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INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
QUO VADIS, HUMANITAS?
THINKING THROUGH CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
IN THE FACE OF CERTAIN SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
Preliminary note
Introduction
1. The method of the document on the sixtieth anniversary of Gaudium et spes
2. The structure of the document: key categories
3. The focus of the document: an engagement with the challenges of trans-
and post-humanism
4. Discernment and the kerygmatic dimension of theology: the integral vocation
of the human being
Chapter I: DEVELOPMENT: HUMANISM AND POSTHUMANISM
1. The Magisterium’s discernment regarding development and technology
2. Some anthropological consequences of recent technological development
2.1. Relationship with the natural environment
2.2. Relationship with others in the digital world
2.3. Understanding oneself: consciousness and corporeality
2.4. Relationship with God
3. The cultural impact of technological revolutions: towards a critical
discernment
Chapter II: LIFE AS VOCATION: THE HUMAN PERSON AS AN AGENT IN HISTORY
1. The historical dimension of human experience: time and space
1.1. Living time with a healthy sense of history
1.2. Inhabiting space: from one’s own space to ‘thresholds’
2. Relationships and the sense of belonging: intersubjectivity
3. The integral vocation to fulfilment in love
Chapter III: THE GIFT OF LIFE AND COMMUNION IN THE FACE OF SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF
HUMANITY
1. Personal identity: a gift and a task
1.1 The task of becoming oneself: gift, love, freedom
1.2 The complexity of identity
2. The gift of life and communion in the face of transhumanism and
posthumanism
2.1. Shaping one’s identity starting from the body given
2.2. Being a gift to others
2.3. The transcendence of God’s gift that opens us to an infinite horizon
3. The unique position of human beings in the cosmos
Chapter IV: HUMANITY AFFIRMED, SAVED AND ELEVATED
1. The ‘polar tensions’ of our creaturely condition
2. The human experience in the drama of sin and grace
2.1 The rupture of the relationships that constitute human identity
2.2. Salvation through the humanity of Christ
3. The new humanity in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God
Conclusion: THE GIFT OF DIVINISATION AS TRUE HUMANISATION
1. The fully human Mother
2. The challenge of the poor
Preliminary note
The International Theological Commission is not merely a group of people who
meet just to draft a text, but rather a space for free exchange and discussion
that benefits from the wealth of perspectives offered by a variety of people
coming from very different contexts.
During its tenth quinquennium, the International Theological Commission had the
opportunity to deepen its study of Christian anthropology in the face of
contemporary cultural challenges, inspired by the sixtieth anniversary of the
promulgation of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council’s Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes (1965-2025). The work was carried out by a special
sub-commission, chaired by Rev. Javier Prades López and composed of the
following members: Rev. Alberto Cozzi, Rev. Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Rev.
Carlos Maria Galli, Prof. Reinhard Huetter, Rev. Victor Ronald La Barrera
Villarreal, Prof. Isabell Naumann, I.S.S.M., Rev. Josée Ngalula, R.S.A., Rev.
Bernard Pottier, S.J.
General discussions on the topic took place during both the various meetings of
the Sub-Commission and during the Plenary Sessions of the Commission itself in the years 2022-2025, under the coordination of the Secretary General, Monsignor
Piero Coda. This text was put to a vote and unanimously approved in forma specifica by the
members of the International Theological Commission during the plenary session
of 2025. The document was then submitted for approval to its President, His
Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the
Doctrine of the Faith, who, after obtaining the approval of the Holy Father Pope
Leo XIV, authorised its publication on 9 February 2026.
Introduction
1. The recent acceleration of technological development and scientific progress
has reawakened our wonder at humanity’s great potential and our perception of
its greatness. Yet, there is no lessening of dismay at humanity’s fragility,
subject as it is to death and disease, as demonstrated by the Covid-19 pandemic,
as well as temptation to resignation to the seemingly inevitable evil of wars
and conflicts, inequalities and indifference. Thus, the ambivalence of greatness
and fragility remains, and this cannot be denied.
We must avoid any attempt to oversimplify this ambivalence by choosing one of
two sides: we cannot censor natural fragility and limitations, exalting only
greatness and strength, perhaps relying blindly on the results of technological
research and scientific discoveries; but neither must we resign ourselves to all
the limitations and fragilities of life, forgetting the potential inscribed in
our intelligent and spiritual nature. The task entrusted to each of us to shape
our own identity with responsibility requires us not to oversimplify what it
means to be human.
2. Being a human person, with infinite dignity, is not something we have
constructed or acquired, but is the result of a free gift that precedes us.[1]
And it is not a gift that we simply received in the past, but something that
exists for ever as a gift in every circumstance of our existence, becoming a
non-transferable task. Appropriating this gift, giving shape to one’s own
identity, is the adventure of life, a task to be undertaken freely and within
the relationships in which we know ourselves, others and reality, so that we can
make our original and unique contribution to human history, corresponding to our
vocation. The gift is welcomed within a ‘we’, a community to which each person
belongs and in which they grow.
3. Religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, propose that we
live, without oversimplification, this ambivalence between human greatness and
limitation, interpreting it in the light of our original and fundamental
relationship with God. In Psalm 8:5, addressing God in a heartfelt dialogue, the
psalmist asks what human beings are such that he is mindful of them and cares
for them. The psalmist responds by noting the greatness God has bestowed upon
human beings in his creation: ‘You have made them a little lower than the
angels; you have crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them power
over the works of your hands; you have put everything under their feet.’ (Ps
8:6-7)[2] This paradox receives
definitive light from the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, where limitation,
finitude and transience, but also the disorder introduced by sin, are overcome
by the work of grace with the gift of divine sonship, which makes us
participants in the life of the Risen One, according to the Father’s plan and
thanks to the renewal of all things in the Spirit.
4. Pope Francis took up the question of Psalm 8, emphasising the response of
biblical anthropology, centred on the fundamental elements of a free and
responsible relationship with creation, with others and with God. But then he
noted how ‘today we realise that the great principles and fundamental concepts
of anthropology are often called into question, also on the basis of a greater
knowledge of the complexity of the human condition, and they require further
in-depth examination.’[3] Pope Leo
XIV justified his choice of name by recalling that ‘in our own day, the Church
offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another
industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial
intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice
and labour.’[4]
5. Reflection on anthropology in the light of revelation is called upon to
interpret the complex conditions of a world that is undergoing change so
profound that it can be described as ‘epochal’. Since the understanding of the
human in the history of thought (particularly in the Western tradition) had
achieved well-defined results, it might seem that further reflection should
focus on clarifying certain particular aspects of human action. Instead, we find
ourselves today once again engaged in exploring the mystery of the human being
as such, in his or her identity. Today’s challenges force us to leave behind our
acquired certainties and can also arouse fears, which are often not unfounded.
Reflection on the human being, in various areas of personal and social life,
seems to go beyond the human, questioning the specificity of human nature
itself.
1. The method of the document on the sixtieth anniversary of
Gaudium et
spes
6. Reason enlightened by faith must establish a critical comparison between new
anthropological horizons and the perennial needs of the human condition:
‘Discernment must carefully distinguish between elements compatible with the
Gospel and those contrary to it, between positive contributions and ideological
aspects, but the more acute understanding of the world that results cannot fail
to prompt a more penetrating appreciation of Christ the Lord and of the Gospel,
since Christ is the Saviour of the world.’[5]
7. This discernment is inspired by the sixtieth anniversary of the Pastoral
Constitution
Gaudium et
spes (1965-2025), an anniversary that points the
present document towards a new reflection linked to the personal and social
anthropology proposed in the Constitution and in the subsequent Magisterium that
has received and developed its teaching. The unique nature of Gaudium et spes
must be emphasised, a conciliar Constitution with specific magisterial
value, expressed in its commitment to consider carefully the condition of
humanity in today’s world. For the first time in history, a document of this
level systematically proposed a vision of the human being illumined by the
mystery of Christ. In its wake, therefore, we have the question of re-proposing
Christian anthropology today in an open and critical dialogue with the more
recent questions coming from human experience and cultures. Precisely in
reference to
Gaudium et
spes, the document places at its centre the human
being, ‘whole and entire, body and soul, heart and conscience, mind and will’,[6]
in order to promote that ‘integral and solidary humanism capable of
creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom
of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity.’[7]
2. The structure of the document: key categories
8. So as to complete in an adequate way this task of critical discernment in the
face of some of the most relevant scenarios for the future of humanity, the
document proposes four main categories in each of the chapters of which it is
composed. It begins by considering the notion of development, which
underpins many of the technological and social innovations currently underway.
The need to ensure integral human development then leads to a reflection on the
category of vocation as a key to anthropological understanding, which in
turn refers to the question of human identity, on both a personal and
social level. Finally, it explores the historical and free dramatic condition
that characterises human identity, understood as vocation, and its dialogue
with new techno-scientific challenges.
9. Reflecting on development, we want to take note, on the one hand, of
the historical-temporal condition of a humanity that has grown as never before in its history, tripling its
population in the space of seventy years. On the other hand, this orientation
offers an opportunity for a critical examination of the concrete conditions of
life of individuals and peoples in this movement of the twenty-first century,
marked as it is by the exponential growth of techno-scientific resources and
their impact on the life of humanity. Current development oscillates between
striving for a concrete improvement in the living conditions of peoples and
dreams even of replacing humanity.
10. The second category is that of integral vocation, taken from
Gaudium et
spes, inasmuch as, starting from an analysis of the concrete
conditions of time, space and intersubjectivity that characterise common human
experience, Christian anthropology appears to be constitutively relational and
responsive, and as such responsible.
11. The third notion, that of identity, has not been explicitly explored
in previous documents.[8] The
question of human identity is indeed a sign of our times, precisely because of
the dimensions assumed by technological and scientific progress, which today
seems to allow interventions on human nature that were unthinkable until
recently, to the point of encouraging the claim of individuals and societies to
absolute self-determination.[9]
12. The fourth key word in the document refers to the dramatic condition
of the process of realising human identity. The path to its discovery,
maturation and fulfilment is complex: it passes through concrete historical
circumstances, in which each individual person and each people must freely put
themselves on the line and expose themselves also to risks, falls and suffering.
The human search for identity is not a predefined matter to be applied
deductively. The revelation of the Triune God opens up the horizon of an
asymmetrical reciprocity in the encounter between divine and human freedom
(according to the biblical categories of covenant and spousal relationship).
In this reciprocity, God’s freedom and love are ‘absolute’, in that they are
original and unconditioned; human freedom, on the other hand, is elicited and
responsive, called to decide for the true good, in accordance with God’s will.
Each person, in realising the humanity given to them by God, represents
something new and irreducible. One’s identity must therefore always be
(re)discovered and implemented personally, thanks to dialogue with the living
God, in the context of the different circumstances of a situated humanity, where
one experiences what Pope Francis has called ‘bipolar tensions’.[10]
3. The focus of the document: an engagement with the challenges of
trans- and post-humanism
13. The dramatic condition of the historical process of humanisation – redeemed
and brought to gratuitous fulfilment in Christ – unfolds in the awareness that
every human being has of their own finitude in the inescapable encounter with
the infinite.[11] Human beings
are the only creatures on earth who know they are finite and so must face the
fact of finitude. It is possible to consider several options that thus open up
before each human being: one can attempt to absolutize finitude; one can attempt
to escape finitude in a fictitious infinity; one can try to come to terms with
finitude; one can inhabit the tension between finitude and infinity, in the hope
of fulfilment received as a gift.
The four possibilities attest, in different ways, that human beings cannot find
fulfilment in their finite condition, but are referred to the ‘other of every
finitude’, to the ‘unconditioned’. They have at least to conceive of the
opposite of the finite, even if they are convinced that nothing is truly
infinite, unconditioned, absolute. And precisely because they are aware of their
finitude, human beings ardently desire to transcend all that is finite. They
may, of course, also despair because of their own insurmountable finitude.
However, the various forms of despair reveal themselves, when examined closely,
to be human attempts at overcoming the tension between finitude and infinity,
either by fleeing finitude or by absolutizing it. This analysis, while making us
aware of tensions that belong to the human experience of all times, also invites
us to consider what new forms they take in certain currents of thought that are
highly influential in contemporary societies, such as transhumanism and
posthumanism.
14. Transhumanism and posthumanism, although related and sometimes
considered identical (due to their respective definitions still being somewhat
fluid), represent different perspectives in understanding human nature and the
future of humanity.
Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that operates on the belief that human beings can
and should use the resources of science and technology to overcome the physical
and biological limitations of the human condition, in particular ageing and even
death, thus shaping their own evolution and maximising their own potential to
the point of redesigning human beings to make them fitted to ‘go beyond’. With
its programmatic emphasis on increasing individual human capabilities, it
develops a distinctly anthropocentric perspective, subscribing to an ideological
and naively uncritical view of scientific and technological progress.[12]
Transhumanism imagines a future in which human beings will perfect the current biological form
that defines human nature, in order to achieve the goal of individual
immortality, supported by technology. In the utopian scope of its quest for
immanent immortality, transhumanism can be interpreted as the existential
expression of a presumption that is both naive and arrogant.
15. Posthumanism, understood in the strict sense, criticises traditional
humanism, questioning the specificity of human beings and the existence of a
‘human form’ that, as such, deserves to be preserved because it carries a
universally valid meaning. It therefore emphasises the ‘hybrid’ (cyborg)
to the point of deconstructing the human subject, making the boundary between
humans and machines completely fluid,[13]
and rejecting the anthropocentrism that remains characteristic of
transhumanism.[14] Ultimately,
posthumanism in the strict sense can be understood as an existential
expression of escapism, which starts from a radical devaluation of the human.
16. Understanding the Christian faith urges us to seek in Christ the Redeemer,
who died and rose again, a synthesis of the profound tensions that characterise
human beings, and which are presented today in a new and challenging form by
transhumanism and posthumanism, and to do so without creating
alternatives or oppositions between them or within them, as often happens in the
contradictions that recur in current debates between ‘given identity’ and
‘constructed identity’, between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, between
‘community/social dimension’ and ‘individual/personal dimension’, between
belonging to a ‘concrete historical culture’ and belonging to the ‘universal
human’. In a specifically Christian and theological vision, the dramatic
condition of the historical process of humanisation, starting from the polarity
of the finite and the infinite, is in fact saved and brought to fulfilment in
Jesus Christ, and cannot find a solution in any form of substitution or
suppression of the human.
4. Discernment and the kerygmatic dimension of theology: the integral vocation
of the human being
17. The purpose of this document is not only to offer a discernment capable of
weighing the anthropological consequences of techno-scientific discoveries and
the corresponding ethical choices of people and societies today. It also draws
out a prophetic proposal in the light of the Gospel.[15]
The theoretical-practical nature of theology encompasses the proclamation of
faith (kerygma) and education in a vision of humanity, in dialogue with
scientific progress, in which everything that is good can be integrated (cf.
1 Thessalonians 5:21) and what is limiting or penalising with regard to the
definitive fulfilment of each person and of humanity as a whole can be overcome.
18. The document is therefore positively orientated towards a theological and
pastoral proposal regarding human life understood as a vocation. The
deepest level of every personal and social experience is that of being called by
another in the perspective of a gift that precedes and makes possible the
response, according to a dynamic of co-responsibility towards others and towards
God. It is this theoretical-practical understanding of the human that the
community of the Church wishes to offer to all.
19. In summary, what is at stake is the question of human identity, individual
and collective, in a developing world, in the light of vocation in Christ, that
is to say, the reaffirmation of humanity’s ‘total vocation’.[16]
This integral vocation is placed in the context of a ‘situated
anthropocentrism’,[17] that is, a
worldview that, on the one hand, upholds the unique and central value of human beings in the midst of the
wonderful accord of all beings and, on the other, recognises that human life is
incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures. Within this world,
vocation in Christ is primary, preceding and giving a foundation to the
Christian response, so that the illusions or disappointments of the journey do
not negate the filial identity to which we are called in Christ through the gift
of the Spirit.
20. Phenomenological analysis and critical evaluation of culture in its various
dimensions are illumined by Christian hope, founded on the certainty of faith in
the good destiny held out to every person in Jesus Christ in the fullness of
risen life. This is the horizon of every transformation that people can desire
for themselves and for others in the historical journey of the human family.
This positive outlook is supported in particular by the figure of the Virgin
Mary, whose response to the divine call reflects all the beauty of life in
Christ, not closed in on herself and plans of her own, but open to the faithful
will of the Lord of history and of all things.
Chapter I
DEVELOPMENT: HUMANISM AND POSTHUMANISM
21. Let us begin by analysing the notion of ‘development’. It is a category that
is present in debates on current changes and concerns very different human and
social problems. This chapter aims to contextualise the potential of the various
ways in which science, technology and cultures today conceive of the
‘development’ of the individual, of societies and of the global world. It is a
category that points towards the future of humanity, which many today feel is at
risk and which requires the urgent contribution of all social agents in order to
defend it. Precisely for this reason, the same question arises forcefully in
many social, cultural and political contexts: where are we as humanity going?
Quo vadis, humanitas?[18]
22. Any conception of ‘development’ implies a specific axiological and
anthropological understanding, according to which what is progress or regression
is judged with respect to a certain ideal. To facilitate discernment of these
challenges, we begin with a brief presentation of magisterial teaching on
‘development’ from the Second Vatican Council onwards. The magisterial texts
express concern for the ‘integral development’ of humanity, which respects its
dignity and authentic identity, as well as its ultimate goal, which refers to a
mystery of full communion with the Triune God and among ourselves. This balance
can be compromised by two temptations. First is the dream of using technology to
make an evolutionary leap that transforms humanity as we know it, enhancing it
with the wonders of science and technology, almost in the manner of
self-generation, allowing us to invent and ‘create’ ourselves beyond the
conditions and limitations of human nature. Secondly, such dreams are built on
an individualistic view of the subject and his or her destiny and rely solely on
scientific innovations, hoping that they can improve individual well-being, even
though in reality the strong impact of the anonymous laws of the market and
profit often negatively affect the existence and future of real people. The
result comprises our common humanity and bonds of fraternity on the one hand,
and at the same time the space for real freedom for people who have few or no
opportunities, on the other.
23. It is precisely the acceleration triggered by scientific and technological
discoveries, fostered by favourable economic conditions and political
constellations, that calls for a review of the meaning and direction of this
‘development’, both in comparison with other categories, such as ‘progress’ or
‘evolution’ rather than ‘regression’ or ‘decline’, and above all in relation to
the demand for human improvement to the point of seeking a ‘superhuman’.[19]
The question remains whether this dream of a transition to a superhuman phase
will not rather lead to a ‘subhuman’ condition. Nonetheless, it must be
acknowledged that this desire to ‘go beyond’, to surpass oneself and one’s
current condition in order to be fully human, represents a tension that is
constitutive of human nature. We can therefore distinguish between a positive
meaning of ‘surpassing’, in which we recognise an openness to what lies beyond
human nature, and a negative meaning, where the idea of overcoming implies the
replacement or suppression of the human.
24. The correct meaning of this ‘going beyond’ that is proper to human beings is
found in the ‘transumanar’ spoken of by Dante in the first Canto of the
Paradiso,[20] as in other
expressions of the experience of ‘divinisation’, the effect of intimate union
with God through grace rather than the product of more or less elaborate human
techniques: ‘Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which
blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and
self-absorption. We become fully human when we become more than human, when we
let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our
being.’[21] At this level of discourse,
we can measure the profound distance that exists between certain forms of
transhumanism’s or posthumanism’s dream of ‘becoming like gods’ (cf.
