Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
Magnifica Humanitas: The Church Coming as the Good Samaritan

Magnifica Humanitas: The Church Coming as the Good Samaritan

Last updated on: May 29, 2026 at 6:28 pm by Rebecca Hamilton

Magnifica Humanitas: The Church Coming as the Good Samaritan 2026-05-29T18:28:58-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Good Samaritan by Hogarth. Source: Wikimedida Commons, share and share alike.

When the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person, or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church must make her voice heard. Magnifica Humanitas

There’s an old saying around these parts: When the buffalo fight in the swamp, the frogs lose.

The Catholic Church, with its global reach and 1.5 billion followers, certainly qualifies as a “buffalo” in any public debate.

By the same types of measurements, AI billionaires, with their vast financial resources that make them, as individual people, more powerful than the governments they always influence and often control, are a sort of mega “buffalo.”

The leaders of government — presidents, prime ministers, kings, congresses and parliaments — who more and more serve the AI billionaires rather than the people they govern, are also “buffalos.”

That leaves us — you and me and those we love — to play the part of the hapless frogs.

Magnifico Humanitas, Chapter 2

Chapter two of Magnifico Humanitas is Pope Leo’s carefully thought-out explanation of why he has to speak now about the tsunami of change that AI is bringing. Magnifico Humanitas is the Pope, telling us that when the buffalo fight in the swamp, the Church will accompany the frogs.

Pope Leo tells us quite clearly that he made the decision to write Magnifico Humanitas based on specific and long-held teachings of the Church. He describes the moral basis for Magnifico Humanitas in detail.

Popes don’t just wake up one morning with itchy typing fingers and toss out a rant disguised as an encyclical.

Papal encyclicals are a response to an urgent need to establish how faithful Christians must respond to events and circumstances that are new, big, and that have the potential to be very harmful to human beings.

AI: A challenge to humanity that requires an answer.

AI fits that description exactly.

AI is a new technology that has the power to challenge the essential humanity of all human beings.

Government officials — presidents, prime ministers, congresses, courts and parliaments — are ignoring their responsibility to regulate AI for the common good. Instead, they are bowing down to the billionaires who own AI and allowing them to ignore the law and raid the resources and the national treasury that belong to all of us.

With one notable exception, the men who are creating and controlling the power of AI appear to act with their own self-interest and greed for money and power as the only yardstick by which they measure the rightness of their actions.

These creators and controllers of the AI behemoth openly acknowledge that AI will render most human beings unnecessary. Not only will we no longer have a means of procuring our livelihoods, but we will become useless baggage to the powerful and wealthy. A few of these tech billionaires have made public statements about their intention to put the entire population under AI surveillance in order to control us.

The Church supports good government and technological advances

Pope Leo makes it clear that the Church does not intend and has no desire to control the normal functioning of healthy civil societies. The Church supports honest scientific inquiry, and it has no interest in impeding technological advances.

The Church is the repository of 2,000 years of teaching, which informs Christian faith.

It provides social services, education, health care and aid all over the world. It is a purveyor of help. The Church provides generous access to the sacraments to Catholics everywhere it can. It maintains the liturgy in a consistent manner, and — this is where Magnifico Humanitas comes in — it also teaches us how to follow Christ.

When the Church teaches, it is applying the Scriptures, especially the Gospels, and 2,000 years of accumulated tradition and understanding to the real-life challenges that faithful Catholics must overcome. When the Church teaches, it is equipping us to be Christ in the world.

When the Church speaks, it does so as the Good Samaritan

Pope Leo writes that when the Church enters into the arena of public debate, it does so in the spirit of the Good Samaritan.

The story of the Good Samaritan is a story that Jesus told to illustrate the responsibility that human beings have to care for and come to the aid of one another.

He was answering a rather condescending question from a teacher of the law who didn’t want to be obliged to help others. Jesus had said that what we must do to inherit eternal life is love God with all our hearts and also love and help our neighbors. The teacher of the law, wishing to justify himself, snapped back, Who is my neighbor?

