Of Avelino’s Ghost and the Senate’s Unpaid Bill

Of Avelino’s Ghost and the Senate’s Unpaid Bill

What makes the present crisis dangerous is not that politicians are fighting.

Politicians fight everywhere. The British Parliament in Westminster has survived fistfights, expulsions, rebellions, and constitutional crises. The United States Senate in Capitol has survived secession, civil war, canings, shutdowns, and bitter partisan warfare. The French National Assembly has seen more collapses and reinventions than many countries experience in a century.

Legislatures are not monasteries. They are arenas of conflict. However, the problem begins when the arena itself becomes contested ground.

That is the deeper issue confronting the Philippine Senate today. The question is no longer merely whether one faction has the numbers, whether one presiding officer has the gavel, whether one committee may summon witnesses, or whether one walkout was justified. Those are symptoms. The disease is more serious: the growing inability of political actors to agree on the source of legitimacy itself.

One faction points to the Senate Rules. Another points to the Constitution. Another points to precedent. Another points to numbers. Another points to political reality. Another points to public mandate. Increasingly, each side recognizes only the authority that benefits its own position.

Everything else becomes optional.

This is not merely a Senate problem. It is becoming a Philippine problem.

Jose Avelino was perhaps lucky to have been long dead before this present spectacle.

Were he alive, reporters would surely be chasing him for comment, not because he would offer moral clarity, but because his old and brutal question has become painfully relevant again: what are they in power for?

That question now hovers over the Senate like an unpaid bill.

Are the senators defending the Constitution, or merely defending their chairs? Are they protecting the institution, or only their faction’s access to power? Are they invoking rules because they believe in order, or because the rules happen to wound the other side today?

Avelino’s infamous line was scandalous because it said aloud what politics usually hides. Today, the public may ask the same thing with even less innocence. Are these good crooks fighting bad crooks, or bad crooks fighting good crooks? Or is the distinction itself part of the performance, with each bloc claiming virtue only because the other side currently holds the gavel?

The present Senate crisis did not arise in a vacuum. It followed the extraordinary spectacle of Senator Ronald dela Rosa becoming the central figure in a confrontation that transformed the Senate from a chamber of legislation into a stage of institutional breakdown. What should have been a constitutional body began to look like contested territory.

There was the chase. There was the confusion. There were reports of gunfire within the Senate complex. There were conflicting accounts from police, security officials, and political actors. There was the sight of public authority itself appearing uncertain about who commanded what, who could enter where, and whose order prevailed inside the building.

Then came the deeper political wound: dela Rosa’s sudden reappearance to help install Alan Peter Cayetano as Senate President, followed by his disappearance once more. In that moment, the question of leadership became inseparable from the question of legitimacy. The public was no longer watching a normal election of officers. It was watching a chamber ask the country to accept a leadership produced under circumstances already clouded by evasion, force, factional maneuver, and constitutional doubt.

From there, the Senate descended into rival claims of authority. The minority bloc denounced Cayetano. Walkouts followed. Hearings were questioned. Committee leaderships became contested. Sessions failed. The Senate, which was supposed to sit in judgment of other constitutional actors, could not settle the authority of its own presiding officer without dragging the country into a legal and political fog.

Ironically, it was the present solons themselves who revived that long-sleeping decision. Avelino v. Cuenco had rested on the shelves of constitutional memory, rarely discussed outside law classrooms and political history, until the Senate’s own paralysis made it relevant again. Now that the case has returned, some would like to dismiss it as moot, academic, obsolete, or merely inconvenient.

But the courts have kept that decision alive. No Constitution has abrogated it. No later charter has erased it. No controlling doctrine has buried it. For now, "Avelino" remains part of the living architecture of Philippine constitutional law.

That is why the contrast becomes cruel.

The solons of the past were no angels. They skirted the law when it suited them. They fought for office, privilege, and survival. Yet even in their worst moments, there remained enough institutional shame to understand that the law could not simply be discarded whenever it became inconvenient. They maneuvered around it, tested its limits, and occasionally stretched it to the breaking point, but they still understood one basic truth: a constitutional order cannot survive if every faction treats precedent as disposable.

That is why the quorum issue matters. It is not merely a question of twelve or thirteen bodies occupying seats in a chamber. It is a question of whether procedure is being used to preserve the Senate, or merely to preserve a faction within it. In a chamber already burdened by public distrust, the legal argument must be cleaner than the politics surrounding it.

The law may be inconvenient, but inconvenience is not repeal. *Avelino* cannot be declared dead simply because his ghost has appeared at an awkward moment for an awkward cause.

The Senate’s defenders may say that politics has always been rough, that parliamentary battles have always involved numbers, tactics, absences, alliances, and betrayals. That is true enough. But this present crisis is not merely rough politics. It is a crisis of institutional confidence.

When a chamber cannot meet, cannot agree on who may preside, cannot determine which committees may function, and cannot persuade the public that its own rules mean the same thing from one day to the next, the problem has already gone beyond ordinary factional combat.

The business community should pay attention to this. Investors do not merely invest in growth rates. They invest in predictability. Capital can tolerate taxation. It can tolerate regulation. It can tolerate labor disputes. What capital fears most is uncertainty.

A legislature unable to determine its own authority sends a signal that uncertainty is spreading upward through the political system itself. Foreign governments notice. Credit agencies notice. Civil servants notice. Local executives notice. Ordinary citizens notice.

The issue is therefore larger than a Senate presidency. It is larger than a quorum dispute. It is larger than Ronald dela Rosa. It is larger than Alan Peter Cayetano. It is even larger than the impeachment controversy hovering behind these events.

The real issue is whether institutions still possess authority independent of the factions temporarily occupying them.

For if authority resides only in personalities, then every transition becomes a crisis. Every election becomes existential. Every defeat becomes intolerable. Every political dispute becomes a struggle not merely for office, but for survival.

That is how republics become unstable. Not always through a single coup. Not always through a single dictator. Not always through one dramatic constitutional amendment. Often, republics decay by installments: one ignored rule, one discarded precedent, one opportunistic interpretation, one factional emergency at a time.

The spectacle also exposes the poverty of strongman rhetoric. For the diehard Duterte supporter who defends his idol’s bloodied record, for the remorseless Marcos loyalist who still excuses Martial Law despite its immense crimes and failures, for every online partisan who speaks endlessly of discipline, authority, obedience, and command, one may ask: where is their celebrated principle now?

Where is their local version of the *Führerprinzip*, their crude *Pangulo Principle*, their belief that decisive leadership can cut through every democratic inconvenience?

If leadership is supreme, why does every dispute collapse into procedural trench warfare? If command is the answer, why are its loudest advocates suddenly reduced to arguing over quorum, recognition, committee jurisdiction, and parliamentary interpretation? If the strong leader solves all, why does the strongman camp tremble when the rules are turned against it?

The answer is not difficult. Much of this politics of strength is strength only online. It is loud in comment sections, brutal in slogans, and merciless in slurs. It calls every legal challenge rebellion, every objection destabilization, every critic a traitor. Yet when confronted by the complexities of constitutional government, it becomes a paper tiger.

It discovers, too late, that the law is not merely a weapon to be used against enemies. It is also a cage that may close around one’s own faction.

Those accused of rebellion may, in fact, be doing something more lawful than their accusers understand. They are using the law to expose flaws within the law itself. That is not anarchy. That is constitutional politics. A legal order does not mature by pretending its contradictions do not exist. It matures when those contradictions are forced into the open and resolved through rules, courts, argument, and public judgment.

One suspects that had Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago been present, she would not have walked out merely because of Cayetano, nor because of any single faction. She would have walked out in disgust at the spectacle itself: senators fighting with extraordinary passion over chairs, titles, alignments, and procedural advantage while presenting each maneuver as a noble defense of constitutional principle.

Of course, even that image requires caution. Santiago herself was no stranger to brawls, feuds, and institutional combat, including her clashes with Juan Ponce Enrile. She was not a porcelain saint of parliamentary decorum. But precisely for that reason, she understood the difference between combat and farce. She knew that political battle could be brutal without becoming intellectually dishonest.

Speaking of Enrile, had he lived to see this present spectacle, one imagines he would already have produced a commentary heavy with recollection, law, precedent, and institutional memory. Whatever else may be said of him, Enrile understood the uses of legal architecture. He understood that one does not simply wave away past rulings by saying there are Senate rules and constitutional provisions in the present. The existence of present rules does not automatically erase prior judicial interpretation. Otherwise, every generation of politicians could pretend that law began only when their faction needed it.

