses his teacher, and is not always right. Often Peter thinks that he understands something, only to vocalize his claim and receive fraternal correction. But he and his fellow believers (and Matthew’s readers, who also have questions) come to a deeper understanding because of the questions Peter is willing to ask. We, too, will need to keep asking questions and name our doubts in order to more fully understand what is asked of us. I do not, then, interpret this gospel to mean that Catholics should blindly follow the Catechism or papal teaching. Instead, we must wrestle with it, ask good questions, and trust that our honest questions will be welcomed and valued, even if it turns out that we are the ones in need of correction.

Second, Peter shows us what Ted Lasso means when he tells his players to “be a goldfish.” Coach Lasso means that after you acknowledge your mistakes, you have to move on so you can focus your energy on the next play. The same Peter who is given the “keys” in today’s gospel is the one who can’t stay awake in the garden, denies being a follower of Jesus three times, and is found weeping bitterly at the end of chapter 26. Peter makes mistakes. Peter experiences profound regret. We actually don’t see Peter named or speak in any of the remaining scenes of Matthew’s gospel (though we assume he is with the group of eleven who receive the great commissioning in chapter 28). Where did that curious student go? He was learning how to forgive himself and move on. In Acts of the Apostles, we see that Peter’s leadership is transformative of the early Jesus movement. Perhaps, like Peter, we took risks that didn’t work out. Perhaps we made mistakes and need to repent and repair. Peter’s legacy for Christians today is one of hope after failure. What would it take for you to be able to move on after an acknowledged error? Bring that to prayer this week.

Finally, let’s think about the symbol of the keys. New renters or homeowners know the feeling of exhilaration that can come from holding one’s first set of house keys. A key signifies that you belong in that place, and you take responsibility (sometimes alone and sometimes with others) for maintaining it. Or, to quote from the Spider-Man franchise, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Pope Leo XIV, in his homily on the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul explains:

“A key does not break down doors; rather, it opens and closes them by finding the proper levers within and guiding their movements, so that locks may release, bolts withdraw, and doors turn freely on their hinges, thereby joining rooms together and transforming many isolated spaces into one welcoming home. In the same way, communion within the Church is not built by clinging rigidly to one’s own position, but by seeking, in all hearts, points of encounter in the Truth, in whose light alone each person becomes a means of growth for another.”

Understood in this way, Peter’s ministry is a ministry of releasing locks with the keys that his wise teacher gave him: keys of curiosity, wisdom, passion for justice, friendship, compassion, leadership, and love.

Questions for Personal Reflection

How do I engage authority figures?

What questions come up for me as I reflect on Peter as a model of asking good questions?

What personal failures are weighing me down? What would it take to forgive myself and move on?

What doors am I tempted to break down forcefully, when a key will unlock them nonviolently?

Sources for Further Reading

Raymond Brown, Karl Donfried and John Reumann, eds., Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (Paulist, 1973).

Arlo J. Nau, Peter in Matthew: Discipleship, Diplomacy, and Dispraise (Liturgical, 1992).

And I think what has struck me lately, especially trying to think through the theological implications of AI, is that we have multiple social imaginaries of AI. Borrowing (and simplifying) the term from Charles Taylor, I’m thinking about the way people – or in this case AI companies – imagine social existence, including how we relate to one another, what holds society together, and how common life ought to be ordered.

I think there are currently three main social imaginaries competing in Silicon Valley.

Peter Thiel and Palantir represent a broadly libertarian perspective. His concern is not primarily with AI but political institutions becoming too powerful. His recent focus on the anti-Christ is his concern about an emerging political order that suppresses AI as part of a promise of peace and safety but is really about just aggregating power. These anti-Christs range from Greta Thunberg to the pope. As a libertarian, this view does seem rooted in a concern for freedom, a belief that more freedom solves more problems and makes things better, and, thus, a suspicion of institutions because they tend to curb this freedom. As Thiel is a bit reluctant to believe that all human life is valuable, his social imaginary is basically a world where people, especially AI companies, can and should do whatever they want. For those who embrace this freedom, their lives will be great. Those who don’t, well, they are just stumbling blocks.

Image via www.vpnsrus.com at Wikimedia Creative Commons

OpenAI shares some of the wariness about government control and intervention, but it seems to have a strong sense of norms and ethics, at least ones that develop over time. It assumes that society learns through experimentation. The future cannot be fully anticipated, so the way forward is to act, reflect, revise, and redeploy, or as they say “pilot new approaches, measure what works, and iterate quickly.” Through this process, things become better. This is why OpenAI seems wary of initial regulations. They work better “downstream.” The issues and problems cannot be seen beforehand, so the way to solve problems and make things better is through iterative deployment. As I see it, their social imaginary reflects American pragmatism. Maybe not quite “move fast and break things” but a more tempered “move fast even though you’ll break things.” As an Appalachian, pragmatism appeals to me, but also as an Appalachian, I am wary of companies that are too pragmatic. The pragmatism of coal companies overrode any concern for people, the miners, their families, the community, the environment, the whole region.

Anthropic takes a different approach. It wrote a “constitution” for its AI, embedding it into Claude. As they explain,

Claude’s constitution . . . . both expresses and shapes who Claude is. It contains detailed explanations of the values we would like Claude to embody and the reasons why. In it, we explain what we think it means for Claude to be helpful while remaining broadly safe, ethical, and compliant with our guidelines. The constitution gives Claude information about its situation and offers advice for how to deal with difficult situations and tradeoffs, like balancing honesty with compassion and the protection of sensitive information. Although it might sound surprising, the constitution is written primarily for Claude. It is intended to give Claude the knowledge and understanding it needs to act well in the world.

This is different from either Thiel’s “freedom as the fundamental value” or OpenAI’s “we’ll figure it out as we go.” It is a commitment to principles that guide action. I’ve seen it. Whereas ChatGPT will affirm my expressions of frustration even when they are laced with expletives, Claude will simply reply, “I will not engage in this kind of behavior.”

This idea of a priori limitations on power is why its social imaginary is like a constitutional democracy that constrains power based on rights and competing claims. This is also closer to the Catholic faith, with its natural law tradition that is behind its commitment to representative government (a view developed by John Courtney Murray and Jacques Maritain). It is why, I think, Pope Leo had Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic, at the Vatican for the release of Magnifica Humanitas.

Even so, I don’t want to dub their view the “Catholic” view. Just as democracies and economies have problems because they cannot account for the whole human person, so too is Anthropic’s account limited. Its constitution is written for its AI, not humanity, so it will function well when it is AI doing AI stuff, like economics doing economic stuff and politics doing political stuff. But it will struggle with a full humanity, like that described in Magnifica Humanitas, no. 50:

At the heart of the Christian understanding of the human person lies the great biblical affirmation that men and women are created in the image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-27) of the Triune God. Created for relationship, every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others and with creation. Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love. For this reason, the human person always remains the “way for the Church” and the heart of every authentic path of integral human development.

Lifting up a view of the human person and making it the criterion for evaluating AI is, I believe, one of the great contributions of the pope’s encyclical. It highlights that one of the most significant issues we are facing with AI is their social imaginaries. This is a properly theological point to make, and it leads to ethical and social concerns. For social imaginaries will flow into relationships, the economy, politics, the environment, and everything, and if they aren’t right – or at least right enough – they will corrode and degrade everyone and everything, even if they are not constrained by governments, eventually get better, or are limited by their own internal values.

For the past 10 years, I've been teaching an upper level course in technology ethics. Students learn fundamentals of Christian ethics as we hash through a host of cases like the collapse of the tunnels in Boston's Big Dig, data mining, copyright and downloading, sexting, privacy, online speech, hacktivism, and post-humanism. We have a lot of fun in the class, and students are really confronted by the moral questions that they had never seen in many of their everyday activities. Interestingly, students seem to think they are getting away with something, taking up class time to argue about the ethics of image-management on Instagram. All the while, they are engaging in deep work with questions of human dignity, marginalization, power, and love. Really, I'm probably the one who is getting away with something!

One of the tricky things about the course, though, is that the cases need constant update. The tech world never stops, and so I have to do major revisions to half of the cases every semester. Two summers ago, we were half-way through the course when the Edward Snowdon/NSA spying story broke. In an instant, our discussion of surveillance shifted! And so it has been my consolation that the ethics material has remained constant. I don't really need to update the material we read on the virtues and principles of the Christian life, nor the articles on how Catholics, Protestants, and Amish approach technology. That stuff doesn't really change.

Or at least, it didn't until last week.

In the space of about 16 paragraphs that directly comment on technology within Laudato Si', Pope Francis makes a couple of substantial—even fundamental—changes through in the way that technology is understood within Vatican writing. The changes are so well integrated into the text and so natural, they are also easy to overlook.

Thinking about Pope Francis' portrayal of technology, I'd offer two things that seem to me to mark significant shifts in either basic content or normative emphasis within Catholic Social Teaching on technology. In these observations, I'll steer clear of the comments that the pope makes on biomedical technologies, as they are probably best understood within the broader context of the discourse biomedical ethics. Instead, I'll consider technology in general, in light of the largest single body of Vatican writing on technology, that on social communications. Since 1936, the Vatican has promulgated more than 210,000 words on communication and the technologies we use to communicate, and that literature provides a focused summary of the perspectives on technology as it is discussed more broadly across Catholic Social Teaching.

1) Individual technologies are not gifts of God: This may seem kind of obvious. However, this idea contrasts the position articulated consistently from the earliest encyclical on communication technology that "technical inventions...though they spring from human intelligence and industry, are nevertheless the gifts of God, Our Creator, from Whom all good gifts proceed." (Miranda Prorsus, Introduction and section 1) Indeed, the Apostolic Instruction Communio et Progressio asserts that "media"—meaning both content and technology—have an "allotted place in the history of Creation, in the Incarnation and Redemption" because "in accordance with His providential design, [they] unite men in brotherhood and so help them to cooperate with His plan for their salvation." (Communio et Progressio, 15, 2) Who knew God loved TV so much?

Image from https://wikimediafoundation.org/technology/

Instead, quoting Saint John Paul II, Francis asserts that “science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity.” (Laudato Si', 102) Throughout the twentieth century, the fundamentally good nature of technology was difficult to critique any given technology from within Catholic social teaching because it originated in a good God. That critique is easier to make when technology is born of human creativity that, while ultimately originating in the work of God, is subject to human sin and failure.

2) Technologies are not morally neutral instruments: Again, while this may seem like an obvious point, I can't state how significant this shift is. In light of the previous idea, Catholic social teaching on technology has generally argued that technologies are not to be judged as good or evil (with the exception of nuclear weapons).  Rather, specific uses of technologies are judged good or evil in light of the consequences of their use or, in the case of communication technologies, the particular messages conveyed. A perfect example of this perspective can be seen in 1997's Pontifical Council for Social Communications document Ethics in Advertising:

There is nothing intrinsically good or intrinsically evil about advertising. It is a tool, and instrument: it can be used well, and it can be used badly. If it can have, and sometimes does have, beneficial results…, it can, and often does, have a negative, harmful impact on individuals and society. (9)

Indeed, if we were to describe Vatican writing on technology in light of the various philosophical models of technology, it would be "instrumentalism." It is an approach that makes a certain amount of sense—the material aspects of an action are not the only parts that have moral species—and it did open space for the development of many means of communicating that were seen by some as approaching inherently evil (for instance Philadelphia's Cardinal Dogherty's ban on film in the 1930s).

That being said, Pope Francis could not have stated his disagreement any more starkly:

We have to accept that technological products are not neutral (107)

I know that we're supposed to say that nothing changes in Catholic social teaching, but rather develops as popes nuance and build upon each other's work. And, yes, you can find some minor antecedents in previous writing (e.g.: Pope Benedict XVI, “Social Networks: Portals of Truth and Faith; New Spaces for Evangelization," 5). But it is difficult to read Pope Francis' words as anything other than a distinct change. (It is telling that of the 11 notes in the 13 paragraphs distinctly on technology, only two reference previous Vatican writing on technology.)

