- Mar 28, 2023
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The latest papal encyclica, Magnifica Humanitas, represents the same secularized social vision that has long been adopted across much of modern Christianity. In contrast to this vision, Augustine rejected the notion of societal progress towards an earthly kingdom of God characterized by mutual understanding and humanitarian care. Defending this classical Christian view that the entire world stands under judgment, Douglas Farrow (Ascension Theology) argues that evil exists strictly as a parasite on created goods, such that its destructive potential scales with the greatness of the good it corrupts. Far from gradually disappearing through human effort, evil advances through parasitic progression and is bounded only by divine judgment. Thus, the highly integrated "good society" promoted by the modern papacy serves, paradoxically, to expand the potential for evil's parasitic growth.
Herein lies the problem: rather than opposing evil, the Church increasingly counsels moral compromise under the guise of pastoral understanding. This therapeutic posture manifests politically in demands for the passive acceptance of a mass migration threatening Europe with a social dissolution whose underlying vulnerabilities were starkly exposed by recent inquiries into the UK grooming gang scandals. The papacy is similarly incapacitated when confronting its own internal crises of corruption and clerical abuse; capable only of issuing empty platitudes, the institution consistently evades the confrontation of systemic evil. This passive stance directly contradicts the Apostle Paul, who explicitly admonishes congregations to purge the wicked from their midst.
This state of affairs is the logical culmination of a long-standing theological shift. When the historical reality of the bodily Ascension is marginalized, the Church loses its anchor in a transcendent, heavenly reality. Consequently, the Christian hope of a coming Kingdom is horizontalized, transformed from an eschatological expectation of divine judgment into a secularized project of earthly progress and social optimization. As the very title of Magnifica Humanitas betrays, the Church redefines salvation as a humanitarian enterprise, thereby gradually relinquishes its role as a sign of contradiction to the world. By treating political integration and social cohesion as the ultimate goods, the Church unwittingly prepares the ground for a simulation of the Kingdom, a diabolical counterfeit of the divine order. In this light, the modern ecclesiastical preference for therapeutic platitudes over moral confrontation is the inevitable outcome of an immanentized faith. Having abandoned the strict discipline of the Eucharist, which simultaneously proclaims Christ's real absence in the world and His real presence at the altar, the Church becomes highly vulnerable to mimicking the very structures of the secular state.
While the Vatican defends Magnifica Humanitas as a defense of the Imago Dei against technological dehumanization, the title's linguistic and structural echo of the Magnificat makes it highly vulnerable to the charge of anthropocentric pride. For those who hold to a strict, classical Christology, praising "magnificent humanity" at a time when the Church is already accused of collapsing into a secular NGO feels less like a defense of the faith and more like a theological surrender.
Herein lies the problem: rather than opposing evil, the Church increasingly counsels moral compromise under the guise of pastoral understanding. This therapeutic posture manifests politically in demands for the passive acceptance of a mass migration threatening Europe with a social dissolution whose underlying vulnerabilities were starkly exposed by recent inquiries into the UK grooming gang scandals. The papacy is similarly incapacitated when confronting its own internal crises of corruption and clerical abuse; capable only of issuing empty platitudes, the institution consistently evades the confrontation of systemic evil. This passive stance directly contradicts the Apostle Paul, who explicitly admonishes congregations to purge the wicked from their midst.
This state of affairs is the logical culmination of a long-standing theological shift. When the historical reality of the bodily Ascension is marginalized, the Church loses its anchor in a transcendent, heavenly reality. Consequently, the Christian hope of a coming Kingdom is horizontalized, transformed from an eschatological expectation of divine judgment into a secularized project of earthly progress and social optimization. As the very title of Magnifica Humanitas betrays, the Church redefines salvation as a humanitarian enterprise, thereby gradually relinquishes its role as a sign of contradiction to the world. By treating political integration and social cohesion as the ultimate goods, the Church unwittingly prepares the ground for a simulation of the Kingdom, a diabolical counterfeit of the divine order. In this light, the modern ecclesiastical preference for therapeutic platitudes over moral confrontation is the inevitable outcome of an immanentized faith. Having abandoned the strict discipline of the Eucharist, which simultaneously proclaims Christ's real absence in the world and His real presence at the altar, the Church becomes highly vulnerable to mimicking the very structures of the secular state.
While the Vatican defends Magnifica Humanitas as a defense of the Imago Dei against technological dehumanization, the title's linguistic and structural echo of the Magnificat makes it highly vulnerable to the charge of anthropocentric pride. For those who hold to a strict, classical Christology, praising "magnificent humanity" at a time when the Church is already accused of collapsing into a secular NGO feels less like a defense of the faith and more like a theological surrender.