Gen 3:4) and the gift of ‘divinisation’ understood as participation in
the divine life in the transfigured humanity of the children of God in Christ.[22]
1. The Magisterium’s discernment regarding development and technology
25. Progress as historical development entrusted to humanity. Taking up
John XXIII’s call to read the ‘signs of the times’[23]
and recognising the global impact of technological transformations that affect
the whole of society, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes placed the development of technology within the dynamic of
progress through which humanity realises itself in history: ‘Through their labours and native endowments human beings have ceaselessly
striven to better their life. Today, however, especially with the help of
science and technology, they have extended their mastery over nearly the whole
of nature and continue to do so.’[24]
The intensity of development, thanks to which human beings procure for
themselves things they once considered beyond their reach, raises certain
questions: ‘In the face of these immense efforts which already preoccupy the whole human
race, human beings agitate numerous questions among themselves. What is the
meaning and value of this feverish activity? How should all these things be
used? To the achievement of what goal are the strivings of individuals and
societies heading?’[25]
26. The call for ‘integral development’. These questions are taken up by
Paul VI, who recognises the valuable contribution of technological progress as
necessary for economic growth and human development. At the same time, he warns
against the risk that the human person is no longer the author of progress: ‘It is not enough to develop technology so that the earth may become a more
suitable living place for human beings. [...] Economics and technology are meaningless if they do not benefit human beings, for
it is human beings they are to serve. Human beings are truly human only if they
are the masters of their own actions and the judges of their worth, only if they
are the architects of their own progress. They must act according to their
God-given nature, freely accepting its potential and its claims upon them.’[26]
This concern gives rise to a fundamental criterion: if technology is part of the
characteristic activity of human beings in the course of history, we must be
vigilant to ensure ‘integral and solidary development’, that is, the
development ‘of each human being and of the whole human being’,[27]
avoiding the exaltation of technology as the dominant form of life, as an
all-consuming way of existing, without really posing the question of its
meaning.[28]
27. Technological development and moral development: towards an integral
humanism. John Paul II, in explaining the need for development to remain
centred on the human person and not lose its moral dimension, echoes a
widespread concern about technological development that seems to be spiralling
out of control: ‘Humanity today seems ever to be under threat from what it produces, that is to
say from the result of the work of human hands and, even more so, of the work of
the human intellect.’[29] The
essential question that emerges concerns the ‘human’ quality of such
development: ‘Does this progress, which has the human being for its author and promoter, make
human life on earth “more human” in every aspect of that life? Does it make it
more “worthy of humanity”?’[30] What guarantees technological development as a positive force is attention to
the ethical dimension of development and therefore attention to the person, to
his or her inalienable dignity and responsibility. The goal of development, in
fact, cannot be entrusted to anonymous laws or mechanisms, regulated only by the
potential of scientific and technological innovations. Development must always
have a personal and social horizon, commensurate with the common good and the
ultimate goal of the person.[31]
28. The potential of technology and the temptation to create oneself.
Benedict XVI warns against the dream of ‘creating oneself’ without taking into
account the gift that precedes us: ‘A person’s development is compromised, if he or she claims to be solely
responsible for producing what he or she becomes. By analogy, the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can
re-create itself through the “wonders” of technology [...]’[32]
At the same time, he welcomes the positive value of technological progress,
which indeed corresponds to a true vocation that comes from God.[33] However, this is also the
source of the ambivalence of technology: ‘Technological development can give rise to the idea that technology is
self-sufficient when too much attention is given to the “how” questions,
and not enough to the many “why” questions underlying human activity.’[34]When human beings give in to a purely functional view of technology, they may
see it as a tool for unconditional freedom, allowing them to disregard the
limitations inherent in life and in things, dreaming of an absolute autonomy
that authorises them to create or recreate themselves. In reality, the mystery
of a creation which must be respected no longer resonates, but everything is
reduced to pure ‘fact’, the result of chance or some necessity, to be exploited
according to the interests of the powers of the day.
29. The power of technocracy and the environmental sustainability of
development. Francis denounces the devastating effects produced by forms of
‘technocracy’ before which human beings ‘stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the
wherewithal to control it.’[35]
What is lacking is a sufficiently solid ethic, a culture and spirituality that truly set limits and
contain it within a lucid self-control. At the root of this problematic
situation is the tendency to set the methodology and objectives of technoscience
according to a paradigm of power, which conditions the life of persons and the
functioning of society. This technocratic paradigm reveals a conception
of the subject who possesses the object in a logic of domination and
transformation for his or her own use and consumption. It is as if the subject
were faced with a formless reality, entirely available for manipulation. Human
intervention in nature is no longer limited to accompanying and supporting the
possibilities offered by things themselves: ‘Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to
extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting
the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a
friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This
has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth [...]’.[36]
This concern about potential abuses is accompanied, however, by wonder at the
beauty of the results of technological development: ‘Technoscience [...] can also produce art and enable men and women immersed in the material world to
“leap” into the world of beauty. Who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a
skyscraper?’[37]
30. On several occasions, Leo XIV has expressed a position of critical openness
towards the potential of technology, emphasising the importance of promoting a model of technological development that serves the person and the
common good and warning against the ‘harmful’ consequences of uncontrolled
progress. Acknowledging the challenge posed by a pervasive and irreversible ‘new digital
humanism’, he invites us to know how to live with it in the right way: ‘Science and technology influence the way we live in the world, even affecting
how we understand ourselves and how we relate to God, how we relate to one
another. But nothing that comes from human beings and their creativity should be
used to undermine the dignity of others. [...] Faced with cultural changes throughout history, the Church has never
remained passive; she has always sought to illuminate every age with the light
and hope of Christ by discerning good from evil and what was good from what
needed to be changed, transformed, and purified.’[38]
2. Some anthropological consequences of recent technological development
31. Magisterial discernment regarding development and its ambivalences
recognises first and foremost the positive value of technological innovations
which, when used well, constitute a great resource for humanity in many aspects
of civilisation and culture. It therefore seems to many that it would suffice to
distinguish between good and positive applications and harmful and dangerous
applications, on the assumption that technology is nothing more than a tool in
our hands. But, as Pope Leo XIV warns, the recent acceleration of technological
development in certain specific areas such as communication, data management and
artificial intelligence, biotechnology and robotics, makes discernment more
complex and delicate: ‘Humanity is at a crossroads, facing the immense potential generated by the
digital revolution driven by Artificial Intelligence. The impact of this
revolution is far-reaching, transforming areas such as education, work, art,
healthcare, governance, the military, and communication. This epochal
transformation requires responsibility and discernment to ensure that AI is
developed and utilized for the common good, building bridges of dialogue and
fostering fraternity, and ensuring it serves the interests of humanity as a
whole. [...] Therefore, the development of such technological advancements must go hand in
hand with respect for human and social values, the capacity to judge with a
clear conscience, and growth in human responsibility. It is no coincidence that
this era of profound innovation has prompted many to reflect on what it means to
be human, and on humanity’s role in the world.’[39]
32. The relationship with technological tools is complex, as the relationship
between the technological tool and the person using it is circular, implying
mutual conditioning. Those who use technological tools are, to some extent,
conditioned by the possibilities that the tools offer and may imagine the
organisation of their lives in a different way. For example, the construction of
motorways and high-speed railway lines encourages the distribution of work over
larger areas and allows for rapid travel, which facilitates exchanges, contacts
and activities over distances that were previously unthinkable. This leads to
greater mobility and a different organisation of working and family life. This
dynamism has a greater impact on the individual when we move from technological
tools that increase the speed of travel (cars, trains, aeroplanes) to
‘intellectual technologies’ that aim to enhance knowledge, that is, what and how
we think (digital technology, social media, artificial intelligence).
33. Since these tools are more closely connected to our self-understanding,
used to express ourselves in various forms of social communication, to shape
personal or collective identities, and to cultivate relationships with others, a
more intimate transformation ensues. Digital technology is no longer just a
tool, but constitutes a real living environment, with its own way of structuring
human activities and relationships. This technological development has a strong
impact on the self-understanding of the individual, inscribed in new cognitive
and communicative potentialities. The digital age inaugurates a new horizon of
meaning in which we think and communicate. The notion of what is universal also
changes, referring less to the idea of a common nature and more to what is
shared in global connections.[40]
Let us now give consideration to some of the anthropological implications that
are emerging in relation to these phenomena, analysing them on the basis of the
four fundamental relationships in which human persons express themselves: with
the environment, with others, with oneself and with God.[41]
2.1. Relationship with the natural environment
34. Our relationship with the environment is modified by synthetic
reality, or rather by the artificial, which pervades all areas of life, from
food (preservation of food; genetically modified organisms) to living space
(urbanisation) to bodily transformations (biotechnology). The expansion of
the artificial world, with materials not found in nature such as plastic,
steel and concrete, makes our relationship with nature and its laws more fluid
and indeterminate, and can create the illusion that only human freedom, based on
the transformative power of technology, offers a right relationship with the
real world.[42] In this way, the
very relationship between nature and culture is transformed and becomes more
complex: it is not nature with its laws and limitations that regulates and
directs development, understood as the drive to overcome unfavourable living
conditions, but rather technological potential, with its ‘unlimited’ resources.
Following this direction, a mentality guided by an economic logic of maximum
profit often prevails, according to which nature must be corrected, modified and
transformed with a view to ever-increasing productivity. The exploitation of the
earth’s resources is then intensified without measure, promoting, for example,
the deforestation of vast areas for intensive cultivation, which ends up
impoverishing the land. The tragic consequence of this is the ‘ecological debt’,
especially between the North and the South.[43]
A similar logic guides projects of uncontrolled and abusive urbanisation, which
disfigure entire ecosystems, as well as policies for the extraction of materials
needed for technological products, which pollute entire natural areas.[44]
In short, the artificial relativises what is ‘natural’ as a normative reference
for human action, causing, in vast regions of the earth, especially in the
South, the phenomena of impoverishment of the plundered natural environment and
of situations of impoverishment of the existence of entire populations, creating
situations of great social injustice.[45]
2.2. Relationship with others in the digital world
35. Relationships with others have been revolutionised in the digital age
through radical transformations in communication (mass media) and
information (big data). These have reached unprecedented levels of
universality, immediacy and involvement, increasing widespread awareness of
belonging to one large human family. However, individuals ‘online’ can often
feel like insignificant dots within an ungovernable and therefore destabilising
flow of information, which pushes them to develop their identity within virtual
bonds (contacts) that are timeless and placeless. This immense mass of data in
which we are immersed, constantly revisable and therefore fluid, intensifies the
perception of the complexity of reality, generating anxiety, insecurity and
fear.
36. In this context of increasing complexity, advances in artificial
intelligence offer a process of data management, organised on a statistical
basis, and the development of effective solutions, based on algorithms, which
are not always controllable by individuals, and sometimes not even by companies
or states (the algorithms of some systems have not been disclosed to any public
authority). The development objectives are managed independently by the system.
This highlights the power of artificial intelligence, with its ability to manage
enormous amounts of data, identifying correlations and proposing decisions based
on inferences that are unavailable to human calculation.
37. AI actually refers to a vast field of research and applications that have
various implications for people’s lives, both at work and in their family and
social lives.[46]
Without going into an analysis of the different forms of AI, it is useful to
clarify the distinction between AI in the strict sense, with its many
applications, and general AI (AGI).[47]
This distinction highlights two different ways of conceiving artificial
intelligence and imagining its meaning and use. AI in the strict sense offers
fast processing of large amounts of data using algorithms that perform complex
analysis and probability calculations, including artificial intelligence systems
that autonomously generate training data and refine their own internal
processes. These forms of use are widespread in civil (individual and corporate)
and military contexts in many parts of the world.[48]
38. AGI refers to a future, pervasive technology capable of replacing all
computational and operational aspects of human intelligence thanks to extremely
high computing speeds, made possible by the future development of quantum
processors. Where specific aspects of human intelligence are consciously
weakened or abandoned, AGI could have profound consequences that risk escaping
human control. Some therefore hypothesise that AI will be asked to manage the
problems it has created, according to a dynamic that would become irreversible.
This vicious circle is presented by some as an almost necessary process, as in
natural processes, a destiny that would bring to extreme consequences what human
beings would themselves have originally caused.
39. In the context of fundamental anthropology, we must ask ourselves whether we
can consider as exhaustive the understanding of the human being as homo faber
and homo technologicus, supported both individually and collectively
by AI that subtly saturates and determines every aspect of life. The result is a
‘hyperconnected’ world, with an increasing acceleration of economic, political,
social and military dynamics, which risk becoming uncontrollable and therefore
ungovernable. In such a world, human action itself becomes material to be
analysed and shaped according to power or market objectives that are not always
transparent. Social control and the risk of manipulation increase.
40. At the application level, AI in the strict sense raises questions
about the reliability of data and the criteria by which programmers process it
so as to make it available. It is unclear what biases or power systems influence
the work. In particular, serious doubts arise regarding automated, AI-based
decision-making processes in sensitive areas of human life: when deciding
whether to provide medical care or grant loans or mortgages or insurance, or
when prosecuting criminal cases in court or assessing the conduct of prisoners
and the likelihood of reoffending with a view to reducing sentences, or when
deciding on military attacks or law enforcement interventions.[49]
41. As for AGI, there is an intense race to increasingly bridge the gap between
the self-improvement of AI systems and the achievement of AGI. Although the goal
is still far off, it is being pursued with great determination, but sometimes
without the caution generated by the wise recognition that good always involves
appropriate limits and proportions. Whether it is a distant dream or an imminent
innovation, this form of general AI stimulates the search for a deeper
understanding of the nature of human intelligence, its uniqueness among living
beings, its irreplaceability, especially in relation to moral responsibility and
its intrinsic openness to transcendence. A type of knowledge and calculation
that dispenses with intelligence that is experienced in a body and situated, as
well as with a type of relational knowledge which is transmitted from generation
to generation through educational processes that play on identity and the
meaning to be given to one’s destiny and role in the world, constitutes a threat
to the true good of humanity. Yet, the dreams of transhumanism, which in
posthumanism even imagines an evolutionary leap, are based on this type
of knowledge without a body, without limits, without ties, and without moral
sense. Such imagination forcefully raises the question of the ultimate goal of
technological progress.[50]
42. In this context, it is understandable how interpersonal communication
has undergone profound changes in the society of mass communication
(radio, television, internet, social media), especially in recent times. There
are advantages to this techno-scientific development, such as active citizenship
or more direct and participatory information at the social and political level.
But often, contacts are created without bonds, functional relationships without
real solidarity, in an infinite market of news and personal data that is not
always verifiable and is often manipulated. Communication is not always fully
transparent. The pervasiveness of social media, which has become so
indispensable that the existence of the human family without it is unthinkable,
requires greater vigilance regarding cultural and economic conditioning. These
are not neutral means: ‘Often such views, stressing the strictly technical nature of the media,
effectively support their subordination to economic interests intent on
dominating the market and, not least, to attempts to impose cultural models that
serve ideological and political agendas.’[51] Their influence on the ethical-cultural dimension of globalisation is a
challenge to anthropology.[52]
43. In many areas of the infosphere, there is a perceived insistence on being
recognised, a constant sharing of thoughts and emotions online, which must be
‘given recognition by others’. Despite the legitimate human need for
recognition, this excessive phenomenon is a symptom of uncertainty of identity.[53]
Precisely because identity must be ‘invented’ without objective external
references (nature, cultural values, social roles, shared customs), it is
weaker: it calls for recognition but must negotiate, attract and conquer it,
even by shouting or by distorting reality. Today, the self struggles in the hope
of being recognised by someone, yet it often does so by asserting its individual
rights against the other, challenging the other. This leads to an
increase of social conflicts, which often become identity conflicts. The current
crisis in Western democracies cannot be understood without taking into account
this growing difficulty in the shared recognition of what unites us as human
beings. This context leaves the way open for political leaders to make important
decisions based solely on their own will.
44. A sensitive social area that is symptomatic of the possible ethical and
cultural implications of social media is the world of children and young
people: ‘The web and social networks have created a new way to communicate and bond. They
are “a public square” where the young spend much of their time and meet one
another easily […]’[54] On the
positive side, these media offer new opportunities for dialogue and are often a
source of independent information, protecting the most vulnerable and denouncing human rights violations. But they also have
limitations and serious risks: ‘the digital environment is also one of loneliness, manipulation, exploitation
and violence, even to the extreme case of the ‘dark web’. […] New forms of violence are spreading through social media, for example
cyberbullying. The internet is also a channel for spreading pornography and the
exploitation of persons for sexual purposes or through gambling.’[55]
45. New forms of social communication have a strong impact on political debate
because, while on the one hand they allow for experimentation with forms of
direct democracy, in which every citizen can express and make known his or her
opinion, on the other hand they can generate strong polarisation between groups
that think differently and confront each other in a conflictual and violent
manner, treating each other as enemies simply because they think differently.
Social exchange itself undergoes a ‘tribalisation’ that fragments society into
opinion groups homogenised by ‘likes’. Political debate risks no longer
being based on shared arguments, but rather on opposing sides in a logic of
power driven by pressure groups. There is often a lack of ‘social dialogue’ that
patiently builds consensus from the bottom up, starting from a common world and
bonds of solidarity: ‘These closed circuits facilitate the spread of fake news and false information,
fomenting prejudice and hate. The proliferation of fake news is the expression
of a culture that has lost its sense of truth and bends the facts to suit
particular interests.’[56]
2.3. Understanding oneself: consciousness and corporeality
46. The information revolution (‘infosphere’) is changing the way knowledge is
exercised: it is no longer a question of developing theories to interpret data
and find solutions to problems, but rather of establishing correlations between
data and calculating success rates. The risk is that, in this way, we tend to
overlook critical knowledge, while delegating certain operations such as
calculation, reasoning and translation could diminish the mental agility and
creativity of the individual. But the greatest danger is that of reducing the
horizon of human knowledge, limiting it to those forms of knowledge that
correspond to what AI can process, with a strong impact on the educational
environment (in schools and universities).[57]
Questions of meaning and ethical issues, but also philosophical (ontological)
and theological questions, may be excluded as irrelevant. Thus, AI could
effectively decide what is permissible to know, relegating other issues to the
subjective realm or to matters of taste. Self-awareness itself can be considered
as a series of pieces of information to be transferred to digital media that are
more resistant than human flesh and organised according to algorithms, while
sensory perception is enhanced by the digital revolution (cyborgs, neuroscience,
the internet), which provides images, sounds and situations in real time,
creating strong emotions in a system of immediate communication and therefore
without any mediation of meaning that would allow for understanding and
reasoning.
47. With the development of biotechnology, neuroscience and DNA mapping,
combined with advances in pharmacology and robotics (cyborgs), our
perception of the body and its meaning is also changing. The obvious gains
for the health and well-being of many sections of the population should be
appreciated: prevention campaigns, early diagnosis, calculation of the risks of
various therapies or the side effects of drugs on the body have greatly improved
the possibilities for medical intervention and so of public health. However, we
cannot ignore the trends that reduce the body to biological material to be
enhanced, transformed and remodelled at will, with the dream of achieving
conditions of existence capable of avoiding pain, ageing and death. Especially
in the West, advances in cosmetic surgery, combined with pharmacology (hormonal
treatments, substances that enhance emotions or concentration) offer tools that
greatly change the relationship with one’s own body and therefore with reality
and with others. The result is a widespread ‘cult of the body’, which tends
towards a frantic search for a perfect figure that is always fit, young and
beautiful. Once modified, often with relentless frenzy, the body becomes a
body-object in which the person-subject mirrors themselves, creating a
relationship in which the person is no longer his or her body but ‘owns’ a body,
from which arises the search for a ‘borrowed’ identity. In this dynamic, it is
no longer necessary to accept one’s own body in order to realise one’s identity.
It can be transformed according to the tastes of the moment. A curious situation
is created: the ideal body is exalted, sought after and cultivated, while the
real body is not truly loved, being a source of limitations, fatigue and ageing.
One desires a perfect body, while dreaming of escaping from one’s own concrete
body and its limitations.[58]
2.4. Relationship with God
48. Digital technologies offer many opportunities to religions that mobilise
digital communication resources in service of their mission. Today, the internet
is a ‘place’ where one can find many positive proposals for religious and
Christian life, facilitating knowledge and information in ways that were
unimaginable until recently. One need only recall how much religious
communication ‘exploded’ during the COVID-19 pandemic.[59]
However, there is a risk that a wide variety of digital religions will fill the
internet like a giant ‘religious market’, offering à la carte choices
according to individual interests. These are religious offerings without real
ties or community belonging, closer to the emotional tastes of individuals than
to a shared experience. One may also doubt the authentically ecclesial character
of certain Christian communication on social networks, especially when used to
fuel controversy, create divisions and even destroy the good reputation of other
people. Furthermore, some of these new online spiritual practices end up
producing a metamorphosis in the mode of believing, since digital technology has
a very strong hold on the religious imagination. Not infrequently, the result is
a new paradigm that redefines religious identities: technology itself also acts
as a spiritual guide and mediator of the sacred. In fact, devotees of various
religions and spiritual seekers often place indiscriminate trust in online
search engines, rendering human mediations of the sacred superfluous, replaced
by the digital. Extreme cases include requests for virtual blessings and
exorcisms, digital spiritualism and three-dimensional ‘false religions’.
