Catholic Social Tips
Happy summer! I just returned from Kauai, and the top of my summer reading list was Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.” The word “encyclical” can be intimidating to lay people because of the assumption that the document will be filled with words that you don’t know or focus on things that are too dense for you to absorb. You may not be interested in hearing about artificial intelligence or technology, but this document is primarily about the church’s position on social doctrine.
Yes, it has been widely reported that it is 245 paragraphs, but my strategy was to break it up into a daily holy hour of reading. Each chapter took about 50 minutes to an hour to read, and the introduction and conclusion took about 20 minutes.
If you add two more days of reflection by reading some of the links shared in the chapters, it becomes a novena to Catholic social teaching and to protecting and preserving human dignity by serving the poor, welcoming the stranger and supporting immigrants in our own communities.
As a digital missionary, I am called to share messages that invite readers of my writing to experience an encounter. Believe it or not, reading this encyclical sparked a profound encounter for me — one that caused me to shift my thinking about the convenience that technology provides. It may not be as valuable if it leads to the loss of human dignity and connection.
“Everything that appears as a ‘limit’ — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. The light of faith offers a perspective on reality that helps us recognize what we call the ‘contingency’ of the things of this world. While it is right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it is also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that ‘religious experience, and in particular Christian faith, propose that we live, without oversimplification, this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, interpreting it in the light of our original and fundamental relationship with God.’” (“Magnifica Humanitas,” 118)
I was guilty of the thinking outlined in paragraph 118. As a baby boomer who is seeing change and fully embracing it, I’ve been dismissive of so many others who really struggle with it. In fact, the change for some is “suffering.”
Think about the changes seen over the 200 years of Catholicism’s history in Hawaii and, most recently, the arrival of Honolulu’s bishop-elect, Jesuit Father Michael Thomas Tupou Castori. Let us pray to our beloved Sts. Damien de Veuster and Marianne Cope to embrace the change that moves us closer to the will of God.
As a lay woman in the church, one of the most encouraging messages for me is outlined in Chapter Two, paragraph 57:
“It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions. As long as this gap persists, we cannot say that society truly and fully recognizes that women have the same dignity as men” (“Magnifica Humanitas,” 57).
There are many people who have written reviews of the encyclical, but none of them seem to really capture substantive examples that have sparked encounter. I encourage everyone to read the document for themselves.
Catechists, as you prepare for 2026-2027 lesson plans over the summer, read the encyclical and fold it into discussions with confirmandi and OCIA candidates.
Read the encyclical at www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html.
Sherry Hayes-Peirce is a Catholic social media consultant based in Southern California.