At a time when artificial intelligence is dominating headlines and raising concerns in communities across the country and among researchers at AI frontier labs, Washington Cardinal Robert W. McElroy in a Sept. 26 lecture called for “a social contract for the digital world” to harness AI’s great promise and safeguard against the grave perils it poses.
“What is needed is a social contract for the digital world, a moment when the major constituencies of our global community come together to forge clear, effective, and penetrating safeguards for both the miracles that will emerge from AI and the dire threats AI will produce,” the cardinal said in a talk at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Washington, D.C.
Cardinal McElroy said that social contract for a future path for artificial intelligence should be charted by a wide range of people, not just by AI industry professionals.
“The contours of the digital world must be forged by a far wider group of people who embrace the breadth of society – workers, university leaders, representatives of government, religious communities, the poor and the marginalized, business leaders and the builders who have created this revolution and genuinely want it to be a grace for all humankind,” Washington’s archbishop said.
The cardinal gave the 52nd Thomas Verner Moore Memorial Lecture, which was established by the Benedictine community of St. Anselm’s Abbey in 1974, its 50th anniversary year, to honor the memory of Benedictine Father Thomas Verner Moore. His ideas and vision were the driving force behind the foundation of that Benedictine community in Washington in 1924, the culmination of his dream of a monastic community devoted to prayer and scientific research. The annual lectures named in his honor are presented in joint sponsorship with The Catholic University of America, reflecting how Father Moore, who died in 1969, served as teaching fellow, instructor, professor of psychology, and eventually as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at the university over a period spanning nearly half a century.
Cardinal McElroy’s talk came as in recent weeks, AI researchers had warned that artificial intelligence posed a potential threat to the future of humanity, and as several leading AI chief executives called on the industry to slow its pace. Meanwhile, in communities across the nation, a cascade of opposition has arisen to the rapid development of data centers needed to power the growth of that technology.
As a framework for his talk, Cardinal McElroy drew upon Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s May 2026 encyclical letter subtitled “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”
The cardinal noted how the landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum of the pope’s predecessor, Leo XIII, brought the perspective of Catholic teaching to address the vast consequences to workers and to social and family life wrought by a transition from an agricultural to an industrial society.
“It is in following this mandate that Pope Leo XIV has issued Magnifica Humanitas precisely because we live in the midst of a technological revolution that may ultimately dwarf the transformations of industrialization,” he said, noting the encyclical states that “we must ask God for the wisdom to interpret the great trends of our time, particularly technological advances. In recent years it has become increasingly evident how rapidly and profoundly digitalization, artificial intelligence, and robotics are transforming our world.” (MH, #4)
Those technological changes, the cardinal said, pose “piercing ethical questions,” including about “raw power placed in the hands of a few entities effectively beyond the reach of government,” and “the question of how privacy can survive in such a digital world.”
“These questions can only be answered in a wide-ranging dialogue at this critical moment in the development of artificial intelligence. And the Church seeks to be a vital part of that dialogue so that the benefits of this digital age will be sustained and enhanced and the dangers minimized,” Cardinal McElroy said.
He pointed to how Pope Leo in his encyclical used the biblical story of the Tower of Babel as an image of human striving for domination coming to a destructive end, countering that with the biblical story of the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem, work that was done “collaboratively with the people as a whole, listening, providing a role for all in the rebuilding and valuing every resident.”
“This moment is for us a call to fashion our dialogue about the digital age so that it becomes a collaborative striving of spiritual and moral depth that embraces all and uses technology with a focus on improving human dignity,” the cardinal said. He added that “a genuinely moral global dialogue on our digital future must follow the model of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, rooted in the diversity of our humanity, the equal dignity of all, and the willingness to limit sheer scientific achievement and action if it can only be accomplished through profound injustice.”
Cardinal McElroy noted how Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas provides “an illuminating compendium of the social teachings of the Church, a handy distillation of the doctrinal trajectory that began with Rerum Novarum.”
“This comprehensive overview of the whole of Catholic social doctrine is essential for framing the Church’s contribution to the global digital dialogue,” he said.
That overview, the cardinal said, includes “Rerum Novarum’s proclamation of the dignity of work and of workers; (and) their value over capital and profit,” and the teaching of successive popes, including St. John Paul II’s emphasis on solidarity as “a form of social friendship among individuals, peoples and nations.”
Washington’s archbishop underscored how “Pope Francis called us to view justice through the eyes of the poor and the marginalized and to understand the enormous personal cost of our technocratic culture that reduces men and women to one-dimensional persons devoid of their human dignity. In addition, Francis pointed to the devastation of our physical world that is being produced by our technological society.”
Those insights are crucial, the cardinal said, because “the digital revolution creates moral questions that embrace virtually every element of Catholic social thought: the nature of human dignity, the rights of workers, the potential for vast advances in knowledge and science, the impact on the environment, family life, political culture, what it means to be human, new types of warfare and the building of peace.”
Cardinal McElroy emphasized six fundamental principles from Pope Leo’s encyclical that he said “form the framework for bringing Catholic social doctrine to the global examination of the moral questions surrounding the digital revolution.”
The first two principles are the dignity of the human person and “the pursuit and defense of the common good,” he said, adding that the third is “the principle of the universal destinations of goods. In the words of the encyclical, ‘this principle reminds us that the earth’s goods – soil, water, air and natural resources – are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all.’” (MH, #65)
The cardinal said the fourth principle, subsidiarity, “points to the critical role that families, educational and cultural organizations, religious communities, and communities of all types play in contributing to the life of the great society which is prior to the state… In the case of the digital revolution, the principle of subsidiarity demands that economic and technological actors not exercise uncircumscribed power over the conditions of everyday life. This is very much at stake in the current moment we are facing.”
The fifth principle, solidarity, promotes “a sense of universal responsibility for the well-being of all,” and should especially focus on the poor and marginalized and on future generations, the cardinal said. He quoted from the encyclical, that “Solidarity demands that decisions regarding data, algorithms, platforms and artificial intelligence, take into account not only the immediate benefit for a few, but the impact on all peoples.” (MH, #76)
Cardinal McElroy said the sixth principle, social justice, points to the need to include “all men and women and children and families equitably in the life of the world and its benefits,” and to banish all forms of exploitation and unjust exclusion and discrimination.
Quoting from Pope Leo’s encyclical, he said, “In the digital age, a just social order guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the youngest and weakest members of society, and subjects the use of data and technology to public oversight, so that the guiding principle is not solely profit, but the dignity of every person and the common good of all people.” (MH, #80)
Then Cardinal McElroy warned of the technocratic paradigm, which he called “the great danger of the digital age.”
“This paradigm is consumed by the power and method of science and objectivity,” the cardinal said, adding, “It endorses not a reverent view of nature, but rather the aggressive drive to dominate and exploit nature. The paradigm posits an illusion of neutrality in technology, ignoring the fact that technology provides a distorted view of human interaction which ultimately favors efficiency and profit. It also ignores the reality that technology brings immense power to humanity in a truncated way that ignores the compelling moral issues that such power raises. It tends to reduce human beings to being a cog in a machine.”
Cardinal McElroy emphasized that “the technocratic paradigm violates each of the core principles of Catholic social teaching. It obscures the transcendent elements of human dignity and leads to the routine denial of human rights. It distorts the common good by instrumentalizing humanity and creating new divisions along economic lines. The technocratic paradigm rejects the principle of subsidiarity by placing power and influence in the hands of a scientifically minded and insular elite, rather than in the mediating institutions of society. And it debases the grace of solidarity by reducing the ability of every man and woman to contribute meaningfully to the common good.”
Countering that mindset, Pope Leo’s encyclical urges that “a new ethic based upon the principles of Catholic social doctrine must be formed to transform scientific research and progress into a process that genuinely enriches the world,” the cardinal said, adding that the foundation for that ethic includes “the recognition that AI systems merely imitate human intelligence, often with greater speed and more accuracy, but without the moral conscience and range of affect and emotions that constitute the human person created in the image of God.”
That is important when assessing AI’s seeming ability “to offer emotional support to women and men and children. A new and distortive notion and experience of friendship and even love is ensnaring many individuals into relationships that can become manipulative and consuming, substituting artificial companionship for authentic relationship,” the cardinal said.
Another key emphasis in the encyclical, Cardinal McElroy said, is “that AI brings with it centralized powers to synthesize, filter and distribute information in ways that distort the Truth and propagate harmful continuing prejudices and divisions in society… One of the most important elements of challenging the technocratic paradigm in our age is to constantly witness to the existence of objective truth and build structures within the emerging digital world that will point to that truth, rather than an increasing universe of distortions that will lead us away from the truth.”
He also underscored how the pope’s encyclical called for “disarming AI,” which Pope Leo said “means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context… This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets driven by the power to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.” (MH, #110)
Cardinal McElroy said a key to this disarmament “is the rejection of the idea that all human limitations are defects that scientific progress should seek to eliminate.” He said disarming AI means “recognizing that human finitude is a core element of authentic humanity and the culture of care, compassion, empathy and embrace that enriches our hearts and souls on this earth.” Quoting Pope Leo’s encyclical, he said, “Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others.” (MH, #122)
The cardinal noted that a pillar of Catholic social doctrine “is the recognition that work is not merely a way to provide income, but an integral expression of our humanity.”
While underscoring that the digital revolution will bring “truly miraculous progress to our world in the areas of science, medicine, the expansion of knowledge and communications, and many of the benefits of AI will allow men and women to carry out their work with greater effectiveness and ease,” the cardinal also warned that “it is quite possible that we will witness enormous net job losses in the coming decades because of AI and robotics. That is the problem with many of the consequences of AI: we simply do not know. What we do know is that there will be massive job losses for individual workers who will become deskilled and thus not employable as a result of AI and robotics in the next decade. We do know that our young people are experiencing enormous job insecurity about their futures. We do know that workers will be competing with machines in a wholly new way.”
The pope’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he said, emphasizes the importance of supporting families and young people in this transition.