So, if this is a change from instrumentalism, to what is it a change? Two things strike me.

First, in continuing the sentence, Pope Francis moves toward a broader recognition of the ways in which our technological choices are embedded in broader questions of social convention, values, and power relationships:

for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build. (107)

Robotics and automation are intertwined with the productive needs of business, social media is intertwined with social valuation of celebrity and image, surveillance is intertwined with desires for safety and control. This recognition of the power of broad social forces on the particular (referred to as cultural or social materialism within philosophy of technology) fits in well with CST's general see-judge-act approach, yet has been generally absent in work on technology.

Second, as the section on technology continues, Pope Francis also moves toward a recognition that the structures of technology itself influence the way that we live, irrespective of the particular uses to which we put a given technology. As he notes technology and science, as ways of thinking and acting, utilize "specialization" and "fragmentation of knowledge" as means to progress. (110) Now, it is not entirely clear here if Francis believes that specialization and fragmentation of knowledge are necessary features of science and technology, are useful ways of constructing them, or are simply the way that we happen to do things today. But in any case, he suggests here that engaging in the practice of technology creates habits, not merely of action, but of thinking about the world. Indeed, to really succeed in technology and science, we are encouraged to become single minded: really get to know your device, your search engine optimization, or the specifics of the metal you are developing.  Engaging technology and science changes us in the engagement. This recognition of the power of the objects we work with (referred to as determinism within philosophy of technology) has been generally been resisted in CST as a limitation on our human freedom to determine the ends of technology. But Pope Francis seems willing to admit that technology doesn't always lead to freedom.

The Upshot

As I've written on Catholic social teaching, I've always been a bit torn. In many places, the popes have written beautiful words that speak to some of the deepest longings and greatest problems in the world today. Laudato Si' continues the best of those themes, even expanding them to connect with his broader vision of the cosmos. Communio et Progressio spoke eloquently of the goal of media and communication technology as ultimately being the full communion of human beings. That communion required knowledge of one another and interchange between persons around the globe. But that knowledge and interchange could only bring communion when it promoted authentic human development and increased the common good. Seeing Pope Francis integrate technology into a broader picture of liberation, development, and common good is fruitful and a helpful reminder that technology is not some separate sphere of our lives, but rather integral to who we are and, indeed, who we have always been.

Yet, Vatican thought on technology has also struck me on many occasions as both methodologically and practically naïve. (And I've not necessarily been shy about that complaint, presenting my critiques to folks from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.) It always felt a bit like the phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people": yes, that's true, but kind of misses some really, really big things.

This encyclical goes a long way to expanding the sophistication with which the Catholic tradition can engage in the process of understanding and assessing the many technologies we use today. If we are to say—as Francis very much did—that technology is to be celebrated, we need to understand exactly why we are celebrating it, and why we might hold off on celebrating at times. Like any other human endeavor, technology is fraught with the complexity that comes of our being people who are not merely spiritual, but embodied and social, aiming at development, but moving toward it in increments. Including the nature of our technologies and their complex relationships with society makes the job of assessing technology more complex. But it will also yield a more full understanding of what it means to use technology in a more human way.

In the end, then, I will need to do some work to update the reading list for Tech Ethics this Fall. But I have a feeling the gains we make will pay great dividends.

Editor’s note: This is a classic post reposted from 2014, by Beth Haile of blessed memory. Her reflections on solidarity and Peter’s leap of faith connect to immigration questions as they existed more than a decade ago - but the questions and concerns are all the more pressing for Catholics today. (Just a couple of many recent messages include the pope’s most recent plea on the Cueta refugees (You Tube), as well as a USCCB 2025 letter regarding migrants in the US.)

I just moved to Texas where the question of what to do the thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the border into our state looms large. More than 50,000 young people from Latin America have entered the US in the last year. This is no small feat. Many of them have traveled across the scorching desert in the intense summer heat, some perishing in the frontier due to lack of food and water. Drug gangs and traffickers have taken the lives of others. But the route seems worth it to those who leave behind a homeland ravished by violence and devastating poverty.

In Texas, we meet a lot of immigrants who have taken the same leap of faith as these young people, illegally crossing the border at the risk of their lives and livelihoods, in order to seek out something, anything better than what they leave behind. I spoke with a family where both parents were university graduates in good jobs with an infant son who simply could not continue to live in an area crippled by the violence of drug cartels. They saved up and paid a smuggler to get them across the border. Here in the US, they didn’t know the language. Since they had no papers, they couldn’t get a job suitable to their skill and education level. Finding housing was difficult. And of course, they can never return to Mexico to see the family they left behind. Now, eight years later, their kids are perfectly bilingual, well-educated in the bilingual schools here, and most importantly, safe. Money, while not abundant, is sufficient. Work is available. It is hard work: physical labor of any kind in the hot Texas summer is hard. But the work is steady. What was amazing was the faith they communicated in their story. “For a long time, I was angry at God,” the husband told me. “I could not see what he wanted from me, why he had made things so difficult. But I see now what God was doing. I see now that he was with me all the time. I see now that he was leading me.”

As I read the Psalm for this Sunday, I heard their story interwoven. “Justice shall walk before him, and prepare the way of his steps.” As I read the familiar gospel narrative of Jesus leaping out into the water after our Lord, I thought too of their leap of faith into the hands of a smuggler they did not know. And as I heard them describe how fervently they believed God had lead them here despite their inability for so many years to sense how God was present in their suffering and sacrifice, I thought of Elijah confronting God in the tiny whisper of his heart.

I have always been wary of reading scripture or doing theology primarily in light of one’s experience. I have always feared too much subjectivity in the conclusions of one who starts with experience. But here in Austin, I seem incapable of separating my experience of living and working and worshiping with my Latino brothers and sisters, many of them here illegally, from the way I reason that God is speaking and calling us to moral action. As a teacher, I told my students repeatedly that solidarity was not a “vague feeling of compassion” (Solicitude rei Socialis) but rather a recognition that all people are bound together “as members of a common family” in such a way that it becomes impossible for us “to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights” (Mater et Magistra). Now, I am learning solidarity from the broken English narratives of those people I live with, who would take extraordinary risks to give their family a chance here in this country.

When we look at Peter walking out onto the water, we need to be wary of overly-simplistic interpretations emphasizing the importance of having faith and its connection to success. Peter here is not the hero of the story. True, he follows Jesus out into the water while (presumably) the disciples cower in the boat. And true, Jesus rebukes him for losing faith, implying at least that had he kept the faith, he would have completed the trek across the waves successfully. The hero here though is Jesus, who stretches out his hand to Peter and guides him gently to safety. And it is in this action that I see the moral imperative of the story as it pertains to those trying desperately (and how desperate they are!) to enter this country illegally. The job of the Church and for those who are part of her body is to reach their hand out to those making such a leap of faith and guide them to safety.

In our local newspaper this weekend, a reverend wrote a letter to the editor arguing that the Church should be at the front of the battle in caring for the influx of recent immigrants into the country. He suggested that churches that host camps should cancel their remaining sessions and instead offer to house some of the children until they are placed elsewhere. He writes,

“These camps have living areas with bedding and dining and kitchen facilities. They also have space where children can be children without fear of gangs and death. Let’s see area churches be Christian!”

Here in this letter we have a taste of what solidarity demands of Christ’s disciples. It demands a commitment to the good of our brothers and sisters (and yes, they are our brothers and sisters) regardless of ways in which they came into this country and regardless of the immense political and legal challenge (and it is an immense challenge) about what should be done long-term. Dana Dillon suggested in the combox last week when Meghan wrote on this issue to donate to Catholic Charities for immigrant relief operations. This is another way of embracing solidarity from afar and emulating Christ’s compassionate rescue of Peter. The Church is in a unique place in that it can awaken a sense of solidarity from those who don’t yet have it. But what I have learned recently is that solidarity is perhaps best learned through experience, through actually living as brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends with those who need our help. After listening to our new friends tell their stories about coming into this country illegally, a dear friend of mine commented, “Deontologist that I am, if somebody came asking about them, I would lie, lie, lie.” And in that morally-compromised comment I think we see truly the power of solidarity and the difficulty of living it out. But live it out we must by reaching out a hand of Christ to help our brothers and sisters who would be lost in the storm otherwise.

I am grateful to my friend, Alessandro Rovati, for writing with me and for organizing this conversation about our article. Thank you to Megan Heeder, Xavier Montecel, Timothy O’Malley, and Catherine Yanko for your contributions. It has been a joy to talk with some of you in person about these things. I’m happy to extend the conversation here.

My contribution is organized according to Montecel’s important questions about our article. Montecel raises three concerns. First, he wonders how the Christian hypothesis interacts with the religious diversity of our classrooms. Second, he worries about the ungrading workload and the pressure it puts on professors. Finally, he warns that ungrading methods might aid and abet inequities for certain student populations.

1. The Christian Hypothesis and Religious Diversity

Montecel agrees that, if we want to be hospitable to difference, then we need to know who we are. We cannot pretend to be nobody. Each of us comes from a tradition that proposes a vision of the world. But is it reasonable to propose the Christian hypothesis when there are so many competing hypotheses in the contemporary classroom? Is there another starting point for a conversation composed of so many different voices? Heeder’s contribution is helpful here. She draws our attention to the personal nature of education. Teachers and students are not instruments in each other’s hands. Rather, we are persons encountering other persons.

Every semester, I realize again the difference ungrading has made to my personal presence in the classroom. I also encounter the difference it makes to my students’ personal presence. They are used to showing up to their coursework in a passive mode, ready to listen, take notes, study, and then regurgitate. Ungrading methods make this passive mode difficult. So, the students have to be the responsible agents they actually are. But this, in turn, means that I cannot give the same lectures I gave the last time I taught the course. Since I’m dealing with responsible agents, my pedagogy and I must be responsive in return. By illuminating the personal nature of education, ungrading makes it difficult to think I’ve ever mastered a course or that I can just roll in and do what I’ve always done. Instead, ungrading puts me in a position much closer to that of my students: the position of the beginner. I have taught the content before. But I have never taught these students before.

I’m a Benedictine, and Benedictines are self-consciously beginners. So, from my perspective, this posture or style of the beginner is essential in the classroom Montecel describes. When it comes to proposing the Christian hypothesis, students recognize the difference between someone who expects them to capitulate quickly to the hypothesis’s truth and beauty, and someone who is eager to listen to what they might say in response to the hypothesis. The former is not really interested in the risk of education while the latter is attempting to embody the fascination Rovati and I hope for. So, in a classroom composed of diverse perspectives, maintaining the posture or style of the beginner enables me to propose the Christian hypothesis in a way that encourages the students’ own proposals.

2. The Ungrading Workload

Montecel also voices a concern many critics and skeptics have regarding ungrading’s time- and energy-consumption. This question is even more poignant as teachers and students experiment with AI for the sake of greater efficiency at different points in the education process. This desire for efficiency is completely understandable. And it’s a matter of justice when we consider the vulnerable position of adjunct faculty, lecturers, and other teachers who may be overworked and underpaid.

Yanko’s comments provoked me in this regard. I read her contribution in light of Pope Francis’s 2020 New York Times op-ed, “A Crisis Reveals What is in our Hearts.” Francis says that the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to examine who we really are. And if we’re not careful, we will squander the opportunity the crisis presents. The use of AI in teaching and learning presents us with an analogous opportunity to examine who we really are as teachers and students. And what many of us have learned is that we are less interested in fostering the contemplative and festive culture O’Malley calls for, and more interested in getting stuff done. O’Malley rightly notes that ungrading methods in a few classes will not change the “frenetic” culture of higher education. To truly change the frenetic school, O’Malley urges Catholics to create contemplative and festive cultures where teachers and students have the freedom to slow down, savor the beauty of the educational encounter, delight in what we find in that encounter, and celebrate the gift of this way of life.

I appreciate the way ungrading methods can point us toward such a transformation. Grading-as-usual is too much like the dismal culture of the market: I will give you as little of X as you will accept so I can get as much of Y as I can get my hands on. The speed and efficiency of this sort of culture is, apparently, tantalizing. In school, it promises accurate measurement and quick results for both teachers and students. Add AI to this mix, and volunteering for ungrading’s time and effort seems quixotic. From the perspective of the market-grading culture, it makes sense to worry about increased time and effort when it comes to grading. And I will not lie: ungrading methods do require time and effort. Perhaps even “more” time and effort than conventional grading methods. But the “more” here is misleading. It’s more time and effort spent on education, not on the sort of grading many teachers find onerous. O’Malley insists that ungrading needs to exist within a larger culture of contemplation and festivity. I think that’s right. Such a culture would make the anxiety about ungrading’s workload a non-starter. To a teacher working in a contemplative and festive culture, ungrading is a part of pursuing the truth. It’s not an add-on to business as usual. It is an essential part of the teaching.

But even in the frenetic school culture most of us are familiar with, where the ungrading teacher usually works alone, a contemplative and festive culture in the teacher’s own classroom remains possible. This is a way of describing Yanko’s experience of navigating AI with the tools of ungrading. Though no method is perfect, Yanko rightly notes that ungrading works beautifully in our current crisis, where AI is exposing various deficiencies in teaching and learning. Ungrading works beautifully, however, only if we have the courage to do the difficult and risky work it requires. In my own pedagogy, I have begun to describe this hard work in explicitly virtuous terms. The inability and unwillingness to persevere in the pursuit of a difficult good has a name: cowardice. The advent of AI and the possibility of ungrading have clarified just how cowardly my students and I can be. To be sure, being cautious about the ungrading workload is not cowardice. It’s wisdom. But in my experience, mustering the courage to take on this challenge is transformative.

3. Ungrading and Inequity

Montecel notes that there are several populations that struggle with ungrading methods. Neurodivergence, economic precarity, and race and gender inequalities, for example, variously impact teachers’ and students’ ability to participate. But his point is even more precise. Some teachers and students are not free to choose the adventure of education Rovati and I describe. It’s not that they experiment with it and find that they don’t like it, or are too challenged by it. It’s that the exigencies of their lives prevent them from participating at all.

Montecel is right. The vision of education we describe in our article is fraught with risk, and not only the sort of risk that is rhetorically powerful for a couple of professors who want to challenge the status quo. It is also fraught with the risk that our commitments and our methods will be used to silence difference, promote injustice, and foster exclusion. But in my experience, the personal nature of ungrading makes it more likely that I will know about the students who are in these vulnerable positions. Not only that, but I will get to know them, not just as students who need accommodation X, but as responsible persons. I work regularly with students who need my course to be as conventional as possible. Ungrading provides us both with the tools we need to accommodate this need. Over time, I have become more explicit about this early in the semester. “If you need a typical grading method, we can accommodate that.” Those who need it are not left behind or made to feel inferior. They are, rather, empowered to make a choice, which is its own oblique introduction to taking responsibility for their education.

Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.

1. Trust that all will be well in the midst of social upheaval

“But Jesus, who in this vision had informed me of all that I needed, answered with these words saying: ‘Sin is necessary, but all shall be well. All shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well.’” (Julian of Norwich, Showings, chapter 27, long text).

Julian’s affirmation that “all will be well” carries profound hope, and even more so when we understand more about the social context in which she was writing. Elizabeth Ruth Obbard explains that Julian was born during a time of great suffering for the English people.

“Edward III was on the throne, and the Hundred Years War with France was in progress, taking its toll of men and money. The peasants were finding it increasingly difficult to make a living, and their frustration culminated in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when the leaders, having been promised a fair hearing, were ruthlessly put down by Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich. When Julian was 7, and again when she was 19 and 27, Norwich was visited by the dreaded Black Death, or bubonic plague. People died in droves, the first swellings of the disease in groin or armpit spreading quickly through the body, leading to death the same day. So many died that heaps of bodies would be collected by carts going around the city at night, the carters calling for people to bring out their dead to be buried in great common pits. It is calculated that over a third of the population of England died in outbreaks of bubonic plague.” (Through Julian’s Windows, 16-17).

War, corruption, political turmoil, poverty, disease, fear, and suffering—such was the context in which Julian wrote. Scan today’s headlines and we see more of the same: war, corruption, political turmoil, and disease lead to fear and profound suffering for so many around the globe.

In the face of such social change, Julian did not experience a call to political leadership and did not form a social movement to address the economic, social, and political crises of her day. Some may see this as a weakness, a failure to respond to the suffering around her. But the vocation she experienced was instead a call to solitary life as an anchoress. She lived in a modest cell attached to the south wall of St. Julian’s Church, and provided prayers and spiritual counsel to the local faithful and to pilgrims who journeyed to visit her. Julian’s room had three doors/windows: an interior view into the altar of St. Julian’s Church, through which she could join in liturgical prayer; an exterior window (some say chamber big enough to sit with visitors), through which she could talk with visitors and receive their gifts; and a third used by two female employees of the parish who brought her food and water and other necessities. The custom of the time was that in exchange for her prayers, lay patrons made donations to the church so that her daily needs would be met. As an anchoress and author, Julian modeled a life of contemplation in the midst of social upheaval.

2. Julian invites us to really see the suffering around us.

Her contemplation of Jesus’s passion and her retelling in gruesome details how Christ suffered is not meant in any way to glorify suffering but instead to face the reality of it. In chapter 17 she describes how she witnessed Jesus’s suffering, saying “the wounds opened wider and the body sagged for all its weight during the long time it was hanging there… the flesh clinging to the thorns as it dried and the thorns clinging to the drying flesh…” Then she recounts her reaction, saying “to see all these many pains of Christ filled me full of pain.” Contemplating the wounds of Christ led her to contemplate the anguish of his mother and friends who watched him suffer. In chapter 18, she writes of Mary’s pain, since “the more sorrow it is to the lover to see the body they love in pain.”

To ‘suffer with’ people in our own day requires a willingness to see the wounds of our world and to let ourselves grieve. It is important for modern readers to develop a capacity for paying attention to the horrors of war, profound greed, the evil of political corruption, realities of genocide, suffering of Ebola victims and their caregivers, fear of those fleeing fires, and all profound experiences of pain, loss, and evil require our attention. In her own work as a spiritual companion, Julian entered into the reality of her community’s suffering, hearing stories of family violence, illness, infertility, premature death, and more. As Julian takes these to prayer, she writes:

“There are evil deeds done that we know of, when such great harm is taken that it seems to us that it were impossible that they should ever come to a good end. And we look upon this with sorrow and mourning, so that we are unable to rest in the blessed contemplation of God as we ought.” (chapter 32)

Julian’s honest look at the reality of suffering does lead to “sorrow and mourning” but does not end with despair. Rather, she notes that the human capacity for understanding is too limited. Instead, in faith, Julian chooses to profess “the high, marvelous wisdom, the might and goodness of the blessed Trinity… For just as the blessed Trinity made all things from nothing, even so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.” (chapter 32). Here Julian holds together both honest commitment to truth-telling about evil and trust that evil does not have the last word; instead, love does.

3. God’s love is the key to Julian’s theology

When seeking to summarize the main take-away of her visions, she writes:

“Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Wherefore did he show it to you? For love.” (chapter 86).

Theologian Grace Jantzen suggests that an enduring lesson from Julian is that violence is not natural, normal, or part of God’s divine plan. Jantzen notes that too often in modern life, violence is taken for granted. Julian’s nonviolent theology offers another way forward, another “imaginary” in Jantzen’s language:

“It is urgent that there should be those who step back and ponder the mind-set and heart-hurt that is acted out in such violence, greed and destructiveness, the cultural symbolic of the West that if it continues to be acted out will certainly destroy the planet through pollution if not through warfare. Only as the deathly habitus is steadily recognized can there be any hope of finding ways of changing the imaginary which underlies it, subverting the preoccupations with death by healing the bitterness of heart and its violent expressions in social policy… Only if there are those who devote themselves to thinking otherwise, to finding other thoughts and values and ways of living them out can there be hope that they may find their way to a symbolic of natality and to the means by which it might be enacted… Part of what it means to be an anchoress in postmodernity must surely be voluntarily to enter a space—indeed to become a space—where thinking otherwise can happen; where creative responses to the deathly structures of modernity can be discerned.” (Jantzen, xx).

Note here the resonance between Julian’s nonviolence and Pope Leo’s call for a “disarming peace.” Julian’s revelations reassure the reader on their path towards trust in God in the midst of the chaotic suffering of the world. Julian looks forward to the day when “we are all in peace and love, that is to say wholly contented with God and with all his works and with all his judgments, and loving and content with ourselves and with our fellow Christians and with everything which God loves, as is pleasing to love. And God’s goodness does this in us.” (chapter 49).

Julian was a 14^th century contemplative, but her social world faced profound suffering, as ours does today. If one seeks to be a modern contemplative, Julian is a steady guide. The modern contemplative must be able to see the reality and enormity of suffering in our world, and at the same time to trust in God’s goodness. The modern contemplative turns towards, rather than away from, the needs of the world. The modern contemplative takes time to question cultural scripts that demand conformity to cruelty. The modern contemplative welcomes the opportunity to be a spiritual companion, and develops a capacity to listen with love. If people of faith are to reshape the climate of war, cruelty, indifference to human suffering that is so pervasive in US life in 2026, we need to cultivate spaces of nonviolence, of healing, of righting wrongs and social repair. Julian’s writings inspire towards those ends.

Mother Julian’s Cell, on the site of the original anchorhold, St. Julian’s Church, Norwich, England. Photo credit: Emily Reimer-Barry.

For Further Reading:

· Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, trans. John Skinner. Gracewing, 2004.

· Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Through Julian’s Windows. Canterbury, 2008.

· Rosemary Radford Ruether, Visionary Women: Three Medieval Mystics. Fortress, 2023.

· Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, new edition. SPCK Classics, 2011.

· Leo XIV, World Day of Peace Message: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/messages/peace/documents/20251208-messaggio-pace.html

· Website of the Julian Shrine:

https://www.julianshrine.org/

The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (La multiplication des pains) by James Tissot, between 1886-1894. Image is in the public domain, courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.

In today’s gospel passage from Matthew, we hear the familiar story of the feeding of the 5,000 or, as it is often called “the miracle of the loaves and fishes.” When we apply common sense, we know that five loaves and two fishes are not nearly enough food to feed 5,000 men, not counting women and children. Yet, somehow, even after all ate and were satisfied, there remained 12 wicker baskets full of scraps!

One popular interpretation of this miracle suggests that the people present actually had food with them, but were too stingy to share until Jesus’s disciples began distributing the loaves and fishes. The “miracle” in this case was that the selfish listeners were moved to generosity by Jesus’s generosity in feeding them. However, while such an account may seem compelling at first glance, it rather removes the miraculous aspect altogether. In other words, this interpretation moves to naturalize the supernatural, to explain away a miracle, to reduce Jesus’s ministry to one of ethical motivation.

Instead, what we find in this week’s readings is almost an opposite movement; we find that the natural is supernaturalized. Five loaves and two fishes were really present, but they became so much more when blessed by the hands of Jesus. They were sufficient to satisfy all present. Meager food became an abundance. The Church has traditionally seen in this a Eucharistic symbol, a foreshadowing of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, when the simple bread becomes the body, blood, soul, and divinity offered by Jesus through his passion, death, and resurrection. Meager natural food becomes supernatural abundance.