49. This trust in a world governed by machines, which not only facilitates the
provision of religious resources but also the direct reception of proposals for
the meaning of life and access to the divine through digital technology, is not
far from the logic of transhumanism and posthumanism: digital
religion presents itself as if it even had the power to create a ‘God in its own
image and likeness’ to offer to a humanity that places total trust in
technology. The ‘living God’ can be replaced by a ‘virtual God’ with the claim
to ‘save’ humanity on the basis of technological performances made available to
the spiritual aspirations of human beings.[60]
50. In sum, these transformations affect our relationship with the Mystery of
the origin and ultimate purpose of human life. When human beings reduce created
nature (persons, the cosmos) to matter to be transformed, they no longer
manifest the glory of the Creator, but take His place. The same happens when the
task of giving meaning to existence and pointing out its ultimate end is
identified with the implementation of technological potential. In this context,
religious and spiritual traditions have something essential and indispensable
yet to offer regarding the wisdom of living in relationship with God.[61]
3. The cultural impact of technological revolutions: towards a critical
discernment
51. The impact of the anthropological transformation linked to scientific and
technological development is already leaving its mark on the social imaginary
of mass culture, but it finds its strongest expression in the movements
of transhumanism and posthumanism. The study of the myths developed by mass
culture regarding the future of humanity (science fiction, dystopias) and the
critical analysis of the founding principles of the transhumanist and
post-humanist movements highlight the significance and scope of the
anthropological changes taking place.
52. The social imaginary, expressed in cinema and television series, but
also in novels, artistic creations and music, reveals an acute perception of the
hopes and risks associated with possible future worlds. Cinema imagined possible
scenarios related to epidemics and planetary catastrophes long before we had to
go through the Covid-19 pandemic. Dystopias suggested the theme of many of the
most important films and novels as early as the twentieth century, exerting a
significant influence on these forms of popular culture. These artistic
creations convey the perception of the inevitability of a process of
technological development that will have a significant impact on people’s lives
and the fate of humanity, in awareness of the risks involved. As a result, there
is often fear of the unknowns that accompany the uncontrollable evolution of
machines or technological devices, which could lead to the creation of
autonomous entities capable of determining the future and dominating the planet.
53. Science fiction films and novels help us to become aware of many difficult
issues concerning human identity and destiny that are thus brought into play.
They question what can be the value of affection and what bonds are possible, or
what will be the powerful forces that will drive progress. They imagine grim
scenarios in which new forms of exploitation of the weak will prevail, perhaps
reducing them to human material for dangerous experiments. The type of social
structure also raises concerns, leaving us uncertain as to whether it will be
elitist and unequal, homogenising and hostile to individual freedoms, or open
and pluralistic, democratic and participatory; whether there will be a
technocratic oligarchy that dominates or a better political organisation based
on human dignity and the common good. Finally, there is concern about the
environmental impact of progress: what pollution will there be, what energy
resources will be available and at what price? What will be the quality of life?
These widespread questions reveal a strong ambivalence between, on the one hand,
unquestioning faith in technology and its ability for auto-correction and, on
the other, mistrust about its being used correctly with the suspicion that the
hidden interests of some powerful lobby could lead to devastating results.
54. Today, it is precisely the transhumanism and posthumanism
movements that provide the conceptual and narrative framework in which this
imagery about the future of humanity emerges most strongly. These two forms of
interpretation and cultural planning, more or less ideological, of the potential
of technology stimulate the collective imagination with the claim of a greater
theoretical rigour that would offer a realistic prediction of the future of
humanity. Ultimately, they make a proposal for a new vision of reality which
involves a new anthropology. They can be considered as ‘systems’ of thought that
promote a crusade in favour of science and its progress in light of the slogan
‘everything that technology can do must be done to improve the human condition’.
It would thus be a matter of preparing for a new, unprecedented phase in human
history.
55. Behind these movements’ proposals lies the unrestrained and uncritical
adoption of the concept of human enhancement: a primarily biomedical
notion that is very prevalent in the field of biotechnology. It can be defined
as the set of biomedical, genetic, pharmacological and cybernetic technologies
aimed at improving the physical, cognitive or sensory abilities of human beings
beyond what is considered normal or average. Its fields of application include
the introduction of advanced prostheses to enhance human physical or mental
performance, including by way of technological and electronic devices inserted
into the human body; the use of techniques for artificial human fertilisation;
the use of drugs that improve the physical and cognitive abilities of human
beings in the fields of sport, physical or mental work, and military activity.
Now, it is precisely the proposal of human enhancement that prompts a
critical reflection on transhumanism insofar as it invites us to ask the
question: ‘Up to what point is it permissible to improve living conditions,
enhance performance and overcome limitations, while maintaining the good of the
human being as the ultimate goal?’ In fact, in the field of human enhancement,
it is already clear that, in order to be authentically human, any desire to
improve the human condition must maintain a balance between what is technically
possible and what is humanly sensible.
56. Based on the above reflections, we can see the importance of focusing on the
anthropological question, asking not so much how to go ‘beyond the limits of the
human’, but rather what makes our existence ‘authentically human’. In light of
this fundamental anthropological question, it is possible to develop some
criteria for a critical discernment of the anthropology underlying these
philosophical and cultural movements.
57. A first element that is problematic is the negative judgement on the
human condition as it is, and ultimately on its identity. This leads to the
dream of reinventing it, a dream motivated by dissatisfaction with what it is,
with its limitations and defects. We must ask ourselves, however, whether
‘resentment’ towards real life is a good starting-point for progress or rather a
temptation to rebel against or escape from reality. This is not about the
necessary struggle to change unjust conditions and structures, but about the
rejection of the nature of things and of oneself. In particular, it is necessary
to warn against a fundamentally negative perception of corporeality, which can
be seen more as an obstacle than as an integral part of human identity.
58. The second aspect, connected to the first, is the dream of
individualistic and elitist perfectionism. It seems that every concrete
human being can exist or be accepted only on condition that they ‘become more
perfect’,[62] so much so that one
might wonder whether the current human condition still has a right to exist or
whether particular human beings have become ‘superfluous’. Some
hyper-technological theories seem to challenge the fundamental principle
inherited from humanism: ‘Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible
with the permanence of an authentically human life on earth. Act so that the
effects of your actions are not destructive of the future possibility of such a
life.’[63] This principle can even
be considered to be a useless and harmful limitation on technological progress.
59. A third factor is the social impact of this view of humanity. In
fact, it can lead to the assertion of a separation between a superior form of
humanity, equipped with tools that empower it to the point of immortality, and a
primitive, pre-technological humanity ultimately doomed for extinction. It is
not clear on what basis the different conditions that humanity can achieve will
be established: wealth, culture, heritage, openness to experimentation or
invention. Nor is it clear who will have the power to make decisions. In this
perspective, the bonds between people are in danger of disappearing, as is
belonging to a people and a culture on the basis of which the common good can be
assessed. Furthermore, if we consider that many social and political structures
arise from shared needs and the organisation of institutions and bonds capable
of meeting these challenges (hospitals, schools, prisons and rehabilitation
centres), we can imagine the difficulty transhumanists and posthumanists have in
saying what will become of the social and political world in which we live.
Transformations are no longer bound by mutual recognition in a logic of
fraternity and solidarity, and the negative consequences of this are reflected
primarily in the idea of the family. There is no longer any talk of procreation
as the communication of life, nor is there any interest in new births. It is
only discussed in terms of planning the lives of other human ‘offspring’, made
genetically perfect. But issues such as the generativity of conjugal love or the
emotional support of families end up disappearing from view.
60. Finally, we must not forget the generally negative view of religious
experience. It is often presented as a resigned and fatalistic position,
which sacralises the current human condition with dogmas and precepts that
inhibit research and progress. Any ‘sacralising visions’ that emphasise the
value of the body or nature as expressions of God’s creation would stand in the
way of free research. The idea that biological life is a gift to be treated with
care would imply the prohibition of certain experiments and improvements,
putting a block on progress. It is no longer clear what is meant by personal
identity when the person is reduced to a bundle of sensations or ‘optimised
projects’, to a sort of enhanced subjective experience and increased cognitive
ability, while the body is reduced to imperfect biological material or, in any
case, material that must be enhanced.
61. Christian anthropology can identify in these contemporary philosophical and
cultural trends many features of the mentality that Francis has described as a
form of ‘neo-Gnosticism’. These are ways of thinking and attitudes that are to
be understood in a sense analogous to the ancient forms of Gnosticism. Such an
approach, in considering human persons and their salvation, seeks to free them
from all dependence and limitation, separated from the body, the cosmos,
community and history.[64] It ‘puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own
subjectivism. [...] It thus presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the
material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no
longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental
identity of the person, and easily manipulated by human interests.’[65]
62. The mindset that can be recognised in transhumanist and
posthumanist movements effectively loses sight of the integral nature of the
human being and, in particular, human identity and vocation according to God’s
plan, exalting some dimensions at the expense of others. The fundamental
anthropological question that arises is clear: is this a proposal that
transforms or distorts human beings in terms of their essence? Will we arrive at
an exceptional human being or at forms of exception to the authentic human
being? According to the Christian vision, human beings are defined by a specific
form that guarantees the unity and integrity of each one, both in reference to
their identity, in the actions through which they become themselves, and in the
ultimate end in which they find their fulfilment. At the individual level it is
the immortal soul that gives form, that is, unifies and organises matter into a
living body, giving human beings a transcendence that post- and
transhumanism can neither achieve nor surpass. However, what unifies and
guides personal development does not emerge only from nature and the cosmos, but
is also realised through relationships, in which personal identity is
anticipated by the expectations of others, and in an original and fundamental
way through free dialogue with God. This is why Paul can recommend: ‘Do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind’ (Rom
12:2), ‘until Christ is formed in you’ (Gal 4:19; cf. also Phil
3:10-11 and Phil 2:6-11). The form of humanity finds its measure and
fulfilment in Christ, who died and rose again, and opens up an integral humanism
in which all persons are enabled to realise themselves beyond themselves, by
virtue of the immeasurable gift of the Holy Spirit. Begun in our earthly
existence, this participation in ‘eternal life’ in Christ is consummated – as
the Church’s faith professes – ‘in the resurrection of the flesh and in the life
of the world to come.’
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, body and soul, is a sign
that we are all called to participate as full human persons in the glory of
Christ at the right hand of God the Father.
Chapter II
LIFE AS VOCATION: THE HUMAN PERSON AS AN AGENT IN HISTORY
63. The prospect of a transhumanist anthropological transformation, as
well as dreams of posthumanism, may seem like a remote possibility, like
an exaggeration far removed from the real condition of humanity. In fact, the
Covid-19 pandemic has greatly diminished confidence in unlimited technological
progress, and it is better understood that humanity needs above all a solidarity
that cares for everyone and thanks to which each people can live in peace. Yet
transhumanism’s demands for progress, especially when they encourage the
drive towards posthumanism, exert a strong impact on the common
imagination and risk acting as a sort of mass distraction from humanity’s most
urgent problems, diverting resources and energy from the daily struggles for the
possible good of so much of suffering humanity, on the one hand, and favouring
distortions in the perception of the real conditions of experience, on the
other.
64. It is therefore necessary to recall some fundamental dimensions of human
experience that are compromised or overshadowed by a certain idea of
technological progress. We shall focus first on two constitutive dimensions: the
historical dimension of human experience, which requires knowing how to
inhabit time and space; and the intersubjective dimension,
which brings into play the sense of belonging to a family, a community, a people
and to the whole of humanity, where we are ‘all brothers and sisters’. We shall
conclude the chapter by placing these dimensions of human experience within an
overall proposal of life as an integral vocation, in line with recent
indications from the conciliar and pontifical Magisterium.
1. The historical dimension of human experience: time and space
65. We place ourselves first and foremost in the context of the constitutive
historical-temporal dimension of human experience. Historical consciousness is a
fundamental factor in the construction of identity, both of the individual and
of a people, understood in their differences but also in their connection. Human
beings are historical and cultural subjects, capable of transforming nature,
cultivating their humanity and giving meaning to history. The notion of history
as a temporal process moving towards a promised and hoped-for future is a
precious legacy of Judaism and Christianity. In the light of revelation,
Christian theology has reflected on the anthropological and salvific meaning of
personal time and the history of humanity. Historical consciousness is a
constitutive element of the Christian faith, which encounters the God who brings
salvation within the historical journey of a people. For this reason, revelation
also shows the mysterious and indelible value of the present, understood as a
privileged and unrepeatable moment of the anticipation of eternity in time. At
the same time, it becomes a critique of various reductionisms concerning time,
the present and memory, as well as eschatology.
66. Peoples are subjects of particular cultures and histories, which are related
to a greater or lesser extent to world history.[66]
Therefore, the human family, the subject of universal history, presents itself
as a plural unity extended in space and time. History has meaning because events
are signs that embody meanings and values through which people realise and
express themselves. This symbolic or ‘sacramental’ structure of historical
events invites us to seek their meaning not only by considering their origin or
proximate causes, but also their ultimate purpose. Thus, history takes place in
processes that transform the conditions of experience and become public events
with more general effects. Today, historical processes are undergoing a clear
acceleration and universalisation:[67]
the human community is rushing towards a common destiny, in which there is an
ever-increasing interdependence between national histories and world history.
This intertwining requires us to articulate well the value of local cultures,
with their processes and times, and the meaning of universal fraternity.[68]
1.1. Living time with a healthy sense of history
67. For human beings, history is an indispensable dimension of their being and
acting. They assume time by way of an intelligent and spiritual interiority,
bringing together the dimensions of the flow of time in the distention of the
soul and thus coming to experience reality.[69]
Memory, understood as the recovery of the past in the present, as well as the
horizon of hope for eternity, open to the future, provides the context for
discovering the meaning of life and for an impetus of human initiative that
enlarges the horizons of action.
68. One of the first repercussions of recent technological developments concerns
the experience of time.[70] Today,
there is a loss of the sense of history and a reduction of experience to the
fleeting moment, together with an ambiguous focus on the present. Digital
culture tends to dissolve the ‘anamnestic culture’ of history and transform the
living culture of memory and hope into a postmodern culture of a present closed
in on itself.
The organisation of information on the internet is concerned with collecting and
organising immense amounts of data based on probability calculations, rather
than with seeking hypotheses of understanding or explanation. Even the question
of the foundation of experience, the explanatory cause or a founding meaning, is
now considered a matter superseded by the analysis of connections between data.
Instead of living memories and traditions forged by memories, the processing of
available data through computerisation takes over, data that can then be
retrieved at any time. But computers do not remember; they merely store data.
This can result in the elimination of the consciousness of time and the
transposition of different times into the space of an indefinite
contemporaneity, leading to what has been described as a spatialisation of the
world. Through technology, we can presume to overcome the power of time
(fleeting and at the same time open to eternity) and make all times
contemporary. But a present that no longer knows the past no longer has a future
either. And the lack of an end, which opens us up to eternity, becomes a ‘bad
infinity’.
69. All this weakens people’s confidence in their ability to interpret and shape
the world, which escapes practical understanding and social control and is left
in the hands of gigantic bureaucracies overloaded with information thanks to
complex, interdependent and ungovernable technological systems, by which
individuals often feel besieged and threatened. Total dependence on these
complex and sophisticated systems, over which the individual has no influence,
creates feelings of powerlessness and pushes people to close themselves off in
limited and protected horizons of meaning and life.[71]
Reality becomes a connection, through which one enters a network of contacts and
encounters that require agility, speed and immediate reactions rather than
reflection and critical thinking. In this scenario, universal narratives and
stories based on lasting choices are less interesting than assuming identities
that weigh light and are multidimensional.
70. It is not surprising that (post)modern culture tends to cultivate the
oblivion of being, memory and eternal destiny. In such a landscape, human beings
are less and less their own memory and more and more their own unlimited
experiment.[72] Among the various
reasons for this ‘cultural amnesia’ we can list the one found in the biblical
story: human beings in prosperity forget their God and the history they have
lived with Him (cf. Jud 2:10; Dt 4:23, 30; Lk 12:31-21),
disregarding the divine commandment that commits them to care for the poor and
marginalised. Added to this is the impact of a scientistic mentality, which
imagines science as the possible solution to every problem, capable of healing
wounds and thus freeing us from the pain of memory. A third factor is
resignation to one’s own limited fragility, devoid of great hopes, which becomes
a simple exhortation to ‘move forward’ without criteria, as if the only
important thing were to advance, to proceed even without a specific goal: an
emancipatory consciousness draws from the past a minimal memory as a stimulus to
go further, without desiring a goal, whether immanent or much less transcendent.
Furthermore, this form of amnesia leaves room for ideological reconstructions of
the past or forms of revisionism and denialism, which seek to legitimise power
games or justify painful conflicts. In reality, we cannot build a future without
a solid memory of the history from which we come and which has generated us, nor
without hope for the future.
71. These situations are also the result of a globalised economy, which favours
a single, mass-produced cultural model, in which powerful forces assert
themselves, protecting their own interests at the expense of weaker cultures.
The result is the loss of the integral meaning of history.[73]
Therefore, there prevail dynamics of standardisation in what we might call
false cultures of ‘consumerism’, ‘waste’, ‘walls’, ‘isolation and
withdrawal’ or even the spread of an ‘empty culture, focused on the immediate
and lacking a common project’.[74]
These false cultures are at work both in populisms that disfigure the term
‘people’, confining it to a logic of closure, and in ‘individualistic liberal
visions’, which reject the very category of people and the positive enhancement
of the community and the cultural ties it contains.[75]
The result of these cultural forms, in the context of a globalised contemporary
digital world, is further disorientation. Compared to these false cultures, the
Gospel presents itself as a kind of counterculture, not in the sense that the
inspiration of the Gospel imposes its own unique hegemonic culture, but in the
sense that it values and promotes all cultures, or dimensions of them, that are
authentically human.
72. In order to cope with this experience of the horizontal acceleration of
historical time, it is necessary to recover the origin and ultimate goal of
history, as they can be experienced in the present, in order to understand their
true meaning. The encounter between human time and God’s eternity in Jesus
Christ freely offers a meaning of history that corresponds deeply to the
expectations of the human experience of time, without detracting from the
intersection of the three dimensions of past experience, present initiative and
future expectation, in the horizon of eternity that qualifies them.
73. The Christian experience of time offers the coordinates of a salvation that
takes place in history, insofar as it places the fullness of time within a
specific historical context, in a present charged with eternity, thanks to the
incarnation of the Son of God (cf. Gal 4:4-6). In this way, it opens
historical processes to the expectation of a promised fulfilment, which realises
the needs of the human heart of every age in an unimaginable way (cf. Rev
21-22).[76] It corresponds to a
need of the historical consciousness of peoples to be able to read events in a
more comprehensive and meaningful context, one that is capable of understanding
historical events in the unity of a universal process endowed with meaning,
while respecting particular histories and grasping unity in the diversity of the
manifold. The eschatological fulfilment promised in Jesus Christ in no way
detracts from the value of concrete historical events in the present, but
illumines their meaning, reactivating the character of experience that brings
promise and with it the active expectation of a new world.[77]
This is possible because the end of history does not coincide with its
conclusion, but refers to a final goal that transcends historical events from
within and directs them towards a new fulfilment, towards which everything
converges.
