Magnifica humanitas, the first social encyclical of Leo XIV, is much more than a document on artificial intelligence. In it, almost without a sound, a movement of greater significance takes place: the social doctrine of the Church (DSI) is described as «a theology of communion in history» (n. 27). The formula is luminous and, in my opinion, contains the most significant development of the entire text.

From Moral Theology to Theology of Communion

St. John Paul II, in Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), had placed the SDC «in the sphere of theology, and especially of moral theology» (n. 41). It was a prudent and necessary affirmation: it defended the doctrine against those who reduced it to ideology or a mere political agenda of the Vatican. Over the years, however, this formula has tended to be read in a restrictive way, as if the DSI were nothing more than the part of the manual of moral theology dedicated to the social questions that have arisen from Rerum novarum (1891). In reality, as the Pope explains, its patrimony is much more extensive: it has its roots in Sacred Scripture, the Fathers, medieval and modern theology and law. Think of the School of Salamanca.

Moral theology accompanies the DSI and will continue to do so. But no longer as its exclusive seat. It is not that it loses its place, but rather that its place is integrated into a greater horizon: that of the theology of communion. To the question «what is to be done?», it adds another, more foundational one: «how to keep us united, and what favors or fragments our unity?». One looks at acts; the other, at the bonds that sustain them. Both are needed, but the heart of the DSI beats today in the second.

This shift did not come out of nowhere. In the twentieth century, two major shifts prepared the ground: the relational shift in Trinitarian theology -Rahner, von Balthasar- and that of conciliar ecclesiology toward the communio. The social magisterium itself matured in this direction. The document of Aparecida (2007), written in large part by the then Cardinal Bergoglio, already strongly reflected the language of communion applied to social transformation. Benedict XVI, in Caritas in veritate (2009), placed charity-constitutive relationship-as «the master path of social doctrine» (n. 2). Francis, in Fratelli tutti (2020), elaborated the idea of fraternity as a social principle. Magnifica humanitas clearly names what was already operating in that tradition without a name: the theology of communion.

Dimensions of communion

In the encyclical, «communion» is a precise theological category, articulated on four levels. The first is Trinitarian. The Christian God is a communion of Persons. Leo XIV formulates it in number 48: «the mystery of the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ as a communion of persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit: love in relationship, which gives itself reciprocally and communicates itself to the world». Communion, before being human, is divine; before being an ethical quality, it is a founding ontological reality.

The second is ecclesiological. The Church, faithful to Vatican II, understands itself to be communio. It is one of the great fruits of the Council, still maturing in the different theological disciplines. In this document, the DSI fully receives the category that is proper to it.

The third is anthropological. Man, made in the image of the triune God, is a being for communion. Gaudium et spes 24 already said: man «cannot find his own fullness except in the sincere gift of self». Leo XIV quotes him expressly.

The fourth is social. The relationships between persons, peoples and institutions are already, or are called to be, the historical manifestation of that ultimate communion. It is here that the object of the SDC is properly situated.

Consequences

Understanding the SDC as a theology of communion crystallizes what was already maturing and brings with it three decisive consequences.

First, a structural multidisciplinarity. Human communion cannot be understood from a single perspective: it requires dialogue with anthropology, law, economics, ecology and other human and experimental sciences. It is not a concession of theology to other disciplines; it is an internal demand of its own object. Its foundation, in my opinion, lies in the unity of reality. This is a profoundly Christian idea and, at the same time, one that can be shared with other spiritual and philosophical traditions: if God, the founding reality, is one and is Love, all of reality must be one and is Love.

Second, a renewed recognition of the autonomy of the temporal. Understood in this way, the SDC offers criteria for discerning links, not technical prescriptions in areas where other knowledge is competent. Here we find a serene response to the ancient secularist objection, a distant echo of the silete theologi by Alberico Gentili. The DSI does not intend to replace the competencies of law, economics or political science.