We see this also indicated in the first reading from Isaiah, again showing the abundance of God and God’s desire to satisfy us, not simply meeting our physical human needs of thirst and hunger, but rather the greater human need for life – eternal life – for which our natural needs provide a metaphor. We are more than our physical body and its natural needs; we are body and soul with a supernatural hunger and thirst that can only be satisfied by God. As the psalm response proclaims: “He answers all our needs” (Ps. 145:16).

We are called to be part of this body of Christ, this Kingdom of God. We see that after Jesus blessed the loaves and fishes, he gave them to his disciples to distribute. This work of distributing the food was their task, their human work, done at his command, and done for his glory. And Jesus made so much more out of their work than they could have on their own; he took their natural efforts and made them supernatural. A simple act became a miracle.

Jesus wants to do this for us as well. Paul asks, “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35). Regardless of the challenges we face, “In all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). When we are united to him, when we do his command, when we offer our work for him and love as he loved, our simple acts can become miracles. Our natural efforts will have supernatural impact because we, too, are sharers in his mission.

As we begin the month of August and continue to march along the weeks of Ordinary time, this is a welcome reminder to pull us from the ruts of the everyday demands of life. We are made for more because we are more than our natural, physical needs and tasks, and only God can satisfy the yearning that we feel within our hearts. And when we acknowledge this and place ourselves at his service, we will find that we become more than we ever thought possible.

In “From Grief to Grace: An Ethics of Love for Institutions Responding to Perinatal Loss,” Thana de Campos-Rudinsky provides a powerful reflection on the institutional changes required in healthcare to better meet the needs of those facing perinatal loss. Campos-Rudinsky shares her own experience of grief and perinatal loss, describing what it reveals about larger issues relating to supporting parents. As a corrective response, she offers an institutional ethic of love. Campos-Rudinsky’s primary concern is to support the journey from grief to grace: “Grace, then, is not the erasure of sorrow but its transformation within a community of care. It is what becomes possible when institutions are animated by love, and when love takes form as shared responsibility for one another’s dignity and flourishing.”

Campos-Rudinsky starts by defining three terms that are deeply related to grief: loneliness, hope, and love. Perinatal loss, as Campos-Rudinsky explains, is often hidden and lonely. She defines loneliness as “a specific form of suffering marked by a profound lack of connectedness—not merely the absence of social contact, but the absence of true belonging grounded in mutual care.” In my own experience, the grief of perinatal loss is compounded by loneliness and isolation because many people don’t openly talk about it and because it has received little attention in theological scholarship. As Campos-Rudinsky explains, “The most fundamental way to counter loneliness is not through efficiency or technical competence, but through love—understood as attentive accompaniment.” By sharing her story, Campos-Rudinsky brings her experience into view and takes the first step toward dismantling loneliness, inviting others to share their stories and to be part of others’ stories.

The power of shared storytelling and story-holding is beautifully expressed in a recent essay, “Losing: A Personal History,” written by my friend Rachel Teubner, who describes the pain of multiple miscarriages: “It was a terrible grief, one that joined me to so many parents and that joins them to me still.” When I ran into Teubner shortly after the piece was published, I hugged her and shared my miscarriage story, feeling comfortable to name the pain that “joins” us. She told me that many acquaintances and friends have reached out to her since writing the piece, thanking her and sharing their stories. Through these exchanges, the loneliness around perinatal loss begins to lift as what was once hidden comes into view, one disclosure, hug, or text message at a time.

Assessing how the hospital fell short in attending to her needs (and the needs of others), Campos-Rudinsky develops “three interdependent pillars of the framework of Ethics of Love for Institutions:”

1. intentional presence: presence that is both committed and nonassuming, allowing space for both solitude and accompaniment;

2. sensible care: care that is both universal and personal, allowing reasonable flexibility within protocols to meet each family’s unique needs; and

3. communal responsibility: responsibility that is both shared and differentiated, fostering collaborative decision-making grounded in the complementarity of expertise between families and providers.

These are beautiful guidelines for how to offer compassionate and loving care, and their power becomes clear when they are embodied in practice. They seem to closely mirror the kind of care Jenny Mohler, my former Jesuit Volunteer Corps manager, received while navigating the diagnosis of thanatophoric dysplasia when she was 19 weeks pregnant with her second child, as chronicled in the Baltimore Sun. Thanatophoric dysplasia is a rare genetic disorder in which the ribs don’t grow properly and obstruct the heart and lungs. The diagnosis meant Mohler’s baby would be stillborn or die shortly after birth. Mohler and her family received support from a social worker at Gilchrist Kids, a perinatal hospice unit within a local hospice. The hospice care she received seems to embody the loving response Campos-Rudinsky rightly argues should be available to all: “Love means being wholeheartedly there for the one who suffers, without assuming a paternalistic posture that overpowers her agency.”

The preparation Mohler received from Gilchrist Kids allowed her and her family to move toward grace through care that was aligned with the pillars Campos-Rudinsky proposes. Mohler was met with “intentional presence,” especially by the Gilchrist social worker who saw Mohler and her family periodically, encouraging them to bond with the baby and make memories in utero. Mohler received the “sensible care” Campos-Rudinsky speaks of and was empowered to make decisions about labor and delivery and to exercise agency over the time spent with the baby during his short life. And Mohler was part of a care team that took “communal responsibility,” working closely with Mohler and the social worker. The baby, Joseph Angelo Mohler, lived for one hour during which he was baptized, and the Mohlers had time to take photos with family and the social worker and to make molds of the baby’s feet and hands. Of that day, Mohler says, “December 13th was an amazingly grace-filled and peaceful day full of love. Because we had good care and we were prepared, the hour we spent with our son was truly one of the most beautiful and meaningful of my life.”

My own experience of perinatal loss reveals structural issues and a reliance on community support, similar to what Campos-Rudinsky describes. This, along with her interview and focus group work, should confirm Campos-Rudinsky’s sense that her experience is both particular to her and also indicative of issues that require a structural response to ensure good and universal care. My miscarriage was found during a regular ultrasound when my husband was abroad. I had to resist the paternalism Campos-Rudinsky speaks of, firmly letting the care team know that I would be waiting for my husband and only making plans until after we could return together to confirm there was no heartbeat. Outside of the hospital system, I found intentional presence. In my case, from our parish priest who prayed for me over breakfast and made me eggs and toast, from my mom who flew in from out-of-state to be with me while my husband made the trek home, and from friends who called or sent cards. Communal decision-making spread beyond the hospital to the local cemetery our priest connected us with that organized the burial of the remains. After the burial, I bought a charm in honor of the baby for a bracelet that I wear regularly. While I found loving care outside the hospital system, Campos-Rudinsky challenges healthcare institutions to assume responsibility for providing such care.

Campos-Rudinsky deserved better care, and I admire her efforts to work for those who are coming after her. I agree that her suggested pillars offer a profound and necessary institutional response to meeting the needs of those facing perinatal loss. I do wonder, however, whether love is a tall order for a central ethic in medicine, and I don’t know whether it is fitting for all aspects of healthcare. But that just makes me want to read Campos-Rudinsky’s new book more, as I am sure it will be, like her article, thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.

This is the first sentence from “Humanity at the Threshold: A Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons” adopted by the participants of the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on July 16^th at the Senatorial Palace on Capitoline Hill near the Colosseum in Rome. Hosted by the Vatican on July 14-15^th at Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo, approximately 200 persons – including Nobel Laureates, AI experts (including Google DeepMind, Aaru, and Anthropic), former heads of state, Vatican officials, religious leaders, and scholars (including myself) – listened to panel presentations during eight sessions and engaged one another during two working group sessions. There were ten working groups, and I was assigned to the one on “Faith Traditions and the Moral Imagination of Peace.”

When nuclear weapons were first being developed, the world had a chance to avoid living in a permanent dynamic of fear. We failed, and as a result, humanity has lived at the edge of nuclear annihilation.

That sentence from the Declaration rekindled a memory for me of feeling such fear in 1983, the year I graduated high school. Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and Mikhail Gorbachev would soon become leader of the Soviet Union. There were over 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled by a dozen or so nations, with around 90% of them belonging to the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Between 1981 and 1984, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists adjusted its Doomsday Clock from 4 minutes to 3 minutes before midnight.

In 1983, moreover, two films captured my attention: The Day After imagined what a nuclear apocalypse would look like, and War Games raised concern about supercomputers, hacking, and a false alert that nearly caused a nuclear exchange and World War III. In addition, MTV aired music videos referring to the threat of nuclear war, including Nena’s “99 Luftballons” (1983), U2’s “Seconds” (1983), Men at Work’s “It’s a Mistake” (1983), and The Call’s “The Walls Came Down” (1983). Some of my peers despaired, “Why plan for the future when everything’s going to be blown to bits by nuclear war anyway?” Others of us tried to do something about it, becoming part of the “nuclear freeze generation.”

As bishops and pastors ministering in one of the major nuclear nations, we have encountered this terror in the minds and hearts of our people - indeed, we share it. We write this letter because we agree that the world is at a moment of crisis, the effects of which are evident in people’s lives.

These words are also from 1983, at the beginning of the United States Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, which sought both “to help Catholics inform their consciences” and “to make a contribution to the wider public debate in our country on the dangers and dilemmas of the nuclear age.” This “landmark” document stimulated much discussion, debate, and study at the time, and I believe it provided a moral boost to efforts to reduce the nuclear threat.

Indeed, with the end of the Cold War, the lowering of the Iron Curtain, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the Doomsday Clock moved in 1991 to 17 minutes to midnight, the most minutes since the United States dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki in 1945, killing between 110,000 to 210,000 people.

More than eighty years after the dawn of the nuclear age, and at the threshold of the age of artificial intelligence, we are presented with an unprecedented challenge.

These words from the Declaration bring us back to the present. Although the number of nuclear warheads possessed by the world’s nine nuclear powers has declined to approximately 12,000, the most destructive thermonuclear weapon today is 80 times more destructive than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Even the “low yield” weapons, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “are specifically designed to be more usable, increasing the likelihood they may actually be used.”

Additionally, given recent interrelated developments – geopolitical changes, especially with the U.S., Russia, and China; a disregard for and erosion of the force of international law; and what Pope Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas calls the “normalization of war” (no. 189-192) and the use of “force without limits” (no. 193-196) – and we find ourselves in 2026 with the Doomsday Clock now “at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.”

In the midst of a worsening nuclear arms race, we are embarking on an equally dangerous AI race.

In the sentence that follows this one, the Declaration refers to Pope Leo’s call in Magnifica Humanitas for an “unarmed and disarming peace” (no. 228). In the encyclical, the Holy Father also addresses the dangers posed by AI and conventional weapons (no. 197-200), as well as “the threat posed by weapons capable of destroying all of humanity” due to “a new arms race, which is hard to control and accompanied by the gradual dismantling of nuclear reduction agreements” (no. 194).

Image courtesy of the author

During the Assembly, we asked hard questions related to the pope’s concern about “the growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control” (no. 197). Guard rails, principles, and the “concrete criteria for discernment” (no. 199) were also frequently addressed. In my working group, we noted that while these are necessary, they are insufficient because there is also the need for moral education and formation in the virtues.

Although there were differences of opinion, the resulting Declaration was a consensus statement, adopting six principles rooted in “our shared responsibility toward present and future generations”:

1. Disarming the next arms race: “We must disarm the next arms race, both AI and nuclear, before they define the next century as well.”

2. Responsible development: “AI developers should transparently publish the principles that guide the behavior of their models and be held responsible and liable for those models’ adherence to such principles.”

3. Responsible use of AI: “We call for the adoption of an international treaty prohibiting the reckless integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command, control, and launch systems so that meaningful human control is maintained.”

4. Responsible governance: “We call for expanded research and dialogue to propose new institutional pathways for international governance of AI.”

5. Responsible leadership: “We recognize that the challenges we face will likely be solved by the next generation of leaders.”

6. Nuclear disarmament: “Nuclear nations must promote policies and doctrines that diminish the role of nuclear weapons, and reduce the likelihood of first use and catastrophic war.”

For more on each of these principles, I invite readers to turn their attention to the Declaration itself. Here I will only add a word about the fifth principle, because it echoes, to a little extent, input from my working group.

Young people must be empowered to engage with nuclear, AI, and other potentially catastrophic threats, through education, mentorship, intergenerational partnership, and inclusive participation across all regions, cultures, and communities. We must advance education initiatives that foster ethical responsibility, critical thinking, media and AI literacy, and a culture of peace.

During our working group’s meetings, Rabbi David Rosen reminded us that we cannot assume that human control is necessarily good either. We are fallible and we can choose not only to do what is morally right but what is morally wrong. On this I added the need for moral formation since the fostering of ethical responsibility and the building of a culture of peace, or the “civilization of love” that Magnifica Humanitas promotes (no. 185), requires more than principles, criteria, and guardrails.

It is not our intent to play on fears, however, but to speak words of hope and encouragement in time of fear.

In 1983, the U.S. bishops wrote these words, and forty-three years later they were on my mind during the Assembly. To be sure, some of the speakers inspired hope, such as the Filipino American Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa who one of two speakers receiving a standing ovation after their address (the other was Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi). But there also were dire warnings given by others that did not dissipate the fear. David Gross, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, more than once spoke to the young persons in attendance, saying, “If young people were informed of the current danger … they would again be marching in the streets.”

I confess that what Professor Gross and others shared about the magnitude of the danger posed by nuclear weapons, compounded by AI, left me feeling not very optimistic about the present and the future. Yet, on the other hand, I met several young students from the University of Notre Dame’s Catholic Peacebuilding Studies program, directed by Gerard Powers who was also a participant in the Assembly (while I’m at it, I recommend the program’s Project on Revitalizing Catholic Engagement on Nuclear Disarmament). While I would emphasize the intergenerational partnership in the fifth principle, the serious engagement of these young people inspired hope. Others there did so, too. That so many persons from so many places and with so many perspectives gathered together to address the current danger we face also gave me hope. Of course, hope is not the same as optimism, but it can save us from despair.

Indeed, hope is mentioned in Magnifica Humanitas many times, including in its final paragraph: “let us become ‘weavers of hope’ in our world, sharing who we are and what we have, so that the presence of Jesus may grow among us and his Kingdom take shape” (no. 245).

Editor’s note: This classic lectionary post on this Sunday’s readings reminds us that to live God’s commandments is to seek wisdom - which is, perhaps, the Hidden Treasure in the field, or the Great Pearl Jesus wants us to seek?

In the first reading, in response to God wanting to give him a gift, Solomon asks for “an understanding heart” and not for “a long life,” “riches” or the lives of his enemies. He asks not for a gift that benefits his own self—life, wealth, or safety—but for the ability to guide God’s “vast people” well. God seems surprised, saying “that there has never been anyone like” Solomon. Perhaps too, we are surprised by a ruler who would value other people over self.

Psalm 119 is a praise of God’s commands. Command has a military connotation, of a general leading troops to battle. Hence, the psalm initially can sound like a praise for God the Authority bossing people around. A more attentive reading reveals that the law leads to kindness and compassion. God’s law is “wonderful”, “sheds light,” and gives “understanding to the simple.” In other words, God’s command is wisdom. It is what Solomon asked for: light and understanding so that all people might live well.

The reading from Matthew’s gospel adds to this understanding of wisdom. The reading begins with the willingness to give everything for the kingdom of God. The person “sells all” to buy “a treasure buried in a field,” and the merchant “sells all” to buy “a pearl of great price.” The end of the reading seems to be in tension with the beginning though. Instead of selling the old, the scribe who is “instructed in the kingdom of heaven . . . . brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” This scribe doesn’t get rid of the old but saves it and unites it with the new.

Putting the two parts of this reading together indicates that, while God is worth more than everything, loving God does not mean rejecting everything. Instead, loving God leads to bringing all things—the old and the new—together. The kingdom of God is not a kingdom where one’s good is in competition with the good of another but where one’s good is dependent upon the good of another. Solomon’s wisdom perfects him but also serves all of Israel. Jesus does not say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and abandon everything else.” Rather, Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)

As simple as this might sound, it is very difficult to live out. We are asked to love God above all else, with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Instead, we find ourselves pursing fame, fortune, and power. We do so not because these are evil but because they are great goods. The desire to belong (fame), the desire for security (fortune), and the desire to do what we think is good and right (power) are all important desires. We need them. We need relationships, security, and self-determination.

The problem is that we often pursue these goods apart from God. We value our group of friends more than anything else, demanding loyalty from those around us regardless of what is true or just. We pursue security more than anything else, closing ourselves from those around us, the neighbor, the stranger, and the enemy. We pursue self-determination more than anything else, acting without regard to our impact on others.

Paul’s letter to the Romans indicates that the path to these goods, the goods we need to live, is to first pursue the wisdom for which Solomon asked, God’s commands, the pearl of great price. Paul doesn’t use these words though. Instead, Paul says that this pursuit is about being conformed to Jesus Christ. Only a Christ like life, one animated by love of God and neighbor, enables fame, fortune, and power to serve wisdom and so serve all people. If we do, Paul reminds us that “all things work for good for those who love God.”

Today, we read the story of Mary of Magdala, John 20: 1-2, 11-18 and celebrate her feast day. Pope Francis elevated her longstanding memorial in the Catholic liturgical calendar to a feast day ten years ago, in 2016, a significant move that places her in a category with only a few other saints and challenges Catholics to remember and celebrate her anew..

In popular Catholic culture, one can find references to Mary Magdalene as the patron saint of repentant sinners, converts, perfumers, pharmacists, tanners, hair dressers, glove makers, and prostitutes.

Even today, some Catholic sources continue to promote the erroneous interpretation (first put forth by Pope Gregory the Great in 591, conflating different biblical texts) that Mary Magdalene “was known to be a ‘great sinner,’ a woman of the streets who heard Jesus speak of the mercy and forgiveness of God and changed her life completely.”

Thankfully, the new preface written for her feast day uses the title “Apostle to the Apostles” given to her by St. Thomas Aquinas and lifts up the significance of her role in ensuring “that the good news of new life might reach the ends of the earth.”

No scriptural text names Mary as a prostitute, an adulteress, or a sinner. In Luke’s gospel (8:1-3), we learn that “seven demons” were called out of her. Most likely this means that she suffered from some crippling illness—mental or physical—and was healed by Jesus. Then she, with other women, accompanied and supported Jesus as he traveled and preached. She seems to have been a woman of some prominence (as “of Magdala” suggests), an important figure in the early Christian movement.

Today’s gospel is the second half of John’s account of Mary Magdalene, a part never heard by most Catholics who do not attend weekday liturgies, which may contribute to mis-remembering. The gospels disagree on a lot about what happened after the Resurrection. But they agree that women were the first to see the risen Jesus and Mary Magdalene was there, though in Mark and John she is alone while in the synoptics she is among women. Mary’s prominence in the early Christian movement seems to point to her alone with Jesus as the original story.

In the story,there are three key moments that might help us remember her.

She Weeps. She Encounters. She Preaches.

Mary weeps.

Her first thought on seeing the empty tomb is, “They have taken his body.” This is why we find her weeping. Despite what might be inferred from the first reading from the Song of Songs, her tears signal more than passion. Confronted with the empty tomb, Mary draws a reasonable conclusion, out of clear recognition of who Jesus was—a prophet who stirred up the people, ate with tax collectors and sinners, preached good news to the poor and woe to the rich, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (countering the pageantry and logic of empire), angered the political authorities, and was sentenced to die a humiliating death on a cross.

Mary of Magdala has good reason to think Jesus’ enemies had taken the body, that she had lost the teacher she loved, and she weeps outside his empty tomb.

Early in his papacy, Pope Francis preached in Lampedusa, “We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – suffering with others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! … let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts”

We can remember Mary by weeping, by being present to the suffering of Christ and that of the “crucified peoples” today.

Mary encounters.

When Mary encounters Jesus, after he calls her name, she recognizes him. In telling her, “Don’t hold onto me,” he isn’t rejecting an embrace. Rather he is inviting her to not to hold onto the way she is used to seeing him (Rabbi, Teacher). Instead, he tells her that he will ascend to God—the God that he and she both know so well--and remain there. He is not dead but remains, not within physical reach but still available to her and to all who believe.

This encounter moves Mary beyond her despair to hope and allows her to live into what she is called to do.

We can remember Mary by encountering Jesus-- in prayer, in loved ones, in strangers, in our opponents, and in the poor. We can strive to contribute to the creation of a culture of encounter in a world torn apart by divisions, and by allowing encounter to transform us.

Mary preaches.

Transformed by encounter, Mary announces the gospel. Improbably, and yet almost certainly, because the early Christians would not make this up, a woman is first to preach the good news, to tell what she has seen and what she has been told. Some gospel accounts tell us this didn’t go well, that Mary and the other women were not believed (Lk 24:8-11).

In the Gospel of Mary, there is a scene where Mary is teaching and Peter interrupts. “Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her?” Mary responds, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Then Levi interrupts, “Peter, you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you, indeed, to reject her?”

Though this conversation may be historical, it is more likely crafted to capture the debate over female visionaries and leaders in the early Christian movement.

Mary preached and it bothered people.

Today, Pope Leo continues in the tradition of Jesus and Mary of Magdala, preaching the truth, even when it makes people uncomfortable. On July 4, 2026, he returned to Lampedusa, and, as the United States celebrated 250 years, called the U.S. to honor its heritage by continuing to welcome the immigrants whose sacrifices and hard work have been crucial to its success.

On Mary of Magdala’s Feast Day, we can honor her by remembering her as a disciple of Jesus and Apostle to the Apostles, who wept, encountered, and preached. One of the most significant Catholic saints, she accompanies us even now, calling us to be transformed as she was.

Editor’s Note: This post is a part of a series of responses to the special issue Women at the Synod on Synodality curated by Alessandro Rovati, the Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Theology

Reading this timely and thoughtful special issue as a historian of Catholicism over the longue durée, I picked up on Catherine Clifford’s characterizations of both the Second Vatican Council and the Synod on Synodality as “historic” with respect to conversations they have opened, and some structural changes they have engendered, respecting women’s participation in high levels of ecclesial deliberation and decision-making. Although I am not an activist pushing for specific roles for women in today’s Church, I also find myself agreeing with Clifford and other contributors to this volume who believe that the Synod, with its inclusion of women as full voting members, represents important but only modest change from earlier, pre-conciliar norms in this area.

However, I differ on the whole with the contributors to the special issue in that I do not believe Vatican II itself was a great conceptual watershed where women’s participation in Church governance is concerned. Indeed, I propose that Catholic scholarly conversations broadly related to this topic should become grounded in greater attention to the more than fifteen centuries of often robust exercise of power within and over the Church—power that was, furthermore, regularly supported by papal judgments and other authoritative instruments of ecclesial law.

For example, from the late Roman era through the eighteenth century, Christian empresses, queens regnant, regents, and many other politically and socially powerful women directed high-level ecclesial affairs often with explicit affirmation from popes and other ranking churchmen. Empress St. Pulcheria participated in the Council of Chalcedon and was thanked profusely by Pope St. Leo the Great for employing her God-given power to discipline Nestorian and Eutychian heretics—some of them bishops. Empress Irene of Athens, with the blessings of Pope Adrian I, who stayed home in Rome, and while standing alongside a Patriarch of Constantinople whom she had selected for priestly ordination and then appointed to his high office, convoked and gave legal force to the Second Council of Nicaea. Poland’s late-medieval monarch, St. Jadwiga, chose bishops and established the Diocese of Vilnius—actions that were ratified by Rome after the fact. Queen Isabella of Castile appointed numerous bishops with authorization from three successive popes. Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, ensured that the norms of the Council of Trent were implemented by the bishops in her domains and protected Jesuits, Capuchins, and other new orders critical to the success of the Catholic Reformation. Closer to our own time, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria lawfully appointed bishops, regulated seminary curricula, regulated and at times suppressed religious congregations, and determined which feast days would be celebrated in various dioceses—all of this while recognized formally by Rome as Regina Apostolica, a title of great ecclesiastical stature.