74. The history of salvation is not presented simply as enclosed in a particular
history of its own, alongside universal history, because God’s concrete saving
action in history is articulated with the cultural movements of peoples
in a unity that maintains the distinction: ‘The Spirit’s presence and activity affect not only individuals but also society
and history, peoples, cultures and religions. Indeed, the Spirit is at the
origin of the noble ideals and undertakings which benefit humanity on its
journey through history: “The Spirit of God with marvellous foresight directs
the course of the ages and renews the face of the earth.”’[78]
The relationship between God and his people, but also with humanity and the
whole of creation, comes about through the gifts of the Spirit and the Word,
which do not simply rain down from above, but germinate within the human being
who welcomes them and with responsibility nurtures them so that they bear fruit
(cf. Is 55:10-11; Mt 25:14-30). In this way, the divine opens up
to the human the space for its own fulfilment, re-establishing human beings in a
new and surprising communion, which neither annuls nor absorbs humanity, but
sustains it in its historical fulfilment. The unifying of historical processes
in Christ does not detract from the substance of local histories and cultures,
nor does it standardise their different riches by flattening them to the
interests of a few or to the laws of the market or the communicative logic of
the global digital world.
75. It is an experience full of joy that Mary expresses in the Magnificat
(cf. Lk 1:46-55). This prayer reveals Mary’s own awareness of history: in
her, as the Mother of Christ, is present the entire economy of salvation in
which the eternal is united in a new way with time.[79]
The Magnificat echoes in Mary’s personal experience that of the entire
people of God in the history of salvation.[80]
We find in it another kind of experience of time, one that is visited by God’s
grace, in which Mary’s obedience to the Angel’s announcement opens up the
fullness of grace that expanded her present (“The Almighty has done great things
for me”) to a positive future (“From now on, all generations will call me
blessed”), in conscious remembrance of God’s saving action and its style of
acting (“From generation to generation his mercy is on those who fear him. He
has shown the strength of his arm. [...] He has lifted up the lowly...”).[81]
1.2. Inhabiting space: from one’s own space to the ‘thresholds’
76. Human beings inhabit space in different ways: they are both ‘domestic
beings’, living in a home, and ‘political beings’, putting down roots and
organising themselves in a city and a homeland, and finally ‘cosmopolitan
beings’, situated in the world. The human dwelling encompasses this triangle
formed by the home, as the sphere of family and nature; by the city and the
people/nation, as the space of history and culture; and by the whole world, as
the horizon of belonging to human nature. Local and global are constitutive
dimensions of human experience, now transformed by the processes of
globalisation, as can be seen, for example, in megacities and in changes in
mobility.[82]
77. A significant phenomenon is the organisation of urban space in megacities.
We are living in the ‘Urban Age’, a new moment in human history.
The formation of huge cities is a phenomenon of our time, which began in the
mid-twentieth century. Since the early years of the twenty-first century, more
than half of the world’s population has been living in cities, leading to a
shift from rural to urban contexts, typical of today’s media and information
culture. The type of life in which human beings seek fulfilment has changed
greatly in these ‘metropolitan regions’, as Paul VI called them, which unite
centres and peripheries in immense agglomerations, with large suburban complexes
often lacking essential services.[83]
78. Today’s changes in mobility also have an impact on the human experience of
space. The possibility already mentioned of shortening distances with faster
means of transport, reorganising the space of life (work, home, friendships,
school) but also the spread and distribution of goods, with the possibility of
always having products from different parts of the world and distant countries
available, has led to a ‘de-territorialisation’ of personal identity and
cultures. Even food is no longer linked to its natural environment of origin and
its seasons. Thus, customs, ways of life and values are in constant tension
between a defined territorial belonging and a borderless planetary civilisation.
We are increasingly citizens of the world. A certain global culture, made up of
undifferentiated and universal values, goods and commodities that belong to
everyone and no one, increasingly determines the way we dress, eat, entertain
ourselves, celebrate and relax, according to the offerings of the leisure
industry. The places of meeting and transit where contacts are established are
increasingly anonymous and uniform ‘non-places’ (stations, airports, large
shopping centres), expressions of an artificial world rather than human and
cultural environments defined by a precise history and identity.
79. In this type of space, people risk moving like nomads wandering in search of
new experiences. Thus, the figure of the pilgrim is lost, who sets out on a
journey leaving his or her home and his possessions behind, in search of the
true homeland in which to live, the promised land to which God calls them.
Moreover, pilgrims do not lose their relationship with their own land: ‘The solution is not an openness that spurns its own richness. Just as there can
be no dialogue with “others” without a sense of our own identity, so there can
be no openness between peoples except on the basis of love for one’s own land,
one’s own people, one’s own cultural roots.’[84]
80. The global organisation of space does not in itself make us more hospitable
and open to others. On the contrary, it often leads to strong identity
reactions, which tend to define one’s ‘own space’ by creating insurmountable
boundaries that establish clear separations between ‘us and you’, one’s own
world and that of others. It is thought-provoking that the first impact of
theories of ‘multiculturalism’ has regard precisely for the perception of space
and the unity of the world we inhabit. One can comprehend the alternative
metaphors associated positively with this discovery: ‘expanding spaces’, ‘making
room for others’, ‘expanding boundaries’; or, conversely, ‘defending one’s
boundaries’, ‘erecting barriers’, ‘defining one's own space’. The imaginary that
dominates so much contemporary culture is that of an individual or a people at
the centre of a ‘sphere of their own’, in relation to which the other or the
stranger appears as a secondary determination, on the periphery or at the
boundaries.
81. In discovering the other, the different and even the stranger, it is easier
today to awaken the perception that ‘no one is master in their own house’, since
otherness has been with us from the beginning, it is with us ‘at home’. This
means that the other is not a derivative of one’s own, but is co-original.
Unfortunately, ‘what is one’s own’ is often defined by processes of exclusion
towards the other, that is, by creating boundaries. This applies to the
consciousness of one’s own self as well as to cultures. We must therefore not
forget that at origin there is a common humanity that is an intertwining, a
network in which the self and the stranger, the self and the other, are
co-implicated.[85] The difficulty
in accepting this original intertwining in a logic of encounter and hospitality
should make us reflect on the functioning of globalisation, which seems to open
up common spaces for encounter, but in reality allows feelings of ‘invasion’ to
grow, revealing the perception of the other as a threat.
82. The Christian faith shifts the axis of the experience of space: ‘Christians
are indistinguishable from other human beings either by nationality, language or
customs. They do not live in special cities, speak a strange language, or follow
a peculiar way of life. [...] They live in both Greek and barbarian cities, as
it happens, and while they follow the customs of the place in their dress, food,
and other aspects of life, they propose a wonderful and, as everyone has
admitted, incredible way of life. They live in their own countries, but as if
they were foreigners; they respect and fulfil all the duties of citizens, and
bear all burdens as if they were foreigners; every foreign region is their
homeland, yet every homeland is foreign to them.’[86]
Christians do not claim a space of their own, except in the service of mission
and worship, and in any case their space is already inhabited by a radical
otherness – that of God – which can also assume, in Christ, the figure of the
stranger who challenges, questioning what was taken for granted and tranquil.
83. Rethinking ‘one’s own space’ implies redefining boundaries as ‘thresholds’,
that is, areas that bring people into contact, spaces of transition. Those who
cross the threshold of another human experience do not simply arrive in another
place, but are called to ‘become an other’. No one can master this difference
and mediate between cultures from a neutral position. The challenge, then, is to
expand our boundaries in order to be open to the call of the other. In this
sense, the parable of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk 10:1-15) offers an
unsurpassed model of the culture of ‘becoming neighbour’ and of encounter.[87]
84. The presence of Jesus Christ, in whom the beginning, the centre and the end
of history are gathered together (cf. Rev 22:13), opens up the space of
life for peoples and individuals, keeping it open as a welcoming place for
differences, without walls or closures. Indeed, it regenerates time, which lives
in a present full of salvific meaning (kairos), while still on a journey,
open to a transcendent future fulfilment that will realise the promise inscribed
in its origin.
2. Relationships and the sense of belonging: intersubjectivity
85. Intersubjectivity, that is, belonging to a family, a people and a tradition,
is situated in this space-time context. These ways of belonging, in which
personal identity begins and is shaped in history, constitute almost a barrier
to the spread of a uniform globalisation, which does not always help to form
authentic bonds: ‘As society becomes ever more globalized, it brings us closer
together, but it does not make us brothers and sisters.’[88]
To speak of intersubjectivity is to emphasise how human life immediately implies
a community horizon: the life of the individual must be situated within the
framework of relationships that form a community. These relationships, which
constitute personal identity, are structured within the family, within a people
with its traditions, and within a broader belonging to common humanity.
86. The family is the original place of intersubjectivity precisely
because it is the place of the gift and acceptance of the miracle of life, which
is realised in every new birth. Intersubjectivity arises precisely where life is
given, not produced, much less self-produced. At the origin of every life there
is an unexpected gift, in an experience of original passivity, by which we find
ourselves in existence, preceded and welcomed by the desire of others. Today’s
dominant culture does not pay sufficient attention to the fact that we ‘are
born’, and transhumanism, and even more so posthumanism, forget
that the human being is first and foremost a child, who discovers that he or she
has been generated and given to himself or herself in the wonderful adventure of
being and growing up.
87. The family as the original community finds in the child, and
precisely in the child’s reception of and coming to self-awareness in the
smiling gift of the parents, a particularly significant realisation of human
existence that no transhumanism or posthumanism can make us
forget. Life as the fullness of being and promise finds its point of fulfilment
in the child precisely as one who is filial, son or daughter.[89]
In fact, the articulation of the human in the love between man and woman, and
above all in the becoming one of man and woman in the fruitfulness of the child,
shows forth the transparency of being as a gift from God. In the child as
filial, a reflection of this origin is manifested, with its accompanying wonder
and fullness, trust and bliss, gift and gratitude. It is this nexus of bonds and
feelings that constitutes the complex interweaving of the beginning, the mirror
of the origin in which filial truth is preserved. The human being as filial
child is the anthropological correlate of being as gift and love, its splendid
attestation. It is precisely this fullness of being in the simplicity of the
child’s gaze that is the secret of the intuitive, but also rational, ability to
unify reality in its dimensions of necessity and freedom, of spirit and nature,
in the embrace of love.
88. The child is a sign of filial humanity understood as dwelling in a fullness:
precisely because the child is not thrown into existence, but welcomed and
surrounded by parental care, he or she does not have to be conquered in an
effort of continuous development, but is received in an attitude of gratitude.
The child is not a void to be filled, but a fullness that is given and promised,
to be accompanied in the adventure of giving shape to existence in the
experiences of life. Filial identity is the object of recognition mediated by
family care in the home: in this space of life, the passivity of coming into
being is the condition of freedom to act, and dependence on love is the
condition of autonomy. This is why reason develops in the child against the
backdrop of an original unity of reality, as an articulation of being, goodness
and beauty. Thought has an affective root in its origin. This condition is to be
rediscovered, not overcome, in an exchange in which the child receives the love
of his or her parents and with their child they rediscover their own filial
being.
89. The desire to enhance the human should therefore focus less on planning a
transhuman that goes beyond the state of (having been) children, and rather seek
to guarantee every family the social and economic conditions to welcome and
accompany this ‘miracle of the beginning’ in a context of life favourable to the
birth and growth of children.
90. Secondly, we must emphasise the human value of belonging to a people,
with its traditions, and also the theological value of belonging to the People
of God in history. The category of ‘people’ in this twofold secular and
religious sense takes on significant weight as a subject of a development that
is fully human. ‘People’ is a historical category that identifies a communal
subject in a given territory, formed over time through processes of integration
and with reference to a culture.[90]
Belonging to a people is a complex human reality, made up of existential and
emotional sharing.[91] It is
realised through the sharing of a culture, that is, a set of values, practices,
customs and habits, which allows people to recognise each other, to live
normally in a common geographical environment, with a particular language and
history. Being part of a people means inhabiting a space together as a sphere of
relationships. Each person seeks fulfilment in a set of relationships within a
given situation, which shapes their mentality and the way they perceive
themselves. There is no identity without belonging – even if experienced
critically – to a people.
91. We thus also rediscover the value of the land as a people’s symbolic
place of culture and identity. This experience is opposed to the globalist
vision that cancels out differences and identities linked to a particular
context. The bond with place offers an opportunity for people to meet and build
social friendships, starting not from abstract ideas but from shared areas of
life and values in the local area (home, work, celebrations). It is precisely
this life of a people with a situated identity that is found in contact with
other peoples, where there is a calling to an exchange, under the rule of
creativity, with different cultures and in a dynamic process, often even one
that is conflictual, which is to be taken up and transformed into a mutual
exchange of gifts. There is no openness between peoples except in love for one’s
own land, one’s own people and one’s own culture.[92]
92. In belonging to a people, it is necessary to avoid the twofold risk of
seeking unifying factors only in ethnicity, language or the defence of
territory, understood as a closed and exclusive space, or of dissolving the
identity of the people in an anonymous and globalised cosmopolitan culture,
which exposes them to the laws of the market and finance, without concern for
protecting the common good of society. The fundamental bond is represented by
culture, that is, by a certain way of life, which encompasses reference to
shared values and therefore oriented towards unity in diversity, which allows us
to go beyond conflicts and move towards bonds of fraternity open to all.
93. Within this dynamic search for unity among all peoples in dialogue with one
another, we find the historical journey of the people of God, which is
the Church, the people of God in which the Body of Christ is historically
expressed.[93] As such, the people
of God is not based on territorial, sociological or institutional dynamics, but
on faith understood as the bedrock of religious, existential and cultural
meaning. She therefore promotes a culture of encounter, since the Church cannot
be separated from the journey of humanity. She accompanies the history of
peoples, maintaining the tensity towards universal communion in Christ, the
mediator of a new life, stronger than evil and death, but also stronger than
conflicts and divisions. This tensity towards communion does not lose sight of
differences, but keeps them open to a greater unified project. This is what
happened at Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:1-13), when the descent of the Spirit
made the Apostles a plural unity, capable of speaking all languages, a ‘People
of peoples’ (cf. Acts 15:14-18). The Spirit of God acts in the different
cultures and histories of peoples with a universalising but not homogenising
work: ‘With your blood you have redeemed for God people of every tribe,
language, people and nation.’ (Rev 5:9; cf. also 7:9; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6)
94. The insertion of the people of God into the historical journeys of various
peoples highlights the challenge of reconciling the particular histories of
peoples with the global development of humanity. There is a growing awareness
that, on one side, the common good of individual peoples cannot be safeguarded
solely through local political strategies, which may be governed by a logic of
isolation and closure. Rather, it requires the convergence and harmonisation of
local projects with global dynamics that transcend the boundaries of individual
countries. But such a synthesis also requires the mediation of international
institutions that are sufficiently authoritative and just, and therefore capable
of reconciling the good of individual peoples with the common good of humanity
as a whole, for the effective protection of what are now called ‘common goods’
(land, water and air). It is precisely in the crisis linked to the Covid-19
pandemic that we have experienced what it now means ‘to be all in the same
boat’, engaged in a common struggle for the good of all.
95. There is a need for ongoing critical discernment of historical and political
choices affecting the human family, from the perspective of the responsibility
assumed by various international organisations, as well as by the Church with
her social doctrine, in order to clarify the question of who is qualified to
decide on the common good and the destiny of all.[94]
In particular, the global economic and monetary systems require, on the one
hand, responsibility on the part of financial institutions, which must be
attentive to the real economy rather than to the logic of profit, and on the
other, they must not lose sight of an ethical approach that is sensitive to the
dignity of the person, the common good in a spirit of solidarity, and the
well-being of societies, especially the most fragile ones.[95]
96. It is essential to value the unity of the ‘human family’, journeying through
history, in reference to the present and eschatologically to the total Christ,
in whom the goal and direction of the journey is fully revealed: the communion
of Trinitarian love, the fulfilment of the redemption of the human family. This
is a journey that takes place in an Easter rhythm, in which what is in the human
heart is revealed at the foot of the Cross, as it is freed from everything that
hinders communion with God, with creation and with our brothers and sisters. It
is precisely in reference to Christ crucified and risen that we can understand
the grace of the time given to us, the most just way of inhabiting space and
living the quality of relationships in which we become ourselves, and the
belonging in which we find the authentic meaning of life.
97. In contrast to any transhumanist triumphalism or radical pessimism of
posthumanism, reference to the mystery of the Cross draws our attention
to history from the perspective of the victims. The true pathos of
history lies not only in humanity’s great achievements, but also in the silent
sufferings of so many people throughout the generations and throughout the
world. History is made up of action and passion, and this attention to the
dimension of suffering gives concrete form to the Christian vision of history,
which cannot be reduced to an anonymous and inexorable process of development
that tends towards an immanent progress, which risks trampling over the corpses
of the defeated and abandoning the weak. There can be no human fulfilment of
history without justice for the victims, nor any sense of the historical process
that does not take into account the needs of the weakest. The true and decisive
meaning of justice is at stake. In Christ, we are authorised to look with hope
to the destiny that awaits us, without forgetting the victims of history, but
rather gathering together their cry.
98. In Jesus crucified, God takes on the full weight and provocation of innocent
suffering with respect to a hope for full justice, connected to faith in eternal
life.[96] Faith in Christ offers a
hope that is already credible in life, transforming it, and also confronts
death, transcending it. The Church, as a communion of saints, uniting those who
are already fully in the Kingdom of God and those who are still pilgrims on this
earth, is a community that transcends death without abandoning history and
offers a universal hope that responds to the thirst for full justice and eternal
life.
3. The integral vocation to fulfilment in love
99. Personal existence is situated in a specific history, time and space, and
awakens to self-awareness within relationships that express a belonging which
precedes and grounds it. In this way, it rediscovers its original meaning as a
call to life: ‘This refers us to an elementary and fundamental truth, which we need to
rediscover in all its beauty: the life of the human being is vocation.
Let us not forget this: the anthropological dimension, which underlies every
calling within the community, which is associated with an essential
characteristic of the human being as such: namely, that the human being is
himself or herself a vocation.’[97]
100. The existence of each human being is properly understood when it is
recognised as the fruit of the Father’s creative love, according to the dynamic
of a call to life and happiness. Every human being comes into being
because he or she has been thought of and willed by God, who loved each one even
before forming them in the womb (cf. Jer 1:5; Isa 49:1, 5; Gal
1:15). This divine vocation explains at its root the mystery of human life,
inasmuch as it is a mystery of predilection and absolute gratuitousness.
Therefore, even though human beings are finite, they cannot be imprisoned in a
mere creaturely dimension, and no definition can capture and exhaust them
completely.[98] The eternal love of
the Father excludes the possibility that the existence of persons is a result of
necessity or chance: every human existence has infinite value in itself. From
this perspective, it is understandable that human beings cannot be subjected to
any exclusively political, economic or social measure that diminishes their
infinite dignity.[99]
101. The perception that life is a gift from God inspires gratitude in people,
who respond to the call by accepting the ‘invitation to be part of a love
story’.[100] Divine love, which
created human beings, ensures that no one should feel ‘superfluous’ in the
world, since everyone is called to respond according to a plan designed by God
for them. Life as a vocation, understood in a broad sense, is proper to every
human being and derives from the simple fact of our filial existence. As an
expression of the providential mind of the Creator, the divine plan is addressed
to every living being in different ways.[101]
Christians recognise that they are called to ‘missionary service to others’[102]
to the point of being able to say of themselves: “I am a mission.”[103]
Human beings, precisely because they are called, are true interlocutors of God;
they do not receive the gift with mere passivity but, by virtue of the gift,
become free agents, capable of offering an increase in good not only to other
human beings but to the same divine economy.
102. Life understood as a vocation is revealed existentially in prayer.
Augustine was well aware of how much vocation implies the call that precedes
human beings, questions them and gives them a future: ‘Do not forsake my
invocation now, you who anticipated me before I invoked you, insisting with
increasing and manifold appeals that I hear you from afar and turn back, calling
on you who called me (vocantem me invocarem te).’[104] Prayer is an attitude
that qualifies humanity. In its various forms of praise, intercession,
recognition of goodness and thanksgiving, prayer is rooted in a profound gesture
of trust and constant supplication to God, who brings us into being and
accompanies and guides us on our journey through life. Especially in the
religions which trace their histories back to Abraham, it expresses a personal
relationship with God, who is addressed as ‘You’: ‘a popular prayer, directed like an arrow towards the heart of Christ, says
simply: “Jesus, I trust in you.”’[105]
In Christian prayer, this relationship is realised as participation in the
relationship of the Son Jesus with his Father in the Holy Spirit. This is the
expression of a human attitude that entrusts itself beyond itself, without
having to dissolve or project itself. It is no coincidence that there is no easy
reference to prayer in the various transhumanist and even less so in
posthumanist manifestos.
