The tech bros say, “technology is amazing.” Pope Leo XIV counters with an ancient truth: people are amazing.
Dr Michael Walker from the Archdiocese of Sydney’s Justice and Peace Office says that, in the pope’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, he draws a comparison between current realities to the construction of the Tower of Babel and the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. One sows dispersion and disunity. In the other, shared responsibility and solidarity rebuild a city.
Dr Walker’s upcoming reading guide, Magnificent Humanity: An Australian Group Reading Guide to Pope Leo’s Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas breaks open the encyclical for anyone interested in studying it more deeply. He co-wrote the guide with US author Bill Huebsch.
The book is designed to be used in small groups – such as teachers on staff development days, or in parishes where there are people who want to delve into the encyclical and its themes.
Right time, right place, right person
Dr Walker said his PhD and career background unexpectedly prepared him to write the guide. In a previous role, for example, he deployed an artificial intelligence app.
He has also researched how Uber was devouring business that had been conducted almost exclusively by private taxi operators, replacing that model with a monopoly with huge amounts of control, and then using it “to drive down wages.”
“It was sidestepping 100 years of labour protections,” he said.
“So I understood the challenges of new technology at a level that not many other people in the Catholic social teaching space in Australia do. But it took me a little while to realise that.
“What was really gratifying was that my own instincts and reservations about the new technology are pretty much reflected in the document – things I was flagging almost ten years ago about power being centralised in tech companies are identified by the pope.”
Pope Leo XIV frames Magnifica Humanitas as continuing Rerum Novarum’s concerns about labour, and about peoples’ material well-being. “He says, what are the new things of today? “It’s clearly the emergence of AI, and how is it affecting people’s working conditions,” Dr Walker says.
Preferential option for the poor
Dr Walker studied law at university but never ended up practicing law. He was more interested in reform, in how rules could be made better and fairer.
“In Catholic social teaching terms, it’s preferential option for the poor, because rules that are notionally neutral often disadvantage people who are poor or marginalised,” he explained.
“At the time I didn’t have that language, but I think that was what I was conscious of. Here we were learning how to apply these rules that, in practice, people with more resources are going to use to their advantage.”
After university, he decided to take up an internship at Parliament House, since that’s where he could observe how politicians reformed laws.
“In the internship, I realised politicians don’t just sit there thinking, ‘How can we make these laws better?’ They react to civil society, who are the drivers.”
This eventually led him into work in civil society, mostly in the union movement, “that’s why I’ve had this long background in workers rights”, Dr Walker said.
Theology from lived experience
“I haven’t seen the edited version of the reading guide yet, but I tried to create a loop back to how things didn’t just come out of thin air,” he said of the reading guide.
“I’ve put in a quote from our Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney in 1890, one year before Rerum Novarum was published. He was talking about how there’s a big strike and he was defending the rights of the workers – and how what they’re asking for is reasonable.
“It’s a good example of how theology doesn’t just come down from above, as if the Pope is some guru who just wakes up one morning with these brilliant insights. He’s actually informed by what’s going on locally. It filters up to him in the Vatican.”
Magnificent Humanity: An Australian Group Reading Guide to Pope Leo’s Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is now available for pre-order at Garratt Publishing. Australian commentary provided by Dr Michael Walker – Social Justice Facilitator and Lecturer, School of Philosophy and Theology, Australian Catholic University.
