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.  

Beyond the label of "Terror": When People still calls Dissent and Struggle against the system as justified

Beyond the label of "Terror": When People still calls 

Dissent and Struggle against the system as justified

It has become increasingly convenient for the establishment and its apologists to reduce every expression of dissent, every cry for justice, and every call for structural change into the language of “terrorism.” What was once prosecuted under the old vocabulary of rebellion, sedition, subversion, or illegal possession of firearms is now more easily condemned through a single, frightening label: “terrorist.” 

Such a word is not neutral. It is meant to isolate, to frighten, and to silence. It tells the ordinary citizen not to listen, not to ask questions, not to examine the causes of unrest. It discourages sympathy for the poor, the landless, and the dispossessed by turning their grievances into a security problem rather than a social question. 

By reducing complex social struggles into simplistic security narratives, the deeper causes of resistance are often ignored: landlessness, poverty, exploitation, political exclusion, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Rather than confront these enduring injustices, those in authority often find it easier to portray organized resistance as criminality, and every demand for radical reform as a threat to national stability. 

Yet behind every label lies a history. Behind every accusation lies a countryside marked by hunger, debt, tenancy, displacement, and broken promises. The question, therefore, is not merely what name the state gives to those who resist. The more important question is: what conditions gave rise to resistance in the first place? 

A genuine mass movement does not arise from selfish ambition, nor from a desire to terrorize the people. It is born from principle, conviction, and love of country. Its aims are not hidden. They are rooted in the urgent needs and long-denied aspirations of the Filipino people. 

1. Genuine Land Reform and National Industrialization 

At the very heart of the struggle lies the demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization — a demand written in the sweat, labor, and sacrifice of generations of Filipino farmers, workers, and toiling masses. 

For centuries, those who till the land have remained landless, while powerful landlords rule over vast estates like private kingdoms. The farmer plants, harvests, and feeds the nation, yet too often remains poor, indebted, and dependent on those who own the soil beneath his feet. This is not merely an economic injustice; it is a social wound passed down from one generation to the next. 

The aim of genuine land reform is simple and just: land to those who actually cultivate it. It seeks to break the chain of rural poverty by ending landlord domination and giving farmers the means to live with dignity, security, and independence. Land must cease to be a privilege of birth, inheritance, or political power. It must become the foundation of livelihood for those who make it productive. 

But land reform alone is not enough. A nation of small farmers cannot fully prosper if it remains dependent on imported goods, foreign capital, and raw-material exports. Genuine land reform must be joined with national industrialization — the building of industries owned, directed, and developed for the needs of the Filipino people. 

National industrialization means creating factories, tools, machines, processing plants, transport systems, and technologies that serve national development rather than foreign profit. It means transforming agricultural produce into higher-value goods within the country, creating decent jobs for workers, and ending the cycle in which the Philippines exports raw materials cheaply and imports finished products at great cost. 

Together, land reform and national industrialization form the basis of real economic freedom. Land reform frees the peasantry from feudal bondage; industrialization frees the nation from dependency and underdevelopment. One gives the farmer land and dignity; the other gives the worker employment, skill, and a future. 

Only through these twin pillars can the country build an economy that serves the many rather than enriches the few — an economy rooted in the countryside, strengthened by industry, and directed toward genuine national sovereignty. 

2. Genuine Freedom and National Sovereignty 

The struggle also calls for true national freedom — a country not dictated upon by foreign powers, foreign capital, or foreign military interests. 

The aspiration is for an economy and political order directed by Filipinos and for Filipinos. It rejects a system in which the country’s natural resources, labor, markets, policies, and even its security direction are bent toward the interests of foreign corporations and powerful outside states. 

Amid the current geopolitical setting, Philippine policy remains too often subservient, mendicant, and vassal-like — a condition its apologists prefer to call “interdependence.” Yet interdependence cannot be genuine when one nation merely follows, adjusts, and obeys while stronger powers decide the terms. Whether the pressure comes from the United States, China, or any other dominant power, the lesson remains the same: subservience is still subservience, even when dressed in the language of alliance, investment, aid, or development. 

The effects of such dependency are often downplayed because these powerful countries are presented as “developed,” modern, and benevolent. But no foreign power, however advanced, should be allowed to determine the destiny of the Filipino people. A nation that relies on others to define its economy, defense, diplomacy, and development cannot claim full sovereignty. 