Jesus replied by telling him the story of a man who was robbed, beaten and left to die on the side of the road. As this man lay there suffering, a Levite, who was a Temple official, passed him by and refused to stop and help. Then a priest also passed him by without helping.

Finally, a Samaritan, an outcast among the Israelites and someone the Pharisee almost certainly would have despised, stopped and cared for the man. He bound up his wounds and took him to an inn, where he paid for his lodging. He left money with the innkeeper to provide for the man’s needs going forward.

Jesus asked the teacher of the law, Who was this man’s neighbor? The Pharisee answered, The one who had mercy on him. And Jesus said, You have answered correctly.

Pope Leo said that when the Church steps in as it has done with Magnifico Humanitas, it is doing it because ordinary human beings are being left beaten, destitute, with no effective help on the side of the road of life. The Church is coming to their aid, like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable.

The loss of morality in government and economics.

One of the encyclicals that Pope Leo references in Chapter 2 of Magnifico Humanitas is Caritas Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict said that love and truth are at the heart of the Church’s Social Doctrine. But he noted with concern that there is an increasing tendency to dismiss morality and moral relevance precisely within social, legal, political and economic fields.

Pope Benedict wrote that in 2009. I think we can all say that the dismissal of morality and moral relevance in politics and finance is now pretty much absolute. We are living through an era in which undisguised and unashamed lies and corruption are accepted as “normal,” and even lionized by many of our so-called “Christian” clergy.

The Church must speak for the common good.

When Pope Leo says that the Church has to enter the arena of public discourse by using its prophetic and moral voice to apply the Gospels to this situation, he is correct.

When he says that the Church is entering this debate with the spirit of the Good Samaritan, coming to provide aid and succor to people who are injured, helpless and abandoned, he is also correct.

Pope Leo speaks to us as our shepherd.

Pope Leo speaks to us as our shepherd. His teaching has deep roots in the rich soil of consistent Church teaching that human beings are made in the Image and Likeness of God. Insisting on moral integrity and concern for the common good from those who govern us is not only our civil right, it is our moral obligation as Christians.

If today we can speak of a corpus of shared principles and criteria, it is because this faith-based interpretation of history has never been interrupted, remaining ever open to the challenges posed by each generation, our Holy Father, Pope Leo, tells us.

Shakespeare wrote that love does not alter when it alteration finds. The same is true of Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. The same Jesus who taught us about the Good Samaritan is speaking to us today, through our Church.

Note: You can find the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10: 25-37. “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” is a quote from Hebrews 3:8. “Love does not alter when it alteration finds” is from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. “When the buffalo fight in the swamp, the frogs lose” is a common saying where I grew up.

Technology and Religion

Corruption

Magnifica humanitas

Pope Leo XIV

Previous Post

May 28, 2026

Magnifica Humanitas is Pope Leo, Repeating What Jesus Said.