Such examples of ecclesially powerful, not just secularly powerful, ruling women of Christendom abound in the records of the Church’s past. We find them across diverse epochs, geographies, and social and political contexts of the Church’s development. Yet this category of leaderly women, despite numbering saints and blesseds among them, is entirely absent from the list of leaderly women of the Church’s past that was presented to us by Vatican officials in the Synod’s Study Group 5 report on women’s participation in the life and leadership of the Church that appeared this past March.

Although synodal discussions have been relatively more attentive to the legacy of territorial abbesses of past times, the Study Group 5 report and various other synodal documents and surrounding conversations misleadingly characterize their power as de facto, not de jure. Yet for centuries, not just in earlier medieval times as is sometimes asserted, certain women consecrated as abbesses had quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over both male and female religious communities and, in some cases, over parish churches. Furthermore, they were typically affirmed in this authority by a mix of papal judgments, affirmations by other leading churchmen, and decisions by sacrally-anointed lay rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France. In medieval and early modern times, abbesses in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and other lands safeguarded their rights of governance against efforts by bishops to usurp them. These rights, often acknowledged in binding papal decrees and ecclesiastical court rulings, at times included participating actively in local ecclesiastical synods, convoking some synods, holding ecclesiastical courts of their own, choosing men who would be ordained, and disciplining wayward clergymen—even to the point of dismissal from curacies and other pastoral benefices.

Ironically, while the synodal Study Group 5 report reduced all of this to “de facto authority,” it was precisely the opposite—abbesses’ de jure authority on the books, but no longer always de facto or actually exercised ecclesial power—that survived the longest into the nineteenth century. Maria Kunigunde of Saxony, as Princess-Abbess of Essen and Thorn, possessed formal rights to sit alongside bishops in synods and to appoint and discipline parish clergymen in her domains specifically as a Princess-Abbess of the Church, not just as a Princess-Abbess of the Holy Roman Empire. She was furthermore recognized in that ecclesiastical dignity and rank by the Pope, in the same way that various Princes of the Church remained recognized as such by Rome even after losing their traditional secular political power, once the revolutionary secularization of her domains by Prussian troops allied with Napoleon was accomplished in 1802.

More striking still, María del Pilar Ugarte y Cortés, the last Abbess of the famous royal monastery at Las Huelgas in Spain, was recognized formally in Rome as a “regular prelate” of the Church, with jurisdictional rights in her domains equal to those of bishops (“secular prelates”) in theirs. Her domains remained independent of any diocese until 1874. These de jure rights were suppressed long after Spain’s bishops had ensured they were no longer exercised in practice. That was during the Bourbon era in Spain when the bishops—as was true in the Holy Roman Empire, France, and other regimes in the eighteenth century—had collaborated with royal authorities to suppress in fact if not always yet in law many ancient monastic privileges as well as ecclesial governance privileges long affirmed by popes, councils, ecclesiastical courts, and royal courts on behalf of a variety of non-episcopal and even non-clerical actors.

Considering the fifteen-century-long tapestry of such neglected yet well-established facts of Church history where women’s steady, if circumscribed and politically embodied, participation in ecclesial governance is concerned, I struggle to see what was so historic, after all, about the inclusion of several handpicked women as listening-only attendees of the Second Vatican Council. I also struggle to see what is progressive, let alone radical, about allowing larger groups of episcopally-vetted women to serve as voting members in a synodal process that, despite its grass-roots elements, has been from its beginning to its present moment highly orchestrated by ranking clerical authorities. Finally, I struggle to see what is radical, let alone a threat—as some conservative Catholic voices characterize it—to the supposedly deeply traditional governing rights of the clergy per se within and over the Church, in Pope Francis’ and Pope Leo XIV’s recent appointments of women to positions in a curial bureaucracy over which the Pope is, of course, the supreme authority.

In short, I agree with the contributors to the special issue that the recently commenced synodal conversations about women, ecclesial leadership, and especially ecclesial governance are a modest beginning of something. I see that something, however, not as a fulfillment of a vision first articulated or gestured at in a serious way in the 1960s, but rather as a recovery of a much deeper, multifaceted, and deeply Catholic tradition of both lay and women’s ecclesial governance that has been with us for generations but neglected in dusty, dark corners of the Church’s attic, so to speak. Because of its associations with historical political and social structures that Catholics of the last century or so have been taught to view as illiberal, overly patriarchal museum pieces, it is tempting to continue neglecting it. Thankfully, however, the recent Synod on Synodality, despite its documents’ limitations in this area, is prompting a great deal of fresh ecclesiological thinking and open-minded revisiting of the Church’s long and rich experience in many temporal as well as global contexts. I am therefore confident that the numerous ecclesially governing women of the Church’s deeper past—saints, blesseds, and otherwise—will be ever more welcome at the table as our synodal conversations continue.

Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.

One gift of Vatican II was the articulation of the priesthood of all believers, including the laity: “the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity” (Lumen Gentium 10).

Clearly we see that the Church envisions the Mass as crucial for living the Christian life for the laity; the moral life is rooted in and finds its apex in the Eucharist, and thus those who care about moral theology should also care about the Mass and the faithful’s ability to participate in and benefit from the Mass. Catholic parents, of course, are included among the faithful, and one aspect that can be deeply challenging to the laity is attending Mass with their young children.

As a mother of seven children ages 20 to 6, I experienced approximately 16 years of having young children at Sunday Mass with me, bringing along various associated challenges: getting to Mass on time in appropriate clothing with needed supplies, changing diapers or dealing with potty-training toddlers during Mass, retrieving dropped baby toys, nursing hungry infants, and above all trying to keep children (mostly) quiet when they preferred to cry, squabble with siblings, or go home. From pretending to be bears huddling in winter coat “caves” to loudly proclaiming “ALL DONE MASS” during communion, my children provided many instances of mortification. My husband and I often found ourselves retreating to the vestibule when the noise level was problematic to others (or ourselves!), and there were many times I left Mass feeling like it had been more of a blur than the summit of my Christian life.

Photo courtesy of and property of the author

Though such moments were difficult, I was committed to Sunday Mass and thus willing to endure the challenges, including accusatory or belittling glares from our brothers and sisters in Christ who preferred a quieter Mass. Once after an especially onerous Mass with my young children, my non-Catholic brother asked me, “How was Mass?” Still feeling my cortisol levels high, I could only say, “Hey, Jesus was there in the Eucharist so that was good.” Indeed, we need to emphasize that regardless of our children’s behavior, attending Mass will always be worthwhile precisely because the value does not depend on our children’s behavior.

At various times, however, I had conversations with fellow parents who simply had opted out of Mass due to the difficulty of taking young children. Their explanations indicated the stress of the situation: “I don’t get anything out of the Mass with all the distraction.” “I just leave feeling angry with my kids.” “Everyone seems annoyed with us.” “It’s just too hard at this active age.” And finally, “The service is just too long to keep my children quiet.”

If we take seriously the importance of the Mass for Christian life, we need to consider such struggles of parents. Within the context of parish life, we can all be welcoming to families with young children and tolerant of the noise and chaos they may bring. An encouraging smile, rather than an obnoxious stare, can make all the difference for stressed Catholic parents making the heroic effort to get their young children to Mass.

However, the one easiest way a parish can be pro-family is simply this: a short homily. An experienced pastor once explained to me that five minutes (or less) was the optimal length for a homily. Such a length is brief enough to hold the attention of the faithful and allow them to remember one main point. Liturgically, the homily is important and ordinarily obligatory for a Sunday Mass, but it is not the equivalent of a Protestant sermon that might be the crux of the service. For Catholics, the homily rather points from the Scripture readings to the Eucharist, the Word made Flesh that comes to us body and blood, soul and divinity, in the Eucharist.

As a parent, I appreciated this prescription of a brief homily length because I so often found myself actively parenting through an extensive homily, not only unable to hear or to digest any of the content, but also fatigued by the effort of placating my children or surviving the exile in the back of the church with all the other hapless parents and frenetic children. In such cases, I found a similar pattern, which was that by the time of the Liturgy of the Eucharist – precisely in the midst of the Eucharistic prayer and consecration when I most wanted their peace and quiet – my children were absolutely unmanageable.

By contrast, with the pastor who kept his homily to five minutes or less, there was minimal struggle through the transition between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and my children were better able to focus and remain quieter during the Eucharistic prayer. While Jesus was present in the Eucharist at both the longer and shorter services, the experience was much more meaningful when the Mass was between 50 and 60 minutes; parents and kids alike were able to be more focused and end up less frustrated at the conclusion of Mass. We can see how parents attending a parish with brief homilies and services lasting less than an hour would be more likely to be consistent in their Mass attendance.

Of course, among the faithful are also many who do not have young children in attendance with them, and perhaps they could benefit from deeper, more extensive reflections on the Sunday Mass readings. Some parents, also, might appreciate the same. Fortunately, there are many who offer such lectionary commentaries, including this very Catholic Moral Theology Substack.

When it comes to Sunday Mass, however, a short homily may make all the difference for providing a welcoming environment for families that allows parents to be fully aware and actively engaged in the Mass, as is directed in Sacrosanctum Concilium:

But in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain. Pastors of souls must therefore realize that, when the liturgy is celebrated, something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration; it is their duty also to ensure that the faithful take part fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite, and enriched by its effects (Sacrosanctum Concilium 11).

Picture: The Moschella/Cloutier garden, as of July 13th

It’s in fact typical that Jesus’ parables have a pretty sharp edge to them. Sometimes, these edges are challenging, but not in a way that defies logic. The prodigal son story may seem to create some “moral hazard” problems, especially in a family-centric society, but placed within the context in which the parable is actually offered - the gathering of sinners and tax collectors around Jesus, rather than the Pharisees - we can see the logic of the story. Besides, the younger son does have to return and acknowledge his terrible actions, and the older son is assured that he is still the heir! Similarly, the Good Samaritan story is offered as a response to the rabbinic question, “who is my neighbor?”, and it clearly suggests the answer is the one whom we meet who is really in need of help. This is a lesson that we certainly don’t always practice, but plenty of parents routinely do this in paying attention to their children, and in reality, many of us are apt to come to the aid of our neighbors, even strangers, who’ve suffered a disaster. Our scope is often not broad enough, to be sure. But the parable’s logic does fit reality, insofar as we recognize the great benefits of a society where we come to the aid of those in trouble, regardless of other considerations.

But this wheat and tares thing just seems… wrong. That’s not how reality seems to work on any level. Perhaps this is a matter of exactly what Jesus states in last week’s gospel, that those of us who do not understand are blind to the reality of the Kingdom! We must take that aspect seriously; at the same time, “taking it seriously” cannot mean, for example, we cease weeding our gardens or punishing corrupt clergy.

The Church’s choice for the first reading, from the book of Wisdom, helps. In this reading, the initial stress is laid on God’s total “mastery over all things,” which is interestingly linked to God’s being “lenient to all.” God’s just judgments and God’s mercy are not somehow two sides of a split personality, but rather go together. This is ultimately because, unlike the world, there are no real opposing powers to God’s sovereignty over the universe. “The enemy” in Jesus’s parable can secretly sow weeds of real discord, but that enemy has no power over the harvest. There is a sense in which the wheat growing in the world cannot ultimately be killed or overrun by the weeds, because the master of the harvest will come.