Third, a communitarian subject. The SDC is not produced only by moral theologians nor read only by the hierarchy. Leo XIV underlines this in Dilexi TeIt would be unimaginable to reread the Christian revelation in modern social, labor, economic and cultural circumstances without Christian laity dealing with the challenges of their time« (n. 82). The insight is not new, but it needed to be remembered. For years, an overly clerical presentation has distanced not a few lay people from exercising their own responsibility in this field.

Practical applications

The change of key is immediately perceived, as soon as the doctrine lands on concrete issues. Take artificial intelligence, the central theme of the encyclical. Along with the usual questions about the rightness of its use - legitimate and undeferrable - the theology of communion introduces another that weighs just as heavily, if not more so: does this technology strengthen human bonds or does it wear them down? The bonds between people, between man and his work, between generations, between peoples and cultures. When the question gains depth, so does the answer.

In the economic field, the relational perspective enriches the discernment of structures: those that allow a human life in which work, the family and care for creation occupy their true place. And, in the debate on migration, the category of communion gives new life to the essential moral judgment, placing it in its authentic horizon: that of the unity of the human family, always fragile and to be rebuilt.

Conclusion

Magnifica humanitas offers to the SDC a key that has been maturing for decades and that now receives its proper name: theology of communion. It is a fundamental step, because it adds to moral theology - without replacing it - a relational gaze capable of embracing human complexity in all its orders. And it is a faithful step: it prolongs the line opened by Benedict XVI and continued by Francis, rooted in Vatican II.

This clarity gives back to the SDC something precious: its own voice in the public debate. Not as a moral code applied from outside, but as wisdom about the bonds that constitute the human. Once again, Leo XIV shows himself to be the pope of unity.

The Sardinian Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was one of the most influential Marxist thinkers of the 20th century, whose life was marked by political struggle and personal sacrifice. A founding member of the Italian Communist Party, he was imprisoned in 1926 by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, despite his parliamentary immunity. During his long and painful captivity, which seriously deteriorated his health to the point of death, he wrote his famous “Prison Notebooks”. This monumental work, written under censorship and in precarious conditions, transformed political theory by moving away from strict economic determinism to focus on the importance of the superstructure and social psychology.

His most famous intellectual contribution is the concept of cultural hegemony, with which he explained that the ruling classes do not only maintain power through force or coercion, but through consensus and the dissemination of their own values and worldview in civil society. Gramsci argued that, to achieve real social change, the working class had to build its own counter-hegemony through education and culture, led by what he called organic intellectuals. His thought revalued the role of institutions - such as the school, the Church and the media - as essential ideological battlegrounds for political emancipation.

The philosopher of praxis and the religious question

Gramsci was not a typical anti-clerical militant. Unlike the aggressive secularism of other co-religionists, his approach to the religious phenomenon was always one of almost reverential intellectual respect. In his famous “Cuadernos de la cárcel” (Prison Notebooks), he analyzed the Church not only in his own way, but also in the way of the Church itself. he analyzed the Church not only as a power structure, but as a force capable of giving moral cohesion and meaning to the popular masses.

For Gramsci, Catholicism was the «spiritual reserve» of Italy. His admiration for figures such as St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas was not merely academic; he recognized in them an anthropological depth that the most crude materialism tended to ignore. This intellectual openness is what makes it possible today to read with different eyes the testimonies that suggest a closeness to the faith in his last days.

The Quisisana clinic controversy

As noted Diego Contreras in Aceprensa, The debate about his presumed conversion was rekindled after the declarations of Monsignor Luigi de Magistris. The archbishop rescued accounts of the Swiss nuns who attended Gramsci in the Roman clinic Quisisana during his agony in 1937. According to these testimonies, the communist leader would have kept a stamp of St. Therese of Lisieux -the «sister of the atheists»- on her bedside table and would have asked to kiss the image of the Christ Child during her last Christmas.

The documentation dusted off by the Jesuit Giuseppe Della Vedova in the 1970s reinforces this atmosphere of research. Sister Angelina Zürcher recalled an exhausted Gramsci who asked for prayers: «Mother, pray for me because I feel that I am at the end».». For his part, the clinic's chaplain, Monsignor Giuseppe Furrer, described his visits as meetings of high theological density where, after discussing the Fathers of the Church, Gramsci respectfully accepted the priestly blessing.

