On Tuesday, May 26, Integrity senior writer Riaan Van Zyl and podcaster The Catholic Esquire appeared on the Integrity Magazine podcast to discuss Leo’s deeply problematic encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.
Earlier this week, Riaan wrote an essay about the document titled, “Vatican II’s religion of man on full display in Leo’s AI encyclical.” It has quickly become Integrity’s most-viewed essay published over the last seven days.
The Dispatch
Riaan’s main observation is this that the letter “continues — and in several places intensifies — the post-conciliar trajectory of anthropocentrism, religious liberalism, and global managerialism that has displaced the older Catholic understanding of Christendom, kingship, and the social reign of Christ.”
The Catholic Esquire shared his thoughts in a multi-part X post Monday. His conclusion was that the encyclical was more of a “rant” about human dignity than anything else, and that Leo is “clearly following in the footsteps of John Paul II and Francis” in espousing a “personalist philosophy.”
In an attempt to educate Catholics on the Church’s true teachings, Integrity has been sharing on its social media pages quotations from popes and theologians who wrote about human dignity before Vatican II.
In his 1885 encyclical Immortale Dei, Pope Leo XIII affirmed that, “If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption.”
St. Thomas Aquinas also taught, “by sinning man departs from the order of reason, and therefore falls away from human dignity.”
Yet Leo echoes other post-conciliar popes’ claims that man has “infinite dignity.”
Integrity will continue to provide analysis on Magnifica Humanitas in the coming days.
Read more: The synodal Tower of Babel: Vatican II’s new religion for a new church
Read more: Is the post-Vatican II Church the Catholic Church?