That is the danger now. Some commentators speak as if precedent were an inconvenience to be managed, not a source of constitutional continuity. They argue as though the Senate Rules and the Constitution exist in splendid isolation, untouched by the decisions of courts and the accumulated memory of the Republic. But if past rulings may be disregarded merely because they complicate today’s preferred outcome, then what prevents tomorrow’s majority from doing the same?

The tragedy is not that politicians fight. Politicians have always fought. The tragedy is that every fight now insists on wearing the costume of constitutional salvation.

A chamber preparing to judge others has placed itself in the dock. A body expected to defend constitutional order has become proof of how fragile that order has become. The Senate asks the people to respect its dignity, yet dignity cannot be demanded by press conference, by roll call, by walkout, or by procedural trick. It must be earned by conduct.

And so Avelino’s ghost returns. Not as a hero. Not as a model nor a saint. He returns as an accusation with a blunt question: "What are they in power for? Are they there to legislate, to judge, to investigate, and to preserve the Republic? Or are they there to count bodies, seize gavels, protect allies, delay accountability, and wrap factional survival in constitutional language?"

The Senate should answer that question before pretending the public has not already guessed.  

Twelve Seats, One Institution: Why Avelino v. Cuenco Still Matters in the Senate Quorum Dispute

Twelve Seats, One Institution:

Why Avelino v. Cuenco Still Matters 

in the Senate Quorum Dispute

The current Senate impasse should not be treated as a mere contest of personalities. It is not only a dispute between blocs, nor simply a quarrel over who should preside, who should control committees, or who should manage the chamber’s impeachment timetable. At its core, it is a question of institutional continuity: whether the Senate may function when attendance itself is being used as a political instrument. 

The controversy turns on a deceptively simple issue: whether twelve senators can constitute a quorum in a chamber constitutionally composed of twenty-four members. 

Those who reject the twelve-senator quorum argument insist that the answer is plain. The Senate has twenty-four members; a majority is thirteen. The Senate Rules require a majority vote of all members for the election of officers. Therefore, they argue, twelve cannot act for the Senate, no matter the surrounding circumstances. To them, “all” means all twenty-four duly elected senators, not twenty-two, not a reduced number, and not a number adjusted by political circumstance. 

That position has force. In the ordinary course of Senate business, thirteen is the safer and more conventional number. The Rules cannot be treated as optional. A chamber that begins adjusting numbers for political convenience risks reducing procedure into improvisation. 

But the matter does not end there. Philippine constitutional law is not built on arithmetic alone. It is built on constitutional text, legislative rules, institutional practice, and jurisprudence. That is why Avelino v. Cuenco remains central to the present debate. 

The Senate Crisis as Institutional Risk 

The recent Senate dispute is not an academic exercise. It affects leadership, committee control, impeachment proceedings, legislative priorities, and the ability of the chamber to function at all. When a faction can prevent business by refusing to appear, quorum becomes more than a procedural question. It becomes an instrument of power. 

That is why the public should be wary of both extremes. One extreme says twelve is never enough because twenty-four always means thirteen, regardless of circumstance, obstruction, vacancy, incapacity, or impossibility. The other extreme says Avelino allows twelve senators to proceed whenever a political opening appears. Both positions are defective. 

The first ignores jurisprudence. The second risks abusing it. The better view is more disciplined: thirteen is the normal quorum in a full twenty-four-member Senate, but Avelino v. Cuenco remains controlling jurisprudence in extraordinary circumstances where rigid arithmetic would reward obstruction and paralyze the institution. 

This is not a minor distinction. It is the distinction between law and factional convenience. 

What Avelino v. Cuenco Decided 

In Avelino v. Cuenco, decided in 1949, the Supreme Court confronted a Senate crisis involving a walkout, a disputed presiding officer, and the election of Mariano Cuenco after only twelve senators proceeded with the session. The objection then was much the same as the objection now: if the Senate had twenty-four members, how could twelve constitute a quorum? 

The Court did not treat the matter as a simple mathematical exercise. It examined the actual circumstances surrounding the walkout, the inability or unavailability of certain senators, and the danger that absence could be used to immobilize the chamber. The Court ultimately allowed Cuenco’s election to stand. 

That is the living doctrine of Avelino: quorum cannot be used as a weapon to murder the institution. 

The decision does not mean twelve is always enough. It does not mean that any faction with twelve senators can reorganize the Senate at will. It does not mean the Senate Rules may be ignored. It does not convert every absence into legal nonexistence. 

But it does mean that the law must take institutional reality into account. Where attendance is being strategically manipulated, where the chamber’s ability to function is being deliberately frustrated, or where certain senators cannot realistically be counted for purposes of attendance, the Constitution cannot be read as a suicide pact. 

The quorum rule exists to ensure legitimate deliberation. It was not created to reward sabotage. 

The Weakness of the “1935 Constitution” Argument 

Some now say Avelino should be discarded because it was decided under the 1935 Constitution. That argument is weak. It is not legal reasoning. It is selective amnesia. 

If every doctrine decided under an earlier Constitution automatically died with the arrival of a new charter, Philippine public law would be unstable to the point of absurdity. Cases decided under the 1935 Constitution would be treated as obsolete. Cases decided under the 1973 Constitution would be treated as contaminated. Statutes passed during the Batasang Pambansa period would be viewed as inherently suspect. By that logic, large portions of our legal order would have to be buried every time the country changes constitutional regimes. 

That cannot be right. A republic cannot rebuild its jurisprudence from zero every time it adopts a new Constitution. Unless a doctrine has been expressly overturned, contradicted by the new constitutional text, or rendered obsolete by later law, it remains part of the legal order. 

Legal continuity is not nostalgia. It is institutional discipline. The same country whose courts have long drawn from American jurisprudence in landmark cases cannot suddenly pretend that precedent has an expiration date. Philippine constitutional law has always been cumulative. It carries forward doctrines unless there is a clear legal reason to abandon them. 

To throw away Avelino merely because it came from the 1935 Constitution would not defend the 1987 Constitution. It would weaken the continuity of Philippine law itself. 

Constitutional Sedevacantism and Political Theology 

One should also not be surprised if some of those eager to derail the present order are, in effect, constitutional or political sedevacantists. 

The diehard Marcos loyalist may treat the 1987 Constitution as anathema, as though the post-EDSA Republic were an empty chair falsely occupied. Some Duterte partisans, in turn, may treat the present Marcos presidency as a kind of antipope regime: formally seated, but politically illegitimate in their eyes. 

In both cases, the disease is the same: refusal to accept constitutional continuity unless one’s own faction occupies the throne. 

That is not law. That is political theology dressed up as constitutional argument. 

It turns constitutional debate into a contest of rival churches. Each faction has its own pope, antipope, saints, heretics, and excommunications. The Marcos loyalist of a diehard kind may reject the post-1987 order. The Duterte partisan may reject the present dispensation out of Dutertist setimentality. The liberal legalist may defend jurisprudence when it helps and dismiss it when it hurts. The result is a republic of selective obedience. 

No serious legal order can survive that. As business leaders, professionals, workers, investors, civil servants, and ordinary citizens should all be concerned. Institutional continuity is not a luxury for lawyers. It is the basis of predictability. When precedent can be discarded because it is old, when rules are read only through factional advantage, and when quorum becomes either a weapon of obstruction or a tool of ambush, the cost is not only political embarrassment. The cost is institutional risk. 

Of Both Warring Blocs and the Old Avelino Question 

A sober observer need not romanticize either side. One may be against the system in general and still insist that the legal issue be treated seriously. Indeed, public distrust makes legal discipline more necessary, not less. 

There is no need to pretend that either bloc represents constitutional purity. Both sides may speak of principle while pursuing power. Committee control, impeachment rules, leadership succession, investigations, and political survival are not minor matters. They are the substance of power. 

The country has seen this performance too many times: senators invoking solemn duty while counting votes; guardians of democracy discovering principle when they lose the gavel; defenders of rules treating rules as sacred only when rules are useful to them. 

Both blocs may be goddamned, as the frustrated citizen might say. One may even be tempted toward a Bonapartist impatience: if the chamber cannot govern itself, why not sweep the circus aside? That temptation is dangerous, but it is understandable. It is what democratic exhaustion sounds like when parliamentary language becomes perfume over decay. 