Sovereignty is not merely a flag, an anthem, or a seat in international assemblies. It means control over the nation’s land, wealth, industry, defense, resources, and future. It means that the Filipino people must be the authors of their own destiny — not clients of empire, not pawns of great-power rivalry, and not tenants in their own homeland. 

3. Ending Exploitation and Social Justice 

The struggle likewise seeks to dismantle a system in which a privileged ruling class enjoys the wealth of the nation while the majority remain trapped in hardship and deprivation. 

It challenges the domination of a few over the country’s industries, resources, land, and means of livelihood. It opposes a social order where workers create wealth but receive only survival wages, where farmers feed the nation but cannot own land, where families remain homeless despite vacant estates and idle properties, and where ordinary people are told to sacrifice while the powerful continue to prosper. 

As history attests, exploitation continues to prevail in many forms: landlessness, homelessness, low wages, high costs of living, corruption, disenfranchisement, and the many arrangements that benefit the ruling establishment at the expense of the many. These are not isolated misfortunes, but symptoms of a social order designed to preserve privilege while demanding patience from those who suffer under it. 

To end exploitation is to insist that the wealth of the country must serve the many, not merely enrich the few. It is to demand social justice not as charity, but as a right: decent wages, secure homes, land for the tiller, dignity for labor, and a society where power is no longer used to protect greed against the needs of the people. 

The branding of dissent as “terrorism” often becomes a convenient veil that prevents meaningful discussion of poverty, inequality, and injustice. It reduces political questions into police matters and turns social grievances into criminal accusations. It allows the powerful to evade the harder and more honest task of answering why so many people feel abandoned, dispossessed, and betrayed by the very system that claims to represent them. 

Yet history reminds that many struggles once condemned by the powerful were later understood as movements for justice, dignity, and national liberation. Labels imposed by authority do not settle the truth of history. Fear may delay change, but it cannot erase the conditions that make change necessary. 

No label can extinguish the truth that so long as injustice persists, so long as farmers remain without land of their own, so long as workers remain at the mercy of compradores and exploiters, and so long as the nation itself remains an appendage of an unjust establishment blessed by foreign masters, there will always be those who continue to stand and struggle. 

The fight for national democracy and genuine freedom is, ultimately, the struggle of every Filipino who believes in justice, dignity, sovereignty, and the liberation of the common people. It is the assertion that a nation must belong to its people — not to landlords, not to compradors, not to foreign interests, and not to those who use fear to silence the demand for a more humane and just society. 

When the Men of Order Cry Nationalism: Accountability, Scandal, and the Cracking Center

When the Men of Order Cry Nationalism:

Accountability, Scandal, and the Cracking Center

There are moments when a political class mistakes public patience for public consent. It hears silence and assumes resignation. It sees people going to work, lining up for transport, paying inflated prices, enduring poor services, and surviving another week, and it concludes that the center still holds. But beneath that daily endurance is a different mood. It is not pluralist enthusiasm. It is not a polite request for better representation among competing factions. It is not simply a wish for balance between Marcos and Duterte, or for a calmer arrangement among elite camps. It is a demand for accountability.

That is what makes the present crisis more serious than another episode of dynastic rivalry. The ruling blocs may still imagine that the public is merely choosing between them. They may still think that the country can be sorted into camps: pro-Marcos, pro-Duterte, opposition, loyalist, reformist, radical, undecided. But that reading misses the sharper force growing beneath the surface. Many Filipinos are no longer asking which faction should manage the system. They are asking why the system keeps producing the same burnt record of scandal, impunity, misuse of public funds, corruption allegations, neglected public needs, and political survival dressed up as patriotism.

Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s appeal to his fellow Philippine Military Academy alumni, made under the shadow of an International Criminal Court warrant tied to the Duterte drug war, is important because it exposed the instinct of the men of order when accountability comes near. They do not begin with the dead. They do not begin with the families. They do not begin with command responsibility, public trust, or the limits of state violence. They begin with nation, sovereignty, loyalty, fraternity, and institutional pride. They reach for the hymn, the flag, the oath, the academy, the old sentimental grammar of service, and they ask that these symbols be made to stand between them and consequence.

