A Credible Witness
Paragraph 89 is perhaps my favorite passage from Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. It’s at the end of a short section titled “An examen for the Church,” where Pope Leo makes the case that the Church must live out its...
Tagged: Magnifica Humanitas
The Weakness of Abuse — Withstanding the Culture of Power
Alex was about 20, a strong young man from a troubled family. His mother, who tried to drown him shortly after he was born, died in a mental asylum. His older brother had been committed to an asylum, where he,...
Magnifica Humanitas: Work, War, and the Civilization of Love
The wise guys are back for Part 4 of their deep dive into Magnifica Humanitas, and this time Scott Lieb and Michel Therrien unpack chapters 4 and 5 of the encyclical. (Click for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)...
Magnifica Humanitas’s Latin Snag
Quite unexpectedly, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas brought me back to my time years ago studying with the much-beloved papal Latinist Reginald Foster. Much of Magnifica Humanitas explicitly hearkens back to Leo XIII’s seminal social encyclical Rerum Novarum...
Magnifica Humanitas: Digital Power and Upholding Human Dignity
The wise guys are back for Part 3 of their deep dive into Magnifica Humanitas, and this time Scott Lieb and Michel Therrien unpack Pope Leo’s analysis of “digital power” and what it means to be truly human in the age...
Magnifica Humanitas and the 12 Steps
Dawn Eden Goldstein, theologian, canon lawyer, and author, who has written Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.’s Spiritual Sponsor, a biography of Fr. Edward Dowling, who was pivotal to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, sees a link between 12...
Magnifica Humanitas: The Church Sees What the World Doesn’t
In part two (click here for part 1) of the Wise Guys’ series on Magnifica Humanitas, Scott Lieb and Dr. Michael Therrien continue breaking down Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical letter. This episode will help you grow in understanding of the...
Pope Leo is coming into his own
One week after the release of Magnifica Humanitas and three weeks into his catechesis on Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican II’s constitution on the liturgy), the vision and mission of Pope Leo XIV are becoming clearer. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Pope Leo seems to have taken...
Is Pope Leo’s Gandalf quote a dig at Peter Thiel?
J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork The Lord of the Rings has made it into Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical — and the reference reads like a veiled rebuke of Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and Tolkien superfan whose dystopian vision twists...
Ten Takeaways from Magnifica Humanitas
It is often said that when the Pope speaks, the world listens. Throughout its history — and especially over the past century — the Church has found itself speaking prophetically at key turning points of modern life. For example, in...
Leo XIV: A Human Heart for Artificial Intelligence
Pope Leo XIV has recently surprised many not only by saying that he is not afraid of those who flaunt great military and political power. He has also surprised us by offering a critical — and at the same time...
Magnifica Humanitas and the Environment
There are few images that haunt me. One of them was hanging on a wall of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago as part of the Blue Paradox Exhibit on microplastics. In the image, a person wades...
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