To the sentimental, one misses figures like Miriam Defensor Santiago, Lorenzo Tañada, Jose W. Diokno, Laurel, and Tolentino. They had their contradictions, ambitions, vanities, and political sins, but they understood the weight of constitutional words. They could meet a legal controversy not merely with press releases, but with intellect, memory, and combat. 

Today, too much of the discourse sounds like factional messaging pretending to be statesmanship. 

Or perhaps the solons are scared of the surname Avelino itself. Jose Avelino left Philippine politics with one of its most infamous confessions: “What are we in power for?” That line survived because it was brutally candid. It stripped politics of incense. It told the public what many politicians thought but dared not say. 

Good crooks and bad crooks, as the bitter formulation goes, may now accuse each other of violating principle. But the deeper suspicion remains: principle is being invoked because power is at stake. 

And so the old question returns: What are they in power for? To convene? To legislate? To try impeachment? To investigate corruption? To protect allies? To delay accountability? To control committees? To avoid unfavorable votes? To prevent a rival from presiding? To use absence as leverage? 

The public may not know every technical distinction between quorum and majority vote of all members, but it knows when procedure is being used as camouflage. 

The Correct Legal Fight 

The serious debate should not be whether Avelino is old. It is old, but old does not mean dead. The serious debate is whether the facts of the current Senate impasse are comparable to Avelino. 

Those defending the twelve-senator action must show that the situation was extraordinary. They must show that the Senate faced more than ordinary absence. They must show that the chamber’s ability to function was being frustrated by strategic non-attendance, incapacity, impossibility, or circumstances beyond ordinary compulsion. They must show that the action restored institutional operation rather than merely transferred power from one faction to another. 

Those opposing the action must do more than repeat that twenty-four requires thirteen. They must explain why Avelino does not apply. They must show that the absences were not legally comparable. They must show that the Senate Rules on election of officers require a stricter threshold. They must show that the denominator cannot be reduced under the circumstances. 

Those are legitimate arguments. But no one should say “regardless of jurisprudence.” That phrase is constitutional illiteracy dressed as legal toughness. 

Jurisprudence is not an accessory to the Constitution. It is the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. A senator, lawyer, professor, or commentator may distinguish a precedent. He may criticize it. He may ask the Court to abandon it. But he cannot honestly pretend it does not exist simply because it complicates his preferred arithmetic. 

The Constitution does not speak in a vacuum. The Court gives meaning to its words. To disregard jurisprudence when it becomes inconvenient is not fidelity to the Constitution. It is factional convenience dressed as legal purity. 

Why Absence Cannot Become Sovereignty 

The danger in the anti-twelve position is obvious. If a bloc can defeat quorum by disappearance, boycott, calculated absence, or refusal to attend, then the Senate becomes hostage to those who refuse to work. The quorum rule, which exists to protect deliberation, becomes a veto power for obstruction. 

A faction could simply stay away and paralyze the chamber until it gets its way. That cannot be the purpose of the Constitution. 

The Senate is not a private clubhouse. It is a constitutional body. Its members are not elected to weaponize absence. They are elected to deliberate, vote, lose, win, and be accountable in public. If they disagree with a reorganization, they should appear and vote. If they believe the move is illegal, they should challenge it in the proper forum. But they should not be allowed to turn non-attendance into institutional blackmail. 

This is where Avelino remains useful. It reminds the country that constitutional rules must preserve the functioning of government, not reward those who sabotage it. 

But the danger on the other side is also real. If Avelino is applied carelessly, it can become a pretext for parliamentary raiding. A faction may manufacture urgency, declare reduced membership, and reorganize the Senate on a thinner number than the Rules ordinarily require. That would also be dangerous. Thus, the doctrine must therefore be applied narrowly. It is a shield against paralysis, not a sword for opportunism. 

A View on Political Predictability 

From a perspective of a concerned folk, the issue is not only who wins the Senate floor. The larger concern is predictability. 

A functioning Senate matters to legislation, budgets, appointments, treaties, oversight, impeachment, procurement investigations, infrastructure policy, and national confidence. When the chamber cannot determine how it may legally convene, it sends a damaging signal: the political class may still treat institutions as temporary shelters for factional advantage. 

The Masses watch that. Investors watch that. Civil servants watch that. Local governments watch that. Foreign partners watch that. Everyone watch that. 

A country does not need perfect politics to function. But it needs basic institutional predictability. It needs rules that are not reinvented every time a bloc loses confidence in its numbers. It needs precedent that is not treated as disposable. It needs officials who understand that legal continuity is part of national stability. 

When quorum becomes uncertain, governance becomes uncertain. When governance becomes uncertain, policy becomes uncertain. And when policy becomes uncertain, confidence erodes. 

This is why the Senate quarrel should not be dismissed as mere political theater. Political theater can become institutional damage when it affects the operation of a constitutional body. 

The Balanced Position 

The proper position is neither romantic nor partisan. In a full and normally functioning twenty-four-member Senate, thirteen is the standard quorum. That should remain the default rule. The Senate Rules matter. The phrase “all members” cannot be casually diluted. 

But Avelino v. Cuenco remains controlling jurisprudence in extraordinary circumstances where rigid arithmetic would reward obstruction and prevent the Senate from functioning. It should not be thrown away because it was decided under the 1935 Constitution. It should not be exaggerated into a license for twelve senators to do anything they wish. It should be read carefully and applied only where the facts justify it. 

That is the serious constitutional position. If Avelino applies, it should be applied with precision. If it does not apply, it should be distinguished with care. But it should not be buried by slogan. 

The Senate should not be governed by arithmetic alone. Neither should it be governed by ambush. It should be governed by law: the Constitution, the Rules, and the jurisprudence that gives both practical meaning. 

The Chair and the Republic 

The current dispute will eventually pass. One bloc will gain, another will complain, and the chamber will move on to the next contest. But the precedent set by this episode may last longer than the careers of those involved. 

That is why the issue deserves seriousness. If senators wish to defend the Constitution, they must defend all of it: text, rules, jurisprudence, and continuity. They cannot defend only the paragraph that keeps their chair warm. They cannot invoke the Rules while ignoring precedent. They cannot invoke precedent while abusing the Rules. 

The public has every reason to be skeptical. The old Avelino question still hangs over the chamber: what are we in power for? 

If they are in power to legislate, they should convene. If they are in power to try impeachment, they should do so under rules that can withstand scrutiny. If they are in power to investigate corruption, they should investigate without fear or theatrical selectivity. If they are in power to defend the Senate, they should stop treating it as a hostage. 

And if they are in power only to protect factions, then the people should at least be spared the sermon. 

Avelino v. Cuenco should not be buried. It should not be worshipped either. It should be read, understood, and applied with care. 

The Constitution changes. The legal order continues. Jurisprudence survives until lawfully overturned. 

That is not nostalgia. Instead, that is institutional discipline. 

To Harness or to Disarm the Machine: On the use of Artificial Intelligence, Neoliberal interpretations of Freedom, and the Forgotten Social Encyclicals in Pursuit of a Magnificent Person

To Harness or to Disarm the Machine:

On the use of Artificial Intelligence,
Neoliberal interpretations of Freedom, 
and the Forgotten Social Encyclicals
in Pursuit of a Magnificent Person

Artificial intelligence has entered public life not merely as a technical instrument but as an anthropological question. Like the plough, the printing press, the steam engine, the factory line, the atomic reactor and the computer before it, AI forces society to ask not only what the machine can do, but what the machine may make of the human person if technological power is separated from moral judgment. 

Drawing from Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, the Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova, and the Catholic social tradition from Rerum Novarum to Laborem Exercens, Gaudium et Spes and Caritas in Veritate, this article argues that the proper question is not whether humanity should use the machine, since it already does, but whether the human person will harness the machine or submit to it. It further argues that the Vatican’s language of “disarmament” should not be read as a rejection of AI itself, but as a call to strip technical power of its false sovereignty. 

In an age when neoliberal capitalism often disguises domination through the language of freedom, initiative, choice and personal responsibility, the Church’s social encyclicals must be read not as decorative literature but as instruments of social judgment. The article concludes that AI must be harnessed because man is called to work, build and govern; it must be disarmed because fallen systems will use technology to dominate while calling domination freedom.

