Cardinal Czerny: Theology must defend human dignity in an age of AI

Vatican News

Catholic theology must combine intellectual rigor with compassion and remain rooted in communion with God, helping the Church safeguard human dignity amid technological change and social crises, according to Cardinal Michael Czerny.

Speaking at Sankt Georgen’s centenary conference in Frankfurt on October 17, the Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development reflected on theological education’s responsibility to serve humanity, drawing on the teaching of Pope Leo XIV and Pope Francis.

The conference, entitled “Beyond knowledge – Theological Education Out of Concern for Humanity,” provided the setting for his address on “Magnificent Humanity and Catholic Theology.”

Reading the signs of the times

Reflecting on Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Cardinal Czerny placed its concern for the human person in the age of artificial intelligence within the wider tradition of Catholic social teaching.

From the Industrial Revolution to the Cold War, climate change, and the pandemic, successive social encyclicals have addressed the circumstances in which human dignity requires protection.

“At each moment the context can be quite different but the music is the same: the inalienable dignity of the human person,” he said.

Theologians, he explained, must identify the questions of their own time, including war, migration, environmental degradation, polarization, and failing governance.

Rigorous study and compassion

Drawing on Sankt Georgen’s motto, Pietati et Scientiae, the Cardinal emphasized that faith, spirituality, and practice guide rigorous academic inquiry.

Theology, he said, is a gift rooted in communion with God and lived within the Church. It receives a living tradition from earlier generations, reflects on it in the present, and hands it on to those who follow.

Such work requires close attention to the concrete circumstances in which people live.

“True attention inevitably takes the form of compassion,” he said, calling theologians to allow themselves to be moved by contemporary slavery, violence, and injustice.

Quoting Pope Francis, he warned that without compassion theologians risk remaining in privileged isolation, sharing none of the risks borne by much of humanity.

The Gospel’s first proclamation, he recalled, has an immediate social dimension expressed through charity and engagement with others.

Learning to listen together

Cardinal Czerny urged a theological approach shaped by discernment and synodality, understood as a culture of mutual trust and understanding.

“It is about a shift in the way Bishops and their flock relate to each other and how genuine authority is exercised,” he explained.

Catholic faculties, he said, should become laboratories of reflection that help local Churches develop pastoral responses to contemporary challenges.

Concluding with Pope Leo’s appeal to educational communities, the Cardinal urged them to “disarm words, raise your eyes, and safeguard the heart.”