COMMENTARY: We cannot truly understand the human person, human relationships or the economy without God.
The Church has always taught that the Gospel bears social implications, shaping how Christians live in the world. Catholic Social Teaching (CST), however, developed only when the fabric of Christendom — the legacy of Christian culture — had worn thin.
Political revolutions overturned longstanding monarchies aligned with the Church, and the Industrial Revolution displaced family patterns rooted in the land and shaped by religious customs. In short, Catholic Social Teaching sought to apply the Church’s teaching to a dramatically changing situation as society embraced secularization and new economic realities.
We certainly continue to face fast-paced social change, and the Church continues to respond, as we see in Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas. Pope Leo situates his message as a continued unfolding of the approach of his predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who addressed the profound changes afoot in industrialization:
“While Leo XIII spoke in his time of ‘new things’ (rerum novarum), today we cannot limit ourselves simply to repeating his insightful teachings. Instead, we must ask God for the wisdom to interpret the great trends of our