Thus, if we are seeking the logic of this parable, we can hazard three claims that might make sense. First, as the first reading concludes, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” As Francis exclaims near the end of Amoris Laetitia, “No one is condemned forever!” And of course this reading must acknowledge the basic truth that, to some extent, we are all weeds. The parable indicates that the Kingdom “permits repentance” - a recognition that, it must also be acknowledged, is not well-suited to the core metaphor, which tempts us to think about the world simply in terms of good people and bad people. If we are tempted in this way, we should certainly then imagine that we are one of the tares!

Second, as befits this acknowledgment of our own sinfulness and our solidarity in sin, the first reading insists that “those who are just must be kind.” To exercise real power is to combine justice and kindness in a way that can be extremely challenging - but nevertheless, we also can recognize from our own experience. In this case, the “kindness” appears to be the gentleness and encouragement that parents ideally show to their children when they err, but that we can also recognize over and over in the way people deal with conflict and discord in any area of life. Fairness can’t go out the window in such situations - indeed, that can end up not being “kind” to a weed, but (to mix our parables) be a matter of not pruning a vine that could grow much better. To fail to leaven justice with kindness is, in some sense, to be very un-god-like and to betray an anxiety about one’s power. (As an aside, I think Leo XIV is particularly good at this combination!)

Thirdly, I think it must be admitted that here we have a parable which only makes sense in light of an eschatology that really believes the credal statement that Christ will come again “to judge the living and the dead.” This is at root the confidence expressed in the first reading’s assurance that God has “mastery over all things.” If you think the weeds will really overrun the garden - meaning the God’s kingdom will fail if you don’t go in and pull up the weeds - you lack confidence in the parable’s image of the harvest separation, after which “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

In practice, this third point points to what might be called the “liminal nonviolence” of God’s Kingdom, a nonviolence that ultimately relies on the weapon of the Cross rather than the means of worldly force and violence to achieve its end. I call it “liminal” because, as the initial examples suggest, I don’t think the story excludes forms of correction and judgment. To go after some of the weeds while being careful to preserve the wheat, you might say, is not excluded - although what that means is illustrated in the first two claims so clearly highlighted in the first reading. No scorched-earth weeding! After all, haven’t we learned that a house can be “too clean”? Still, I don’t want to get too close to taking the edge off the parable, an edge that cuts most clearly (including against each one of us) when we recognize that the world lives toward a time when all will receive judgment, and all the weeds of our own lives will have to go off to the furnace. In light of this, we may rejoice that God’s power allows for great mercy, and so seek to show that mercy to others, as the Lord’s Prayer commands. In the meantime, we might also then learn to live well in a world (and a Church!) where we curb our tendencies toward overzealous weeding.

Stephen Pope’s essay provides a characteristically lucid exposition of the ordo amoris in the tradition of Catholic moral theology. It is also a characteristically generous response to Vice President J.D. Vance’s efforts to use the ordo amoris to justify this administration’s “America First” policies. Pope provides an instructive corrective for the VP and others who have oversimplified or misunderstood the ordo amoris, ignoring “authoritative voices from [their] own Catholic tradition.” Because the ordo amoris is at the heart of the Christian moral life and because the concentric and hierarchical simplicity of Vance’s interpretation is ultimately misguided, Pope’s response is timely and imperative. The ordo amoris or ordo caritas tradition, Pope suggests, entails a certain simplicity and complexity, but not of the sort that Vance envisions.

On the one hand, ordering our loves is a matter of exercising the virtue of caritas by loving God, self, others, and creation. On the other hand, what this entails with respect to family, neighbors, strangers, and specifically the poor, refugees, and immigrants requires ongoing discernment for Christians and Christian communities no less than for American policy makers. In short, I agree with the three central points of Pope’s essay: the Christian moral life is essentially a call to love God, God’s creation, neighbor, and self, to discern how to order our loves given our diverse roles, relations, histories, and social contexts, and to prioritize the needs of the poor and oppressed, both at home and abroad.

The implications of Pope’s essay for U.S. immigration policy seem to be the following.

First, because the ordo amoris is not simply a matter of expanding concentric circles, it does not justify, as Vance argues, a set of “America first” policies that neglect the needs of refugees, immigrants, or the global poor beyond U.S. borders. Second, the ordo amoris, rather, calls followers of Christ to pay special attention to the needs of fellow Christians, the poor, neighbors, and strangers at home and abroad. This does not settle the matter of precisely what U.S. immigration policy should be, but it does point to an alternative order of loves and priorities than those outlined by Vance and the current administration.

Because Vance uses his interpretation of the ordo amoris to defend this administration’s “America first” policies and practices, a full response warrants not only Pope’s insightful instruction on the ordo amoris, but also attention to the nativist, anti-immigrant, and white Christian nationalist sentiments that bolster this agenda. Indeed, as Pope notes, faithfully discerning what the ordo amoris entails requires attention to history, power, social context, roles, and relations. The assertions, policies, and priorities of the Trump-Vance administration reflect a nativist, anti-immigrant, white Christian nationalist vision of “America first,” one that is profoundly unchristian and has roots at least as deep as the nation itself. Especially amid the fanfare of America’s 250th Anniversary as a nation, we do well to recall that American Christianity has been a double-edged sword: some strands have bolstered indigenous genocide, slavery, nativism, and their afterlives, while others have ignited movements for liberation, abolition, justice, hospitality, and more egalitarian forms of American democracy.

Historically in the U.S., nativism—”an ideology, governmental policy, or political stance that prioritizes the interests and well-being of native-born or long-established residents of a given country over those of immigrants”—has not only restricted immigration for certain groups, but has also done so by promoting xenophobia, racism, white supremacy, and white Christian nationalism. Vance is not the first to make such arguments and will not be the last. Ironically, given Vance’s appeal to the ordo amoris, some of the most prominent early proponents of nativist white Christian nationalism, such as the “Know Nothing” Party, used scripture and theology to defend not only chattel slavery but also their aggressive anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Protestant nativism.

There is room for sincere disagreements and arguments about the best immigration, refugee, and political asylum policies. But it is also important to distinguish reasonable arguments about immigration from nativist assertions, rhetoric, and policies. For instance, when Vance falsely claims that immigrants create “ethnic enclaves” which spur violence and crime; or spreads calumnies about Haitian immigrants; or refuses to condemn the heinous—misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and antisemitic—messages of the leaders of the Young Republicans organization; or, rather, condemns Rene Good, the mother of three who was shot and killed by an ICE agent during the siege of Minneapolis, as a “deranged leftist” whose death was a “tragedy of her own making;” or uses terms like “illegal immigration” to characterize all forms of immigration; or approvingly normalizes Americans who “want to live next to people [with whom they] have something in common,” and not next to people who speak a “different language” or come from “a totally different culture,” he echoes and condones centuries-old arguments of American nativists and leaves the realm of reasonable argument or policy design. Indeed, the Trump-Vance team has only sharpened the anti-immigrant nativism that fueled Trump’s initial rise to power in 2016, “seizing on scare tactics, falsehoods and racial stereotypes” about “illegal aliens,” “invading,” and taking American jobs and homes. What Republican governor of Ohio, and Trump-Vance supporter, Mike DeWine wrote in response to their claims about Haitians could apply to nativist rhetoric more broadly: “Their verbal attacks against these Haitians — who are legally present in the United States — dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument.” Such nativist statements have not only diluted and clouded but have mostly replaced arguments for specific immigration policies.

Vance’s appeal to the ordo amoris does not just commend a parochial vision of Christians loving their family, neighbors, communities, and citizens before foreigners—a vision that Pope rightly rejects. Rather, Vance repeatedly suggests that Americans should only have neighbors and live in communities that are culturally, linguistically, and racially homogenous. His ordo amoris is inseparable from racist attitudes and policies that have intentionally segregated American neighborhoods, cities, schools, and churches since before the founding of the nation.

Far from merely rhetorical, however, this nativist rhetoric undergirds the mass-deportation, detention, and anti-immigrant/anti-refugee policies and strategies of the administration. From Trump’s second inauguration to May of 2026, around 400,000 people have been booked into ICE detention; 52 people have died in ICE custody. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention, the largest number of detained immigrants in U.S. history, and one that is likely to expand with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) allocating $45 billion to new facilities. To exacerbate the already brutal U.S. mass deportation, detention, and military industrial complex, OBBBA, for which Vance was a vocal supporter and cast the tie-breaking vote, gives federal agencies $170 billion for anti-immigrant enforcement, detention, and deportation while defunding SNAP and other programs. The co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, who bankrolled much of Vance’s career, now “has a thirty-million-dollar contract with ICE to provide A.I. surveillance and data-mining technology for hunting and deporting immigrants.”

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s early executive orders suspended the U.S. refugee resettlement program (USRAP), with exceptions made for a small number of white South Africans. The Supreme Court just empowered Trump to turn back asylum seekers at the southern border. And the administration has denied millions of dollars in federal grants to Christian charities that assist refugees, like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Family Services. Not only has the ordo amoris tradition prioritized care for fellow Christians regardless of nationality, as Pope notes, “Our collective responsibility as Americans [to the global poor and refugees] is in fact intensified to the extent to which the policies and interventions of our government have contributed to the impoverishment of millions” (55). We know that U.S. foreign policies and interventions have enormously contributed to conflicts and poverty in regions that drive people to seek refuge.

Pope joins Pope Francis in rightly rejecting Vance’s nativist interpretation of the ordo amoris tradition. As Pope Francis wrote, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups” (56). The prophetic refrains of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures call for welcoming the stranger and foreigner, breaking bonds, and releasing captives. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to illuminate the dual love command which sums up the law and prophets, calls followers to love even enemies in the Sermon on the Mount, identifies with “the least of these,” and calls Christians to meet their needs. Together with the tradition of reflection on the ordo amoris that Pope illuminates, these demonstrate that the ordo amoris contravenes rather than condones the white Christian nationalist playbook: America first qua nativism.

Editor’s Note: For more conversations with the Journal of Moral Theology’s authors and responses to their essays, check out HERE.

This debate between principles and context hardly seems new. You can see it after Vatican II in those who debated proportionalism and natural law. You can see it in the 90s when John Paul II argued for exceptionless norms in Veritatis Splendor. You can see it in Cathleen Kaveny’s reflection on the 2018 CTEWC meeting where she said the gathering declared that “[s]ocial and cultural analyses have now become the focus of attention” and individual actions are “evaluated by the degree to which they participate in or resist structures of sin or oppression.”

Partly, I think this debate continues because it is just the nature of doing moral theology. Principles need to be applied to actions, and as different theologians work in ethics, they come to focus on either context for the application or theory to grasp principles.

But I also think there is more to the persistence of this debate. I think the binary nature of our public discourse has seeped into the guild and shaped the context within which we carry out our theology.

While a bifurcated public discourse is not new in the United States, its prominence has been accelerating since the end of the Cold War. Instead of a common, external enemy, political parties started to turn on each other. The FCC’s 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine removed the legal requirement that broadcasters present opposing views on air. Cable news expanded, often by stoking conflict. Newt Gingrich advocated a confrontational style, getting his party to prioritize Republican loyalty and Democratic opposition over the common good. The internet and then social media accelerated all of this by rewarding the most extreme voices. The Iraq War and the bailout following the 2008 financial crisis deepened distrust of government along partisan lines. Donald Trump’s political style of treating every disagreement as a battle between loyal allies and enemies intensifies this binary.

This structure of our public discourse has come to shape how we carry out debate in moral theology. The first move is to position an essay, locating which side it is on before giving it a hearing or considering its argument. The question is not “is it true or false?” or “is the argument strong or weak?” The question is “where does this belong?” Once positioned, it can be dismissed as partisan. There is no need for genuine engagement. Just use the standard tropes of criticism directed at the caricature of the opposing side.

While we Catholic ethicists are often aware of this initial dynamic, able to recognize it in ourselves and others and work to avoid it, the fact that we must acknowledge its reality and guard against it implicitly accepts that we are operating within a binary context. We make moves in our work to avoid it because we know we are operating in this kind of system.

