Living Our Magnificent Humanity

To our Acutis families and users,

Our first article on the Pope Leo’s Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas which you can find here: Sharing Our Magnificent Humanity, focused specifically on Artificial Intelligence and the Pope’s shared vision. This article continues our reflection, but now diving into another topic that the Encyclical discusses–transhumanisim and posthumanisim. We are going to look at what these terms actually mean, their errors and then leap from the idea of sharing our magnificent humanity to “living” it.

For us at Acutis, regardless if we are a digital platform, we celebrate all of our users as being made of both bodies and souls. Why this is so important for us to express is due to these rising ideologies of transhumanism and posthumanisim. Although they contain the word “human,” they see humanity as soulless. These concepts and those individuals behind them share a firm belief called materialism¹. Many materialists believe that our humanity “inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations²” and there are materialists who see a future where AI along with other technological advancements will create a world where “there will be no distinction…between human and machine.³” All in the name of “progress” there are those whose hope rests in a humanity that will “surpasses itself in a new evolutionary stage.⁴”

What does this all mean? Simply, there are those who see our humanity converging with technology so that humans will finally perfect themselves and surpass limitations–even death. This excites the imagination for entrepreneurs who are all racing (with a lot of money being invested) to be the first to be able to truly interconnect flesh and mind with machines.

The Church is not unfamiliar with these kinds of ideas. Since the beginning, the Church has condemned the errors of materialism, and have released various documents to help guide the faithful and the world in truth.⁵ One of the main themes that all of these documents maintain is human dignity and Magnifica Humanitas is no different. Apart from AI, arguably the most talked about subject in the Pope’s Encyclical is the dignity of the human person, and there is good reason for this. In line with all of his predecessors, the Pope continues the teaching that, “Every human person possesses an infinite dignity,⁶” and this dignity is due to the fact that humanity is “endowed with 'a spiritual and immortal' soul.⁷” This point cannot be more important today when there are those who are working tirelessly to prove otherwise.

The wisdom of the Pope and Church continues to recognize the error of these materialistic ideas, and within the Pope’s first Encyclical, an answer is offered and given its own section of the Encyclical called: The authentic “more than human”: grace and Christian humanism. The Pope agrees that we are called to some much more, but reminds all of us that “‘more than human’” is not an exclusive domain of technological promise. For centuries, the Christian tradition has maintained that human beings are not confined by the boundaries of their own nature; rather, they are called to self-transcendence, not through an escape from reality or a contempt for their limitations, but through their fulfillment in love.⁸” All of us are called to something far better and greater, but we must on a daily basis, “embrace the possibility of transcending ourselves through God’s grace.⁹” This is where the Pope points to “the radical departure from Promethean dreams: what saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency, but a relationship…elevated by the inexhaustible grace of God — and on the relationships cultivated.¹⁰”

For the Acutis team, what we take from this is that we are first Catholic. We first live our faith and this living faith is what is infused in our day to day at Acutis. As Catholics, our relationship to our users is not just merely making information more accessible and faster, but creating connections to enrich the Catholic faith. This is why we designed Acutis specifically for families. By joining our platform, our parents can enjoy the freedom and peace of a platform that is built so their families can live alongside technology and not harm our very fragile souls. The parents on the Acutis team are very aware of how dangerous using AI is, and how adults and kids can find themselves in situations where we are reading or worse, watching content that causes us to sin. Acutis AI is designed to safeguard our family’s souls while at the same time providing with every search or generation a deepening of our understanding of the Faith. This is what it looks like “living our magnificent humanity” alongside technology. God has given us the ability to create. AI is a human creation and with correct guidance it can be used by anyone to live a life that seeks truth, beauty and good.

We want our users to live their Faith, live their magnificent humanity, and to grow in their relationship with Christ. Acutis AI absolutely can help with this and much more. As we grow, our users will also share in our growth. Everyday we are learning more and more by living our Faith alongside our technology. The Acutis team prays that the lives of our users be full of blessings and that God graces them each day with better understanding of their relationship with technology as well. We hope that all of our users continue to grow in their faith and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we at Acutis pray for charity to continue to grow so we can continue to provide more to our families.

God bless and peace to all of you

Danny Joseph Daniels

Acutis AI writer

IG: Catholically_Conscious

Footnotes

1. Ask Acutis: What is the core idea behind materialism that is contradictory to the catholic faith? ↩

2. Ibid ↩

3. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Viking, 2005) ↩

4. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, May 15th 2026, Paragraph 116 ↩

5. Ask Acutis AI the following question to learn more about this: What are the documents that the Church published that condemned materialism and to summarize, what did they say? ↩

6. Magnifica Humanitas, 60 ↩

7. CCC, 1703 ↩

8. Magnifica Humanitas, 127 ↩

9. Magnifica Humanitas, 128 ↩

10. Magnifica Humanitas, 128 ↩