Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine: On the Impact of Categorical Overreaches

Writing on theology and ethics and their application to politics and economics in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr runs the risk of fusing the respective domains, which I maintain are qualitatively different, and thereby minimizing or losing outright what is unique to each domain. Besides occasioning category mistakes, such as in labeling divine love as ethical rather than as distinctly theological, overreaches from one domain onto another even at the expense of the other’s own criteria can occur from the underlying error. Besides being extant in Niebuhr’s text, the conflation of distinct domains and the related overreaches of their respective criteria has exacerbated the long-standing conflict between the Jews and Arabs in what was Palestine when Niebuhr was writing his book on Christian ethics in which he discusses the sheer intractability of the conflict.

In Niebuhr’s view, “the full evil of human finitude and sin is most vividly revealed in conflicts between national communities.”[1] Such conflicts “present a tragic revelation of the impossibility of the law of love because no party to the conflict has a perspective high enough to judge the merits of the opponent’s position.”[2] That is to say, every perspective is partial, and thus partisan, rather than wholistic containing tensions and even outright contradictions. “Every appeal to moral standards thus degenerates into a moral justification of the self against the enemy.”[3] To Niebuhr, “self-love is never justified.”[4] This is so both ethically and in religious terms. On the ethical level, Niebuhr insists that, “In spite of the relativity of morals every conceivable moral code and every philosophy of morals enjoins concern for the life and welfare of the other and seeks to restrain the unqualified assertion of the interests of the self against the other.”[5] Any moral justification on behalf of one’s own side against one’s enemy cannot be construed as moral, but, rather, immoral qua egoist. In terms of religion, Niebuhr wrote that “human egoism . . . is sin only from the perspective of the law of love.”[6] Here, Niebuhr’s statement would be more congruent on the religious level if self-love, which is a sin, were substituted for egoism, which is an ethical term. Self-love is a sin because it goes against charity, meaning love in a distinctive religious sense (i.e., caritas). The seventeenth-century Jansenist priest in Europe, Pierre Nicole, penned an essay railing against self-love precisely because it is antithetical to charity understood as love (rather than as philanthropy); even enlightened self-interest is still of sordid self-love and thus not at all consisting of love.

In Niebuhr’s discussion of international conflicts between nations in which distinctly religious love, such as manifests in compassion rather than hatred to enemies, is wholly absent, and taking into account the squalid theological idolatry of self-love that places love of self above love directed to an externally-based divine (e.g., God), Niebuhr’s theological claim, “Parties to a dispute inevitably make themselves judges over it and thus fall into the sin of pretending to be God,” is hardly surprising.[7] The gravitas of self-love that renders any combative perspective partisanship (i.e., partial) is ultimately sourced in self-idolatry, hence presumptuous infallibility and the presumed universalizability of one’s perspective as absolute can be expected. In the mid-2020s, in the midst of Israel’s militaristic decimation of Gaza, which went far beyond the damage that had been committed by Hamas in an attack in Israel in 2023, Niebuhr’s distinctly theological claim readily applies, and may even explain the longstanding intransigence of the aggressor in the multi-year operation that went far beyond justice to vengeance, which, incidentally, is supposed to belong to Yahweh alone.[8]

Writing in the mid-1930s, hence prior to the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Niebuhr perceived the “rivalry between Jews and Arabs in Palestine” as “a conflict between two races and religions, involving not only the natural will-to-live of two collective racial organisms, but [also] the economic differences between the feudalism of the Arabs and the technical civilization which the Jews [were] able to introduce into Palestine.”[9] From a standpoint in time after many decades from the establishment of Israel, it is easy in hindsight to grasp the superiority of the technical civilization not only economically, but also militarily. Even in the 1930s, the conflict must have been generally perceived as frozen in terse intractability. The rule of love based on forgiveness, as in being compassionate to enemies, was so far from the contending mentalities and emotions in Palestine that Niebuhr’s more general claim that such love is impossible in the world of politics appears to be tenable (even though I disagree with his claim).