When the Machine Becomes a Question

There are moments in history when a machine ceases to be merely an instrument and becomes a question. The plough was such a question. So was the press, the steam engine, the telegraph, the factory line, the atomic reactor, the computer and now artificial intelligence. Each arrived first as a practical device, promising speed, power, reach, convenience and profit. Yet each soon forced society to ask a larger question: not simply what the machine can do, but what the machine will make of man if man forgets what he is.

Artificial intelligence has now brought modern society to such a moment. It drafts correspondence, summarizes reports, designs images, filters applications, translates documents, recommends medical decisions, predicts consumer behavior, supports military planning, detects financial anomalies, imitates literary style and reorganizes office work. It has entered the school, the boardroom, the newsroom, the government bureau, the parish office, the campaign room and the home.

This is why the present debate over artificial intelligence cannot be left to engineers, investors, regulators or futurists alone. It belongs also to philosophers, theologians, workers, teachers, parents, executives, statesmen and citizens. AI is not only a productivity tool. It is a civilizational test. Properly governed, it may become one of the great instruments by which human intelligence extends its reach. Improperly worshipped, it may become another mechanism by which man is reduced to function, preference, labor cost, data and appetite.

The central question is therefore simple but severe: shall the person harness the machine, or shall the person submit to it?

To harness is to command, direct, discipline and subordinate. To submit is to abdicate. A society that harnesses artificial intelligence places it under conscience, law, education, labor dignity, democratic oversight and the common good. A society that submits to artificial intelligence allows the machine — or, more precisely, those who own, finance and deploy the machine — to define efficiency as destiny.

This article argues that artificial intelligence should be understood neither as idol nor demon, neither salvation nor apocalypse. It is a machine: powerful, disruptive, useful, dangerous and subordinate. The real crisis is not in the circuit. It is in the anthropology of the user, the corporation, the school, the state and the market order into which the machine is inserted.

I. Magnifica Humanitas and the New Social Question

Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, signed on May 15, 2026, the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, enters directly into the tradition of Catholic social discernment. The Holy See presented the encyclical as a document “on safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence,” explicitly linking the AI question to the Church’s older engagement with industrial capitalism and labor. The Vatican Press Office noted that the encyclical was signed on the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, making the historical connection unmistakable.

The title itself is significant. Magnifica Humanitas does not speak first of digital systems, regulatory standards or computational capacity. It speaks of humanity, and more specifically of the human person. The Vatican’s official text frames the document around the “res novae of our time,” “building for the common good” and “remaining human.”

This framing matters. In the encyclical’s logic, artificial intelligence is not merely a technical breakthrough. It is one of the “new things” that compels moral interpretation. The machine appears as novelty, but the moral question is old: what becomes of the person when power grows faster than wisdom?

The answer offered by Magnifica Humanitas is neither technophobic nor naive. The encyclical does not present technology as inherently hostile to humanity. Rather, it treats technology as morally consequential because it bears the imprint of those who design, finance, regulate and use it. The document’s concern is not that man has invented a tool, but that technical power may claim the right to govern humanity.

At the presentation of the encyclical, Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence already affects decisions shaping human coexistence and even the conduct of war. The Vatican Press Office reported his concern that algorithms, when fed by data marked by prejudice and injustice, may obstruct access to health care, employment and security.

A machine may classify. It cannot answer for justice. A machine may predict. It cannot repent. A machine may generate language. It cannot bear witness. A machine may imitate prudence. It cannot possess conscience.

The fear is not that a machine has acquired a soul. The fear is that human institutions will hide behind machine outputs to avoid moral responsibility. The algorithm did not decide; the institution did. The model did not exclude; the employer, insurer, platform, agency or state chose to treat its output as authority. The danger of AI is therefore not merely artificial intelligence. It is artificial irresponsibility.

II. From Rerum Novarum to Artificial Intelligence

The deliberate connection between Magnifica Humanitas and Rerum Novarum is substantive, not ceremonial. In 1891, Leo XIII addressed a world remade by industrial capitalism. He confronted the changed relation between capital and labor, the rise of new economic power and the social instability created by industrial modernity. In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII famously states that “capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital,” a formulation that refuses both class warfare and economic absolutism (Leo XIII, 1891).

The AI question continues that older labor question under new conditions. In the nineteenth century, society had to ask whether the worker would become an appendage of the factory. In the twenty-first century, it must ask whether the person will become an appendage of the system: a data profile, a workflow element, a prompt operator, a behavioral prediction, a replaceable node in an automated network.

John Paul II sharpened the labor question in Laborem Exercens by placing work within a personalist anthropology. The encyclical was issued “on the eve of new developments in technological, economic and political conditions” that, according to many experts, would influence work and production “no less than the industrial revolution of the last century” (John Paul II, 1981).

That description fits the AI age with striking force.

If work is merely output, AI may replace the worker wherever output can be simulated. If work is personal action, social participation, responsibility, discipline, creativity and service, then AI must be judged by whether it elevates or diminishes the worker as a person. The economic issue cannot be separated from the anthropological issue.

This is why the language of the “person” becomes crucial. The modern economy prefers the “individual,” because the individual can be counted, priced, targeted, segmented, surveyed and sold to. Bureaucracy prefers the “case.” Technology prefers the “user.” Politics prefers the “voter.” But Catholic social thought insists on the person: embodied, relational, moral, spiritual, historical and answerable before God.

The individual consumes, votes, clicks, borrows, purchases, competes and exits. The person remembers, promises, suffers, forgives, creates, worships, learns, inherits and builds. The person is not merely a unit of preference. The person is a moral being whose freedom is not reducible to choice and whose dignity is not earned by productivity.

Gaudium et Spes supplies the deeper theological anthropology. The Second Vatican Council placed the Church’s social reflection within the concrete conditions of the modern world and treated the human person as the center of social concern (Second Vatican Council, 1965). Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate continued this line by insisting that social doctrine revolves around “charity in truth,” a principle that must take practical form in moral action (Benedict XVI, 2009).

Thus the AI debate cannot be reduced to jobs, privacy, misinformation or regulation, though all are important. It is about anthropology. What is a human being? Is he a processor? A consumer? A biological platform? A replaceable node in a network? Or is he a person whose dignity precedes both market valuation and machine measurement?

A civilization that cannot answer this question will not govern AI. It will be governed by it.

III. Efficiency as Servant, Efficiency as Metaphysics

The modern economy will be tempted to answer the AI question in the wrong way. Markets admire speed, scale, measurability, repeatability and cost reduction. Bureaucracies admire process. Political campaigns admire manipulation of attention. Corporations admire anything that transforms uncertainty into manageable prediction. In such an environment, artificial intelligence will be welcomed first not as a moral instrument, but as an instrument of efficiency.

Efficiency is not evil. No serious civilization can despise it. Waste is not holiness. Delay is not wisdom. A farmer who refuses a better plough does not thereby become more human; he merely becomes less productive. A hospital that refuses digital tools does not thereby become more compassionate; it may simply become slower, more expensive and less accurate. A school that refuses technology entirely may not be defending the mind; it may be denying students the language of their age.

The problem begins when efficiency becomes metaphysics. Once speed is treated as wisdom, automation as progress and output as truth, the machine begins to dictate the meaning of human life. The person is then no longer the subject who uses the tool; he becomes the object being optimized by the system.

This danger is particularly acute in business. A firm that uses AI to eliminate needless drudgery, improve safety, detect waste, support workers and free human judgment for higher tasks has harnessed the machine. A firm that uses AI merely to reduce headcount, surveil employees, manipulate customers or avoid responsibility has submitted to the machine, even if profits rise.

A company may automate reports, but it cannot automate honor. It may optimize workflow, but it cannot outsource prudence. It may predict customer behavior, but it cannot generate legitimacy by algorithmic command. It may reduce friction, but it cannot create trust merely by increasing speed.

The great business question of the AI age is therefore not simply: how many jobs can be automated? It is: what kind of worker, manager, entrepreneur and citizen will remain after automation has done its work?

If the answer is a passive operator dependent on machine suggestions, then AI has degraded the firm. If the answer is a more capable person, freed from drudgery and trained for higher judgment, then AI has served enterprise well.

IV. Market Submission and Sterile Reaction

The doctrine of the person cuts against two opposing errors.