This reality is even more obvious when one tries to respond to a positional critique. When one says “I am not that” or “that isn’t my position” or any other attempt to reject a categorization, one has already conceded that the structure of the debate is a binary. One’s job has become to defend one’s true location, fighting against a false positionality for a true positionality. It is arguing about the context within which debates occur. It is a battle over territory, a zero-sum game, and as one must continually defend one’s territory, the ideas become more markers of location than openings for discussion.

At this point, genuine discourse is almost impossible. The more one defends oneself, the more one is operating within the binary architecture. The more one operates in the binary architecture, the more the discourse is about defending one’s location.

I think this underlying architecture is why sixty years have not moved the debate about norms and context forward so much as hardened it into camps that now hardly talked to each other. We are operating on a field that assumes conflict as primordial, that life is a winner take all proposition, and that every maneuver is really about protecting one’s position.

This problem is not the need for better theology but for a better context. We believe in the Trinity, where each person is fully what they are precisely in relation to the others. This Trinity is also the source of creation, meaning that conflict and hostility are not the fundamental reality. Love is. And love is non-competitive. It expands as it is shared, strengthening everyone. It is freeing, liberating, calling us to care for what is good and for ourselves and others.

I am not sure how to instantiate a context for debate built on this belief. It requires both individuals and institutions to generate and sustain it. I can make two small suggestions that I think would further us along this path though.

First, we should be wary of projecting political or cultural positions upon theological positions. For too long, we’ve been using terms like “liberal” and “conservative” in theology. These terms import a binary architecture that makes genuine dialogue and collaboration all but impossible. These labels presume a view of the world in tension with Christian beliefs, so they skew our theology at its foundational level.

Second, we should avoid approaching our theology as attacks, as if its primary purpose is to defeat abstract “armchair” theologians or “trendy postmodern” ones or any other position. Such a telos for theology should be a warning that the work, whatever else its merits, is operating in a binary context. I think this is more challenging than we might think because much of our theology can be mistaken for attacks. This post can come across as a critique of bishops. The work of identifying and resisting sinful structures can be mistaken for mere deconstruction. But the difference from an attacking approach is that the telos is about the constructive work, like finding a problem that has hindered our debates or working toward a more just and merciful world or discerning those actions that can guide us toward greater love of God and neighbor.

These suggestions do not undo the binary context within which we operate. But identifying the problematic binary afflicting our field and trying to operate differently is the beginning of building a new context, one that presumes a world where God loves each of us, calls us to love one another, and so moves us to do work that cooperates with God.

Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas conveys a deep sense of urgency about human dignity in the face of new technological developments. To name just a couple, the pope sees a concern with “a new mindset of [data] extraction” (178) where people in power have unprecedented access to health records, demographic data, and more, in such a way that they can vastly manipulate people into the future. (This is one of the many reasons for concerns with DOGE’s access to that data.) Or just a bit later, the pope discusses modern day technological slavery that abuses human workers (179). Many people describe some of the great advantages of AI development - but the pope reminds us that Christians cannot avoid consideration of human suffering that results from such development.

It’s interesting to reflect on the encyclical in relation to this week’s scriptures. Paul’s words in this week’s Letter to the Romans might seem to want to skip over the effects of suffering, in a way:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God...

However, when we put Paul’s words alongside Jesus’ - we see that we already have the potential to see some of that glory now. Jesus’ parable this week is The Sower - a parable that talks about seeds being sown on different kinds of soil, and what happens to them. In his discussion of this parable, Jesus suggests that the seeds are the life of God, and that we are the soil in which those seeds are sown.

We already have those seeds - that glory of God - but we do not likely know what kind of soil we are cultivating. Of course, Jesus hopes we are cultivating that rich soil that produces fruit 30 or 60 or 100 times over its yield.

One of the puzzles of this parable is that we cannot know with any kind of immediacy or certainty that our God-given seeds have found that rich soil. In fact, Jesus cautions against being too quick to come to judgement or certainty - for that kind of certainty is actually a rocky and poor soil:

The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time.

Cultivation is not something we can grasp with certainty - in fact, any degree of certainty is likely to be indicative of the wrong kind of soil. In other words, our actions cannot be outcomes-based (or grounded in how much money we have made or how much time we have saved). Rather, our actions need to be aimed at loving more. And love is something we are always growing into - always learning how to do more and better.

What Jesus’ parable suggests is that the cultivation of rich soil has to happen at the same time that we are also anticipating and seeking God’s seed that is in us. Rich soil is cultivated alongside waiting, love, hope, and expectation. We work and act, not because the work will definitely land somewhere, but because we work and act in love. In other words, love is the medium and the cause of our working and acting.

What might this suggest for the moral life and AI? To me it suggests that part of our practice of moral life is to cultivate waiting - that is to say, to cultivate contemplation, silence, and a waiting on God who will act in God’s own time.

Pope Leo suggests that despite the urgency of AI questions, waiting and patience are indeed part of our work. He writes, “Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care for the human family. This need is all the more urgent given the frequent imbalance between the speed of technological growth and the slower development of awareness, norms, safeguards and institutions capable of governing its effects.” (106)

The antidote to our AI discomforts and questions is not simply to perpetuate the world in which AI exists - to do more, quicker, more efficiently. It is to love, more patiently, to pay more attention to the human beings in our midst.

That requires rich soil, indeed. So this week, let us cultivate waiting and contemplation, yes even in the face of apparently urgent concerns. This kind of countercultural impulse also cultivate in us seeds that will sprout when and where they are needed in the days and years to come.

I devoured Magnifica Humanitas in just a couple of hours the day it was released - and the encyclical did not disappoint. It was not only the discussions of theological anthropology that I enjoyed reading, but also the longer overviews and introductions to Catholic social teaching. I am very much looking forward to using this encyclical in my Catholic Moral Theology course this fall.

But yes - like many people writing on this document, it is the questions of AI and human nature that are occupying much of my current reflections on the encyclical. As much as AI is a different language game (and indeed it is, in the ways it integrates our input into its activities, and reciprocates by directing our subsequent inquiries and considerations) - AI also still exists in the same broad universe of age-old considerations about technologies and humanity.

We have been here before, indeed we are always here in the midst of these questions. Therefore, we need to consider the ways in which our current conversations relate to previous ones about technologies and being human.

We have been here before. The pope begins with scripture, reminds us of the story of which we are a part. He argues that we are making a choice between the Tower of Babel and “the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” (1) The Tower of Babel represents both “an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction” but also “a profound danger…conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion” (7). Babel narrates the ways humans aim for “self-affirmation” and “efficiency” rather than human dignity; in doing so, we doom ourselves, for we create a city focused on our idealism about being human - that is, what we think a human being is - rather than fostering a city that supports who we already are as human beings. Which is to say, always already dignified and worthy.

Because we do not believe this, not really, about our dignity and worth…

Babel is not the first time we have to confront our own doubts about our dignity. Turning back earlier in Genesis to the initial creation stories, we find God creating a good world in which humans can live, in both Genesis 1 and 2. God gives us the earth for our good use - and use it, we do.

(As a key side note I won’t develop here, I think Genesis demonstrates that the earth is both our given world and the arena for making use of what we have been given. Put differently it is the scene of our tool-making, of creating things that aid us in making this world our home. The significance of this is that in contemporary debates about viewing technology as primarily as tools, or as a culture/built environment, perhaps Genesis suggests it is both/and.)

Of course Genesis 3 happens, when the serpent makes us doubt our own dignity by raising about God’s commands not to eat from a certain tree. Yet even in the Fall humans are not prevented from stewarding the earth, nor from using the gifts of the earth. Indeed, out of great love, God creates some of the first postlapsarian tools we have, garments of skin.

Many theologians writing about technology-use have written about those garments of skin as our first technologies. Those garments begin to shape a world view in which nakedness becomes known, but also a world in which these second skins protect against sun, rain, ice, snow, and even against each other. Clothing becomes not only a technology that is a gift from God, but can be used in terrible as well as beneficial ways. So Pope Leo can remind us: “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.” (9) Clothing can operate in demeaning and divisive ways (we can consider the kinds of clothing concentration camp victims are given) as well as caring ways (how about homemade swaddling PJs for newborns). We have faced these kinds of technology questions even from the beginning.

We are Always Here… We still face these questions today. Even those technologies that we now quite take for granted (doorknobs, pencils, scissors) shape worldviews in which some people are “in” and some people are “out”; some treated with dignity and some not. The doorknob, for example, must be turned in particular ways which are available only to some people, but not to all. Not every hand can open a clock-wise turning knob. Not every hand can reach a doorknob. Not everyone has a hand with which to open a door of this kind. And think of what exists on the other side of that doorknob that may support (or not) human dignity? What if it is a bathroom that cannot be reached in time? Then we can think about a series of doors and doorknobs - and a whole network of rooms in buildings that may be limited to only a few, by design. The apparently insignificant doorknob is the battle site for human dignity especially for those who are left out.

This is why it is crucial to pay attention not to the ones who have, but to the ones who do not have. Can we imagine creating doors that do not so exclude? Of course we can, and we have done so. But doing so requires both a desire to encounter the dignity and worth of another human being, and the creativity to respond in an alternate way.

Pope Leo’s description of humanity in Magnifica Humanitas thus stands critically in contrast to Babel: “building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected.” (12, emphasis mine). To be human is to be limited. Even before the Fall, we were never created to be God, but in God’s image. Part of the definition of being human is that we are not God; we will not measure up either to our imagined perfections of who God is, nor for our imagined perfections of who we are. But this fact does not make us less human or less worthy; to the contrary, our dignity and worth are integral to our created nature as limited, weak, human beings.

Human Limits and Disabilities

The final point I want to make here is about disabilities in relation to Pope Leo’s theological anthropology (and I really have been here before! See this article from 10+ years ago at the Journal of Moral Theology, “We Do Not Know How to Love.”) Statistics about how many people have disabilities suggest maybe a quarter of the adult population has an identifiable disability related to hearing, neurodiversity, mobility, or vision.

A common narrative about technologies is that they support or enhance life for a range of identified disabilities: motorized wheelchairs, cochlear implants, gene therapies, and more. Isn’t life good when people can move, hear, not have to worry about the lack of particular amino acids? This is the kind of question people often ask - but it is also the type of question that presumes that only an ideal body can be a happy body. In a world where only some bodies get identified as disabled (25%), that means the ideal body looks like most people, maybe even 75% of adults.

Think about how this idea downplays the idea of human dignity - and mostly not for the people society presumes have disabilities. Rather, we downplay human dignity for the people who are presumed to be “ideal”. Who can’t reach the kind of doorknob I mentioned earlier? Well, as it happens, any one of us might be a person who can’t reach a doorknob on any given day. We might be faced with a large door, or be a child, or in a wheelchair, or finding our hands full of some necessary item that we can’t put down.

Presumed “ideal” people are especially the ones who have to imbibe the narrative of having to be efficient, timely, autonomous, and incapable of errors. What a horrible thing, to always be living in a world where there aren’t second chances, and where we think reform or change doesn’t really happen - precisely because we live in a world where our technologies serve efficiencies and imagined ideals.

Pope Leo instead encourages us to rethink how we see ourselves. We are all limited; the things commonly understood as disabilities are just one form of limitation.

What does it look like when we accept, even love, each other and ourselves because of our limits, our mistakes, our weaknesses - and we design our technologies with loving our limits in mind, just as with the doorknobs? This is why I think Pope Leo thus asks us to consider what it means to be “freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.” (110)

What might it look like to design AI so that those of us in limited bodies get to shape technologies in a way that supports our common good? That is a tough question - but it is also a question we have always already been addressing.

Editorial note: In a classic post, Thomas Bushlack explores what it means to live moral life not out of obligation, but with intentions more deeply intertwined with Christ’s will. Ed. Jana M. Bennett