|
Greetings!
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, yesterday and it feels, in many ways, as though it was written with us, as Catholic school leaders and educators, in mind. Framed as an appeal for the defense of humanity in a rapidly automating world, it urges governments, corporations, and individuals to engage technology in ways that safeguard human dignity.
While I have only completed an initial perusal of the document, I want to offer a few initial reflections on four passages that I believe speak directly to our work.
Two Cities and Two Loves
Pope Leo poses the question first asked by Saint John Paul II: does AI “make human life on earth ‘more human’? He answers that if it does, we may embrace it as an opportunity, likening the work to the patient rebuilding of Jerusalem. If instead "power grows while the heart withers and human bonds fray," we are building Babel anew (129).
This is not an abstract theological concern for us. Every time we introduce a new technology into a classroom, we are implicitly answering this question. I think this encyclical calls us to answer it explicitly and together, ensuring that our adoption of AI in our schools leads to making us more human.
The Culture of Immediacy and the Work of Education
Pope Leo names something I think we all feel, and that is that digital culture fosters immediacy and hyper-stimulation, generating "fatigue, boredom and apathy concerning the effort required for seeking the truth" (139). Education, he contrasts, "is a long journey requiring patience" (140).
Educating students about AI, Leo writes, means” teaching them to decide when and for what purposes it ought not to be used." The speed and ease of AI-generated answers “risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions,” and it is the questioning, not the answering, that forms the intellect and the soul (140). In shaping our students' experience with this technology, it will remain critical that we nurture the wisdom to both know when and when not to use it, and affirm the value they create by engaging each other and their own intellect.
What the Digital World Cannot Provide
Perhaps the most countercultural line in the passages I've highlighted comes in paragraph 147: “Schools are not called to follow the pace of the digital world, but to offer that which the digital sphere by itself cannot provide, namely a shared time for learning and developing trustworthy relationships.” In an era when school quality is too often measured in outputs and efficiencies, this is a prophetic. Our schools are not slow because they are behind. They are slow because formation requires slowness. Relationships require time. This is not a statement against innovation, but it is a reminder that some things cannot be rushed.
The encyclical gives us language to name this with confidence and reminds us that families already sense it. Pope Leo observes that many parents, wanting their children “to grow in the capacity to form relationships, develop critical thinking, and embrace solid values, place great expectations on schools as [valued partners]” (143). That expectation is a gift, and it is also a charge that gives our work in Catholic schools particular urgency in this moment.
Adults as Artisans of Education
Finally, Pope Leo turns directly to us as adults and calls us to "rediscover our vocation as artisans of education." He describes accompanying young people in their use of technology as "a concrete form of charity" that safeguards their dignity. And he makes a claim that I find both humbling and energizing: “Teaching new generations that technological evolution [is not predetermined] but can be guided by personal and collective responsibility constitutes one of the most valuable services to the common good" (238).
We will have more opportunity to engage this document together. For now, I simply invite you to sit with it. While it certainly presents cautions, it is does not present case that is afraid of technological evolution. At its heart I found it to read as a pastoral letter addressed, in no small part, to our work. I look forward to the conversations that will flow from it as we continue to engage AI in ways that allow us to continue to develop in our students authentic, moral, critical, and creative thought.
With gratitude,
NICHOLAS FORD | Superintendent
Office for Catholic Schools | Archdiocese of Seattle
| 