So, in utter futility, Niebuhr asks his readers rhetorically, “How can a high enough rational and moral perspective be found to arbitrate the issue between” the Jews and Arabs in Palestine? “How is the ancient and hereditary title of the Jew to Palestine to be measured against the right of the Arab’s present possession? Or how is one to judge the relative merits of modern Jewish against ancient Moslem culture without introducing criteria which are involved in and do not transcend the struggle?”[10] Both peoples had some historical presence in the region, and the involvement of religion and questions of ethics in this mess renders the conflict that Niebuhr perceived in the 1930s as even more intractable. Conflating all of these domains doesn’t help.

For example, the claim that the Jews had a hereditary title is dubious if it comes out of a religious story, or myth, and has been superimposed on the political domain, for the religious and political domains are arguably distinct—each having its own unique basis—so criteria from one of the domains supervening on those of the other can be flagged as an overreaching encroachment and thus as out of bounds, to evoke sports. Put another way, the jurisdiction of material in the mythic genre does not extend into the political world, whose genre is that of political power rather than faith narratives. So, it would be more accurate to say politically and culturally that both the Jew and the Arab had (conflicting) historical interests in occupying the land.

Replacing the theological dimension with that of ethics and basing that on history, even fusing these two domains, is also problematic. Niebuhr disparages that the “(p)articipants cannot find a common ground of rational morality from which to arbitrate the issues because the moral judgments which each bring to them are formed by the very historical forces which are in conflict. Such conflicts are therefore sub- and supra-moral.”[11] In other words, ethical analysis would get only so far, rather than resulting in a definitive should that both parties would accept as legitimate as taking into account their respective interests and histories.

At this point, Niebuhr shifts back from the ethical to the religious level of analysis, but even in spiritual terms, he was not optimistic. “The effort to bring such a conflict under the dominion of a spiritual unity may be partly successful,” he admits, but then he observes that such efforts had “always [produced] a tragic by-product of the spiritual accentuation of natural conflict.”[12] Even though religion “may be regarded as the last and final effort of the human spirit to escape relativity and gain a vantage-point in the eternal,” the “introduction of religious motives into these conflicts [has usually been] no more than the final and most demonic pretension.”[13] In other words, the presence of religious motives on both sides contributed to the sheer intransigence of the antipodal political positions.

Again, warding off distinctly religious content from the turf of actual geopolitics between nations in the context of international relations is advisable, but distinguishing related domains is easier said than done, given the proclivity of the human mind to agglomerate different strands as if they were essentially the same stuff. This tendency is especially egregious when at least one of the domains, along with its criteria, is unique and thus not just different from the others. Given the tendency to project or apply religious meaning onto geopolitics, it is worth taking into account Niebuhr’s suggestion that “a contrite recognition of the finiteness and relativity which characterizes human spirituality, even in its moments of yearning for the transcendent,” is necessary in applying religion to political/cultural conflicts between nations lest the “religious aspiration” be “transmuted into sinful dishonesty” and thus make the political matters even worse.[14] In other words, without spiritual humility in line with the true situs of finite creatures, which of course are not deities and thus are not omniscient or omnipotent, religious beliefs can easily become weapons even in the midst of stultifying cognitive dissidence.

Hence Niebuhr laments, “Historical religions, which crown the structure of historic cultures, thus become the most brutal weapons in the conflict between cultures.”[15] This happens too much, and at least part of the problem, I submit, is that religious meaning is so often conflated with differing genres or domains, including those of history, politics, and even ethics. A religious entitlement to land, a title whose jurisdiction is limited to the religious domain, is not itself a political statement. Put another way, the criteria in the domain of religion that undergird the religious claim of being chosen by a deity, or even a shared deity, for the land, or even a chosen people, do not override the criteria of political power that are sovereign in and innate to the political domain; in fact, the criteria innate to religion do not even have validity there.

I contend that religious meaning, as in what religious scholars classify as myth (i.e., a religious story with a message), is qualitatively different, as well as unique, from the contents that are “home grown” in other, even related, domains. International disputes stand a better chance of being mitigated and even solved if all the combatants would “get on the same page” in the sense of focusing on the distinctly political criteria of international relations, whether the criteria are based on international law or the nature of power itself in the state of nature as described by Thomas Hobbes in his classic text, Leviathan. Diverging interpretations of a passage in a distinctly religious text need not complicate matters that could perhaps be solved politically, especially if those interpretations are subject to the gravitas of self-love and thus partial. At the very least, the contention that a convenient interpretation of one’s own text has universal validity incurs a conflict of interest even just in religious terms. For example, the statement, my sacred book says I get to win, inherently lacks credibility, and incurs the “extra-jurisdictional” overreaching of religious content onto the political domain of winning territory.