103. Today, especially in the West, there is often favoured a ‘culture of
non-vocation’, which in fact also underlies contemporary anthropological
challenges. In particular, with regard to the education of young people, it is
not difficult to see how their understanding of life often lacks openness to an
ultimate meaning, both in terms of orientation and in terms of constitutive
relationships. They do not know or recognise that they are called. Their plans
for the future are limited to a logic that reduces the future, at best, to the
choice of a profession, economic security or the satisfaction of certain needs:
‘These are chosen with no reference to the mystery or the transcendent, and
perhaps, too, with little responsibility in relation to life, one’s own and that
of others, of life received as a gift to be generated in others.’[106]
The prevailing anthropological model seems to be that of the ‘person without a
vocation’, whose impact on the perception of life is to feel lost in the drama
of an existence that finds no meaning and is without hope for the future. It is
the invitation to a ‘life as a vocation’ that can open up a horizon that goes
beyond any claim to find an ephemeral ‘life project’ that is entirely
self-founded and planned by the individual, which paradoxically reflects
conformity with the dominant mentality.
104. The proposal of life as a vocation can and must give rise to a positive
‘culture of vocation’ as an adequate understanding of the process of maturation
of the identity of individuals and peoples. Precisely for the youngest, the
culture of vocation opens up the realistic possibility, because it is rooted in
God’s call, of following a path ‘born of freedom, enthusiasm, creativity and new horizons, while at the same time
cultivating the roots that nourish and sustain us.’[107]
In contexts favourable to a vocational upbringing, it is easier for an attitude
of gratitude for the gifts received to emerge, which gives rise to a sense of
responsibility and gratuitous self-giving in favour of others, especially those
most in need.
105. In these thoughts we find Mary’s inner attitude: grateful for God’s gaze upon her, faithful amid fear and
turmoil, she courageously embraced her vocation and made of her life an eternal song of praise to the Lord.[108]
In the figure of Mary, we see an eminent realisation of life as a vocation,
understood as a process, typical of unique and free people, to be lived in
gratitude and trust rather than as a project of self-realisation. Mary lived
this process herself, facing her questions and difficulties when she was very
young. She knew how to look with her heart and dialogue with the things she
experienced, meditating on them over time.[109]
Chapter III
THE GIFT OF LIFE AND COMMUNION
IN THE FACE OF SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
106. Rediscovering life as a vocation means responding to a gift that calls us
to shape our own identity, taking on the task of becoming ourselves and
transforming society and the world according to God’s plan. It is not simply a
matter of making plans, preparing for the future, finding a job to earn a living
and improving the world. The serious question in life, understood as a vocation,
is to realise one’s personal identity as a gift for others.
107. Let us now focus on the category of human ‘identity’. It has been
classically defined through the categories of ‘substance/nature’ and ‘person’,
to indicate what remains identical to itself over time and ensures the basis of
the ontological and moral dignity of every human being.[110]
On this basis, we shall be guided more specifically by the concern to offer
discernment of current phenomena and their impact on the future of humanity. How
can we succeed in discerning an ‘authentic human identity’ in this cultural and
social age? What are the criteria for this discernment? We wish to emphasise in
particular the twofold characteristic of human identity, in that it implies both
a gift and a task, which requires us to hold together various dimensions in
order to highlight the unique position of human beings in the cosmos.
1. Personal identity: a gift and a task
108. The challenges arising from advances in biotechnology, robotics and
artificial intelligence, but also from the widespread cultural imaginary, call
into question the basic experience that human beings have of themselves in
concrete terms, that is, the experience in which they shape their identity.[111]
Yet the answer to questions such as ‘Who am I and who are we? Who do I want to
be and who do we want to be? What do I want to do with myself and what do we
want to do with ourselves as a human family?’ is constitutive of the experience
of all persons who are committed to giving themselves an identity in a dynamic,
unique and concrete history, and in a set of constitutive relationships to which
they correspond.
1.1. The
task of becoming oneself: gift, love, freedom
109. At the origin of this journey is a gift that ignites in the heart the
search for happiness, that is, for life in its fullness. The gift, once
recognised and accepted, becomes the task in which each person discovers that
they are entrusted to themselves. Human beings cannot be happy without knowledge
of who they are. One cannot desire anything, not even happiness, unless one
discovers that one is authorised to desire oneself unconditionally by virtue of
a given recognition: ‘Our dignity is bestowed upon us by God; it is neither claimed nor deserved.
Every human being is loved and willed by God and, thus, has an inviolable
dignity.’[112] Therefore, when
human persons seek to shape their identity, they must be aware of the ‘exalted dignity proper to human persons, since they stand above all things, and
their rights and duties are universal and inviolable.’[113]
This dignity is based on creation in the image and likeness of God, which is
ultimately in the image of the Son, who, in his incarnation, shared our nature
and elevated it to union with the divine life, and in his resurrection inserted
our nature into a destiny of eternal life in communion with the Trinity.[114]
110. The most fitting atmosphere in which to develop one’s identity is that of
love, beginning with the family, which is the origin of our existence. In fact,
many forms of poverty, including material poverty, arise from the root of ‘isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love’.[115]
According to the dynamic of asymmetrical reciprocity between gift and response
that shapes our identity, taking responsibility for one’s life means recognising
that one is entrusted to oneself (self-possession) by an unsolicited gift that
must be recognised, accepted and desired as a good for oneself (assent). This
recognition of the gift that precedes us is not just a matter of pure reason. It
involves an affective dynamic: we love ourselves because we are wanted and
loved, and we feel wanted and loved. This process is possible when we find
ourselves in relation to a reality with meaning and promise, full of positive
significance to be discovered in wonder. This is recognition, just as necessary
as when often sought after in other ways in the infosphere. The world is not a
collection of things to be exploited and objects to be manipulated, but a
dwelling place in which one can find one’s own place.[116]
Not infrequently, the rejection of God’s love, determined by various factors
(psychological, relational, cultural) that make it difficult to perceive the
original gift, also compromises the processes of forming personal identity. The
love received and accepted is the driving force behind any process of
self-acceptance and growth, and finds its origin in God himself, eternal love.[117]
111. The realisation of this identity, in its ontological consistency, is
entrusted to freedom: ‘Every individual possesses an inalienable and intrinsic dignity from the
beginning of his or her existence as an irrevocable gift. However, the choice to
express that dignity and manifest it to the full or to obscure it depends on
each person’s free and responsible decision. [...] the image of God is entrusted to human freedom’.[118]
A person who renounces the search for truth and goodness may come to think that
he or she has no identity to preserve and build through truly free and conscious
choices. If we then consider all the individual and social dimensions of human
beings situated in history, it follows that ‘the proper exercise of personal freedom requires specific conditions of an
economic, social, juridical, political and cultural order. [...] Real and
historical freedom always needs to be “liberated”.’[119]
St Paul’s teaching challenges us in this regard: ‘Christ has set us free for
freedom! Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened once again by a
yoke of slavery [...] For you, brothers and sisters, have been called to
freedom.’ (Gal 5:1, 13)
1.2. The complexity of identity
112. However, this is not a simple process. Identity is complex, consisting of
various dimensions. Human beings are aware that their identities, while
individual and non-transferable, are also relational, shaped by the communities
to which they belong and by the circumstances of their lives.[120]
Therefore, identity is always something received and, at the same time,
something realised and developed by each person. No human creature enters into
existence already fully defined and perfect: we must learn who and what we are,
both as children and as adults. We learn to accept the gift of ourselves, above
all by taking on the task of forming our identity, which is implied in this
gift, and rediscovering it at every new stage of life.
113. The process of developing one’s identity takes place at different levels,
both natural and cultural, so that the more complex a society is in terms of
classes, professions, common interests or religions, the more complex it will be
to form an identity from the overlapping of different sources of identity.
Throughout history, human beings have developed and enhanced their identities by
establishing new relationships, especially through marriage (cf. Gen
2:24), forming new families, migrating from their homeland to other places,
learning new languages and modes of expression, or adopting new customs and ways
of life. Our nature, precisely because it is human, enables us to realise a
great variety of ways of thinking, feeling, living and identifying ourselves.
But this also implies the possibility of making mistakes, so that our ability to
give ourselves an identity or to re-imagine our identity is not infallible; on
the contrary, it remains exposed to the danger of confusion in identifying our
own reality.
114. The various factors that make up identity must be considered in their
unity. The search for identity is always accompanied by the need for unity,
completeness and synthesis that harmonises the various elements, avoiding
dispersal and fragmentation. In this sense, the search for one’s identity takes
place in the ‘heart’, that is, in the centre of the person that knows how to
unite the pieces. The word ‘heart’ cannot be explained exhaustively by biology,
psychology, anthropology or other sciences. It is one of those original words
that indicate the reality that belongs to the whole human being, as a corporeal
and spiritual person. As it leads us to the intimate centre of our person, the
heart allows us to recognise ourselves in our entirety and not just in some
isolated aspect. Therefore, it is also capable of unifying and harmonising our
personal history, which may seem fragmented into a thousand pieces, but where
everything can have meaning. In the heart we find the right relationship with
the world, and that is why it is said that when we grasp reality with our heart,
we can know it better and more fully. Finally, the heart makes it possible to
build authentic bonds, because a relationship that is not lived with the heart
is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation of individualism. If relationships
do not involve the heart, we arrive at a ‘loss of desire’, because the other
disappears from the horizon and we close ourselves off in our own ego with its
needs, without the capacity for healthy relationships. As a result, we also
become incapable of welcoming God.[121]
115. For us Christians, among the many elements that constitute human identity,
one stands out as a true formal principle, capable of ordering the other
aspects. It is the gift of being not only creatures or servants of God, but of
being called to be sons and daughters of the Father, to the praise of his glory
and for the benefit of the whole of creation (cf. Rom 8:20-23). This is
attested to by the Spirit of God who cries out in us, ‘Abba/Father’ (cf. Gal
4:6; Rom 8:15) and conforms us to Christ, so that we are made
participants in his divine identity as Son of the Father (cf. 2 Pet 1:4).[122]
Filial identity is the ultimate and radical determination of our identity, and
those who are marked in their hearts by the Holy Spirit find in this identity as
sons and daughters the point of reference for every other aspect of their
identity.[123] This identity,
entrusted to our freedom, appears as an all-encompassing reality that enters
into the depths of the heart, so that the person reaches a definitive awareness
of his or her own uniqueness in distinction from everyone else. It is also an
integrative act, capable of harmonising the different dimensions in the gift of
self. The response to the divine call appears unique, irreplaceable, personal
and therefore new each time.[124]
Let us consider some constitutive dimensions of identity in this light.
2. The gift of life and communion in the face of transhumanism and
posthumanism
116. The complexity of the processes involved in forming one’s identity makes
possible the misunderstandings in which the dreams and illusions of
transhumanism and posthumanism proliferate. In fact, the path towards
each person’s identity is not achieved in the manner of a guaranteed mechanism
or as a natural evolution. People discover that they are called to answer for
themselves and their actions, in which they express who they are and who they
want to be. They realise themselves in a unique and irreducible history, which
cannot be dissolved into an anonymous mass that lacks originality. The search
for and formation of one’s identity always brings something new, both in
relation to natural conditions and to the culture in which one lives. Such
identity cannot be played out in an arbitrary, absolute affirmation of oneself,
without a heritage to appropriate or natural conditions to interpret; but
neither can it be reduced to correspondence to the expectations of others, to
cultural forms and pre-established social roles. It is not a question of wearing
a ready-made uniform, but of sewing a tailor-made suit that expresses one’s
originality and the unique name that God knows and has entrusted to us, because
each of us is an original and unrepeatable being, called to make a unique
contribution.[125]
2.1. Shaping one’s identity starting from the body given
117. At the beginning stands the relationship with one’s own body: we must
recognise that ‘the human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God.”
[...] It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as
generated by others.’[126] We
understand the urgency of the warning to respect the order of elementary human
experience: ‘We are called to safeguard our humanity, and this means first of
all accepting and respecting it as it was created.’[127]
This is a truly ‘ecological’ choice: ‘Learning to accept our body, to care for
it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine
human ecology.’[128] In
particular, one of the greatest challenges facing culture today, at the level of
personal identity, is the acceptance of one’s own body as sexed, seen as a gift
and not as a prison that prevents us from truly being ourselves, or as
biological material to be modified.[129]
118. In this context, theological reflection on disability can also take on
significant value in defending the infinite dignity of every person by embracing
this particular state. The voice of people with disabilities is a radical
challenge to the ‘culture of waste’ that resonates in certain transhumanist
or posthumanist arguments. We are on very delicate ground, yet
significant for the question of biological-natural identity, which deserves much
more in-depth consideration. In general, it is necessary to recall the decisive
significance of dependence and vulnerability as integral elements of every human
experience.[130] While congenital
disabilities are not as such willed by God directly, disability should be
explored – with all its specific particularities – as a manifestation of those
dimensions of finitude and contingency that should be seen and experienced not
merely as something negative in regard to the formation of identity. In fact,
the condition of disability keeps personal identity firmly anchored to given
bodily-spiritual reality, to the point of appearing as an inescapable element of
the identity of the disabled person. In the context of the whole person and his
or her history, disability can also be an opportunity for good, wisdom and
beauty. We are far from transhumanism’s and posthumanism’s dreams
of escaping from the natural basis of existence, and especially from the
limitations of one’s own body, in order to achieve one’s identity.
2.2. Being a gift to others
119. The identity that is affirmed in the gift of self is at the centre of those
interpersonal relationships in which the person is realised: ‘As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal
relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his
or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that human beings
establish their worth, but by placing themselves in relation with others and
with God.’[131] These
relationships become significant for identity if they are not lived in a selfish
and closed manner, since human beings come to themselves through others and in
relation to others.
120. The mystery of the human person includes his or her call to social
communion.
Gaudium et
spes reiterated that human beings, which are ‘the only creatures on earth which God willed for themselves
(Deus propter seipsam voluerit), cannot fully find themselves except through a sincere gift of themselves
(nisi per sincerum sui ipsius donum)’.[132]
The papal magisterium insists on the importance of persons realising themselves
in a dynamism of transcendence, a sort of ‘ecstasy’ in the gift of self: human
beings cannot ‘fully know themselves apart from an encounter with other persons
[...] No one can experience the true beauty of life without relating to others,
without having real faces to love.’[133]
No person can achieve fulfilment in isolation, but only in love realised in
openness, in the capacity to welcome others and establish solid bonds.[134]
121. Authentic identity requires a real experience of otherness. Following this
direction, it is necessary to build solid bonds through social dialogue,
understood as the ability to listen to the other as other, that is, for the
reasons that make them irreducible and different: ‘All this calls for the ability to recognize other people’s right to be
themselves and to be different. This recognition, as it becomes a culture, makes
possible the creation of a social covenant. Without it, subtle ways can be found
to make others insignificant, irrelevant, of no value to society.’[135]
It is in the context of this dialogue that an identity is achieved which is not
exclusive, but consistent and capable of recognising and proposing the
elementary human experience to all.
2.3. The transcendence of God’s gift that opens us to an infinite horizon
122. Religion, understood as a relationship with the sacred and, above all, with
the Mystery of God, recalls the transcendence of the gift of life, keeping open,
above all, the horizon of the mystery of origin and end, and allowing us to
overcome the temptation to plan human life according to our own measure and
criteria: ‘God is the guarantor of the true development of human beings, inasmuch as,
having created them in his image, he also establishes the transcendent dignity
of men and women and feeds their innate yearning to “be more”. The human being
is not a lost atom in a random universe, but is rather God’s creature, whom God
chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.’[136]
Only He can decide who is born and who dies. This view of our origin
opens up an infinite horizon on the destiny of the person, created in the image
and likeness of God, destined to share in His own fullness of life. A
transcendent vision of the person and his or her destiny is necessary to
sustain, with the right motivations, the full value of every human life in its
overall dynamism.[137]
123. Faith in Jesus Christ offers a perspective that broadens our view of the
contingent facts of history, with the concrete question about the origin of
everything and the ultimate end: ‘Precisely because God gives a resounding “yes” to human beings, they cannot fail
to open themselves to the divine vocation to pursue their own development. The
truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the
whole human being and every human being, it is not true development.’[138]
Faced with this powerful ‘Yes’ from the Creator Lord, who could arrogate to
themselves the right to say ‘no’ to a human life and stop this personal story
that has begun?
124. We find a paradigmatic correspondence between God’s ‘Yes’ and the
cooperation of the human creature in the Annunciation to Mary (cf. Lk
1:26-38). The Gospel narrative reveals a personal and intimate relationship in
which God and Mary (representing all creatures) are free interlocutors. In her
response to God, Mary shows herself to be a ‘theologal person’ in an original
dialogue with God. She responds to God’s word addressed to her with a likewise
total and unreserved ‘Yes’ in which she dispossesses herself for God, and thus
realises the true possession of herself.[139]
Thus, Mary exemplifies openness to the transcendent fulfilment offered by God in
Jesus Christ, to which the dignity of the person is itself inclined.[140]
This destiny is not a gift extrinsic to human experience. On the contrary, it
corresponds in an excessive way to the dynamism inscribed in the development of
the human being and the cosmos and thus perfects the very natural reality in
which we live.[141]
3. The unique position of human beings in the cosmos
125. The personal identity of the human being also implies a unique position in
the cosmos, in relation to all other creatures: ‘Now human beings are not wrong when they regard themselves as superior to bodily
concerns, and as more than a speck of nature or a nameless constituent of the
human city. For by their interior qualities they outstrip the whole sum of mere
things. They plunge into the depths of reality whenever they enter into his own
hearts; God, who probes the heart, awaits them there.’[142]
Moreover, recent attempts to downplay human nature, with materialistic or
biologically inspired reductions, are still paradoxically human behaviour: even
when dreaming of transcending their human nature, or lowering themselves to the
merely animal level, the person inevitably acts as a human being. The human
person, as a spiritual being called to a direct and immediate relationship with
God, can never legitimately be reduced to the category of an object, nor can he
or she reduce others to objects of possession.[143]
It is essential, on the journey towards one’s own identity, that each person
recognise this unique position in the cosmos and in the human family.
126. This does not imply that other living beings should be considered mere
objects of domination or exploitation, which would lead to a logic with serious
consequences for society: reinforcing the idolatry of the strongest and
producing inequalities, injustices and violence for humanity and the planet as a
whole.[144] According to Sacred
Scripture, other creatures deserve a positive view, worthy of care and respect,
especially animals as living and sentient beings. Human beings, although at the
centre of creation, cannot understand themselves unless they discover themselves
situated in the context of other creatures and united with them.[145]
However, we must avoid the excesses of certain advanced societies, especially in
the West, which tend to consider some animals, especially domestic animals,
almost as persons.[146] We must
avoid the reciprocal temptations of humanising animals and reducing the human to
the animal.
127. From a theological perspective, the doctrine of creation as the action of a
personal and transcendent God and the understanding of human beings as in the
image of God teach us that the existing universe is ‘the setting for a radically personal drama’
in which the Creator acts. We are therefore invited to recognise ‘the sacred character of visible creation’,[147]
where human beings assume the role of responsible stewards of the physical
universe. They are part of created reality and have the capacity to give new
form to the natural order, becoming agents in the evolution of the universe
itself, but always in accordance with its own laws.[148]
They must give an account of this stewardship of the world, received as a gift,
to the One who entrusted it to them.