«It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't.»

Perhaps the most enigmatic phrase collected by Furrer is Gramsci's response to the offer of the last sacraments: «It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't.». These words reveal the inner drama of a man caught between the honesty of his public political commitment, the possible consequences of a change that could affect his relatives (especially his wife Julia and his two children, in the USSR) and the motions of a conscience that was looming over the abyss of death.

When on April 27, 1937 Gramsci breathed his last, Furrer entered the room to sprinkle the body with holy water, despite the reluctance of his sister-in-law Tatiana. There was no official act of conversion, no public abjuration of his Marxism. But, as with so many great souls, the boundary between doubt and faith turned out to be much more porous than ideologies allow us to admit.

The echo of a search

We will never know with certainty what happened in the intimacy of his spirit. What is clear is that Gramsci was a man who, even in the darkness of cell and illness, kept a window open to the transcendent. His figure reminds us that the dialogue between secular thought and Christianity need not be a battle of annihilation, but a mutual recognition of human complexity.

In a time of superficial radicalisms, the serenity with which Gramsci is said to have gazed at the tabernacle from the door of the chapel of Quisisana is an invitation to reflection. Perhaps, at the end of the road, the great theoretician of history was not looking for a dialectical synthesis, but simply for rest in the arms of that «sister of the atheists» who accompanied him in the silence of his room.

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Does the work of an artist who is shown to have been a criminal cease to be valuable? Can the same person be both admirable and despicable? Are cruelty and excellence incompatible? The mystery of man faces the culture of cancellation, that social phenomenon that seeks to do retroactive justice by trying to repair the often irreparable at the cost of ruining the objectively commendable work of a person and condemning him or her to ostracism, economic boycott and reputational stoning.

Universally famous artists such as Picasso or Michael Jackson, or some more local ones such as the recent case of Juan Carlos Aragón, myth of the Carnival of Cádiz, have gone from being idolized to being hated; from being applauded to being stoned. 

I think it is right and just to denounce evil, that the truth be investigated, that the criminal be condemned, that the victims be compensated, that the hidden cases covered by the shine of the star come to light; but I do not see any sense in denying the value of a work because of the sins of its author, no matter how serious they may be. It is the 3.0 version of the classic argument ad hominem, logically considered a fallacy through and through. 

A beautiful work does not cease to be beautiful because it has an atrocious father, just as an atrocious work does not cease to be beautiful because its father is a beautiful person. 

The same that applies to individual sins could be applied to collective sins. 

Would you stop drinking Fanta if you found out that it was invented in Nazi Germany? Will you stop using the cell phone you are reading this article on because it works thanks to a satellite launched into space with a rocket based on the V2 with which Hitler bombed Europe? Will we stop using the nuclear medicine that cures cancers invented by the Americans thanks to the research to develop the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs? 

Behind the culture of cancellation hides a scandal typical of postmodern society: the man who had reasoned that God does not exist and who had put himself in his place, has discovered that he is not God either. He is naked!

Human idols have feet of clay, and as soon as you scratch them you discover their fragility, the inescapable corruption that invades us. The current political panorama also offers us a unique perspective to contemplate the mystery of human weakness. «We couldn't believe it, I'm in shock!», reply the friends of those who have just been caught red-handed after having been elevated to the secular Olympus for years as defenders of the highest human values. I am sure that even some of those involved will be in shock, unable to understand why he did what he did if he considered himself an irreproachable person. Why do we sin? Why do we catch ourselves doing what we do not want to do? Why do those who are capable of leading us to touch heaven with their dance, their music, their painting, their intelligence, their science, their inventiveness, their political ideas... behave like demons? 

The culture of cancellation tries in vain to punish in this life those who are already dead. I prefer not to idolize any human being, no matter how brilliant he may seem to me, and continue to believe in divine justice, where the whole truth will be revealed, and which will give to each one his due, in his just measure. Let us admire the beauty that is above man and let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

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