Category mistakes, consolidation, and especially presumptuous overreaches of one domain’s criteria into another domain even at the expense of that other domain’s own, sovereign criteria have been committed so much that they may be taken for granted, as valid, even as we look back at the Catholic Church’s overreaching onto Galileo’s valid scientific criteria and scoff at the theological overreach. The world is at the center of Genesis in that religious text, but this does not mandate or justify presuming that the religious meaning is astronomical in nature and applying theological criteria onto those belonging to astronomy. From the other direction, foisting criteria of the domain of history onto a faith narrative also counts as an overreach—in this case, at the expense of the sui generis (literally “of its own genus”) religious domain and its own criteria. From such errors, even peaceful international relations can be thwarted.

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1. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1936), p. 136.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 64.
5. Ibid., p. 116.
6. Ibid., p. 124.
7. Ibid., p. 136.

8. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” gave rise to Nietzsche’s point that because the vice conflicts with the divine attribute of God’s goodness (omnibenevolence), the interlarding of the former invalidated the concept of the deity, hence Nietzsche wrote, Gott ist tot (God is dead), even as Nietzsche leaves the living deity itself untouched. Misinterpretations of Nietzsche’s famous line presume, in effect, that the actual divinity can be changed by human hands, and thus discredited and even killed. It is a problematic, internally inconsistent conception of the deity that is the object of Nietzsche’s critique. In the movie, Angels & Demons, a priest asks Prof. Langdon whether he believes in God, “not what men say about God.” This distinction reflects Augustine’s point that due to the Fall, divine revelation reaches us as through a smoke-chalked rather than transparent window.

9. Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 136-37.
10. Ibid., p. 137.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., pp. 137-38.

A Temporary Alignment of Politics and Religion: The U.S. Senate Sanctions Russia after a Funeral

It is easy to point to instances in which elected government-officials stage political theater for effect, for in the domain of politics, perception has a political currency that can leave a real imprint almost as if the staged were actual rather than pretense. When the leader of one group takes over as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from a person of another partisan group, for example, it is customary for them for the mallet literally to be handed over. In the U.S. Senate, its president, who is also the Vice President of the U.S., may sit in the presider’s chair during a vote if a tie is expected; the Senate President can vote only to break a tie. A certain depth of political meaning can go along with the actual presider presiding. Sometimes, however, an arrangement can have a depth of meaning as well as carry actual political weight. The Senate’s vote on additional economic sanctions on Russia on July 28, 2026 is a case in point, for the synchronicity itself could have caused goose-bumps on exposed skin. Even so, even profound political meaning (and fulfilment) is a far shot from religious belief and experience. Distinguishing these is important in this case, for the day of the vote included a very relevant funeral at the National Cathedral that many senators no doubt attended, and could be expected to ponder their own mortality and what may lie beyond.

The full essay is at "A Temporary Alignment of Politics and Religion."

Valkyrie

Claus von Stauffenberg was a Nazi army officer who attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944. Stauffenberg was shot the next day as a result. The Nazis did not surrender until May 7, 1945, a few months shy of a year later, so Stauffenberg’s intent to end the war would have made a substantial difference in terms of the number of dead and wounded from World War II in Europe. The 2008 film, Valkyrie, chronicles the story in the genre of historical fiction, even though Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson play Nazi figures (without even German accents), although Tom Hollander does play a suspicious Nazi quite convincingly. Viewers could still be excused for approaching the film as a “Wagner meets Shakespeare in the Park” production. The film gets its title from the Valkyrie in Wagner’s opus: handmaidens of the gods. The sparce religious nomenclature in a few scenes of the film is easy to miss, and, I submit, the interlarding of religion is ill-suited to the political drama.

The full essay is at "Valkyrie." 