• The first error is market submission. It says: the machine has arrived; therefore society must adapt to it. If AI lowers costs, reduces employees, accelerates production, predicts consumers and reorganizes white-collar work, then resistance is inefficient. In this view, the human person becomes an adjustable variable in the model. Employment, education, attention, privacy and even truth are subordinated to technical and commercial advantage.
  
  This error is powerful because it clothes itself in realism. It says that one must deal with the world as it is. It says markets are not sentimental, competition is unforgiving and delay is suicide. Much of this is true as description. It becomes false as doctrine. To recognize market pressure is prudence. To accept market pressure as moral law is idolatry.

• The second error is sterile reaction. It says: the machine has arrived; therefore society must denounce it. This view may speak piously about the soul, sin, obedience and revealed truth, but it often refuses to engage the actual conditions under which modern persons live. It can mistake nostalgia for orthodoxy and hardship for virtue. It can romanticize older forms of life not because they were holier, but because they were less technically mediated.
  
  In this form, even religious language may become evasive. It may speak of the soul while ignoring the economy that forms habits, the school that forms thought, the media system that forms attention and the workplace that forms character. It may dismiss language such as humanitas as modernist ornament while failing to see that the human person is central to Christian doctrine.

Both errors fail because both refuse governance. The first refuses moral governance. The second refuses historical governance. The first kneels before the market. The second flees into an imagined past. Neither forms the magnificent person required by the present age.

A more serious view begins with historical realism. It recognizes that machinery is already present. It recognizes that AI will not be uninvented. It recognizes that institutions, workers, schools and states must learn to act within this changed environment. But it also insists that adaptation is not submission. To govern is neither to worship nor to flee. It is to command.

V. Neoliberal Freedom and the Soft Tyranny of Choice

There is another reason the Church’s language of disarmament may sound unsatisfactory to the concerned person. In an age when neoliberal capitalism struggles to maintain its foothold, the vocabulary of human dignity is often seized by the very order that diminishes it. Words such as freedom, initiative, liberty, choice, responsibility and even frailty are interpreted in a hyperindividualist manner until they become masks for a subtler tyranny.

The market order says: the individual is free because he chooses. He is responsible because he bears the outcome. He has initiative because he competes. He has liberty because no one formally coerces him. He is frail because he is human, and therefore the system’s injuries may be sentimentalized as the inevitable cost of life.

Under this grammar, even suffering can be privatized. If the worker is exhausted, he must become more resilient. If the poor are excluded, they must become more enterprising. If the citizen is manipulated, he must become more discerning. If the machine displaces labor, the displaced must reskill, adapt and remain optimistic.

This is where a sinister inversion occurs. The system wounds the person and then says: this is merely human life. It calls competition freedom, insecurity initiative, precarity flexibility, isolation choice and exhaustion responsibility. The person is told he is free while being trained to accept conditions he did not choose and cannot meaningfully govern.

For this reason, the social encyclicals cannot be treated as decorative ecclesiastical literature. They are not pious ornaments placed beside the market. They comprise a social outlook: a moral reading of economy, labor, property, technology, development, power and the human person.

• Rerum Novarum did not merely advise workers to be good within industrial capitalism; it placed capital and labor under moral judgment.
  
  
• Laborem Exercens did not reduce Christianity to private virtue inside economic necessity; it treated technological and economic change as a challenge to the dignity of work.
  
  
• Caritas in Veritate did not treat development as mere expansion; it placed development under truth and charity.
  
  
• Antiqua et Nova and Magnifica Humanitas now carry that tradition into the age of artificial intelligence, asking whether technology will serve human dignity or reorganize the person according to the logic of systems.

The anxious question is therefore justified: what are these encyclicals for if Christians treat them as literature rather than doctrine for social life? What does it mean to profess belief in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” while treating the Church’s social teaching as optional prose? What does it mean to condemn the misuse of machines while accepting the economic order that arms them? What does it mean to praise human dignity while practicing a functional prosperity gospel, in which wealth is read as blessing, poverty as failure, initiative as salvation and the market as providence?

This is the scandal. Many Christians do not reject Catholic social doctrine openly. They domesticate it. They quote it at conferences, admire its balanced tone, file it under “ethics,” and then return to a practical religion of success. They may profess the Creed liturgically while believing, economically, in the prosperity gospel: that the favored rise, the disciplined win, the market rewards virtue and the poor are best helped by becoming more competitive.

In such a world, the encyclicals become beautiful documents with little governing force.

The danger is that Magnifica Humanitas may suffer the same fate. It may be praised as timely, humane and thoughtful, while the actual systems of AI deployment remain governed by profit, speed, military advantage, labor reduction and behavioral capture. The language of the human person may be celebrated, but the person himself may still be measured, scored, replaced and optimized.

This is why the criticism cannot stop at the machine. Artificial intelligence does not appear in a vacuum. It appears inside neoliberal capitalism, platform capitalism, state security systems, consumer psychology and geopolitical rivalry. To complain about AI while leaving these structures untouched is to notice the weapon while ignoring the arsenal. The machine is armed not only by code, but by incentives.

Here, “disarmament” becomes more than a metaphor about technology. It becomes a challenge to the social order that weaponizes technology. To disarm AI is not only to regulate algorithms. It is to question the economic theology that says whatever is profitable, scalable and chosen is therefore legitimate. It is to reject the hyperindividualist distortion of freedom that leaves persons alone before systems too large for them to resist: that liberty without solidarity becomes abandonment. that initiative without justice becomes competition among the wounded. And choice without truthful conditions becomes managed consent.

VI. Why “Disarmament” and Not Merely “Harnessing”?

It is not accidental that Magnifica Humanitas reaches for the word “disarmament” rather than relying only on the milder language of harnessing. To harness a machine is to govern it, direct it and subordinate it to human purpose. That remains necessary. But disarmament goes further. It suggests that artificial intelligence is not merely a neutral tool waiting to be placed in good hands. It has already entered logics of rivalry, domination, exclusion, surveillance, commercial capture and war.

At the presentation of Magnifica Humanitas, Leo XIV said that “artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.” He acknowledged that “disarm” is a strong word, but described it as necessary to awaken conscience and indicate a path.

This explains why disarmament carries more moral weight than harnessing. Harnessing assumes that the machine is powerful and must be guided. Disarmament assumes that the machine has already been placed inside structures of conflict. It is not merely a plough waiting for the farmer. It is also a weapon, a market instrument, a surveillance device, a political amplifier and a tool of institutional sorting.

The problem is not only what AI can do. The problem is what kind of social order is already forming around it.

The word also reveals the Church’s view of the human person. It is not because the Church despises human effort. On the contrary, Catholic social teaching has consistently honored labor, reason, craft, invention and the responsible development of earthly life. From Rerum Novarum to Laborem Exercens, work is treated as a field of dignity, not as a punishment to be escaped. The person is meant to cultivate, build, govern and create.

But disarmament also recognizes human fragility. Man is not only creative; he is also tempted. He can turn intelligence into domination, efficiency into exploitation, knowledge into control and invention into violence. The machine magnifies not only human reason but also human disorder. A society that builds AI without moral discipline may not become more enlightened. It may simply become more efficient in its injustices.

This is why disarmament must be read spiritually and politically. It does not mean dismantling all technology. It means stripping AI of its false claim to mastery. It means freeing technology from the systems that make it an instrument of domination while calling domination progress.

Harnessing names the positive task: commanding the machine for the sake of human flourishing.

Disarmament names the negative and spiritual task: stripping the machine of its false claim to mastery, and stripping humanity of the illusion that technical power can overcome the woundedness of the human condition.

Together, they form a fuller ethic. The person must harness the machine because man is called to work, build and govern. The person must also disarm the machine because humanity is fragile, fallen and tempted to make idols out of his own inventions.

VII. Why “Disarmament” Can Be Misread

The language of disarmament is powerful precisely because it is dangerous. It can be misunderstood. Readers who take the word verbatim, or technically, may assume that the Vatican is calling for artificial intelligence itself to be disavowed, dismantled or treated as an enemy of man. In that reading, disarmament sounds less like moral governance and more like renunciation: as though the Church were asking humanity to step away from the machine entirely.

That would be too narrow a reading. The intent of Magnifica Humanitas is not to deny the reality of artificial intelligence, nor to pretend that modern society can simply uninvent it. The Holy See presented the encyclical as a response to AI’s real social power, not as a fantasy of retreat. Its concern is that AI be disarmed from logics of domination, exclusion and war, and placed at the service of human dignity, solidarity and the common good.