That is why the backlash from Frank Cimatu, Gary Alejano, and others carried more weight than an ordinary social-media scolding. Their criticism was not merely that Dela Rosa had used the PMA hymn in bad taste. Their deeper charge was that he had tried to convert an institutional song into political armor. An alma mater song, especially one tied to the academy that produces many of the country’s military and police leaders, is not a personal distress signal. It is not a shield for legal exposure. It is not a campaign jingle. It is not a plea for uniformed sympathy. If it stands for courage, integrity, and loyalty, then those values must be measured against accountability, not invoked to avoid it.

The larger scandal is that this maneuver is not new. Philippine politics has long allowed powerful men to borrow the moral capital of institutions they have weakened. They speak in the name of the Constitution after bending public office to factional needs. They speak in the name of the people after neglecting the people’s most basic demands. They speak in the name of sovereignty after failing to make domestic justice credible. They speak in the name of order after presiding over disorder in public finance, public services, and public morality. When pressure arrives, the first instinct is not confession, reform, or submission to process. It is symbolic mobilization.

That is why this cannot be treated as a simple matter of pluralist competition. The point is not that the Marcos camp and the Duterte camp are merely two legitimate poles in a normal democratic marketplace, each representing a different constituency and policy preference. That frame is too soft for the depth of the crisis. The two wings of the present ruling order carry their own burdens of shame. They carry the odor of scandal, impunity, family power, discretionary funds, coercive politics, and selective morality. Their quarrel may be real, but it does not cleanse either side. Their conflict may expose crimes and abuses, but exposure by one compromised faction does not automatically produce justice.

The public demand, therefore, is not simply for alternation. It is for accountability that does not stop at factional convenience. It is for a reckoning that does not merely punish one camp so another camp can inherit the center. It is for a political order in which the law does not move only when elite alliances collapse. It is for a public finance system where funds cannot be hidden behind vague security justifications while schools, hospitals, transport, agriculture, wages, and disaster response remain inadequate. It is for a state that does not remember sovereignty only when the powerful are threatened, and does not remember the poor only during campaigns, relief operations, or police raids.

This is where the phrase “bombard the headquarters” becomes politically meaningful, not as a literal call to violence, but as an old revolutionary metaphor for exposing and challenging the command centers of power. The people’s anger is not satisfied by watching one wing of the elite bombard the other while preserving its own headquarters intact. The demand is wider. It is to bombard the headquarters of impunity itself: the dynastic headquarters, the budgetary headquarters, the police headquarters, the propaganda headquarters, the confidential-fund headquarters, the patronage headquarters, and the ideological headquarters that keeps telling citizens to choose between rival managers of the same decay.

The danger for the ruling center is that many people already understand this. They know the Marcos and Duterte camps are not clean opposites. They know that one side’s corruption charge does not erase the other side’s historical baggage. They know that one side’s invocation of sovereignty does not erase the victims of state violence. They know that one side’s appeal to institutional order does not erase the possibility that institutions are being used selectively. They know that when dynasties fight, the truth may surface, but truth is not the same as justice unless it is followed through without fear or favor.

This is why the current cries of nationalism sound so thin. Nationalism, if serious, should begin with the people’s condition. It should begin with whether citizens can eat, work, study, travel, heal, farm, fish, organize, speak, and live without fear. It should begin with whether public funds are used for public needs. It should begin with whether the law can reach the powerful. It should begin with whether state violence can be investigated honestly. It should begin with whether the poor are treated as citizens rather than as suspects, clients, labor reserves, voters, or scenery.

But the nationalism now being performed by the men of order begins somewhere else. It begins with the predicament of the powerful. It begins when an ally faces arrest, when a patron faces investigation, when a confidential fund is questioned, when a political family faces impeachment, when an international court asks for answers, or when a ruling coalition breaks apart. The nation is invoked not as a community of suffering and entitlement, but as a shield for those already protected by office, wealth, surname, rank, or machinery.

That is not nationalism. It is reaction. It is the old center trying to save itself by dressing up self-preservation as patriotic resistance.

The Duterte wing reacts to accountability by calling it persecution, foreign interference, elite conspiracy, or betrayal. It asks its followers to see legal scrutiny as an attack on the nation. It treats loyalty to Duterte as though it were loyalty to the republic. It treats the drug war not as a field of unresolved deaths and command questions, but as a badge of political authenticity. In that story, Bato is not a former police chief facing grave accusations. He is a symbol of a besieged movement. The warrant becomes a weapon of outsiders. The hymn becomes a call to comrades. Sovereignty becomes the last refuge of those who once demanded obedience from the weak.

