Like many Catholics, I was transfixed by the recent conclave. That white smoke signaled not just a new Pope, but an American Pope who would call attention to the work of a predecessor who wrote long ago about things that are particularly relevant today.
In his first official address to the College of Cardinals on May 10, 2025, Leo XIV explained he chose his name “mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
The title Rerum Novarum means “New Things.” Writing in 1891, Leo XIII looked back at the innovations of the Industrial Revolution that had dramatically reshaped society. From the steam engine and the cotton gin, to faster means of communication, to mass production and urbanization, these “new things” radically altered human life—especially work, family, and the relationship between man and machine.
We now stand on the brink of another revolution that changes the relationship between man and machine: the possibilities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence (or AI).
Our new Pope Leo XIV continued to explain to the Cardinals that “in our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labor.”
What is new about AI?
Is AI really a “new thing” that warrants a response from the Church? After all, new technologies have always caused job losses.
With each technological advancement, those who work on the one it replaced are also replaced, unless they adapt. The first example of this kind of disruptive technology that I remember being aware of was the cassette tape. But I wasn’t worried about all the 8-track tape and vinyl record producers who would now be out of work. I was happy I could make mixtapes. The advent of the automobile meant entire industries based on horses would become obsolete: horse-drawn carriage makers, blacksmiths, saddle and harness manufacturers, and livery stables, to name a few. The rise of digital cameras led to Kodak’s decline. Streaming services put Blockbuster out of business, and so forth. And as far as my beloved cassette tapes, they were replaced by CDs, and then MP3s (and it will stop there for me, because I refuse to pay a monthly subscription for music).
From the Industrial Revolution till recently, though, mechanization was only replacing manual labor. What about intellectual labor?
In some industries, machines have already been taking on tasks that people do with their brains and not their hands. Notably, these were tasks that required humans to think like computers—for example, to identify patterns on diagnostic images, on radar maps, etc. Whether it is finding early signs of a tumor or predicting where a hurricane will hit, the computer often has an edge. It is, after all, a computer. It can parse and analyze long strings of data without eye strain or the need for a break.
But what about when we program the computer to seem to “think” like a human? Could it be here that Pope Leo XIV is pointing us to Rerum Novarum and the treasury of the Church’s Social Teaching?
Programmers use the term “Generative AI” to denote AI that appears to create, no pun intended, new things. Things like magazine articles (this one is human-authored, I promise), website help videos, brochures, short stories, whole novels, even music and art. It can write a catchy song or make a thumbnail image for your social media post. You can feed it an author’s life’s work and have it produce a new novel in that author’s style.
The word “generative” is interesting. It reminds us of Genesis, the book that tells of the creation of man, when the Father breathed life into Adam. And yet, there is nothing truly generative about generative AI, because it has no soul. It has no life to share. There is no ghost in the machine.
The Central Message of Rerum Novarum
Humans are unique among material creation because God created us with immortal souls. Because He made us in His image with free will, we have the capacity to make a gift of ourselves to others. The Catechism teaches that “Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that ‘everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as “another self,”’ above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity” (1931). This is the central message of Rerum Novarum and the basis of all Catholic Social Teaching: we must never lose sight of our neighbor’s humanity.
This causes us to ask: Why do human beings alone write, create art, ask philosophical questions, and wonder about the universe? How do good books, art, music, and philosophy lead us to communion with each other and God? What is lost when machines ape this capacity, and when institutions present that content as created by people? Will the authors, musicians, artists, and others whose work helps and inspires us be able to continue?
What happens when we can no longer tell the difference between man and machine? Not because the machine does it so well, mind you, but because we forget who we are.
In other words, to be clear, this is not about job losses.
We already read of people thinking of AI as their “friend.” How many generations of “generative AI” presented on websites, in classrooms, bookstores, and, God forbid, the home, will it take to lose what it means to make a human connection, communion with another unity of body and soul? And from there, how many till we lose sight of our own ability to seek, know, and love our creator?
It’s believed that Leo XIV is at work on his first encyclical, and it remains to be seen if and how it may build on Rerum Novarum. Whatever topic he chooses to focus on, I can thank him for the gift of recalling Rerum Novarum and pointing the faithful back to it. We must never lose sight of how all the work we do, and all the media we consume, should point us to Heaven.
Editor’s Note: For more on this historical encyclical and how to understand it in today’s context, read this author’s newest release, A Pocket Guide to Rerum Novarum: Pope Leo XIII’s Landmark Encyclical and Its Application to Our Time, available from Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