In that sense, disarmament does not mean the destruction of the tool. It means the dethronement of the tool. It means preventing technical power from claiming the right to govern humanity.

Artificial intelligence will not, in its actuality, become sovereign unless human beings and institutions grant it that sovereignty. The machine does not rule by itself. It rules when executives, states, schools, militaries, courts, employers and citizens hide behind it, obey it uncritically or allow it to define what counts as efficient, rational, normal and necessary.

The more practical language remains harnessing. Humanity has to harness the machine rather than submit to it. AI must be commanded, disciplined and subordinated to human judgment. It must assist thought without replacing conscience. It must aid production without defining the value of labor. It must support governance without becoming government. It must extend human intelligence without pretending to become wisdom.

But there is also a deeper, almost eschatological resonance in the word disarmament. It suggests that humanity must remember its fragility. The Church’s warning is not only that machines may become too powerful. It is that human beings, being fallen, tempted and finite, may place too much of themselves into the machine. They may pour into AI not only intelligence, but pride, domination, fear, greed, rivalry and the old lust for control.

In this sense, the machine becomes a mirror. It reflects not only human brilliance, but human woundedness. The same intelligence that can use AI to cure disease, organize knowledge, educate the poor and reduce drudgery can also use it to automate prejudice, manipulate voters, replace workers without responsibility, intensify war and concentrate power.

The fragility lies not in humanity’s lack of talent, but in humanity’s lack of perfection.

VIII. The Sentimentality of Hardship

The language of disarmament carries another danger: it may sound, to impatient modern ears, like a sanctification of difficulty. It may be heard as though the Church were telling humanity to endure mental math rather than use the calculator, to prefer the ledger over the spreadsheet, to honor the quill over the typewriter, to defend the knight after gunpowder had already changed the battlefield.

This is not a trivial misunderstanding. Much opposition to technology has often hidden itself inside a sentimental defense of older disciplines. The older way feels more human because it required visible effort. The clerk’s hand moved across the ledger. The student solved the equation unaided. The craftsman shaped the object by touch. The knight mastered horse, sword, armor and ritual. These forms of labor had dignity, and their disappearance should not be mocked. A civilization that laughs at all older disciplines becomes shallow.

But it is equally shallow to confuse difficulty with dignity. Man is not made more human merely because a task is harder. Waste is not holiness. Delay is not wisdom. A farmer who refuses the plough is not defending the soul of agriculture; he is making hunger more likely. A hospital that refuses digital diagnostics is not defending compassion; it may be endangering patients. A student who never learns mental discipline becomes weaker, but a student who is forbidden every tool becomes artificially constrained.

The same applies to artificial intelligence. The purpose of human formation is not to preserve every burden. It is to form judgment.

Mental math may train the mind, but the calculator has its place. Handwriting may discipline attention, but the typewriter and computer have their place. Memorization may strengthen the intellect, but reference tools have their place. The moral question is not whether the tool reduces effort. The moral question is whether it reduces the person.

The analogy of the knight and gunpowder remains useful. Those who mourned the knight were not entirely wrong. Gunpowder did end something: an older world of personal combat, aristocratic military identity and visible martial discipline. But history did not stop because the knight lost his centrality. Courage did not disappear. Duty did not disappear. Strategy did not disappear. They moved onto another field.

So too with artificial intelligence. AI may end certain older forms of intellectual labor. It may weaken the prestige of routine writing, routine calculation, routine drafting and routine analysis. Some will mourn this, and not without reason. But the task is not to preserve every older burden as though burden itself were sacred. The task is to move human dignity to the new field: judgment, conscience, interpretation, responsibility, creativity and wisdom.

The Church’s warning, therefore, should not be read as a demand that person to reject the machine in order to prove one's humanity. It should be read as a demand that person not allow the machine to define one's own humanity.

The problem is not about that person who uses a calculator. The problem is when that person no longer understands number, relation, proportion or truth. The problem is not that that person who uses AI to draft, organize or summarize. The problem is when that person can no longer think without permission from the machine.

The magnificent person is not the person who refuses assistance. He is the person who remains master of assisted action. That person may use the calculator, but should still know what calculation means. That person may use the spreadsheet, but should still understand judgment. That person may use AI, but should still possess thought. And that person may harness the machine, but must not become intellectually disarmed before it.

IX. AI, Business and the Efficient Dependent

The business world has particular reason to take this argument seriously. Artificial intelligence will be sold to firms in the language of efficiency: faster reports, lower headcount, better targeting, smoother logistics, automated customer service, predictive compliance and reduced uncertainty. Many of these uses may be legitimate. Efficiency is not the enemy of human dignity. A wasteful enterprise is not thereby more humane.

Yet the corporation that treats AI merely as a labor-reduction device may hollow out the very human capacities that sustain enterprise: judgment, loyalty, trust, tacit knowledge, institutional memory, negotiation, prudence and moral responsibility.

The proper business question is therefore not only: how many functions can be automated? It is: what kind of worker, manager and citizen remains after automation has done its work?

If the answer is a passive operator dependent on machine suggestions, then AI has degraded the firm. If the answer is a more capable person, freed from drudgery and trained for higher judgment, then AI has served enterprise well.

This distinction recalls Rerum Novarum. Leo XIII confronted industrial capitalism not by rejecting industry, but by placing capital and labor under moral judgment. The industrial worker was not merely a cost. The AI-era worker is not merely an inefficiency waiting to be optimized away. The worker remains a person, and the workplace remains a moral community even when mediated by software.

Here, the distinction between hardship and dignity returns. It is not necessary to preserve every older task in order to preserve labor dignity. Many tedious tasks should be automated. But when automation becomes a pretext for treating persons as disposable, the machine has not served work. It has degraded it.

The business culture that harnesses AI will use it to elevate human responsibility. The business culture that submits to AI will use it to manufacture efficient dependents.

X. Education: Mental Math, Calculators, and the Discipline of Judgment

The example of mental math is useful because it shows both sides of the problem. A student who never learns arithmetic discipline may become dependent on the calculator in a shallow way. He may get answers without understanding proportion, relation, estimation or error. In that case, the tool has weakened him. But a student forbidden to use any calculator, even after learning mathematical principles, is not necessarily more intelligent. He may simply be made slower. The tool becomes dangerous only when it replaces understanding rather than serving it.

The same applies to AI in education. A student who uses AI to avoid reading, writing and reasoning becomes weaker. A student who uses AI to test an argument, compare sources, clarify structure, identify counterarguments and revise prose may become stronger, provided he still owns the judgment. The aim is not unaided exertion for its own sake. The aim is formed intelligence.

The Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova is important precisely because it frames the matter as a relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. It does not treat AI as an isolated technical phenomenon, but as a development that must be understood in light of human wisdom, responsibility and truth.

The school that merely bans AI may produce resentment and evasion. The school that merely adopts AI may produce dependency. The school that forms judgment may produce persons who can use machines without surrendering thought.

XI. The Social Encyclicals as Judgment, Not Literature

The social encyclicals must be revisited not as museum texts, but as instruments of judgment. Rerum Novarum asks whether labor is being dignified or consumed.

Laborem Exercens asks whether work remains personal or becomes merely functional. Caritas in Veritate asks whether development serves truth or merely expansion. Gaudium et Spes asks whether earthly affairs remain ordered to the human person and the common good. Antiqua et Nova asks whether artificial intelligence is being understood in relation to human intelligence, wisdom and responsibility. Magnifica Humanitas asks whether humanity will remain profoundly human when technical systems become powerful enough to imitate, classify and command.

If Christians read these documents but continue to live by the prosperity gospel, then the problem is not that the Church has failed to speak. The problem is that its people have preferred a more convenient creed. The official creed says one thing. The practical creed says another. The lips say “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” The habits say: efficiency, success, visibility, wealth, self-optimization and market reward.

That contradiction matters in the AI age because the machine will magnify whatever anthropology it receives. If it receives Catholic personalism, it may be ordered toward dignity, solidarity and the common good. If it receives neoliberal hyperindividualism, it will optimize isolation. If it receives prosperity-gospel capitalism, it will classify the successful as deserving and the displaced as deficient. If it receives state militarism, it will accelerate domination. If it receives consumer nihilism, it will multiply appetite.