Ben-Hur

By 2026, the world hardly needed any convincing regarding the strident zeal for endless vengeance in the Middle East, given the genocide still occurring in Gaza against the Palestinian people. In 1945, the world had needed no convincing on just how severe, and at what tremendous scale, state-sponsored (and engineered) hatred against a people deemed “subhuman” could be. The 1959 film-version of Ben-Hur is saturated with the desire for vengeance, with the antipodal motive of forgiveness only being shown as a more powerful, and thus stronger, phenomenon at the end of the film when Judah Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are spontaneously cured of leprosy at the very moment in which Jesus dies on the Cross. Only in aiding Jesus with water on his arduous way to the Cross does the Jewish man, Judah, realize the value of the suffering man’s righteous, unmerited suffering, especially relative to the value of even satisfied vengeance. At the moment of his death, Jesus, freed of a mortal body, cures the two women as a result of Judah’s change of heart. The message is that forgiveness wins over resentment and vengeance from a spiritual standpoint.

The full essay is at "Ben-Hur."

Russian Patriarch Kirill: A Case of Religion Overreaching

The political separation of “Church and State” in U.S. constitutional law, a doctrine that is of jurisprudence (judicial decision) rather than theology and thus does not straddle and therefore demarcate the political and religious domains as qualitatively distinct from a neutral standpoint. Furthermore, the question of what makes the religious domain distinct (and unique) from all others is the pole from which a religious functionary’s (or religionist) leap into the political garden from the Garden of Eden can be detected. The trouble worsens if the criteria from one domain in imposed and overlaid in the overreaching into another domain, as if the criteria that is determinative in one domain were valid in another. In fact, the eclipsing itself of the other’s own criteria on their own “turf” is unethical. The legitimate sovereignty of a domain’s own criteria in that domain over criteria indigenous to other domains yet superimposed renders any supervening overreaching as both erroneous—as in going off-sides in football (soccer)—and unethical because the criteria indigenous to a given domain should not be disrespected within their own domain. In other words, encroaching is presumptuous. If these ideas strike the reader as novel, even strange perhaps, then I am keeping within the confines of my mission in writing, as I look to a new dawn in which the ideational tyranny of hitherto reigning yet questionable assumptions ist zerstört because they have been discredited, which is not to say that every extant assumption should be eviscerated and expunged for lack of substance. Unfortunately, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, went out on a tree limb, far from his religious tree’s trunk, by formulating and spreading “revisionist propaganda to justify the war in Ukraine” while the invasion was underway.[1] The history and legitimacy of a bygone Russian empire (not the U.S.S.R.) properly belong to the political rather than to the religious domain. Being schooled in theology does not give even a high religious functionary the knowledge on which to presume to be an expert in political history and international relations. The resentment in the E.U. and U.S. at the patriarch’s intrusion into a domain that is not an extension of the religious domain was not merely from opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also from an intuitive sense that the domains of religion/theology and politics/government are distinct and thus require different knowledge-sets and have their own respective criteria and distinctiveness.

In late June, 2026, agreement in the E.U. on “the 21^st package of European Union sanctions against Russia” remained “mired in difficult, with multiple obstacles and the public threat” of a veto by the E.U. state of Bulgaria in the European Council, where the proposed law had to pass unanimously or else fail to be enacted.[2] Bulgaria’s governor, Rumen Radev, “publicly announced his opposition to sanctioning Patriarch Kirill” with “a travel ban and an asset freeze.”[3] Both the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church “belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, share the same faith and dogma, and are bound by cultural and historical ties.”[4] Radev’s rational is political rather than theological, however, as would be the proposed sanctions against the patriarch, who had overstepped from the theological onto the political domain in justifying the Russian government’s war even if he drew on theological doctrines in making the political statement on the war. Had Kirill restrained himself to “coloring within the lines” of theology proper, he would not have been vulnerable in the political domain.

Especially in Christianity, where Christ’s preachment, give what is Caesar’s unto Caesar, is a salient reminder that distinctively religious transcendence does not bother with politics, Kirill’s political ideology can be likened in the Gospels to the Jewish Zealots whose cause Jesus does not take up because that political movement is antipodal to  the religious preachment to love thy enemy. It is fitting, therefore, that Pope Leo had recently been implicitly invalidated even Catholic just-war “theory” by stating that Jesus would not be in favor of fighting in any war. From the perspective of the political domain, Jesus of the Gospels may appear, at a distance, as a mystic whose teachings pertain to a kingdom not of this world. This is not to say that a distinctly religious message cannot have political implications, even dire ones, as per Jesus in the Gospel narratives, but to say that something that is in one distinct domain has an effect in another domain is not to say that the “something” is in the other domain. Kirill went into the political domain in formulating and spreading pro-war propaganda and thus lost hold of that which makes the religious domain unique and distinctive. In other words, he went too far out on a branch and fell into another property without bothering to acknowledge that he was then in another, qualitatively different domain with its own criteria.

Crucially, the political domain is based on this realm, whereas, as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote, the divine transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion). Whereas the political domain is compatible with humanism, religious transcendence, having a transcendent reference point (e.g., God), is not based in, and thus limited to our realm, which is in the principle of possibility within the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility. The two domains—the political and the religious—are thus qualitatively different. To remake the latter too much of this realm is to deny the radical transcendence that renders the religious domain unique. In depicting the Kingdom of God in overt political terms wherein social, economic, and political inequalities are treated as the problem and the Kingdom as a particular political-economic system, or structure, Liberation Theology risks denying the distinctly religious transcendence that is in the kingdom preached by Jesus in the Gospels. No where in those stories does Jesus design an equitable economic system, for his Father’s kingdom is of the heart rather than political economy. Similarly, Jesus does not justify the Roman, or any other empire, for his orientation is to reverting hearts back to God. Kirill’s attempt to justify the Russian empire from a Christian standpoint can thus be regarded not only as dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary, but also besides the point, lying in another domain of human experience.

At a basic level, the religious domain can be said to be unique, and thus distinct from other domains qualitatively rather than just by degrees of difference, because of the transcendent basis that is not based within our realm wherein we think, perceive, and feel. The experience of religious transcendence is thus unique. Kirill strayed from this by climbing so far out on a tree branch (limb) that he fell into someone else’s yard and started telling the people there how their game is properly to be played. Any player in the indigenous group there could not be blamed for exclaiming to the prelate, Excuse me? You don’t know how to play our game because it is taught only here, not where you come from. You are off-sides.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Oil, Cod, Kirill: Friction Points Emerge in New E.U. Sanctions Against Russia,” Euronews.com, 26 June, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Pope Leo on the Ethical Dangers of AI

Speaking on his first “social” encyclical, Pope Leo said the Roman Catholic Church, whose membership stood at 1.6 billion embodied souls around the world, was “called to interpret ‘new things’ of the age in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person.”[1] He was on terre firma from a distinctly religious standpoint in being anchored in the Gospel stories, which include direct and parabolic preachments by Jesus of Nazareth. Regarding the dignity of the human person, which pertains as much to a humanist as a theist, that basis is not distinctly religious and thus can occasion or permit wandering into other domains such that virtually any topic relevant to mankind could be roped in and even subjected to supervening religious criteria even over criteria native to the topic’s own domain!

To be sure, we should all be for the dignity of the human person, especially as regard dangers from the state. Even so, the utopian vision of humans living free from virtually any threat goes too far in denying the human condition, which is Fallen due to original sin from a Biblical standpoint. Just because some threat or danger exists to people prior to death does not in itself justify an overriding religious interpretation at the expense of the criteria of the domain in which the danger exists. To apply God to automobile safety, for example, would seem contrived and artificial at best. Instead, government regulators ought to be consulted.

Similarly, that the Pope “said he had heard ‘very troubling voices’ regarding autonomous weapons systems and algorithms capable of denying access to healthcare, employment or security based on unjust and prejudiced data” may be better handled by high government officials, regulators, and even ethicists rather than a religious functionary whose knowledge lies in theology.[2] The pope’s statement that words were necessary that are capable of “awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity” best fits the field of ethics, which, although related to religion, is nonetheless distinct.[3] In other words, the pope’s diction belies his implicit claim that the domain of theology is most fitting for a critique of AI. Indeed, the pope even “said every great technological power must be accompanied by moral discernment and public accountability.”[4] Ethics and public policy, not theology. In stating that AI should be “freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of dominion, exclusion or death”—a statement, to be sure, that reasonable people embrace—defense policy under democratic auspices is the native domain, with applied ethics also being highly relevant so it is not simply a matter for immoral or amoral government officials.[5]

