All posts tagged: just war

The five main takeaways from Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI

The five main takeaways from Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Leo XIV published on Monday (May 25) what is already being called the keynote document of his papacy, titled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), a sweeping encyclical addressing what he considers a new industrial revolution fueled by artificial intelligence. While the document extensively reflects on AI and its repercussions on society, war, work and education, its real focus is offering the Catholic Church’s wisdom on what makes humanity, well, human. If the title doesn’t make that priority clear, then the text reinforces it: “Human” is the most repeated meaningful word in the official English version, followed by “social” and “person.” Leo looks with concern at a culture that sees people as “a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited.” He also warns of certain mindsets, such as transhumanism and posthumanism, that are popular in Silicon Valley and that hope to build a human-machine hybrid world or, worse yet, substitute humanity with machines altogether. Speaking to journalists after the presentation of the encyclical, the Rev. Brendan McGuire, often …

Pope Leo calls on Catholics to ‘move beyond’ just war theory in new encyclical

Pope Leo calls on Catholics to ‘move beyond’ just war theory in new encyclical

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — While Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical mostly focuses on AI, it also includes language that suggests that Catholics move past their longstanding reliance on just war theory, offering an assessment of armed conflict likely to spark debate among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The Catholic tradition has long drawn on saints like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to teach that war is permissible in a very narrow set of circumstances — where war is justified as a last resort to respond to damage that must be “lasting, grave and certain.” Per church teaching of just war theory, the war must also be likely to be successful and create less harm than the harm eliminated. Since becoming pope last year, Leo has been clear he intended to take a firm stand against war. His first words greeting the world after his election were, “Peace be with you all!” in a speech that went on to call for peace that is “unarmed and disarming.” More recently, in his Palm Sunday homily in March, Leo said, “This is …

Cardinal Robert McElroy explained why the Iran war is immoral

Cardinal Robert McElroy explained why the Iran war is immoral

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — As Americans hotly debate the Iran war, many examine the political and economic consequences, while others consider the war from an ethical and moral perspective. For pacifists, the answer is simple: The war is wrong because all wars are wrong. For political realists, the answer is also simple: Might makes right. If you have the power, you can do whatever you want. But there is also a long tradition of Christian theologians examining individual wars to determine if they are just or not, from St. Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to modern leaders. The result is the just war theory, used to justify or condemn individual wars. No one has used this theory to examine the Iran war better than Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington who has doctorates in both political science from Stanford University and in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. At Stanford, his dissertation was titled “Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Moral Norms in International Affairs.” In an interview with his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic …