Magnifica Humanitas: Building Jerusalem or Another Babel?
The National Catholic Register commentary by Stephen Hildebrand (May 28, 2026) offers an enthusiastic appraisal of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas by the usurper antipope Leo XIV. The article presents the document’s central metaphor of “building” to frame the discussion around artificial intelligence, contrasting a potential “Tower of Babel” (a civilization without God) with the “rebuilding of Jerusalem” (a civilization of love). Hildebrand highlights Leo XIV’s warnings about technocratic culture and the dangers of AI, while emphasizing the document’s “cautious optimism” and its call for education to form “faithful builders” who can master technology rather than be mastered by it. This commentary, far from offering a prophetic warning against the spirit of the age, serves as a sophisticated vehicle for the very modernist errors it claims to transcend, cloaking a naturalistic humanism in the vestments of a faith it systematically empties of its supernatural content.