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling correctly distinguishes the ethical from the theological in that they can conflict without either one being thereby invalidated. From the standpoint of ethics, Abraham is guilty of attempted murder of his son, Isaac, while from a theological standpoint, he is legitimately subject to a divine command to sacrifice his son. The proper place for a theologian lies with the latter, whereas an ethicist should be confined to the former; overreaching invalidates. So, by quoting Paul’s exhortation to “keep awake” (1 Thess 5:6), the pope committed a category mistake in substituting “humanity’s critical sense and moral vigilance” for being on guard for Jesus Christ’s Second Coming.[6] Overreaching onto ethics can come at the expense of distinctly religious content. Discussing “the biblical figure of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem,” the pope presented “the image as a model for the ethical construction of the digital age.”[7] I doubt very much if the distinctly theological meaning of that figure is as an ethical model, so we may legitimately ask what of the textual meaning did the pope omit that is distinctly religious, and whether that is applicable to AI. Such overreaching onto even ethics stems from a greed of a certain sort that is also unbounded and based in self-love rather than self-regulation.

To claim as the pope did “that no one must be excluded from digital transformation and that human beings can never be reduced to ‘productivity,’ ‘cognitive performance,’ or ‘mere data’ is not to make a theological statement; a pope is not a business ethicist. John Rawls’ theory of justice applies to the design of economic systems with the priority going to the design itself being oriented to benefitting the least well-off economically. Such a theory is directly applicable to how everyone can actually be included in a digital economy rather than “a privileged few.”[8] So too is Kant’s categorical imperative that mandates that rational beings be treated not merely as means, but also as ends in themselves; human resource management could stand to take that imperative more seriously. In trying to invoke theology in stating, “The person bears within him—or herself—a freedom, an interiority, and a vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block,” the pope set up a red herring, for no appreciable danger from AI blocking worship existed even on the horizon in 2026, and certainly not in the workplace where productivity and performance are most relevant and where worship does not pertain. Even if AI were capable of worshipping God, presumably humans could still do so unimpeded, and people would not do it at work while getting paid for their labor.

The pope was on firmer ground in advocating a “civilization of love” as laid out by Pope Paul VI and John Paul II, yet in inviting all people to become “artisans of hope,” Pope Leo turned hope toward Augustine’s earthly city rather than to the heavenly city.[9] That is to say, the theological dimension transcends society and the workplace, government policy, and technology, rather than being oriented exclusively or primarily to them. It is precisely that dimension that was absent from the pope’s remarks that centered instead on the ethics of computer technology. Overstepping into other domains can be thought of as leaving one’s home unattended and thus undefended in its own right, under its own criteria, such that people may even misconstrue it as something else entirely.

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1. Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., italics added.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.

Magnifica Humanitas: On Leo the Lion-Hearted

Sometimes it pays to go behind a piece of writing to conduct a genealogy of the writer himself or herself, rather than to dive into the writing itself. On May 25, 2026, the fourteenth Pope Leo of the Roman Catholic Church spoke at the Vatican on his first “social” encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (magnificent humanity), which he had signed ten days earlier. An encyclical is known as a teaching (magisterium) instrument used by the papacy to communicate the Church’s position on a topic. In presenting his encyclical, the pope “described the current technological revolution as an ‘epochal turning point’ comparable to the upheaval confronted by Pope Leo XIII during the industrial Revolution.”[1] That pope’s emphasis on the ethical dimension of an economy, especially with regard to inequality and the related marginalization, was the reason why Robert Prevost chose the name Leo when he accepted the vote in favor of him becoming the next pope after Francis, another social-justice-oriented pope. Lions may indeed come late in the summer, or, sadly, not at all (for even willful, bullying Leos can actually be cowardly, as in Oz), but Leo XIV was already charging voraciously ahead in May, consummating his nomenclature-rationale in words that ensconced his Church firmly in the twenty-first century (in utter contrast to Joe Ratzinger’s antiquarian corrupt administration). All of the media buzz aside, however, if the previous Pope Leo (XIII) actually had had little or no normative influence on what would be harsh (even child!) labor conditions later in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe and North America, then a clear-eyed observer in 2026 could already be skeptical as to the practical significance of Magnifica Humanitas on managers and programmers in Silicon Valley going forward. Moreover, the foray of religion onto AI technology, and even ethics, the latter of which is distinct from albeit related to religion, can be criticized as an instance of dogmatic over-reaching.