Next Post

May 30, 2026 Is AI a Toy? Or is AI the Terminator?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Commandments 2012 Election 2016 Election 2020 Election 2022 Election 2024 Election Abortion Addiction Adult Day Care Advent Africa AI Alcoholism Alex Pretti Renee Good America American Citizenship American Fascism Announcement Anti Semitism Anti-Semitism Apologetics Archbishop Coakley Argentina Armenian Genocide Ash Wednesday Ballot Box Salvation Biden Big Beautiful Bill Bishop Black Mass Blasphemy Boko Haram Book Review Brainwashing Breast Cancer Bribery Calling Evil Good calling good evil Cancer Canonize Caregiving Catholic Catholic Vote Cause for Sainthood Chaos child abuse Child Labor Child Rearing Child Sacrifice Christian Bashers Christian Leadership Christian Persecution Christian Solidarity Christianity Christmas clergy Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Climate Coakley Common Good Communion Communism Computers concentration camps Conclave Confession Consecration to Our Lady Conversion Coptic Christians Coronavirus Corporatism Corruption COVID Crisis Pregnancy Centers Culture D Day Death Death Penalty Dementia Democracy Designer Baby Destruction of the Family Dictator Dignity of Work Divine Mercy Novena Divine Mercy Sunday Divorce Doubt Drug Addiction easter Ebola Economics Education Egg Harvesting El Salvador Elderly Epiphany Epstein eternal life Eternal Life Eucharist Eugenics Euthanizing Children Euthansia evangelization Excommunicate Biden Extraterrestrial Life Failed Clergy Faith False Gods Family Fascism Fatherhood Feast of the Assumption First Amendment Flood the Zone Following Christ forced conversion Forgiveness Fortnight4Freedom fourth amendment Fr James Altman Fr Stanley Rother free press Freedom Freedom of Conscience freedom of religion Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship vs Religious Freedom Geek Stuff Gender Theory Genocide God the Father Good Friday Gossip GQP Greenland Grief Gun Control Gun Violence Hate Blogs Health Health Care Heart Attack Heaven Hell Herod HHS Mandate History of the Crusades Holy Father Holy Father' Holy Father's Tweets Holy Matrimony Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Holy Thursday Holy Week Home Homeschooling homosexual Hospice Human Dignity Human Rights human trafficking Humor ICE Idolatry Immaculate Conception Immigration Incest Infertility Inspiration Iran War ISIS Islam Islamic Brotherhood Israel JD Vance Jesus Jobs Jordan Judas Judicial and Legislative Murder Judicial Murder July 4 Just War Justice Kavanaugh Ketanji Jackson Brown Laity Latin Mass Leadership Lent Less of Me Lying Lying for Trump Mad King MAGA Magnifica humanitas Mama Marriage Marriage Protection Amendment Martyr Media Bias Medicaid Men and Abortion Mercy Military Dictatorship Misogyny Motherhood Movie Review Murder Music National Catholic Register Nazi Clergy Neo Nazis New Category New Evangelism New Evangelization News Headlines Nigeria No Kings Novena for the Persecuted Church Nuns Obama Oklahoma Oscar Romero Our Lady Our National Embarrassment Pakistan Palm Sunday Papal Conclave Papal G8 Pedophile piano political priests Political Whore Clergy Politics Polygamy Pope Francis Pope Francis Visit United States Pope Leo XIV Pope's Prayer Intentions Pornography Post Christian West Poverty Prayer Prayers for the Persecuted Church Pro Life Prophecy Prostitution Purgatory Putin Quack Medicine Racism Rape Religious Freedom Renee Good Republican Republican priests Rerum Novarum Retirement Risen Lord Roe v Wade Rosary Sacrament Sacred Heart Sacrilege Saints Salvation Same Sex Marriage Sanctity of Human Life Satan Save Our Democracy scandal Scripture Shroud of Turin Sisters Slavery Social Justice Social Security Solidarity Cross St Michael the Archangel stations of the cross Stop Late Term Abortion Stroke Suicide Supreme Court Surrogacy Surveillance State Synod Syria Taliban Tariffs Taxes Technology Thanksgiving The Ascension The Cross The Locust Class The Political Heresy The Resurrection The Tomb The Transfiguration The Trinity The War on Girls Tornado Trauma Trump Trump Coup Trump Destroying America Trump's Coup Trump's War on the Rule of Law Trumpism Ukraine Uncategorized USAID USCCB Vatican Vatican Reform Violence Against Women Violence in America Vocation Voting Rights Wages Walk for Life War Weight Loss White House Why Aren't You a Feminist Too? Woke Women Leaders Women's Rights Worker's Rights World Hunger World War I World War III World Youth Day Worship Writing Year of Faith

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 October 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 August 2016 May 2016 April 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian denomination places great emphasis on "justification by faith alone"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Catholics Orthodox Lutherans Methodists