The Church’s social encyclicals therefore do not merely tell Christians to “be good” inside whatever system happens to exist. At their strongest, they deny that any system may define the human person apart from truth. They do not offer a party platform, but they do offer an alternative moral imagination. They refuse the market’s claim to be providence, the state’s claim to be salvation and the machine’s claim to be wisdom.

That is why the AI debate must return to social doctrine. Not because the encyclicals contain software policy in advance, but because they preserve the question the machine cannot answer: what is the person for?

Without that question, disarmament becomes a slogan and harnessing becomes a management technique. With that question, both become moral disciplines. AI must be harnessed because human beings are called to work, build and govern. AI must be disarmed because fallen systems will use it to dominate while calling domination freedom.

XII. Fragility and the Other Life

The most provocative reading of disarmament is not technical but theological. It suggests that humanity must see itself as fragile.

Modern technological culture dislikes this message. It prefers mastery, optimization, enhancement and control. It dreams of frictionless systems and predictable behavior. It wants illness managed, death delayed, attention captured, desire anticipated and choice engineered. Artificial intelligence fits naturally into this dream because it promises something close to administrative omniscience: the ability to know, predict and act faster than human beings can.

But Christianity has never treated the human person as perfectible by technique. Man is capable of greatness, but also fallen. He builds cities and idols. He cures and kills. He creates music and weapons. He seeks truth and manufactures lies. He desires communion and domination. The machine amplifies all of this.

This is why disarmament must be read spiritually. It does not mean that human effort is worthless. It means human effort must be placed under humility. The only perfect order is not the machine order. It is not the market order. It is not the bureaucratic order. It is not even the highest earthly civilization. The only perfect order belongs to God, to the life beyond this one.

Such a claim does not devalue earthly work. It prevents earthly work from becoming idolatrous. Hospitals must still heal. Schools must still teach. Businesses must still produce. Governments must still govern. Engineers must still build. Writers must still write. The point is not to despise the city of man, but to remember that the city of man is not the Kingdom of God.

When AI is asked to provide certainty, control, immortality or final judgment, it becomes a false eschatology. It promises in technical form what only grace can fulfill. A civilization that asks AI to save it will become disappointed, manipulated or enslaved. A civilization that uses AI as a tool while remembering that man remains finite may still remain human.

This is the hidden wisdom of disarmament: it tells humanity not merely to control the machine, but to confess that even the controller is fragile.

XIII. The pursuit  of a "Magnificent Person"

The pursuit of a magnificent person must become the cultural program of the AI age.

Such a person is not anti-modern. He uses tools. He understands systems. He welcomes genuine productivity. He does not confuse inconvenience with virtue. He does not romanticize drudgery or pretend that older forms of life were automatically holier because they were less mediated by technology.

But neither does he confuse automation with wisdom. He knows that the machine can assist thought but cannot substitute for conscience. It can organize memory but cannot redeem history. It can generate options but cannot define the good. It can improve production but cannot create purpose. It can recommend action but cannot bear responsibility.

The magnificent person is not merely efficient. He is responsible. He is not merely informed. He is formed. He is not merely connected. He is capable of communion. He is not merely productive. He is fruitful.

In the language of business, he knows that technology must be placed in the service of human flourishing. In the language of politics, he understands that power without accountability becomes domination. In the language of education, he knows that skill without wisdom is dangerous. In the language of faith, he knows that man is not saved by his own inventions.

This vision of the person offers an answer to both market submission and sterile reaction. Against the market absolutist, it says that the human being is not a cost center. Against the reactionary, it says that tools are not evil simply because they are new. Against the technocrat, it says that efficiency is not wisdom. Against the sentimentalist, it says that hardship is not holiness.

The magnificent person is capable of command because he is capable of obedience — not obedience to the machine, the market or the crowd, but obedience to truth. His freedom is not the mere multiplication of choices. It is the disciplined capacity to choose the good.

XIV. Toward an Ethic of Harnessing and Disarmament

If artificial intelligence is to be harnessed rather than submitted to, several principles follow.

• First, AI must remain subordinate to human judgment. It may advise, summarize, simulate and recommend, but it must not become the final moral authority. Institutions must make clear who is responsible for decisions shaped by AI.
  
  
• Second, AI must serve the dignity of work. It should relieve drudgery where possible, but not treat workers as disposable. Firms should ask whether automation elevates human responsibility or merely transfers wealth and power upward.
  
  
• Third, education must be redesigned around judgment. Students must learn how to question machine outputs, verify sources, detect bias, reason ethically and write with ownership. The goal is not to ban the tool but to prevent the collapse of thought into convenience.
  
  
• Fourth, public oversight is essential. Systems that affect health care, employment, law enforcement, credit, education and democratic participation require transparency, accountability, appeal mechanisms and independent review.
  
  
• Fifth, technological development must include the poor and excluded. If AI becomes a tool only for wealthy firms, powerful states and privileged schools, it will deepen inequality. If it is governed as part of the common good, it may widen access to knowledge, productivity and participation.
  
  
• Sixth, AI must be judged by truth. In an age of synthetic media and automated persuasion, the defense of truth becomes a public duty. A society that treats speech as mere content will be conquered by manipulation.
  
  
• Seventh, the economic imagination that arms AI must itself be judged. The current Hyperindividualist interpretation of of freedom, initiative and choice must be purified by solidarity, truth and the common good. Otherwise, AI will merely give old tyrannies a new interface.

These principles are not anti-innovation. They are the conditions under which innovation remains humane.

Conclusion: The Machine Must Be Useful, Not Sovereign

Artificial intelligence may help humanity write, diagnose, simulate, design, translate, discover and govern. But it cannot supply the reason why these things should be done. It cannot tell society what kind of future deserves to exist. That question remains with the person.

To harness the machine is to keep technology within a moral order. To disarm the machine is to free it from the armed logics of domination, exclusion, commercial absolutism and war. These are not opposing tasks, instead, they are two sides of the same moral discipline.

The machine, then, is not the only thing that must be disarmed. The economic imagination that arms it must also be judged as the current hyperindividualist interpretations of freedom, initiative, and choice must be purified by solidarity, truth and the common good. Otherwise, AI will merely give old tyrannies a new interface.

The magnificent person cannot be formed by prosperity piety, market fatalism or technological surrender. That person requires a social order that treats the person not as a winner or loser in a private contest, but as a bearer of dignity whose flourishing is inseparable from justice, work, community, truth and God.

The word disarmament may sound, at first hearing, like a call to endure mental math rather than use the calculator, to preserve the knight even after the gun has arrived, or to suffer the old burden merely because it is old, tried, and tested. That reading must be rejected. Human dignity is not proven by refusing tools. The magnificent person is not the person who rejects assistance. He is the person who remains master of assisted action.

He may use the calculator, but he should still know what calculation means. He may use the spreadsheet, but he should still understand judgment.

He may use AI, but he should still possess thought.

The machine has arrived. It will not be uninvented. The task is not to flee it, nor to worship it, but to place it under moral command. Artificial intelligence must be useful, but not sovereign. Powerful, but not ultimate. Intelligent in function, but never treated as wisdom itself.

The magnificent person is therefore not the one who refuses the machine, nor the one who submits to it. He is the one who can take the machine into his hands without allowing it to take possession of his conscience.

***

References

Benedict XVI. (2009). Caritas in veritate. Vatican.

Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, & Dicastery for Culture and Education. (2025). Antiqua et nova: Note on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. Vatican.

John Paul II. (1981). Laborem exercens. Vatican.

Leo XIII. (1891). Rerum novarum: On capital and labor. Vatican.

Leo XIV. (2025, June 17). Message of the Holy Father to participants in the Second Annual Rome Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vatican.

Leo XIV. (2025, November 7). Message of the Holy Father to participants in the Builders AI Forum 2025. Holy See Press Office.

Leo XIV. (2026). Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. Vatican.

Leo XIV. (2026, May 25). Presentation of the encyclical letter “Magnifica Humanitas” of Pope Leo XIV, on safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence. Holy See Press Office.

Second Vatican Council. (1965). Gaudium et spes: Pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world. Vatican.

When Regulation Becomes a Tollgate: Thoughts over ad permit rule

When Regulation Becomes a Tollgate:
Thoughts over the proposed advertising permit rule

The controversy over the Department of Trade and Industry’s proposed advertising permit rule should not be dismissed as a simple misunderstanding over paperwork. It revealed something more serious: the old temptation of bureaucracy to convert ordinary economic activity into a privilege granted by the state.