The Marcos wing counterreacts by presenting itself as the guardian of institutions, order, and lawful procedure. It wants to look like the adult restoration after Duterte’s disorder. It wants to occupy the center as the camp of stability, diplomacy, and legality. But this posture cannot be accepted without scrutiny. Institutional language does not erase the unresolved moral history attached to the Marcos name. Nor does it erase present questions about public funds, elite privilege, patronage, and selective justice. The camp that claims to defend institutions must prove that it is not merely using institutions to discipline its rival while insulating itself.

Both wings therefore carry the same burnt mark of scandal: the belief that the state can be held as a family asset, a factional weapon, or a protective wall. The forms differ. The rhetoric differs. The enemies differ. But the underlying practice is familiar. Public office becomes a fortress. Public money becomes leverage. Public outrage becomes something to be managed. Public memory becomes something to be manipulated. National language becomes a costume for factional survival.

That is why the people’s demand for accountability must be broader than the immediate legal case against Dela Rosa, broader than the impeachment drama around Sara Duterte, broader than the Marcos-Duterte split, and broader than any one corruption controversy. These are openings, but they are not the whole field. The question is whether the country will use this rupture to interrogate the structure that made such abuses ordinary. The question is whether accountability will climb upward, sideways, and backward, or whether it will stop at the boundary of political usefulness.

A true accountability politics would not ask first whether the accused belongs to one faction or another. It would ask what was done, who authorized it, who benefited, who paid, who died, who was silenced, who received funds, who approved releases, who falsified justifications, who protected the chain, and who now invokes the nation to avoid answering. It would not permit the drug war to be treated as merely a Duterte issue while ignoring the state machinery that carried it out. It would not permit corruption to be treated as merely a Duterte issue or a Marcos issue while ignoring the budgetary culture that makes discretion, secrecy, and patronage normal. It would not permit the security establishment to wrap itself in honor while refusing scrutiny over the uses of force and loyalty.

This is the business significance of the crisis. A country cannot build durable confidence when accountability depends on factional timing. Investors, workers, taxpayers, and citizens all need a predictable state. They need to know that public funds are not political loot. They need to know that law enforcement is not selective. They need to know that courts are not merely instruments in elite conflict. They need to know that national policy is not held hostage by dynastic rivalry. They need to know that the state can survive the fall of any patron because its institutions are stronger than the men occupying them.

When that confidence disappears, the cost is not only moral. It becomes economic. Public projects become suspect. Procurement becomes a site of distrust. Regulatory decisions are read as factional moves. Fiscal priorities are questioned. Reform promises lose force. Citizens become less willing to comply because they no longer believe sacrifice is shared. Businesses price in instability. Public servants lose morale. Social anger becomes harder to contain. The state may still function, but it functions with a legitimacy deficit.

The misuse of public funds is central because it translates elite abuse into daily hardship. A questionable allocation is not just a line item. A confidential fund is not just a bureaucratic phrase. A diverted peso is a classroom not repaired, a medicine not bought, a farmer not supported, a road not built properly, a flood response delayed, a health worker unpaid, a commuter left stranded, a public system weakened. Corruption is not only theft from the treasury. It is theft from the future capacity of the state.

That is why the people are right to be angry. They are not angry in the abstract. They are angry because they experience the consequences of public failure every day. They are asked to understand why budgets are constrained while political offices find money for discretionary spending. They are asked to accept poor services while officials move in convoys. They are asked to trust institutions that move slowly against the powerful and swiftly against the poor. They are asked to believe in nationalism from politicians who remember the nation most loudly when their own camp is endangered.

This anger is not a polite pluralist sentiment. It is not simply a call for more voices around the table. It is an indictment. It is a demand that the headquarters be opened, searched, audited, questioned, and stripped of its sacred immunity. It is the demand that the public be allowed to see what was done in its name and with its money. It is the demand that oaths, hymns, flags, and offices stop being used as curtains.