Cardinal McElroy said human dignity must be central to every phase of the AI and robotics revolutions, including enacting safeguards to protect workers, such as using the ensuing wealth created by those technologies to provide job training programs and income supports to those who have lost their jobs, and ensuring that wealth arising from those changes does not fall disproportionately into the hands of those who are already most wealthy in our society.
Reflecting on benefits that the digital revolution might bring to humanity, the cardinal said, “Vast areas of information and learning which would have been impossible 10 years ago will enrich our lives. Diseases that were incurable will become curable. Communication across continents on a level formerly unthinkable will bring together families and friends in wholly new and economical ways. Efficiencies in commerce will be immense.”
But he noted how Pope Leo’s encyclical addresses key areas where that revolution might endanger freedom, including privacy. The cardinal pointed out how in recent months, frontier AI labs have reported incidents of their models breaking free and invading other companies’ systems and stealing information.
“It has become clear that transparent safeguards, the development of which cannot be left to the AI companies alone, must be developed rapidly if men and women are going to have any assurance that their privacy is not increasingly at risk and the entire technological apparatus of our society is not plunged into chaos,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal McElroy said another area of human freedom at risk in the digital age is the danger of AI luring vulnerable and lonely people “into personal relationships that are not human and can dominate their emotional life.”
Safeguards are especially needed for children in the digital world that is dawning, he said, noting, “Our society must have an informed and substantial dialogue about the dangers that are posed to children by AI and the safeguards which are needed to protect children from genuine threats.”
Washington’s archbishop also pointed out how the encyclical warns of the digital economy leading to new forms of exploitation of workers. “Pope Leo even goes so far as to label this exploitation slavery in its disregard of the dignity of workers,” the cardinal said. The encyclical points out how in many parts of the world, children and adolescents work in inhumane conditions mining the rare earth minerals that are vital to the digital world.
Another danger that Pope Leo underscored in his encyclical is how “the digital revolution is changing the nature of conflict. Some of the most destructive methods of warfare among and within nations are cyberattacks, information distortion and the automation of strategic decisions,” the cardinal said, also pointing to the critical danger of autonomous weapons systems.
“The events of these past weeks, including AI errors that almost led to an American attack on a Chinese vessel, illustrate the depth of the dangers that the utilization of these new technologies in armaments, target decision-making and real time discernment with lethal consequences carry for our world,” Cardinal McElroy said. “All around us there are burgeoning signs that the destructive potential of these new technologies has been underestimated and hurriedly implemented. The world cannot responsibly afford to continue at this pace.”
Amid those realities, the cardinal noted the encyclical emphasized “the call of every Christian and all people of goodwill to build up a civilization of love: disarming our own words and actions, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and bonds of amity among peoples and nations.”
Warning that the digital revolution cannot be stopped, Cardinal McElroy said that revolution “will come at a terrible cost, and that cost will be experienced in grotesquely unequal ways.”
The cardinal then posed questions about what may unfold: “Will privacy be eroded so deeply that it ceases to exist in many parts of our daily lives? Will net job losses be crippling to the poor and the marginalized, and how can society alleviate this? Will AI become a substitute for real friendship and affection? Will artificial intelligence destroy our common home in irremediable ways through environmental destruction? Will warfare delinked from human control broaden the recourse to war and deepen its destructiveness? Most chillingly of all, are the recent breakouts with the most advanced models of our frontier labs a sign that this technology will in the end be uncontrollable, with devastating consequences?”
Cardinal McElroy noted that now key decisions involving those questions are being made by the researchers who created those technologies and the companies that own them. But he warned that “these ‘creators’ frequently suffer from the blinders of the technocratic paradigm which assumes all problems created by technology can be fixed by technology. It is for this reason that the world cannot allow the contours and guardrails of the digital revolution to be forged in isolation by its builders.”
Governments have the power to help implement vital safeguards and provide essential incentives “in this societal effort to foster the best in the digital revolution and prevent the worst,” he said, but he noted that “governments alone cannot chart the way.”
The cardinal said that is why a social contract is needed for the digital world, engaging the perspectives of a wide spectrum of people and drawing on their shared wisdom.
“The present moment of crisis is centered on the fact that in artificial intelligence, the cutting edges of the technology are escaping human control and are misaligned with what they have been instructed to do and what is safe. But a social contract for the digital world must go beyond this immediate question and speak to the entire scope of potential grave harms that are intrinsic to AI: job loss, environmental damage, the erosion of privacy and the emergence of chilling new forms of warfare,” he said.
The cardinal emphasized that “this social contract must be informed by workers’ associations and business leaders; religious communities and universities, representatives of the poor and the marginalized.”
Concluding his talk, Cardinal McElroy said, “In collaboration with governments and researchers, such a wide community of wisdom is our best hope of forming an international framework that can lead us from the precipice that we are on so as to witness the miracles that the digital revolution can produce while avoiding the evils that untrammeled implementation of rapidly developing technology will bring to us all.”
Link to the text of Cardinal Robert W. McElroy’s talk, “A Social Contract for the Digital World,” given on Sept. 26, 2026 at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Washington, D.C.:
