The recent Vatican statement on artificial intelligence, Antiqua et nova, represents an important new contribution to Catholic social thought. Jointly published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education and approved by Pope Francis, the document carries the subtitle “Note on the Relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence.” While global media coverage has focused on the document’s call for ethical oversight and effective regulation of AI in areas ranging from work and education to warfare, much of Antiqua et nova is an extended reflection on the deeper anthropological and ethical implications of the AI revolution. With a title that echoes Rerum novarum, the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII that launched modern Catholic social teaching, Antiqua et nova brings the Church into full dialogue with the transformative technology of our era.
While Leo’s encyclical began with “the spirit of revolutionary change” and the “vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science,” it did not include any substantive reflection on technology. The next major social encyclical, Pius XI’s Quadragesimo anno (1931), noted the “diffusion of modern industry throughout the whole world” and its extensive effects on economic and social life, but it, too, did not relate technology to Church teaching. Pius XII was the first pope to do so. His 1953 Christmas address noted the “excessive, and sometimes exclusive, esteem for what is called ‘progress in technology,’” which seeks to displace “every kind of religious and spiritual ideal.” Pius was not anti-technology. “It is undeniable that technological progress comes from God,” he underscored, “and so it can and ought to lead to God.” But he criticized a “technological spirit” pervading the economy and society that “only recognizes and reckons real what can be expressed in mathematical formulas and utilitarian calculations.”
Debates at the Second Vatican Council surrounding Gaudium et spes, the 1965 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, took up the relationship between technology and core principles of Catholic social thought, including human dignity and the common good. In the end, an optimistic tone prevailed: the final text of Gaudium et spes lauded advances in science, medicine, transportation, and communications as progress for humanity. But while the Council celebrated a “growing interdependence” promoted by “modern technical advances” it also warned that technology should not displace human connections “on the deeper level of interpersonal relationships” that demand “a mutual respect for the full spiritual dignity of the person.” To secure just societies into the future, “religious culture and morality” should “keep pace with scientific knowledge and with the constantly progressing technology.”
In the decades following the Council, the Vatican was slow to address the computer revolution. While Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI periodically warned of the dangers of technocracy, echoing Pius’s concerns about the “technological spirit,” they did not reflect systematically on the digital age opened up by the invention of the microprocessor, the personal computer, and the Internet. Benedict’s 2009 encyclical Caritas in veritate was the most in-depth exploration. As a peritus at Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger had been critical of the technological optimism of Gaudium et spes. As pope, he appreciated advances in technology “produced through human creativity as a tool of personal freedom.” At the same time, he warned of its potential dehumanizing effects. “Even when we work through satellites or through remote electronic impulses, our actions always remain human, an expression of our responsible freedom.” Like Pius, he insisted that a fascination with technology should not distract from the “immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life.”
In the years preceding Antiqua et nova, Francis periodically addressed the AI breakthroughs that have unfolded during his pontificate. In 2020, for example, he welcomed the Rome Call for AI Ethics organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life. “It is not enough simply to trust in the moral sense of researchers and developers of devices and algorithms,” he told the Academy assembly. “There is a need to create intermediate social bodies that can incorporate and express the ethical sensibilities of users and educators.” Following the public release of ChatGPT in fall 2022 and the proliferation of large language models (LLMs) that followed, Francis’s public interventions grew more frequent. In his message on the World Day of Peace in January 2024, for example, he warned of AI’s implications for “discrimination, interference in elections, the rise of a surveillance society, digital exclusion and the exacerbation of an individualism increasingly disconnected from society,” as well as threats to peace posed by autonomous weapons systems. Echoing his extended critique of the “technocratic paradigm” in his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, Francis insisted that the measure of AI should be its impact on human dignity and the common good, understood as the good of all, especially those on the margins.
The imperative of upholding human dignity, the foundation of Catholic social thought, is at the core of Antiqua et nova. While much of the note addresses policy issues—including the dangers posed by misinformation, biased data, and a lack of human oversight over AI in fields ranging from health and education to economics and security—a central contribution is the sharp distinction drawn between artificial and human intelligence. Through a close analysis of differences between humans and machines, the note aims to temper both hopes and fears about the prospects of human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI) in any foreseeable future. It insists that a vast gulf separates humans’ God-given intelligence, in all its complexity, from even the most advanced AI technology. Machines can never be true partners, let alone companions. Despite all the hype, they are still human tools.