There is, of course, a legitimate place for regulation. No serious observer argues that advertising should be left completely unchecked. False claims, fake discounts, fraudulent promotions, deceptive endorsements, bait-and-switch schemes, and predatory sales tactics must be punished. Consumers deserve protection. Honest businesses also deserve protection from competitors who cheat, mislead, and abuse the public trust.

But the question is not whether advertising should be regulated. The question is how.

There is a great difference between enforcing truthful advertising and requiring every business to seek prior permission before speaking to the market. There is a great difference between punishing fraud and creating a permit system that makes even honest commerce wait at the counter. One is regulation. The other begins to look like rent-seeking.

The DTI draft, as described by critics, appeared to cross that line. It reportedly would have required businesses to secure government permits before publishing advertisements, sponsored posts, digital campaigns, or sales promotions. Applications could have had to be filed up to thirty working days before publication, with permit fees reaching thousands of pesos per advertisement.

For a large corporation, this is an irritation. For a small business, it is a wall.

A major company can absorb fees. It can hire lawyers, compliance officers, advertising agencies, consultants, and liaison staff. It can maintain a department whose only job is to deal with paperwork. It can wait out the delay, pay the charge, and still proceed with its campaign.

The small entrepreneur cannot.

The home baker announcing a weekend promo, the online seller boosting a Facebook post, the neighborhood shop advertising a discount, the young clothing brand testing its first campaign, the provincial reseller trying to reach customers through social media—these are not enterprises with legal departments and compliance budgets. They live on speed, visibility, thrift, and timing. A sale announced too late is no sale at all. A campaign delayed for a month is already dead. A fee that looks modest to a conglomerate may already be punishing to a microbusiness.

This is why the objections raised by Senator Bam Aquino, Carlo Ople, digital creators, and small-business advocates resonated so strongly. They understood that the proposed rule would not merely regulate advertising. It would change the balance of the market. It would make the ordinary act of reaching customers dependent on government clearance, time, fees, and discretion.

Aquino’s opposition was therefore not simply a defense of business convenience. It was a defense of the small enterprise against a system that could bury it under forms. His warning about bureaucracy and prior restraint went to the heart of the matter. A policy that requires permission before an advertisement may be released does not merely supervise commerce after abuse occurs. It places government at the gate before speech enters the marketplace.

Ople’s criticism was just as direct. Such a policy, he argued, would hurt small businesses and favor the big players. That point deserves emphasis, because it exposes the practical effect of many regulations that are written in the language of public protection. A rule may claim to protect the consumer. But if its effect is to make competition more expensive, slower, and more difficult, then it also protects incumbents. It protects those already large enough to survive the burden.

That is the danger of bureaucratic overreach. It often arrives dressed as public service. It speaks of consumer welfare, fairness, discipline, order, and accountability. But when translated into practice, it creates permits, fees, delays, and official discretion. And once ordinary commercial speech must pass through a government office before reaching the public, the system becomes vulnerable to favoritism, lobbying, and quiet extraction.

The beneficiaries are not necessarily the consumers. Often, they are the bigwigs who can afford the process and then pretend that the process exists for the common good.

This is where the controversy touches the older question of protectionism.

Is this protectionism? In one sense, perhaps. But if so, it is protectionism in its most distorted form.

Classically speaking, protectionism was supposed to protect the weaker producer: the farmer, the smallholder, the local shopkeeper, the small manufacturer, the community enterprise, the domestic worker of capital trying not to be crushed by bigger forces. In its older moral claim, protectionism was not merely a favor to business. It was a defense of those without scale, without leverage, without the means to survive an unequal contest.

By that standard, Aquino and Ople were closer to the older protectionist instinct than the bureaucrats drafting new tolls. They spoke for the smallholder of the digital economy: the online seller, the content creator, the micro-entrepreneur, the provincial merchant, the modest shop whose advertisement may be nothing more than a boosted post or a short promo graphic.

To see bigwigs presenting themselves as the “protectors” of the public is therefore a mockery of protection. It is protectionism turned upside down. The powerful claim to protect consumers, while the practical effect is to protect themselves from smaller competitors. They wrap market control in the language of public welfare. They speak as if they are doing the public a favor, when the result is to raise the cost of entry for everyone below them.

This is the oldest trick of protectionism by paperwork. A large company can call compliance a virtue. It can say strict rules are necessary. It can declare itself responsible, disciplined, and transparent. But if those same rules make it harder for small competitors to advertise, then the regulation becomes a shield for incumbents. It becomes a public favor in appearance and private advantage in effect.

No wonder neoliberals, rallying under the banner of “no free lunch” and deregulation, so often cry protectionism whenever the state intervenes. They have seen, or claim to have seen, too many cases in which state intervention does not protect the small but serves the big. In their telling, regulation becomes the mask by which bigwigs control both state and economy, then use that control to pin down the smallholder.

That criticism is not always fair, because not all regulation is bad and not all protection is corrupt. A society that refuses to regulate in the name of market purity merely leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong. But in this case, the neoliberals would find an easy target. A permit-before-advertising system gives them exactly the example they want: a state that claims to protect the public while imposing costs that only the large can comfortably bear.

The deeper tragedy is that such proposals discredit legitimate regulation. When government overreaches, it gives ammunition to those who would dismantle even necessary protections. When consumer protection is confused with permit extraction, the public begins to suspect that all regulation is merely another racket. When bureaucrats treat every business activity as something to be licensed, they weaken the case for real enforcement against fraud, scams, and abuse.

That is why the distinction must be made clearly. Regulation is necessary. Rent-seeking is not.

A serious consumer protection policy would target bad actors. It would punish businesses that lie, deceive, or manipulate. It would establish clear advertising standards. It would simplify complaint mechanisms. It would educate businesses on fair practices. It would give consumers a fast and credible avenue for redress. It would focus on fraudulent promotions, fake endorsements, false discounts, misleading product claims, and predatory campaigns.

What it should not do is require honest small businesses to pay and wait before they can tell the public what they sell.

The DTI has since clarified that the controversial proposal was only an internal draft and would not be finalized or enforced. That clarification was welcome. But it also sounded, to many observers, like a retreat after the public saw what was inside the drawer. The problem was not merely that the draft existed. The problem was that it reflected a certain instinct: the instinct to treat economic life as something to be pre-cleared, monetized, and processed.

That instinct must be watched carefully.

For the small business owner, advertising is not a luxury. It is often the only way to survive. A social media post may be the difference between selling and closing. A promo may be the difference between paying rent and falling behind. A boosted campaign may be the only weapon a small seller has against a mall brand, a franchise chain, or a platform-favored giant.

To place that weapon behind a permit system is to disarm the small in the name of protecting the public.

The irony is severe. Government often praises micro, small, and medium enterprises as the backbone of the economy. It encourages Filipinos to become entrepreneurs. It speaks of digital transformation, inclusive growth, innovation, and local enterprise. But when a proposal like this appears, the rhetoric collapses. The entrepreneur is no longer celebrated. He is processed. The small seller is no longer empowered. She is made to queue.

This is how the permit state expands: not always through sweeping laws, but through circulars, drafts, forms, and fees. One requirement becomes another. One clearance becomes a habit. One fee becomes a precedent. Soon enough, the citizen who merely wishes to sell honestly must first ask permission from an office that claims to know what is best for the market.

And in such a system, the small pay first, the large pass through, and the public is told it was all done in their name.

The backlash against the DTI draft was therefore more than a reaction to an unpopular proposal. It was a reminder that regulation must never become a tollgate. It must never be allowed to become a revenue device disguised as consumer protection. It must never serve as a polite instrument through which big players secure their place while smaller competitors are delayed, taxed, and discouraged.

The real task of government is not to make every advertisement an application. It is to ensure that advertisements are truthful. It is not to make every small business wait for permission. It is to punish those who deceive the public. It is not to convert enterprise into paperwork. It is to create conditions where honest enterprise can compete.

Aquino, Ople, and the small-business advocates who pushed back understood this. They were not defending fraud. They were defending the right of the small to exist without being treated as a revenue opportunity by the state.

That is the lesson of the controversy.

Consumer protection is a duty. Bureaucratic toll collection is not. Regulation should defend the public from deception; it should not defend the powerful from competition. And whenever the language of public welfare is used to justify a system that only the big can easily afford, the public has every reason to ask who is truly being protected.