In Pope Leo’s letter Magnifica Humanitas, he invites renewed attention to five classic Catholic principles of social justice: 1) the common good; 2) the universal destination of goods; 3) subsidiarity; 4) solidarity; and 5) integral human development. Today we discuss principle #2.
American Catholics are often oblivious to the longstanding teaching on the universal destination of goods. It’s not uncommon for me to teach those five paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn. 2402-2406), and immediately be suspected by some of the students of favoring Marxism.
On the one hand, Catholic Tradition affirms the importance of private property, especially in a fallen world in which we are vulnerable to being used or exploited by others. On the other hand, any right to private property is always subordinate to the deeper truth that all of God’s creation was intended for the use of the entire human race, not to any isolated individual or group.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) distinguished between owning goods and using goods. Society is better ordered with fewer conflicts when people take care of “their own” portion of the goods God created. But a rich man never has a right to exclude the poor from using the goods he owns. This is Thomas Aquinas teaching in the 1200’s, not Karl Marx.
Nor is this Tradition new in the 1200’s. It goes all the way back to Genesis, when God created all that exists and entrusted it to human beings as stewards. Every human being has a right to basic human goods, which God intended for the flourishing of each and every human being. This principle is reflected repeatedly in Deuteronomy 23-24. Do not go over your crops a second time; instead leave the rest for the foreigners, orphans and widows. You also were foreigners once in Egypt. If a poor person owes you a debt, you cannot take his cloak or millstone as a pledge—he needs those to live. Neighbors can feel free to eat fruits while passing through the fields of neighbors, but are forbidden from hoarding them into a basket. And so forth.
In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly compares us to stewards who take good care of the master’s property until the master returns, at which point we will give an account of our stewardship. On that day, he will assemble all the nations and have his angels gather each one of us for judgment. The truth will come out about whether we did or did not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the foreigner, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46).
These biblical and medieval views of humanity and “ownership” of property do not fit in well with modern polarized ideologies. Too often, Christians define their ideas based on their reactive contempt toward the stupid ideas of “those people,” not realizing that Marxism and unbridled Capitalism have way more in common with each other than with the classical and medieval view of human flourishing.
Let’s turn now to Leo’s own words in the encyclical, as he explains the universal destination of goods: “First of all, this principle reminds us that the earth’s goods — soil, water, air and natural resources — are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all, and that every person has an inherent right to the use of such goods, both now and in the future” (n. 65). In continuity with the Judeo-Christian Tradition, Leo acknowledges the importance of private property, but insists that no one can be deprived of basic goods.
Leo invites our attention beyond merely material goods. Human beings deserve access to more than just food and water and shelter. Yes, corporations can petition for patents and create algorithms to serve their own interests—but they may not do so in a way that deprives other humans of goods that they need to be connected with the rest of the human community. “In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods” (n. 67).
Leo sees artificial intelligence, on the one hand, offering potential to increase wealth and diminish toil. But AI also brings a powerful potential to exclude and marginalize some groups of human beings in even more damaging ways. Leo repeatedly calls for transparency regarding algorithms and who benefits from those algorithms, in order to ensure that all human beings have value, and none are deprived of the goods that God intends for them.
As I’ve suggested in previous posts, there is nothing inherently “new” in AI. It can only take what is already there and then aggregate and apply it to “succeed” in the algorithm used to train it. What is new is the exponentially increased speed and power, which opens up increased potential for catastrophic harm.
For corporations that hope to profit from AI, it is a strong temptation to guard their algorithms secretively. If you take the modern American view that private property is an absolute right, then those corporations have every right to do so, even if it leads to the destruction of the human race. But if you look at twenty centuries of Catholic Tradition, not to mention the Old and New Testament, you will see consistently that we humans are stewards, not owners. God has entrusted us with a world that abounds in goodness. God desires that every human share in the abundance. We actually are our brother’s keeper.
It grieves me that many Christians put their politics first and their faith second, not to mention their love for all the humans God has created. As I see it, first social media and now AI have frequently manipulated us to be even more polarized, greatly diminishing our capacity to respect human dignity, to listen deeply, to be with, and to enter a shared desire for human flourishing.
We have now reached a point in which an increasing number of highly intelligent human beings (even calm and measured ones) are predicting that it is only a matter of when and how—not if—an AI model causes a catastrophic event. Sometimes it takes a true crisis for human “enemies” to put aside their differences and their selfishness and to work together for sheer survival. Leo is inviting much more—not merely the survival of the human race, but a shared commitment to the common good and a reclaiming of the truly “Traditional” Christian understanding of the universal destination of goods. God is a bountiful Father who wants good gifts for all his children.