Chapter IV
HUMANITY AFFIRMED, SAVED AND ELEVATED
128. What the human family needs, and within it every person seeking their true
identity, is not an evolutionary leap beyond the present condition, but rather a
saving relationship that makes the adventure of realising oneself fully
meaningful and beautiful. In this sense, we speak of humanity saved, that is,
respected as a gift from God and not replaced. Salvation in Christ involves a
‘full surpassing’ of our humanity only in the sense that it brings about the
process of taking up, purifying and recreating the human. It is therefore not
primarily a question of accelerating development towards new forms of life, but
rather of sustaining the journey of peoples and individuals, offering a purpose
and meaning that allows each and every one to fulfil their vocation, shaping the
identity of daughters and sons of God in a universal fraternity. The dreams of
transhumanism and posthumanism presume to oversimplify the tensions that run through the human experience. But
this project, on closer inspection, proves to be dehumanising.
129. The adventure of personal and social human identity has an unavoidable
‘dramatic’ character. By this we mean to emphasise the free nature of the
process of becoming oneself, through concrete historical circumstances – with
all the sufferings, sins and failures it involves – which is never definitively
concluded in history until its eschatological fulfilment. This dynamism,
positive in itself, is recognised above all in certain ‘tensions’ or ‘polar
oppositions’ (following Romano Guardini’s expression) proper to our creaturely
condition but which, given original sin, are also experienced in a disordered
way and in need of redemption. The Christian proclamation of salvation offers a
completely human way, by grace, of living these polarities which is both healing
and elevating. It is a matter of living them as a place of encounter with the
event of Christ’s death and resurrection and thus verifying the anthropological
credibility of the Christian proclamation of the new creature.
1. The ‘polar tensions’ of our creaturely condition
130. The human condition appears to be marked by irreducible tensions or
polarities, the meaning of which each person and the whole of humanity is called
to discover, in order to bring them together in a harmony that allows life to
grow in all its potentialities.[149]
These ‘polar tensions’ are constitutive of common human experience, and in them
the person discovers his or her being as a mystery open to the Mystery of God.
If we want to understand the resources and difficulties of the journey to
becoming ourselves, we need to become aware of these characteristic polarities
of the human condition.
131. Polar opposites give form to concrete life in every human being and in the
community. Human life itself is structured in an ‘oppositional’ form.[150]
These tensions run through all levels of reality and take on different
expressions in the search for unity in concrete living. In polarity, opposition
is referred to a higher plane which maintains the tension. Limits are
integrated, not denied. Oppositions help us to understand that it is only in the
concrete that complete reality is realised, which brings about a synthesis in
growth, uniting opposing determinations and realising harmony between them.
132. Such polarities should not be interpreted in a dualistic logic, but as a
‘unity of the two’, nor can they be oversimplified by reducing one term in a
monistic logic of identity or in a dualistic logic of the dialectic of
opposites. Polarities therefore transcend dualisms and monisms, which claim to
capture the mystery of the human being, and show the right and indispensable
value of difference. The opposite poles are not cancelled out; one pole does not
destroy the other. Neither contradiction nor absolute identity dominates. To
live them well, another logic is needed, one that allows us to grasp the inner
rhythm of reality in a form that is more consistent with the data and more
harmonious. We are ultimately referred to the very rhythm of Trinitarian life,
which is reflected in creation, by virtue of which the relationship between two
does not close in on itself, nor does it reabsorb otherness into the one, but
opens up to completion in the third, always excessive and inexhaustible.
133. Through polar oppositions, the original gift that precedes and gives
foundation remains intact. They must therefore be understood in the light of the
character of promise that springs from the gift itself. Rather than as mere
‘facts’, polarities should be interpreted as ‘gifts’. It is precisely in Christ
that the complete taking up of polarities into a unity that maintains
differences and harmonises them in a higher synthesis comes about. This capacity
for unifying integration, which respects reality in its concreteness and
therefore in its polar opposites, is characteristic of the ‘et/et’ way of
thinking typical of the Catholic forma mentis. And this is what happens
in the Church: in her, human beings acquire by grace a sense of total reality,
since in her the horizon of experience of the person and his or her mystery is
broadened. Let us then briefly examine these creaturely polarities in an order
that goes from the most immediate human experience to the deepest root,
specifying that there is a ‘circular progression’ among them rather than a
simple succession.[151]
134. a) With regard to the tension between the material and the spiritual,
it should be remembered that human beings, created in the image of God, are
physical beings who share the world with other living beings. This implies,
first of all, that corporeality is essential to the identity of the person, but
it also means that the material world creates the conditions for human beings to
engage with one another and so integrates interpersonal relationships: in the
family, in peoples and in humanity. Biblical anthropology excludes mind-body
dualism, avoiding both spiritualistic and materialistic reductions of the human
being: the person is a ‘unity of body and soul’.[152]
This unity, which does not remove polarity but unifies it at a higher level, can
be grasped in the symbol of the ‘heart’, as already indicated: ‘This profound core, present in every man and woman, is not that of the soul, but
of the entire person in his or her unique psychosomatic identity. Everything
finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its
spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions.’[153]
135. Regarding the relationship between the spiritual nature of human beings and
evolving matter, it is important to emphasise that human beings cannot be
explained solely as the result of the evolution of matter: ‘Each of us has a personal identity capable of entering into dialogue with
others and with God himself. [...] The qualitative novelty implied by the
emergence of a personal being within the material universe presupposes a direct
action of God, a unique call to life and to the relationship of a You to another
you.’[154] We therefore reiterate
that human beings ‘must not be subordinated as a mere means or instrument to
either the species or society.’[155]
As created in the image of God, human beings are capable of weaving
relationships of communion with the Triune God and with other human persons, but
they are also capable of exercising a service to the created universe with their
work.[156]
136. b) Let us now consider the tension between male and female. The most
beautiful fruit of sexual difference is the recognition of the other and
the mirroring in reciprocity that springs from the encounter between man and
woman in Adam and Eve, with the wonder that accompanies it: ‘When finally God presents the woman, the man exultantly recognizes that this
creature, and this creature alone, is a part of him: “bone of my bones and flesh
of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Finally, there is a reflection, a reciprocity. [...] This was how the man was, he lacked something to reach his fullness; reciprocity
was lacking.’[157] In seeking to shape their
own identities, each is in some way referred to the other and vice versa: ‘The difference between man and woman is not meant to stand in opposition, or to
subordinate, but is for the sake of communion and generation […]. In order to know themselves well and develop harmoniously, human beings
needs the reciprocity of man and woman.’[158] The identity of man and
woman is not a contingent variable that can be shaped independently or even in
contrast to its original and permanent meaning; it is not a property to be
managed according to subjective perception, but a gift to be received as a
blessing from God who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) in a dynamic that does not
close in on itself, but opens up to a dimension of the ‘unity of the two’
(according to the teaching of John Paul II).[159]
This is the challenge of being ‘generative’, that is, capable of giving oneself
to another, which opens up to a third and thus to new life. The current tendency
to deny or ignore this natural difference, received as a gift, and to replace it
with any possibility that the human mind can imagine, becomes a dangerous way of
erasing real bodily identity and closing oneself off in an endogamous
self-contemplation.
137. c) Furthermore, the tension between the individual and the community
should not be forgotten. Every human being created in the image of God is a
person, capable of knowledge and love, who expresses himself or herself both as
an individual and as a member of the community. Human beings are
relational and social, included in the human family. Human beings are therefore
called to realise their social dimension within family, religious, civil,
professional and other groups, which together form the society to which each
belongs.[160] The fundamentally
social character of human existence must be balanced with recognition of the
inalienable value of the person, with his or her individuality and originality,
as well as the importance of individual rights and cultural diversity.
138. d) Finally, we must remember the tension between the finite and the
infinite. People feel called to affirm their identity in a tensity towards a
fullness (the infinite) that is called into question by contingency and
limitation (the finite). No person can live without some openness to the
totality of reality and its meaning, even if it is in the form of rejection.[161]
By virtue of their spiritual (incarnate) nature, every person is capax omnia,
open in some way to being present to all things, and also capax Dei. This
reference should not be thought of as an infinite goal to be achieved starting
from individual experiences of finite and limited reality or from the
accumulation of different experiences. Rather, the wisdom of Israel teaches us
that openness to totality is the necessary dramatic horizon from which the
finite can be grasped as such (cf. Qo 3:9-11; Sir 43:26-28).
Therefore, in their historical journey of searching for and developing their
identity, persons are called to insert the meaning of the fragment into the
whole and to grasp the unity of meaning in its various articulations. Reality is
not grasped separately as either finite or infinite, but as a unity of
identity-difference of finite-infinite. This is the tension reflected in St
Augustine’s famous exclamation: ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts
are restless until they rest in you’,[162]
which will be taken up again in medieval culture, achieving a marvellous
literary synthesis between the Augustinian cor inquietum and the restless
adventure of Ulysses in the Divine Comedy. On this need for totality in
knowing and living, Dante’s Ulysses indeed urges his companions: ‘Consider your
seed, / You were not made to live like brutes, / But to follow virtue and
knowledge.’[163]
2. The human experience in the drama of sin and grace
139. We now turn to a point of view that is specifically Christian and
theological. The ‘polar tensions’ are a spur to the dynamic development of the
human being. Human freedom, however, always situated in a history made up of
encounters and clashes with other freedoms, is marked by original sin, which
finds confirmation in personal sins, and is therefore experienced as a fallen
condition and as wounded freedom, exposing itself to a partial and disordered
fulfilment. History attests, nevertheless, to the experience of the possibility
of living the human condition ever again redeemed, sustained and elevated by
grace.[164] From this point of
view, the category of ‘the dramatic’ implies both the risk to which freedom is
exposed in its path of personal realisation, because it can contradict its
original condition in sin, and the dramatic aspect of redemption insofar as it
is realised through the encounter between the freedom of the Son of God and the
freedom of every person situated in history.
2.1. The rupture of the relationships constitutive of human identity
140. Let us pause for a moment on the text of Genesis, where we find a
mythico-symbolic description of a concrete reality that has wounded human
existence. At the root of the fallen condition, which leads us to misunderstand
the authentic meaning of polarities and to lose sight of the promising character
of difference or limitation, there is a rupture in the relationships that
constitute authentic identity (cf. Gen 3-11): ‘Since, through sin, human beings refuse to submit to God, their inner balance
is also broken, and contradictions and conflicts erupt within them. Thus torn
apart, human beings almost inevitably produce a tear in the fabric of their
relationships with other human beings and with the created world.’[165] This is a rejection of God’s gift and therefore of relationship with the
Creator: ‘This is the first and fundamental “relationship”, which gives value
both to the fact that human beings are made of “dust” and to their being alive
through the divine “breath”.’[166]
In the transition from gift to command, which identifies and proposes a task,
suspicion creeps in (cf. Gen 3), communicated by the serpent, and this
changes the view of God and reality and leads to transgression, compromising the
relationship with the Creator.[167]
141. The first consequence of this rupture is disorder within the human being
between the material/corporeal and spiritual dimensions.[168]
This disorder implies a loss of harmony between the two dimensions and requires
a special vigilance in order to recognise the spiritual and immortal soul within
oneself and not allow oneself to be deceived by ‘a fantasy born only of physical or social influences’, but rather
lay hold ‘of the proper truth of the matter.’[169]
Disorder in our relationship with matter also affects our corporeality, the
place where we experience our limitations and fragility, as can be seen in
‘nakedness’ when it loses its original innocence and integrity and so becomes
hostage to the other. More broadly, it is precisely the loss of the symbolic
value of all things, reduced to material to be arbitrarily manipulated for
profit alone, rather than seeing them as signs of a greater mystery, that is at
the root of the current ecological crisis.[170]
142. As a result of this, interpersonal relationships are also compromised.
First of all the relationship between man and woman, then the relationship
between siblings, and finally the relationships between peoples. We are
witnessing an expansion of human conflict: ‘The rupture with Yahweh simultaneously breaks the bond of friendship that had
united the human family. Thus the subsequent pages of Genesis show us the man
and the woman as it were pointing an accusing finger at each other. Later we
have the brother hating his brother and finally taking his life. [...] The
result of sin is the shattering of the human family, already begun with the
first sin and now reaching its most extreme form on the social level.’[171]
Universal fraternity, inscribed in our common origin, is not adequately
recognised; indeed, it is constantly offended by the manifestation of so many
social particularities and differences, which provide a pretext for the
arrogance that dwells in the human heart and is consolidated in the affirmation
of one’s own identity in polemical opposition to others. History, since its
beginnings, has therefore been marked by rivalry and war, and peoples have had
to rise from the rubble each time, attempting to heal the fractures and redraw
the outlines of peace and solidarity.[172]
2.2. Salvation through the humanity of Christ
143. God’s free initiative, which comes to the aid of every person and every
people on the path of forming their identity, finds its gratuitous and concrete
form of realisation in the history of salvation. In it, God revealed himself to
human beings by identifying himself in his relationship with them. He revealed
his identity to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (cf. Ex 3
and 6). Jesus fully reveals to us the mystery of God who is Father, Son and Holy
Spirit and who gives us the gift of becoming children in the Son, brothers and
sisters, able to call God Father and Our Father. In the mysteries of Christ’s
life, the filial resolve of Jesus’ freedom is manifested according to the
measure of a relationship of reciprocity with the Father, which He lives in the
Spirit. In the light of Jesus’ prayer to the Father (cf. Mt 11:27), we
come to know the elements that are fundamental to a complete understanding of
our relationship with God. First comes the initiative of God, known and
recognised as the Father who gives everything of himself to the Son. Secondly,
Jesus teaches that only the Son knows the Father (cf. Jn 10:15): only He
who recognises himself as the Son knows and recognises the Father as Father. The
third element is the dynamic reciprocity between Father and Son, where the
asymmetry of origin (only the Father is the beginning without beginning) is
given in the symmetry of gratuitousness and totality of mutual gift. This mutual
love between Father and Son is disclosed and offered to the disciples in the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit as Person-Gift. He also makes it possible for the
disciples to cry out from their hearts: “Abba Father!” (cf. Rom 8:15;
Gal 4:6).[173]
The God who reveals himself as Father and Son and Spirit thus reveals himself as
‘our’ Father (cf. Mt 6:9-13), Father of all human creatures immersed in
time and space. Every human being is called to recognise and welcome the gift of
his or her creaturely identity within the wider family of creation.[174]
But the full revelation of who we are and who we are called to become is given
to us by the incarnation of the One who is the Father’s Image, in whose image
and likeness we were created and divinised (cf. Col 1:15) and who
redeemed us from sin.[175]
144. Jesus Christ identifies with every aspect of what it means to be truly
human. He does so by becoming part of a specific people, with its own history
and traditions, namely, the Jewish people, chosen and called by God to be a
blessing for all nations. He does so by receiving his earthly existence from
Mary, the wife of Joseph, of the tribe of Judah, and by learning the family
trade of carpentry. He receives the fullness of the gift of the Spirit from the
moment of his conception, and at his baptism in the Jordan he is sent to fulfil
the mission entrusted to him. From the moment of his conception, the Holy Spirit
pervades and shapes his humanity in accordance with his filial identity, given
him by the Father. In this way, the Son expresses his personal and relational
eternal identity, which he receives from the Father, in our true humanity and
thus fully reveals human beings to themselves.[176]
In a concrete story and as a member of the human family he becomes our brother,
and so he opens the way for us to receive a new identity as his brothers and
sisters and he nourishes this identity within us.
145. His complete self-giving for us is manifested in his pierced body and in
his blood shed on the cross for our salvation, and he becomes even more ‘ours’
in his resurrection for us. Christ, who saves us on the cross, presents himself
to us risen, full of life, and from his wounded and transfigured heart there
comes to us the gift of the Holy Spirit. This mystery of Easter has opened up
for us the real possibility of reaching human fulfilment, which we begin to
taste in our daily lives. As Pope Leo XIV says: ‘Christ is risen. He is truly
risen! [...] We must ask, then, for the grace to see the certainty of Easter in every trial
of life.’[177] The mystery of
Christ’s Easter reaches our human life in all its dimensions, in all its stages
and in all its moments. We need to be aware that we are in need of
salvation: Christ saves us today!
146. The encounter with the humanity of Jesus Christ illumines our humanity and
reveals us to ourselves. First of all, it restores our sense of freedom in the
face of the Creator's call, precisely as it realises our vocation to participate
in the eschatological fullness of His risen life. This realisation of the
fullness of the human condition (cf. Eph 4:13) and ‘the perfection of humanity in Christ challenge the absolute autonomy that
sinners have chosen for themselves. This means that the proclamation of the
Gospel cannot be separated from a proclamation of judgment and a call to
conversion.’[178] Following
Christ includes the way of the Cross, a path that does not destroy the person’s
being, but eliminates the many forms alienation takes, illumining that critical
judgement regarding human behaviour which, according to the measure of Christ,
offers a service to human dignity and the common good in society, bringing
justice to fulfilment with charity.
147. The ‘mystery of charity’ of Jesus Christ offers a global vision of reality
that is new and, ‘while it subjects the desire of modern humanity to critical
examination, it nevertheless affirms its importance, purifies it and surpasses
it.’[179] This desire, which can
also be glimpsed in the dreams expressed by various forms of transhumanism
and posthumanism, is illumined in the light of its fulfilment in
Christ: ‘What all human beings seek, desire and hope for, at least implicitly,
is transcendent, infinite to the point that it can only be found in God.
Humanity’s true humanisation reaches its pinnacle in its gratuitous
divinisation, that is, in friendship and communion with God. […] The grace of
Jesus Christ abundantly fulfils the deepest desires of human beings, even those
that exceed the limits of human strength.’[180]
The fulfilment of human beings in God neither absorbs nor diminishes the human,
just as it does not impoverish the divine that is communicated. It is, in fact,
an encounter of freedom, where God divinises at the same time that the human
being is humanised.
3. The new humanity in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God
148. ‘The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of
the human being take on light.’[181]
In the event of Jesus Christ, the Father’s ‘pre-established plan’ for creatures,
and in particular for human beings, was revealed (cf. Acts 2:22-23;
Eph 1:1-14).[182] Christian
anthropology is fully illumined when we recognise that we have been willed and
created by the Father to become ‘sons and daughters in the Son’ and to
participate, through the gift of the Spirit, in the communion of intra-divine
love.[183] What we as Christians
call ‘grace’ is first and foremost God himself who gives himself to us in Christ
as a love that elevates us, purifies us, transforms us and brings our life to
its fullness. Grace is first and foremost He himself who saves us on the cross;
it is He himself who is the living One who gives us the Holy Spirit and
consequently brings about a new dynamism of salvation, of renewal in our very
being and in our lives.
149. The realisation of this divine plan, revealed in the Covenant, began with
creation, and its fulfilment is precisely the Christological event that will
reach its climax when everything is recapitulated in the Father and God will be
all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:20-28).[184]
Christ is the second Adam, in whose image the first was formed (cf. Rom
5:14). Christian anthropology, therefore, as proposed by Gaudium et spes,
perceives the completed perfection of humanity in the light of the humanity of
Jesus of Nazareth, not only because He is its unsurpassable pattern, but because
it is by way of the conformation of the personal history of each human being to
His unique history, through the gift of the Spirit, that we become sons and
daughters of the Father, and fulfil our human vocation: ‘By His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every
human being.’[185]
150. Through the mysteries of Jesus’ life, there comes about the consummation
and transfiguration of the world and of history. We do not go beyond Jesus
Christ, but we seek to come to him by entering ever more deeply into his Paschal
mystery. In Christ, believers are ‘transformed into his likeness, from glory to
glory, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit’ (2 Cor 3:18).
Christ has, in fact, brought all newness in bringing us himself, and the Holy
Spirit introduces us into this newness of Christ.[186]
There can be no ‘trans’ or ‘post’ that the newness of Christ has not already
integrated by way of anticipation. Christ is the final word of God in all his
unsurpassable newness.
151. The life of the believer, which is expressed as a response to a call (cf.
Jn 15:16), is not realised in a single moment in time, but is prolonged in the
incorporation of the Christian into Christ, in the Holy Spirit, so that
everything may be offered to the Father. Christian life as a vocation translates
into the involvement of personal existence in the existence of Christ ‘until
Christ be formed in you’ (Gal 4:19). This is the ultimate principle of
human unification. It is a progressive assimilation to Christ, until we have his
sentiments (cf. Phil 2:5), his thoughts (cf. 1 Cor 2:16). By
becoming like the Son, through the gift of his Spirit, vocational existence
translates above all into a love that does not spare itself but offers
everything to the Father in filial obedience (cf. Jn 10:17-18; Heb
10:8-10) for the salvation and happiness of our brothers and sisters.