The PMA hymn episode remains powerful because it dramatizes this curtain. A man facing grave accusations reached for a sacred institutional song and asked it to carry his case into the emotional realm of loyalty. But the public has become less willing to accept such transfers. It has heard too many slogans. It has watched too many officials speak of service while securing privilege. It has watched too many scandals disappear into committees, technicalities, settlements, alliances, and distractions. It has watched too many powerful figures discover law only when they can use it and discover nationalism only when they need cover.

The academy’s ideals, if taken seriously, do not support this evasion. Courage means facing accountability even when it is humiliating. Integrity means not hiding behind fraternity. Loyalty means fidelity to the Constitution and the people, not to a patron. If the PMA hymn is to mean anything, it must not be available as an emergency shelter for alumni in political distress. Its dignity depends on refusing that use.

The same principle applies to the entire state. Congress should not be a shelter. The police should not be a shelter. The military should not be a shelter. The budget should not be a shelter. The courts should not be a shelter. Sovereignty should not be a shelter. The presidency should not be a shelter. The republic should not be turned into a bunker for men and families who have exhausted public trust.

What makes the present moment dangerous for the center is that the old method of containment is losing power. The elite can still mobilize loyalists. It can still dominate media cycles. It can still turn scandal into spectacle. It can still frame every issue as a binary conflict between camps. But the public’s resentment is no longer easily confined inside those binaries. Many Filipinos may dislike Duterte without trusting Marcos. They may distrust Marcos without absolving Duterte. They may support accountability at The Hague while demanding accountability at home. They may reject foreign interference while also rejecting domestic impunity. They may understand that two things can be true: sovereignty matters, and sovereignty has been abused by those who use it to hide from justice.

This complexity is not pluralist softness. It is sharper than partisanship. It is the refusal to let any camp monopolize the language of the people. It is the refusal to let one scandal erase another. It is the refusal to let counterreaction pose as justice. It is the refusal to let reaction pose as nationalism. It is the insistence that both wings of the ruling order answer for what they have done, what they have enabled, and what they have neglected.

The Marcos-Duterte split may therefore become useful only if it breaks open the sealed rooms of power. If it merely rearranges control, it will deepen cynicism. If it exposes wrongdoing only to punish enemies, it will fail. If it produces investigations that stop at political convenience, it will confirm the public’s worst suspicion. But if it widens into a genuine demand for accountability across camps, offices, budgets, police chains, and dynastic networks, then it may become more than an elite rupture. It may become an opening.

The ruling center fears that possibility. It prefers a manageable fight. It prefers Marcos versus Duterte, not people versus impunity. It prefers hearings that wound rivals, not audits that threaten the whole patronage system. It prefers legal action that disciplines one camp, not structural accountability that changes how public power is used. It prefers nationalism as a slogan, not nationalism as the people’s claim over the state.

That is why the language must be corrected. This is not a crisis of civility between political factions. It is not merely a crisis of polarization. It is not simply a problem of institutional balance. It is a crisis of accountability. It is a crisis created by years of public money treated casually, violence justified politically, offices inherited dynastically, institutions used selectively, and citizens told to wait.

The people are not asking merely for better manners among elites. They are asking why the headquarters still stands untouched after so much burning. They are asking why the same wings of power, though now attacking each other, still carry the same smoke of scandal. They are asking why those who neglected public needs now speak as though they alone can save the republic. They are asking why every powerful man becomes the nation when he is threatened, while ordinary citizens remain statistics when they suffer.

In the end, Bato’s use of the PMA hymn will be remembered not because it was the largest scandal, but because it captured the moral posture of a class under pressure. It showed a man of order reaching for nationalism at the moment accountability approached. It showed how quickly fraternity can be summoned when law becomes inconvenient. It showed how institutions are asked to lend dignity to those whose public record demands scrutiny.

But the country’s deeper judgment will not stop with him. It will extend to both wings of the ruling order. It will ask what the Dutertes did with power and violence. It will ask what the Marcoses do with institutions and public funds. It will ask why corruption keeps returning under different names. It will ask why the poor are always told to obey while the powerful are allowed to negotiate consequence. It will ask why the center calls itself stability when, for so many citizens, it has meant only managed decay.

The men of order are crying nationalism because they can hear the demand growing louder. It is not a request for inclusion in their drama. It is not applause for one dynasty against another. It is the demand to bombard the headquarters of impunity, to expose the burnt foundations beneath both wings, and to insist that the republic belongs neither to the family in power nor to the family out of favor.

It belongs to the people who have paid for every scandal.