What the Rock’s Been Cooking

 

AI and the Theology of the Body, Part Four

07/06/2026

If you could invite any four people to your home for supper to discuss AI, who would make your guest list? You already know three on my AI guest list: Professor Ethan Mollick, author Vauhini Vara, and Professor Carissa Véliz. My fourth dinner guest would naturally be our Holy Father, Leo XIV. Why? As you may know he released a major encyclical on AI called “Magnifica Humanitas” on May 15, 2026. The ink is still wet from his signature on the encyclical.

Like a trained conversationalist, the pope happily acknowledges the valid points raised by his dinner companions. Leo agrees with the positive assessment of AI by Mollick, noting: “Technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity” (no. 4). Leo would concur with the insights of Vauhini Vara about corporations driving innovations for financial gains, saying: “Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often trasnational parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments” (no. 5).

Finally, Leo would nod positively with Carissa Véliz’ concerns of AI as a tool of despotism, stating gravely: “Yet precisely because of their power, [corporations] can also hasten the expansion of the technocratic paradigm. [But m]ore power does not necessarily imply something better” (no. 94).

Now when the pope opens his mouth to speak for the Church, he does not wax eloquent about the scientific, technological, or geopolitical implications of AI. Instead, he talks about humanity, the only area where the Church is truly expert. Hence, the title of his encyclical is “Magnifica Humanitas” or “The Grandeur of Humanity.” The basis of the Church’s confidence in speaking about humanity stems from the fact that Jesus came to reveal not only who God is, but also who man is.

Thus, in his opening paragraph, Leo quotes Vatican II’s groundbreaking document Gaudium et spes, which states: “It is only in the mystery of the Word made Flesh [Jesus] that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear” (no. 22). We might say the grandeur of humanity is the dish the pope brings to my AI potluck dinner (because I can’t cook).

Leo XIV is fully cognizant that he stands on the shoulders of giants, especially his namesake, Leo XIII. Thus, in chapter one he outlines the rich heritage of Catholic social doctrine elaborated by the popes of the 20th and 21st centuries. Leo distills 5 principles for Catholic social teaching from his papal predecessors: (1) the common good, (2) the universal destination of goods, (3) subsidiarity, (4) solidarity, and (5) social justice.

That is, only when we transform these 5 abstract principles into concrete action on the personal, national, and international levels do we fully protect and promote “the grandeur of humanity.” Or, as Dwayne Johnson, the wrestler known as the Rock, dramatically said: “Can you smell what the Rock’s been cooking?” After all, Leo is the successor of St. Peter, the rock on which Jesus built his Church. The Rock, therefore, has always been cooking.

Pope Leo’s dish for our AI dinner helps us to taste two new issues regarding AI: first, transhumanism and posthumanism, and second, how a new colonialism brings behind it a new slavery. Here’s how Leo puts the first issue: “In general, transhumanism envisions the enhancement of human beings through technologies – such as biomedicine, body-engineering, devices, and algorithms – with the aim of increasing performance and capabilities.”

He continues on this same front: “Post-humanism, especially in its more radical forms, goes further: it challenges an anthropocentrism and envisions a hybridization of human beings, machines and the environment, even anticipating a threshold where humanity surpasses itself in a new evolutionary stage” (no. 116). We might compare transhumanism and posthumanism to Clark Kent stepping into the phone booth to become Superman. AI proposes to help man undergo an evolutionary leap kind of like when man went from monkeys to humans.

Secondly, Leo points out how a new form of colonialism and

slavery of the poor is emerging: “A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential but largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training, and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages.”

Leo keeps cooking: “In some regions of the world children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted [required for the production of devices and microprocessors on which AI depends]” (no. 173). If this trajectory does not change course, Leo predicts: “The digital age, will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form” (no. 178). In other words, you and I may enjoy the benefits of the latest Iphone or Android, but that comes at the cost of the virtual slavery of millions of people in developing countries, especially women and children.

Again John Paul’s theology of the body not only reinforces Leo’s criticisms of AI but sort of raises them to a higher pitch. How so? John Paul observes that man’s perennial desire to overcome death – the underly motive of transhumanism and post-humanism – will only be achieved in the resurrection of the body. The Polish pope agrees that man is called to a transhuman and post-human destiny which he calls “divinization”.

He writes: “The divinization of the ‘other world’ indicated by Christ’s words will bring to the human spirit such a ‘range of experiences’ of truth and love that man would never have been able to reach it in [his] earthly life” (393). Divinization, the pope contends, can only be received as a gift of God. That is, unlike what AI asserts, we cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. John Paul also proposes we cannot receive this transhumanization (or divinization) without loving our neighbor, especially the poor.

In other words, we cannot climb to heaven by stomping on our neighbor’s head. John Paul explains: “And for this reason, [the love of neighbor] we profess faith in the ‘communion of saints’ (communio sanctorum) and profess it in organic connection with faith in the ‘resurrection of the body’” (396). That is, if the road to transhumanism and posthumanism runs rough shod over and tramples the bodies of God’s children (in a new colonialism and slavery), it will not lead to eternal divinization but to eternal damnation.

Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Leo XIV are successors of St. Peter, who was the rock on which Jesus built his Church. And Jesus promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against the Church because “the rock” would speak in every age with the authority of Christ himself. In that sense, John Paul II’s “theology of the body” and Leo’s encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” are exactly “what the rock’s been cooking” regarding artificial intelligence. Bon appetit.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Dominate Us or Die for Us

 

AI and the Theology of the Body, Part Three

07/02/2026

A third author we want to include in our conversation about AI and the theology of the body is Dr. Carissa Véliz. She’s a professor of philosophy at Oxford, and unsurprisingly very articulate, thoughtful, kind, and she also did not mince words. And of our three interlocutors so far, she’s the toughest and most pessimistic about AI. Is it only a coincidence that the one person in favor of AI was a white male who teaches business while the two pessimists are minority females: an India reporter and a Hispanic professor?

Professor Véliz gives numerous examples where biases were evident in AI results. She writes in her 2026 book, "Prophesy": “Another reason [algorithms are unfair] is that most of these algorithms are fed with historical data, and racism is baked into it…” She continues: “Predictive algorithms identify correlations, and not being white is associated with having fewer opportunities” (137). Carissa Véliz is arguing we should learn from history – as AI does because data is typically historical – but we should not get stuck in the past. Like the old definition of insanity: you keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.

The full title of Professors Véliz’ book, though, “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI,” suggests a darker and more sinister reason for the rise of AI, namely, dominance, or the word she more frequently uses “despotism.” She explains how predicting what you and I will do next is highly lucrative. She argues: “In the data economy, we are being surveilled…Our data is feeding the machines deciding our futures” (140).

She gets more specific: “Data brokers all over the world have a data file on you. It contains information like your name, age, gender, income, education, and occupation. Data brokers…track family life events like marriages, divorces, funerals, and pregnancies…They track your location, which allows them to know where you live, where you work, how well you drive (Fort Smith drivers are in big trouble), whether you are buying drugs, or going to a psychologist, or attending a family planning clinic, whether you are having an affair (through patterns like two phones coming together in a hotel every week)” (141).

And here’s the financial ROI for all the surveillance and data mining: “They then ‘add value’ by predicting what you’ll do next and selling that to the highest bidder” (141). Recently I was talking to several priests about why it takes the pope sometimes a long time to appoint a new bishop to a diocese. One priest remaked along the lines of Professors Véliz’s point: “Some priests turn down episcopal appointments because unlike the past when sins were forgiven and forgotten, today sins are forgiven and never forgotten.”

Now all that sounds pretty bad, but Professor Véliz believes things are much worse, arguing that AI is being used not only to make money but to consolidate power. She insists: “The act of surveillance is an act of despotism.” She elaborates: “Surveillance creates asymmetries of power, because the surveilled (you and I on our phones) is at the mercy of the watcher [AI]. The more information the watcher [AI] has on their subject, the more power they have over them, and the easier it becomes to predict and influence their behavior. There is no surveillance for the sake of it. Surveillance makes no sense without predicting and an intention to control” (144-45). She cites the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and China as illustrations of the striking similarities between “authoritarian states” and “authoritarian corporations” (149). Sort of makes you want to go and live on Gilligan’s Island, doesn’t it?

Once again the theology of the body comes to our rescue and helps us separate the wheat from the chaff of artificial intelligence. On the one hand AI can be “wheat’ in the way it surveils us. How so? Well, surveillance doesn’t have to be creepy. For example, parents diligently surveil their babies, gawking at every move, taking pictures of their first steps, and even putting cameras in the corners of the bedroom in case anything goes wrong at night. Young lovers surveil each other while on romantic dates and cannot take their eyes off each other (or their hands). They cannot bear to be apart, even for a moment. God, for his part, is constantly vigilant for his children. Psalm 139 asks: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to the highest heavens you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” It is good to be super-sensitive, therefore, to AI’s constant surveillance, because it reminds us of God’s omnipresence and omniscience. God's unwaveringly gaze upon us.

But John Paul also reminds us God does not surveil us for the sake of dominating us, but rather for the sake of dying for us as a Spouse. John Paul touches on one of the touchiest passage of Scripture, Ep 5:22, which reads: “Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.” You know how all brides love to plaster that passage on their wedding cakes. The pope-saint immediately clarifies: “When [St. Paul] expresses himself in this way, [he] does not intend to say that the husband is the ‘master’ of the wife and that the interpersonal covenant proper to marriage is a contract of domination by the husband over the wife.” Then the Holy Father adds a little later: “This relationship is…not one-sided submission…Husband and wife are, in fact, subject to one another.”

Then he reveals the root of this mutual submission: “Christ is the source and at the same time the model of that submission – which confers on the conjugal union a deep and mature character” (474). In other words, if you want to know why God surveils us, we only have to look at the cross. God watches over us not to dominate us but to die for us. That death to self is how Jesus loves his Bride, the Church – he cannot take his eyes and hands off us – and that death to self is how husbands and wives should love each other. And that dynamic is the exact opposite of how AI interacts with us. That is, AI surveils us to dominate us; Jesus surveils us to die for us.

Praised be Jesus Christ!