152. The totality of existence always remains a mystery, but it is no longer an
alien enigma. Rather, it becomes a space in which we begin to understand and
experience something of the Mystery of God’s love, inasmuch as we adhere freely
to it (cf. 1 Jn 2:3-6). Within this existence ‘in Christ’,
anthropological polarities find their gratuitous fulfilment in concrete terms.
The tension finite/infinite is resolved in the recognition that we are
loved in our limited existence, but at the same time oriented, in hope, towards
a fullness that we cannot even imagine.
153. The material/spiritual tension (body/soul) finds its full meaning in
the resurrection from the dead. On account of this, human beings are saved
completely, inasmuch as the resurrected body becomes, in a certain sense, the
transparent visible sign of the whole human being, the dimension that reveals
the human being’s spiritual nature, which remains the unifying summit of the
self and attests to the difference between the human being and other animals.
154. The tension man/woman finds its proper perspective in the Christian
proclamation about man and woman as persons created in the image of a personal
God with the calling to the ‘unity of the two’ (cf. Gen 1:27) with an
identical dignity. Thus, we can recognise the originality of sexual difference,
an expression of the mystery of God, by virtue of the loving unity between the
two, its procreative purpose and its openness to interpersonal communion and
communion with God.[187]
This polarity is not abolished in the resurrection of Christ nor in the
transfiguration of the human being that follows: ‘It is sown a living body, it
is raised a spiritual body. If there is a living (psychikôn) body, there
is also a spiritual (pneumatikôn) body.’ (1 Cor 15:44-45)
Scripture teaches that in the resurrection people will be like angels and will
neither marry nor be given in marriage (cf. Mt 22:30), yet the
resurrected body retains the sex of the physical body. Jesus in his resurrected
body remains a man, and Mary, the Mother of God, in her body assumed into
heaven, remains a woman. What is true of Jesus and Mary is also true of all
humanity.
155. Finally, the tension individual/community, which also implies
tension between cultures, finds its point of convergence in Eucharistic and
ecclesial communion until its fulfilment in the communion of saints. Christian
experience is expressed as belonging to the people of God who journey through
history towards their destiny. This belonging does not detract from personal
identity, but rather makes it possible and promotes it: ‘In this regard, reason finds inspiration and direction in Christian revelation,
according to which the human community does not absorb the individual,
annihilating his or her autonomy, as happens in the various forms of
totalitarianism, but rather values the individual all the more because the
relation between individual and community is a relation between one whole and
another.’[188] This is a form of
belonging that is never exclusive or closed in on itself, one that does not
establish an ‘us’ against a ‘you’. Instead, it is an inclusive belonging
committed to the affirmation of universal fraternity, in harmony with other
religious experience.[189] If in
the created order there remains a certain ongoing tension between the individual
person and the demands of social existence, in the life of grace we participate
in via in the perfect harmony between the Persons of the Trinity
who share the communion of a single divine life.[190]
156. Incorporation into Christ takes place through the concrete flow of life
that springs from him, within the sign of the unity of Christians who proclaim
the Word of God and celebrate the sacraments. The Church makes the divine gift
tangible so that all may effectively experience the proclamation of salvation
and participate in new life in Christ.[191]
The culminating expression in the Church and in the history of the new reality
of human life given in Christ is the Eucharist. Through communion with the body
and blood of Jesus, which is, for that very reason, communion with God,
disciples become the people of God. Such communion cannot be explained in purely
sociological terms, because it is born of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Cor
13:13)[192] The Eucharistic
celebration takes up and regenerates human relationships and opens them to the
communion of the Trinity. It should be emphasised that ecclesial communion
fulfils, albeit imperfectly, that profound need for the unity of the individual
and of humanity, which has driven so many social and revolutionary utopias
throughout history without ever being achieved. In fact, in Eucharistic
communion, individual and community are not opposed to each other to the
detriment of the other, but are drawn to each other in a circularity that finds
adequate expression only from within the Trinitarian Mystery. The Eucharist
illumines not only social life and history, but also our relationship with
creation, according to the Lord’s promise: ‘We are waiting for new heavens
and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.’ (2 Pt 3:13; cf. Rev
21:1)[193]The rhythm of life in
creation, in its various seasons, is taken up by sacramental celebrations,
opened up for the communication of God’s grace and inserted into the Paschal
mystery of Christ. In particular, the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist takes
on a cosmic significance.[194]
157. Forgiveness and mercy also contribute decisively to the bonds of communion
that bring about reconciliation, capable of destroying the walls of separation
between individuals and between peoples (cf. Eph 2:13-14; Col
1:20). In the sacrament of reconciliation, God renews our hearts wounded by evil
and sin, as well as our fraternal relationships, allowing us to start afresh,
not from the experience of evil done or suffered, but from the fullness of God’s
love.[195] In this way, processes
of reconciliation are also fostered at the social level.
158. The theological reflection we have sought to make regarding human
experience and the process of the maturing of one’s identity is based on the
sacramental economy of salvation. In order to (re)elaborate and propose a fully
human culture, capable of looking to the future and also confronting the
challenges and fundamental misunderstandings conveyed here by transhumanism
and posthumanism, theological reflection must be accompanied by the
contribution of other sciences and the arts. For this reason, it is appropriate
to invite people and institutions involved in the socio-economic, academic,
artistic, cultural and political spheres to collaborate in this goal. Starting
from exchanges already underway, the aim is to develop new ways of thinking and
acting, in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary form. In this way,
theological anthropology can be translated into lived and concrete experience,
both on a personal and social level, especially in the educational and cultural
fields. Today more than ever, in the face of the challenges of a humanity that
looks to the future with hope and uncertainty, interdisciplinary and
transdisciplinary dialogue and cooperation are needed. Our purpose must be to
give expression to the inexhaustible richness of human experience according to
the good design of God our Father.
Conclusion
THE GIFT OF DIVINISATION AS TRUE HUMANISATION
159. At the beginning of our journey, a question resounded, shared with our
brothers and sisters in humanity: Quo vadis, humanitas? At this juncture
of the twenty-first century, the human family is faced with questions so radical
that they threaten its very existence as we have known it until now. The
unprecedented scientific and technological development in the history of the
planet must be accompanied by a corresponding growth in responsibility that
directs progress towards the good of human beings, because today they are
exposed to risks never before imagined. The impact of technoscientific
development, particularly the digital revolution, on human experience is
profound, both in terms of our relationship with the environment and our
relationship with others in society, with ourselves and with God. New
technologies may usher in an era of real change in the human condition,
reflected in the fears of the social imaginary of mass culture and in the
disturbing optimism or pessimism of transhumanist and posthumanist
movements. Today more than ever, the anthropological and cultural proposal that
Christianity offers involves the conception of life as a vocation, which makes
possible a human way of inhabiting time and space and of conceiving
intersubjective relationships, while at the same time becoming a prophetic
judgement on the more disturbing aspects we cannot fail to recognise in
transhumanism and posthumanism.
160. The concept of life as a vocation is the perspective in which the decisive
and complex process of forming identity at a personal and social level can/must
be placed. The Christian view of life articulates identity with the recognition
of an original free gift that goes before and the acceptance of a task that
follows, entrusted by God’s love to the freedom of individuals and peoples. All
human beings are called to receive themselves as a gift, to share the gift of
difference, to become a gift for others, to recognise the transcendence of the
gift as something divine.
This process, which affects personal and social identity, is never static or
defined once and for all, but has an intrinsic dramatic dimension, which is
revealed in the ‘polar tensions’ typical of human experience throughout history,
which become radicalised in the face of the challenge of evil, as it seeks to
alter their original meaning. The dialogue between human and divine freedom, in
accepting or rejecting the gift of divinisation by grace, cannot fail to have a
dramatic character: ‘See what great love the Father has given us, that we should
be called children of God; and that is we are! That is why the world does not
know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, but
what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ (1 Jn 3:1-2).
161. In our societies, driven by pressing dreams of unlimited enhancement or
even replacement of the human, the Christian faith makes this theological,
pastoral and cultural proposal. It is a theoretical and practical understanding
of the human that the ecclesial community always wants to put before its members
and wishes to present to everyone. The Christian proclamation identifies the
appropriate way to go beyond (trans) the limits of human experience, with
the deification (theiosis) possible only to God,[196]
which is the exact opposite of transhumanist self-deification. It is
concretely realised by way of vocation in Christ (cf. Rom 8:1; 2 Cor
5:17; Gal 3:26-28; 2 Tim 3:12). The Son of Man is the One in whom
the tensions constitutive of the human being find dynamic balance. Through the
gift of his Holy Spirit, the baptised participate in this fullness, not yet
perfectly within the course of history, but awaiting the definitive
recapitulation, when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). Thus, in
the face of the various reductions we have described, where certain aspects of
the human are put to death, the Catholic forma mentis seeks a dynamic
synthesis in which no dimension of common experience is lost, while respecting
its constitutive tensions.
162. We must emphasise once again that the fact that these tensions can find
convergence in faith does not mean some kind of premature elimination of the
drama of life. The gift of the Spirit of the Risen One is freely offered to
human freedom, which cooperates with divine grace. In Christian life, the drama
of creation is neither eliminated nor ignored. Natural tensions are, in a
certain sense, experienced with greater radicality, because of the emergence of
a new awareness: Christians know in Christ their condition as beings who owe
everything to the initiative of God the Father and who, at the same time, are
called by Him to the most authentic development and full gift of themselves. For
this reason, their proclamation of salvation does not insist so much on their
own ability to overcome natural or cultural limitations for themselves (even
technologically), but rather on the affective and grateful acceptance of the
gift of a love that makes possible the development of personal and social
identity, inasmuch as it works through charity (cf. Gal 5:6), taking on a
creative task for a better service to the common good.[197]
In this way, it contributes to the fulfilment of the divine plan according to an
asymmetrical reciprocity of gifts.
1. The fully human Mother
163. In light of this theological-pastoral perspective, Mary, Immaculate and
Assumed into the bosom of God the Father with Jesus, appears as the admirable
figure of a human being in whom the tensions between soul and body, man and
woman, and individual and community express their fullness according to a unity
that does not destroy but enhances each integral element. Mary’s obedience to
the Lord’s call is attested to as perfect availability in her entire personal
being, spirit and body; it is attested to as a virginal and maternal
fruitfulness for the building of a new people in human history; it is also
attested to as a paradigm of personalising integration into the community of
disciples (cf. Jn 19:25-26). In fact, in Mary, the Church contemplates
what we all hope to be: the image of a human being in her fullness.[198]
In the circumstances of her life, Mary achieves a synthesis that unites the call
of love and free response; personal vocation and social mission; filial identity
and fraternal communion; the proclamation of God and service to other human
beings; responsible obedience and generous service; the acceptance of the gift
and the free giving of oneself; the joy of song and serene meditation on life;
belonging to her own people and openness to all generations; acceptance of her
own limits and the happiness of faith; the ‘yes’ to the fulfilment of God’s will
(cf. Lk 1:26-38) and the concern that all may do what Jesus will tell
them (cf. Jn 2:5). Mary accepted her life as a vocation and thus realised
her personal identity in the fulfilment of the mission entrusted to her, so that
the loving plan of the Triune God for all humanity might be accomplished.
2. The challenge of the poor
164. The relentless technological development that we consider in this text,
which favours above all those who already have much power, challenges us to turn
our gaze to the poorest. If this development, together with the ideologies that
accompany it, involves serious risks, as we have seen, these will be even
greater for the weakest and most defenceless, that is, for those who count for
nothing because they are of no use to the workings of the more powerful. They
run the risk of becoming waste material, ‘collateral damage’, swept away without
mercy. As Christians, however, we are called to see them through the eyes of
Christ, who says to each of them: ‘I have loved you.’ (Rev 3:9) As Pope
Leo XIV explains, Christ ‘by his love given to the end, shows the dignity of every human being.’[199]
This encourages us to ‘perceive the strong connection that exists between Christ’s love and his call to
be close to the poor.’[200] From
this arises the duty to be particularly attentive—as humble sentinels—to the
consequences that new developments in society may have on the lives of the least
among us. We must respond with a prophetic word and with generous involvement.
The authenticity of our faith and the human value of our lives are at stake.
[1] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 6. 11.
[2] Psalm 144 asks the same question, but highlights the fragility of human
beings: ‘Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, the son of man that
you think of him? Human beings are like breath, their days like a passing
shadow.’ (Ps 144:3-4) Job also questions the meaning of God’s interest in
human beings: ‘What are human beings that you should regard them so much and
turn your mind upon them?’ (Job 7:17)
[3] Francis,
Address to participants in the Plenary Session of the
Pontifical Council for Culture, 18 November 2017. See also the document of
the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un
itinerario di antropologia biblica, 2019, 8, which uses Psalm 8 as the basis
for discourse on biblical anthropology.
[4] Leo XIV,
Address to the College of Cardinals, 10 May 2025.
[5] International Theological Commission,
Theology Today: Perspectives,
Principles and Criteria, 2012, 55.
[6] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 3.
[7] Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 19.
[8] The term ‘identity’ appears in the anthropological documents of the International Theological Commission,
but it is not among the most frequent. It is used in a sense that is not
specifically anthropological but Christological or Trinitarian, and sometimes in
a generic sense.
[9] On the notion of human nature – also in relation to that of the person –
see International Theological Commission,
In Search of a Universal Ethic: A
New Look at Natural Law, 2009, 64-66; Id.,
Religious Freedom for the Good
of All, 2019, 32-39. This is a complex notion, which designates the
principle of the specific ontological identity of a subject, that is, its
‘essence’ as understood in terms of a set of stable characteristics. However, it
is not something fixed and static, since it is a dynamic internal principle that
inclines the subject towards its fulfilment through specific activities in a
complex interrelationship first and foremost with God in Christ, with other
persons, and with all realities.
[10] Cf. Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November
2013, 221.
[11] For this characterization of the existential condition, see S. Kierkegaard,
The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong (Kierkegaard’s Writings, XIX), Princeton 1980, ‘Despair as Defined by
Finitude/Infinitude’, 29-35; Id., The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans.
with Introduction and Notes by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B.
Anderson (Kierkegaard’s Writings, VIII) Princeton 1980, ‘V. Anxiety as Saving
through Faith’, 155-162.
[12] See N. Bostrom, ‘Transhumanist Values’,
Journal of Philosophical
Research 30/Supplement (2005): 3–14, 4. For more on transhumanism,
see S. Young, Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto, Amherst NY
2005; The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science,
Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, ed. Max More and Natasha Vita-More, New York/London 2013; Y. N. Harari,
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, New York 2017; R. Kurzweil,
The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, New York 2024.
See the Humanity Plus website: https://www.humanityplus.org [accessed online on 19 August 2025].
[13] On posthumanism, see R. Braidotti,
Metamorphoses: Towards a
Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge 2002; The Posthuman,
Cambridge 2013; C. Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis 2009. M. Rosendahl Thomsen and J. Warnberg (Eds.),
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism, London/New York 2020; F. Ferrando,
The Art of Being Posthuman: Who Are We in the 21st Century? Cambridge
2024.
[14] However, in some versions,
transhumanism appears to be oriented
towards a ‘posthuman ideal’ to the point of conflation with posthumanism.
The articulation of a ‘posthuman ideal’ can be found in N. Bostrom's
paradigmatic Transhumanist FAQ (https://nickbostrom.com/views/transhumanist.pdf [accessed online on 19 August 2025]).
[15] Cf. Francis, Apostolic Constitution
Veritatis gaudium, 27 December
2017, Preface.
[16] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 11.
[17] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Laudate Deum, 4 October 2023, 67,
citing Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 89. Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,
Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 2 and 57.
[18] The Council had already asked questions about the future of humanity: Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,
Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 11.
[19] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Note Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, note 9.
[20] D. Alighieri,
The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, Canto I, 70: ‘Transumanar
significar per verba non si porria; però l’essempio basti a cui esperienza
grazia serba’, which could be translated as ‘transcending the human
[reserved for those who enter into communion with God in Paradise] cannot be
expressed in words, but only intimated by way of example to those who will one
day be able to experience it.’
[21] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November 2013,
8.
[22] Patristic and scholastic tradition is rich in statements proclaiming the
deification of Christians, their communion with the Son, with the Spirit and
with the Father, the dwelling of the faithful in God and of God in them. The
axiom ‘God became what we are so that we might become what He is’, is a common
heritage, albeit with different nuances, in this tradition. Among others: Irenaeus,
Adversus Haereses V praef: SC 153, 14: ‘Following the one
steadfast and truthful teacher, the Logos of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, who,
through the superabundance of his love, became what we are, so that he might
make us capable of being what he himself is'; Tertullian, Adv. Marc. II,
27, 7: SC 368, 164.166: ‘God became human so that human beings might be taught
to act divinely. God acted as an equal with the human, so that human beings
might act as an equal with God. God was found small, so that human beings might
become very great’; Cyprian, Quod idola 11: CSEL 3/1, 28: ‘Christ wanted
to be what human beings are, so that human beings could also be what Christ is’; Athanasius,
De Incarnatione 54, 3: SC 199, 458: ‘For the Son of God became human to
make us God’; Thomas Aquinas, Officium de festo corporis Christi, Ad
Matutinas, In primo Nocturno, Lectio 1: Opera omnia, v. 29 (Paris 1876)
p. 336: ‘The only-begotten [...] Son of God, wishing us to share in his divinity,
assumed our nature, so that, having become human, he might make human beings
gods.’ For a summary presentation of the Christian meaning of ‘divinization and
how it is achieved, see International Theological Commission,
Theology,
Christology, Anthropology, I, E, 1-5.
[23] John XXIII, Encyclical Letter
Pacem in Terris, 11 April 1963, 21ff.
Cf. also Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 4 and 44.
[24] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 33.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Paul VI, Encyclical Letter
Populorum progressio, 26 March 1967, 34.
[27] Ibid., 14.
[28] Cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Letter
Octogesima adveniens, 14 May 1971,
29.
[29] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter
Redemptor hominis, 4 March 1979,
15.
[30] Ibid.
[31] In particular, on the ethics of technology, see John Paul II, Encyclical
Letter
Sollicitudo rei socialis, 30 December 1987, IV, 27-34.
[32] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
68.
[33] Cf. ibid., 16-17.
[34] Ibid., 70.
[35] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 105.
[36] Ibid., 106.
[37] Ibid., 103.
[38] Leo XIV,
Address to Catholic digital missionaries and influencers,
29 July 2025.
[39] Leo XIV,
Message on the occasion of the AI for Good Summit, 10 July
2025.
[40] Cf. A. Barba-Kay,
A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital
Formation, Cambridge 2023.
[41] The anthropological impact of new technologies, and in particular digital
technology, had already been analysed by a group of scholars commissioned by the
European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communication. The results can be found in the volume
The Onlife Manifesto. Being human in a
Hyperconnected Era, 2009 (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-04093-6) [consulted online on 19 August 2025]).
[42] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 115.
[43] Ibid., 51, where the North-South polarity does not have an
immediately geographical meaning, but indicates a socio-economic distinction,
which cuts across different situations of poverty: cf. Leo XIV, Apostolic
Exhortation
Dilexi te, 4 October 2025, 11-12.
[44] Cf. K. Crawford,
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs
of Artificial Intelligence, New Haven/London 2021.
[45] Some criteria for discernment can be found in
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 461-487.
[46] See the interdisciplinary work of M. J. Gaudet et al. (ed.), AI Research
Group of the Centre for Digital Culture of the Dicastery for Culture and
Education of the Holy See, Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and
Anthropological Investigations, vol. 1 (Eugene, OR 2024).
[47] Cf. Francis,
Message for the 57th World Day of Peace, ‘Artificial Intelligence and Peace’, 1 January 2024, 2. Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Note Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 7-12.
[48] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Note Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 49-103.