Already, U.S. President Trump had dismissed that pope’s disavowal of war in the context of the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran, saying that that pope knew nothing about foreign policy (and thus should have kept his mouth shut). The same could be said of the pope’s (or any religious cleric’s) knowledge of AI. Even though applied ethics is one of my academic fields, for example, I have not written on medical ethics because I do not have a bachelor’s degree (i.e., the MD) from a school of medicine; instead, I have written on political ethics because historical political theory is one of my doctoral fields, on business ethics because I have the MBA (and BS) degree, and on philosophy (and ethics) of religion because I have graduate degrees in religious studies and theology.  Having taken only one course in computer programming in college, I assiduously avoid getting “into the weeds” in applying historical ethical theories to AI, for overreaching into any domain beyond a person’s ken would render one susceptible to the hypertrophy of one’s own ideological opinion primped up as knowledge, or worse, truth.

Moreover, the pope unwittingly opened himself up to the charge of having overstepped the domain of religion by pontificating on AI ethics. Implying that the human-God relation, which transcends even existentialism, somehow translates into a particular ethical stance on something as secular as computer technology is arguably dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In the thirst to be relevant on every contemporary issue, a religious functionary can easily lose sight of the big picture, and even his own ring.

It is significant that Pope Francis chastised bishops in the U.S. for their obsession on two social issues, as if religious faith were an ideological prejudice. The opportunity cost of such a normative orientation lies in the distinctly theological alternative focus on soteriology (and Christology). In the Gospels, Jesus is silent on abortion and homosexuality, so it is strange (at best) that some Roman Catholic bishops have made those issues definitive for church memberships being in good standing (e.g., receiving the Eucharist).

What is the soteriology of AI? Even were AI computers sentient (i.e., self-aware, as to themselves as entities, and with their own motives that involve beliefs and even feelings), what would that have to do with a human being’s salvation before God? That there are threats facing us in our lives in this world is just part of the human condition, even biologically. Even were war and poverty eliminated by enlightened public governance, soteriology would remain as an issue as long as an abyss separates us from God. Put another way, even were there no threats to us in life, it would still be difficult to follow in Christ’s footsteps in responding compassionately even (and especially!) to people we detest. A cowardly lion would have utter disdain for such “weakness,” and would thus remain adamant in refusing to forgive. But as Esther, Ben Hur’s eventual love-interest, remarks in the film, Ben-Hur (1959), when Ben Hur tells her of his thirst for revenge against Messala, a young rabbi has been preaching, “forgiveness is greater, and love is more powerful than hatred.” The opposite of love is not hate, but, rather, indifference, so the seemingly solid fortification of hatred can indeed be dissipated if there is the will, and love. Even without the threat of AI, letting go of one’s hatred as well as the default assumption that making the first move at reconciliation is humiliating rather than a manifestation of strength is difficult.

Although Nietzsche claims that forgetfulness in place of memory is essential in forgiving other people, I submit that even forgetting what a past argument was about is not sufficient for a person to overcome the instinctual assumption and habit of avoidance once that is well-grooved. A few months before writing this essay, I made the first move in restoring a friendship, and having forgotten what we had argued about two years earlier was not sufficient for me to use free-will to stop when passing him to say hello, to which he reciprocated, which led to subsequent socializing. We both subsequently related this to the forgiveness, and the related “peace be with you,” which are so very salient in the Gospels. Interestingly, the experience itself of reproachment led me to consider the guy a long-standing, good friend to whom I could open up about myself even though he and I had not been on speaking terms since arguing about who-knows-what.

In this essay winding up here, have you noticed that I have not analyzed, pro or con, the pope’s teachings on AI? Besides, I am not competent to pontificate on computer technology—which I both enjoy and am frustrated by (the compound, uneasy feeling of which may be what prompts exogenous pontificating on AI by some), and I am probably going to hell anyway to be devoured by angry lions for having criticized a pope Leo who pounced on a reticent Silicon Valley in May. Lions don’t come in late summer in California, after all.

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1, Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.