Baptisms and funerals — and how I wish there were more of the first and fewer of the second! — underscore our historical character. Consider, as well, how we mark an historic event by asking, for example, “Where were you when Leo XIV stepped forth as the first American pope?” And now a good many people are thinking through his first encyclical. It’s all about us, “magnificent humanity.” It teaches, eloquently, that it is our Creator who gives us our abiding dignity.

In his searching analysis of artificial intelligence, Pope Leo draws on the legacy of Catholic Social Teaching. That legacy reflects the Church’s historical development of its mission. Thus, Leo notes the need to “first clarify some fundamental principles concerning the way in which the Church exists in history.” Not to do so “would expose Social Doctrine to the risk of being perceived…as an external code of ethics,” when in truth it stems from “a Church that walks alongside humanity.”

In walking with humanity, the Church both teaches and learns. Pope Leo teaches that truth is not a pragmatic social construct. Rather, he cites St. John Paul II’s diagnosis that “once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes.” Leo cites, too, Pope Francis’s judgment: “If society is to have a future, it must respect the truth of our human dignity and submit to that truth. Murder is not wrong simply because it is socially unacceptable and punished by law, but because of a deeper conviction. This is a non-negotiable truth attained by the use of reason and accepted in conscience.”

Even so, secular philosophers often dismiss any moral absolute in favor of consequentialist negotiations. In his influential Principia Ethica, G. E. Moore (1873-1958) tells us that “apart from the immediate evils which murder generally produces, the fact that, if it were a common practice, the feeling of insecurity thus caused would absorb much time, which might be spent to better purpose, is perhaps conclusive against it.” Or perhaps not, right?

But over the centuries the Church also learns in her walking with humanity. She experiences a development of her doctrine. Pope Leo calls our attention to the case of slavery. We were shamefully late to denounce it. He confesses that it has led to “a wound in Christian memory.”

“This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice…there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.”

History, moreover, has surprising teachers. With regard to slavery, we have more to learn from Spartacus than from Cicero. Even so, Gandhi’s vision of nonviolence far surpasses both.

Sometimes, indeed, the Church only comes gradually to a deeper understanding of pressing issues, and Pope Leo notes that “past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available.” Her developing grasp of such criteria comes with a fuller appreciation of natural law. Natural law, of course, is not a statistical snapshot. Rather, as Thomas Aquinas explains, it is “an imprint on us of the Divine Light” and, as such, “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law” (ST I-II q. 91, art. 2).

Such is our fallen humanity, however, that just as we can advance in our appreciation of natural law, we can also lose ground. Today’s widespread slavery suggests that its current rejection is often just lip service. And so abject is Canada’s moral failure in legalizing assisted suicide that it has now resulted in over 100,000 deaths. When we call God into doubt, we call ourselves into doubt.

A recent obituary, “Edgar Morin, the ‘Grandfather’ of French Intellectuals, Is Dead at 104” (NY Times, June 2, 2026, B11), is instructive. French president Emmanuel Macron lauded its subject as “humanism personified.” Had not the “Grandfather” authored his six-volume work La Méthode, in a reviewer’s words, “on what it means to be a human”?

Truth be told, Prof. Morin’s effort illustrates that, in Horace’s words, parturient montes et nascetur ridiculus mus (the labor of the mountains gives birth to a ridiculous mouse). But why, gentle reader, do I speak in so deflationary a way? In an interview Morin gave at the age of 101, he remarked, “I still have no idea why I was born, why I exist, why I am sitting here talking to you.” Surely from this admission it follows that he would have no idea of why he, or any human, should have a non-negotiable dignity.

In a TV film the “Grandfather” also shared that “as far as God is concerned, what I want to say is, I don’t have any relations with this chap.” Right. Even so, God keeps the professor’s soul in existence, and his body awaits its resurrection. Nonetheless, and to his credit, Morin added, “We can’t shut up in our minds and reduce to ideas the infinite complexity and the infinite mystery of the world.” He understood that philosophy begins in wonder! So, we can still hope — can we not? — that in the life to come Justin Martyr, the first Christian philosopher, will find the professor a docile student. Neither a ChatGPT AI nor a Claude AI, however, will be present, since such machines have never lived, much less will they live in eternity.