The biggest failing in the Pope's recent encyclical is that it offers no vision of a post-work world (work in the economic sense, the job as a core part of a life.) It treats job displacement as a serious risk but gives no guidance, spiritual or otherwise, for what comes after.
Users express optimism that the Church could add unique value on post-work society amid AI automation, an area where secular thinking falls short.
This is where the secular world has the least idea of what to say, and where the Church could add the most value.
But even beyond the spiritual, the Church has like 15 centuries experience running communities not oriented around a wage (monasteries, etc.) to draw upon.
The biggest failing in the Pope's recent encyclical is that it offers no vision of a post-work world (work in the economic sense, the job as a core part of a life.) It treats job displacement as a serious risk but gives no guidance, spiritual or otherwise, for what comes after.
The risks it names are real and important. But risk management is not the same as a vision. We need a sense of where we want to end up, and how people will find meaning once we're there.
This is where the secular world has the least idea of what to say, and where the Church could add the most value.
But even beyond the spiritual, the Church has like 15 centuries experience running communities not oriented around a wage (monasteries, etc.) to draw upon.
Though the encyclical doesn't say it explicitly, one reading is that it entails a call for labor protectionism. But this fails on the encyclical's own terms, because it fixes dignity to productivity, the thing the encyclical condemns.
The risks it names are real and important. But risk management is not the same as a vision. We need a sense of where we want to end up, and how people will find meaning once we're there.