[49] Cf. Leo XIV,
Message to participants in the second annual conference on
“Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Corporate Governance”, 17 June
2025.
[50] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Note Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 38.
[51] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009, 73.
[52] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Note Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 85-89.
[53] Many exponents of contemporary culture have addressed this issue: cf. E. Erikson,
Gioventù e crisi di identità, Roma 1995.
[54] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25
March 2019, 87. Cf. also Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
Final Statement of
the Workshop on Risks and Opportunities of AI for Children. A Common Commitment
for Safeguarding Children, 24 March 2025.
[55] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25
March 2019, 88.
[56] Ibid., 89; cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3
October 2020, 199-202; Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Nota Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 77-84.
[57] See various recent studies by MIT, such as N. Kosmyna et al., ‘Your Brain
on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay
Writing Task’, https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ [accessed online 19 August 2025].
[58] Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June
2009, 74; Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25 March 2019, 82.
[59] Cf. T. Berger,
@ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (Liturgy, Worship, and Society Series), New York/London 2019.
[60] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Culture and Education,
Nota Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, 104-107.
[61] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 85,
199–201, 222.
[62] In Summa Theologiae
I, q. 25, a. 6 ad 3 and ad 4, Thomas Aquinas
rejects the idea of a best possible world that God was obliged to create,
arguing that the world God has actually created cannot have been ‘made better’
than it has been in regard to the gift of grace and in particular the grace of
the union of the divine infinite with the finite in the hypostatic union.
[63] H. Jonas, Il principio responsabilità, Torino 2009 (orig. 1979), p. 54.
[64] Cf. Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Gaudete et exsultate, 19 March
2018, 36-39; see also Apostolic Constitution
Evangelii
gaudium, 24
November 2013, 94.
[65] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter
Placuit Deo, 22
February 2018, 3, which specifies both the similarities and differences between
the forms of Gnosticism in antiquity and these tendencies in modern and
postmodern thought.
[66] The notion of a ‘people’ is not synonymous with that of a ‘nation’, which
has a more political and legal meaning, even if the two are not mutually
exclusive. On the meaning proposed here, see Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020, 157-158: ‘If we wish to maintain that society is more than a mere aggregate of individuals, the term
“people” proves necessary. There are social phenomena that create majorities, as
well as megatrends and communitarian aspirations. Men and women are capable of
coming up with shared goals that transcend their differences and can thus engage
in a common endeavour. Then, too, it is extremely difficult to carry out a
long-term project unless it becomes a collective aspiration. All these factors
lie behind our use of the words “people” and “popular”.’ Cf. also paragraphs 90-92 below.
[67] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 5.
[68] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020,
9-17. See also numbers 151-153, in which Pope Francis locates regional realities
between local and universal ones.
[69] In a paradigmatic way: Augustine,
Confessions, XI, 14. 31. 41. Cf. P. Ricoeur, Temps et Récit
I-III, Paris 1983-1985.
[70] There is a widespread perception of a ‘lack of time’, where time is
consumed but not lived: Z. Bauman, Consumo dunque sono, Roma-Bari 2009; Id.,
L’etica in un mondo di consumatori, Roma-Bari 2010. On the loss of the
sense of history and memory: J. B. Metz, Sul concetto della nuova teologia
politica 1967-1997, Brescia 1998.
[71] Cf. for example: C. Lasch,
L’io minimo. La mentalità della sopravvivenza in un’epoca di turbamenti, Milano 1985.
[72] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Lumen fidei, 29 June 2013, 25, with
its emphasis: ‘In contemporary culture, we often tend to consider the only real truth to be that
of technology: truth is what we succeed in building and measuring by our
scientific know-how, truth is what works and what makes life easier and more
comfortable.’
[73] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020, 13.
[74] Ibid., 17; also 188, 27, 30, 36.
[75] Cf. ibid., 160 and 163.
[76] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter
Fides et ratio, 14 September
1998, 12.
[77] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 38-39.
[78] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter
Redemptoris missio, 7 December
1990, 28.
[79] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter
Redemptoris Mater, 25 March
1987, 36.
[80] Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Verbum Domini, 30
September 2010, 30.
[81] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos, 24 October 2024, 19.
[82] Cf. Synod of Bishops, XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops – Second Session:
Final Document. For a Synodal Church: Communion,
Participation, Mission, 26 October 2024, 111-113.
[83] Cf. Paul VI, Apostolic Letter
Octogesima adveniens, 14 May 1971,
8-12.
[84] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020, 143.
[85] Cf. P. Ricoeur,
Lectures 1. Autour du politique, Paris 1991; also B. Waldenfels,
Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phenomenologie des Fremden,
Frankfurt am Main 1997.
[86] Letter to Diognetus 5:1.
[87] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020,
77-86.
[88] Ibid., 12; cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Deus caritas est, 25 December
2005, 19.
[89] Among the authors who have worked in this perspective, see the
philosophers G. Siewerth, Metaphysik der Kindheit, Einsiedeln 1962; F. Ulrich,
Der Mensch als Anfang. Zur philosophischen Anthropologie der Kindheit,
Einsiedeln 1970. In theology, there is the well-known essay by K. Rahner,
‘Gedenken zu einer Theologie der Kindheit’: Schriften zur Theologie, VII,
313-329.
[90] On the relationship between the political community and the people, cf.
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 385. On the symbolic
richness of the people, see R. Guardini, Dostoevskij. Il mondo religioso,
Brescia 1951, p. 15.
[91] Cf. Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November
2013, 268, where he emphasizes the ‘spiritual taste’ of belonging to a people
and participating in ‘the gaze of Jesus [which], burning with love, expands to embrace all his people’.
[92] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020,
144-145.
[93] On the value of the experience of the people of God, cf.
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 377-383. On the ‘theology of the people’,
see L. Gera, La religione del popolo, Bologna 2015 (orig. 1977).
[94] On the importance of the international community, cf.
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 428-450.
[95] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Promoting Integral
Human Development,
Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones, 6 January
2018, 18-33.
[96] Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Spe salvi, 30 November 2007,
43.
[97] Francis,
Address to participants in the International Conference “Man-Woman. Image of
God: Towards an Anthropology of Vocations”, 1 March 2024. Cf. also Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus
vivit, 25 March 2019, 248-277.
[98] Cf. International Theological Commission,
In Search of a Universal Ethic: A
New Look at Natural Law, 2009, 66. Id.,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004, 7.
[99] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 1.
[100] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25
March 2019, 252. There is no shortage of contemporary authors who propose a
phenomenology of calling and response, of gift, as a path to a renewed
anthropology that also takes into account the intrinsic religious dimension of
the human: J.-L. Chrétien, L’appel et la réponse, Paris 1992; J.-L. Marion,
Étant donné, Paris 1998, Id., À vrai dire: une conversation,
Paris
2021.
[101] Cf. Pontifical Work for Ecclesiastical Vocations,
New Vocations for a
New Europe, 8 December 1997, 13.
[102] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25
March 2019, 253.
[103] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November 2013,
273.
[104] Augustine,
Confessions, XIII, I, 1.
[105] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos, 24 October 2024, 90.
[106] Pontifical Work for Ecclesiastical Vocations,
New Vocations for a
New Europe, 8 December 1997, 11c; cf. also 12-13.
[107] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25
March 2019, 184.
[108] Cf. Francis,
Message for the 2020 World Day of Vocations, 3 May
2020.
[109] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos, 24 October 2024, 19.
[110] ‘By exercising the freedom to cultivate the riches of our nature, we grow over
time. Even if a person is unable to exercise these capabilities due to various
limitations or conditions, nevertheless the person always subsists as an
“individual substance” with a complete and inalienable dignity.’ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 9. The text specifies the
ontological foundation of the dignity of the human person by taking up the
classical definition of the person as an individual substance of a rational
nature. On the human person, its uniqueness, freedom, dignity and openness to
transcendence, see further:
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church,
124-148; International Theological Commission,
Religious Freedom for the Good
of All, 2019, 29-42.
[111] Among the authors most knowledgeable on this contemporary issue are E. Morin,
Il metodo 5: l’identità umana, Milano 2002; Z. Bauman, Intervista
sull’identità, Roma-Bari 2007.
[112] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita,
2 April 2024, 11.
[113] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 26.
[114] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 17-21.
[115] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
53.
[116] On the value of intergenerational relationships, see Francis, Post-Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation
Amoris laetitia, 19 March 2016, 193. The freedom of
young people is more fragile if it is empty, devoid of affective memory: Francis,
Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christus vivit, 25 March 2019, 181.
[117] Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June
2009, 1.
[118] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita,
2 April 2024, 22.
[119] Ibid., 31.
[120] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Dicastery for Promoting Integral
Human Development,
Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones, 6 January
2018, 10.
[121] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos, 24 October 2024, 15-19.
[122] Cf. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 110, a. 3; q. 112,
a. 1.
[123] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution
Lumen
gentium, 21 November 1964, 13.
[124] In Edith Stein’s philosophical-theological reflection, the divine
‘calling’ (Berufung) is the deepest criterion for the individuation of
the personal human being; cf. Endliches Sein und Ewiges Sein,
Freiburg-Basel-Vienna 2025 (chap. VIII). P. Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre,
Paris 1990, highlights the dynamics of the narrative identity of the person,
which implies the capacity to understand and express the image of oneself
received in one’s relationships and appropriated in a story.
[125] Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June
2009, 68.
[126] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita,
2 April 2024, 60.
[127] Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Amoris laetitia, 19
March 2016, 56.
[128] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 155.
[129] As
Dignitas infinita emphasizes: ‘It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the
unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is
not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are
already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the
assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However,
in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the
sense intended here.’ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 60.
[130] Cf. A. MacIntyre,
Dependent Rational Animals. Why Human Beings need the
Virtues, Chicago 1999 (chap. 1).
[131] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
53.
[132] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 24.
[133] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020, 87.
[134] Cf. ibid., 111; also 95.
[135] Ibid., 218.
[136] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
29.
[137] Cf. ibid., 11. See also
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 130.
[138] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
18.
[139] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter
Redemptoris Mater, 25 March
1987, 30-31.
[140] Cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 20.
[141] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 79, 83.
[142] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 14.
[143] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 81. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Declaration
Dignitas infinita, 2 April 2024, 9.
See also International Theological Commission,
Religious Freedom for the Good
of All, 2019, 42.
[144] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 82.
[145] Cf. Id., Apostolic Exhortation
Laudate Deum, 4 October 2023, 67.
[146] On the relationship between animals and human beings from a biblical
perspective, cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal
8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica, 2019, 139 ff.
[147] International Theological Commission,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004, 66.
[148] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Laudate Deum, 4 October 2023, 26-27.
[149] See the classic account, R. Guardini,
Der Gegensatz: Versuche zu einer
Philosophie des Lebendig-Konkreten (Romano Guardini Werke), Mainz 2025.
[150] Cf. J. Bergoglio – Pope Francis,
Nei tuoi occhi è la mia parola. Omelie e discorsi di Buenos Aires 1999-2013, Milano 2016, XIX. This gives rise to the principle that ‘unity is greater than
conflict’ (Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November 2013,
228): the resolution of conflicts is referred to a higher plane that preserves
within itself the positive potentialities of polarities in tension.
[151] For the description of these anthropological polarities, we take
inspiration from the International Theological Commission,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004, 25-51.
[152] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 14; cf. International Theological Commission,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004,
26-30. While there has been a long and dominant tradition in theology that
interprets this ‘unity of body and soul’ along the lines of Aristotelian
hylomorphism, revised in the light of revelation (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae I, q. 76) and also reflected in the Magisterium (from the Council
of Vienne to the Second Vatican Council), there is also an older tripartite
account—body, soul, spirit—which also has solid foundations. See H. de Lubac, Théologie dans l’histoire: I. Lumière du Christ, Paris
1990, 113-199. The two accounts are in reality not mutually exclusive but complement each
other, enriching Christian anthropology with different accents, thanks to their
constitutive reference to the relationship with God (to which both concepts of
soul and spirit refer), which suggests that the material/spiritual polarity
finds harmony at a third and higher level, namely, that of relationship with God
(cf. as specified in n. 132).
[153] Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos, 24 October 2024, 21.
[154] Id., Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 81. Every human
being is a person who integrates and transcends his or her biological, genetic
and bodily dimensions: ‘When a new person is born of the conjugal union of the two, he or she brings
with hi mor her into the world a particular image and likeness of God himself:
the genealogy of the person is inscribed in the very biology of generation.’ John Paul II,
Letter to Families “Gratissimam sane”, 2 February 1994, 9.
[155] John Paul II, Messaggio ai partecipanti alla Plenaria della Pontificia Accademia delle
Scienze, 22 October 1996, 5.
[156] Cf. International Theological Commission,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004, 64.
[157] Francis,
General Audience, 22 April 2015. Adam’s amazement at the woman means that the recognition of Eve
as ‘part of him’ does not imply possession or simple dependence, but is an
unexpected and gratuitous gift that comes only from God, even if it touches the
identity of the man deeply. This is the meaning of otherness in reciprocity.
[158] Francis,
General Audience, 15 April 2015.
[159] Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter
Mulieris dignitatem, 15 August
1988, 6. Id.,
Letter to Families “Gratissimam sane”, 2 February 1994, 8.
[160] This polarity translates, in its exercise, into other important ‘tensions’
inherent in social phenomena, cf. Francis, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii
gaudium, 24 November 2013, 221-237.
[161] Cf.
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 130.
[162] Augustine,
Confessions I, 1.1.
[163] D. Alighieri,
The Divine Comedy. Inferno, Canto XXVI, 118-120.
[164] On the historical nature of redemption, see Pontifical Biblical Commission,
Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica,
2019, 11 and chap. IV.
[165] John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Reconciliatio et
paenitentia, 2 December 1984, 15. Cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un
itinerario di antropologia biblica, 2019, 295ff.
[166] Pontifical Biblical Commission,
Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica,
2019, 12.
[167] From God’s perspective, the commandment is a ‘gift’ (Deut 5:22;
9:20; 10:4; Neh 9:14), while for human beings it mostly takes on the
aspect of a ‘test’ (Gen 22:1; Ex 15:25; 16:4). In concrete terms,
it is rare that individuals immediately understand the ‘goodness’ of what is
prescribed; hence, they manifest their faith if they obey even though they do
not (fully) understand the goodness of what is prescribed (cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission,
Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica,
2019, 273).
[168] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration
Dignitas infinita,
2 April 2024, 18.
[169] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 14.
[170] Cf.
Compendium of the Social
Doctrine of the Church, 451-452.
[171] John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Reconciliatio et
paenitentia, 2 December 1984, 15. On the ‘proliferation of evil’ following
the transgression in Eden, see Pontifical Biblical Commission, Che cosa è
l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica, 2019, 302ff.; on
the consequences of the transgression, see ibid., 319-324.
[172] Cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission,
Che cosa è l’uomo? (Sal 8,5). Un itinerario di antropologia biblica, 2019, 240-241.
[173] On the Holy Spirit as ‘Person-Love’ and ‘Person-Gift’, see John Paul II,
Encyclical Letter
Dominum et Vivificantem, 18 May 1986, 10; cf. also Augustine,
De Trinitate V, 11.12; VI, 5.7; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
I, q. 38 a. 2.
[174] Cf. Dei Filius, chap. II: DH 3004 ff.
[175] Cf. Augustine,
De Trinitate VII, 6. 12: ‘Let us make human
beings in our image and likeness (Gen 1:26) [...] This is not to be
understood in the sense that it was gods that made human beings or that they
made them in the image and likeness of gods, but in the sense that it was the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who made human beings and therefore in
the image of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that human beings
might exist as the image of God. Now God is Trinity. But since this image
of God was not made at all equal to its model, since it was not born
of God but was created by Him, to signify this it is said to be an image that is “in the image of...”, that is, an image that does not reach the
model in terms of equality, but approaches it in terms of a certain resemblance.
In fact, one does not approach God by overcoming spatial distance, but by
resemblance, and it is by dissimilarity that one distances oneself from Him
[...] It is because of an imperfect resemblance, as we have said, that human
beings are said to be in the image and indeed in our image, that
the human being might be the image of the Trinity; not equal to the Trinity, as
the Son is to the Father, but approaching the Trinity, as we have said, through
a certain resemblance in the way that distant beings are close not through
spatial contact but through imitation. For this reason, it is said: “Be
transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2), and to
his audience the Apostle also says, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as
beloved children.” (Eph 5:1) For it is to the new human being
that it is said: “which is being renewed in the knowledge of God, conforming
to the image of its Creator.” (Col 3:10)’; cf. also De
civitate Dei XI, 2; XXI, 15-16.
[176] ‘God’s plan for the human being was fully manifest in Jesus alone. He is the
definitive human being according to God’s will.’ Benedict XVI,
General
Audience, 9 January 2013.
[177] Leo XIV,
Address to participants in the Jubilee of Oriental Churches,
14 May 2025.
[178] International Theological Commission,
Theology, Christology,
Anthropology, 1981, I, D, 2.3.
[179] Ibid., I, D, 3.
[180] Ibid., I, D, 2.2. The intellectus fidei
of divinization as
the full and definitive ‘beyond’ of human life is at the centre of modern
theological reflection. Great theologians of the nineteenth century, such as A. Rosmini,
Antropologia Soprannaturale (Opere di Antonio Rosmini 39/40), Roma 1983,
and M. J. Scheeben, Handbuch der Katholischen Dogmatik III/4, Freiburg
1961, §§ 146-180, already treated this topic. The theme of divinization has also
attracted the interest of ecumenical dialogue, with promising points of
convergence, as emerge in documents from dialogue with the Orthodox Church: The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of
the Holy Trinity (1982) and Faith, Sacraments and the Unity of the Church
(1987).
[181] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 22.
[182] Cf. Irenaeus,
Adversus Haereses IV, 38, 3-4: ‘Thus, through this
order, these rhythms and this movement, the human being, created and formed,
becomes the image and likeness of the uncreated God, the Father benevolently
deciding and commanding (Gen 1:26), the Son executing and forming (Gen
2:7), the Spirit nourishing and giving increase (Gen 1:28), and human
beings gradually make progress and rise to perfection, that is, they approach
the Uncreated; for only the Uncreated is perfect, namely, God. For it was
necessary that human beings should first be created, then, having been created
receive growth, having grown become adults, having become adults multiply,
having multiplied be strengthened, having been strengthened be glorified, and
having been glorified look upon their Lord. For God is the one who is to be
seen, and the vision of God brings incorruptibility, and incorruptibility brings
nearness to God (Wis 6:19).’ See also IV, 11, 4; 12, 3; 37, 7; 39, 1.
[183] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa
Theologiae, I, q. 43, a. 5.
[184] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution
Dei Verbum,
18 November 1965, 3-4.
[185] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 22.
[186] Still relevant today for reading the signs of the times ‘in Christ’ and
for making a critical discernment of that spirit’ which works in separation from
Christ and which can inform the visions of transhumanism and posthumanism is H. de Lubac,
La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore,
Paris 2014.
[187] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 12; John Paul II, Apostolic Letter
Mulieris
dignitatem, 15 August 1988, 7.
[188] Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter
Caritas in veritate, 29 June 2009,
53.
[189] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Fratelli tutti, 3 October 2020, 272.
[190] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 24; International Theological Commission,
Communion and
Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004,
40-42.
[191] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution
Lumen
gentium, 21 November 1964, 3; Catechism of the Catholic Church,
774-776.
[192] Cf. Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Sacramentum
caritatis, 22 February 2007, 12.
[193] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 39. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24
May 2015, 236.
[194] Cf. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Laudato si’, 24 May 2015, 237.
[195] Cf. Ambrose,
Hexameron IX, 76; Explanatio Ps. 39, 24; De
institutione virginis, 104.
[196] Cf. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 112, a. 1.
[197] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution
Gaudium et
spes, 7 December 1965, 39, 45. Francis, Encyclical Letter
Dilexit nos,
24 October 2024, 209.
[198] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution
Sacrosanctum
concilium, 4 December 1963, 103.
[199] Leo XIV, Apostolic Exhortation
Dilexit te, 4 October 2025, 2.
[200] Ibid., 3.
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