The case in Antiqua et nova for a strong distinction between human and machine intelligence has three main components, each with philosophical and theological foundations. The first is a broad definition of intelligence that goes beyond calculation to include “willing, loving, choosing, and desiring,” capacities that soulless machines, without self-awareness, do not and cannot ever possess. The second component is the embodied character of human intelligence. Humans are both spirit and matter, not “two natures united” but a union that “forms a single nature”—a nature qualitatively different from the fusion of software and hardware in even the most advanced robot. The third, related, component of human intelligence is its relational character. It is “not an isolated faculty” but one “exercised in relationships, finding its fullest expression in dialogue, collaboration, and solidarity.” That relationality extends to a care for all creation and a desire to know God. Human intelligence—self-reflective, embodied, and relational—is ultimately oriented towards the Truth. AI, its pale shadow, is merely logical operations on data.
The many references to Catholic philosophy and theology in Antiqua et nova are fitting given the note’s primary audience: those “entrusted with transmitting the faith.” But they also work well as a counter to the reductionist, materialist worldview that dominates much of the speculation about the quest for AGI. The idea that human intelligence emerges solely out of the physical operations of the brain is an article of faith, a conviction that human experience, including the mysteries of free will and consciousness, will eventually be explicable in material terms. The related belief that computers might become conscious—that the quantity, speed, and configuration of their operations might somehow spark a qualitative leap to self-awareness—is also an article of faith without any solid empirical foundation. In the meantime, as Antiqua et nova insists, it is wrong to suggest that machines exercise freedom on the human model. All they do is crunch data and generate outputs. They are tools, not independent agents. If the experience of consciousness and free will are someday reduced to material causes and capable of replication in machines, the gulf between human and machine intelligence may close. But in the meantime, the Christian claim that we are spiritual as well as material beings, distinguished from machines by consciousness and free will, is compatible with the best scientific evidence.
While Antiqua et nova convincingly casts doubt on the prospects for truly human-level AGI, it does not fully address technology’s growing ability to simulate human intelligence in its complexity. Since their explosion onto the scene, LLMs have become progressively better at approximating human communications in their choice of words, speech cadence, and personal tone. In the coming years, as AI agents gain access to more personal data—from online messages and posts to consumer choices and location histories—and grow more adept in reading and responding to human emotions, they will likely take on the semblance of intelligent, caring persons. When advanced LLMs are built into robots styled to resemble living beings, the human propensity to anthropomorphize the non-human—well-documented in the case of pets—may transform them into stand-in companions and, in some cases, trusted friends. A new world of AI pseudo-intimacy may be on the horizon, with far-reaching implications for society.
Antiqua et nova acknowledges this horizon but is not alarmed by it. In a section on “AI and Human Relationships” it notes that “AI can simulate empathetic responses,” but insists that “it cannot replicate the eminently personal and relational nature of authentic empathy.” This statement seems true now; whether it will hold true into the future is far from certain. The authors are right to remind us that “AI is but a pale reflection of humanity—it is crafted by human minds, trained on human-generated material, responsive to human input, and sustained through human labor.” At the same time, however, the growing ability of AI to simulate human intelligence and develop human-like connections marks a historic turning point. Since Pius XII popes have warned about technology’s potential to disrupt and distort interpersonal relationships—from radio and television through the internet and social media. With rapid advances in AI, that potential has radically increased.
The task ahead will be both to retain the integrity of human relationships and to build human-AI partnerships for the common good. Antiqua et nova reminds us that “instead of retreating into artificial worlds, we are called to engage in a committed and intentional way with reality, especially by identifying with the poor and suffering, consoling those in sorrow, and forging bonds of communion with all.” AI subject to ethical oversight and effective regulation can buttress efforts to uphold human dignity and build more just and inclusive societies. At the same time, as the “artificial worlds” of human-machine interaction inevitably proliferate, their psychological and social effects, especially on young people, should also be regulated. Artificial intelligence and human intelligence are bound to remain qualitatively different. But the ways they intersect will provide new challenges for the Church and the world.
