Laudato Si and the Problem with Technology

On Our Distance from the God of Revelation

Fontana Lake Dam, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Let me begin by making an important qualification: I have never considered myself a person hyper-concerned with the effects of technology. In seminary, I always found it fascinating to see how a personal mantra became a ubiquitous expression almost overnight. I remember a moment in my second year of formation, when a member of our priest faculty told his students that “technology is the ontology of modernity.” The phrase immediately became a catchphrase for use both inside and outside of the classroom. And I always responded (with full Christian charity, of course) by insisting that the claim is ridiculous. “Surely, you enjoy your air conditioners and refrigerators and air travel and your aunt’s chemotherapy,” I’d often reply. Making use of language in the style of a gun rights advocate, I would tell my fellow seminarians: technology is not your problem; people are your problem. 

That stance of mine started to change sometime in 2015. A professor at Mount St. Mary’s and I began a book exchange, of sorts. I would give him something to read and think about that I thought worthwhile, and he would do the same. The book he gave me for the summer is called Better Than Well, by Carl Elliott. Elliott has a PhD in philosophy from Glasgow University and an MD from the University of South Carolina, where he concentrated on psychiatric medicine. His book is an exploration and semi-critique of the American obsession with enhancement technologies; on practices ranging from southerners engaging in accent-reduction therapy to sex reassignment surgery. About halfway through the book, at the conclusion of a chapter on Prozac and other prescription drugs used to alter mental states, Elliott writes:

On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and more creativity. But Sisyphus is not a patient with a mental health problem. To see him as a patient with a mental health problem is to ignore certain larger aspects of his predicament connected to boulders, mountains, and eternity.¹

What Elliott is talking about in this chapter is the use of medical technologies not to change or alter realities, but to leave reality as it is but see it differently. This idea of a cultural retreat from reality grounded in the actual practices of actual people grabbed my attention in a new way. For the first time, concern for the effects of technology seemed worth thinking about. Then in May of 2015, Pope Francis issued the encyclical Laudato Si. To my surprise, an encyclical with an ostensible focus on the environment and care for creation included a deep meditation on the impact of technology on our Christian lives. The past several years of work in schools and parishes have only confirmed (to my mind at least) that the impact of technology of which Pope Francis speaks deserves our attention. Laudato Si is an encyclical that deserves our attention.

Here is my general theme: Pope Francis in Laudato Si is concerned with a modern technological paradigm that distorts our relationship to reality. Serious spiritual consequences follow from this distortion, and I believe that these spiritual consequences are of real import for a pope who is more pastor than philosopher or theologian. After some introductory remarks, I will use key passages from the encyclical to present a vision of how Pope Francis understands the challenges that we face regarding technology, reality, creation, and the spiritual life; I will use outside sources when necessary to flesh out these ideas. 

A few introductory remarks. I think that Pope Francis is particularly concerned with our human appreciation and recognition of reality as something that is given to us. Consider the following. In Laudato Si, Pope Francis uses the word “realism” or “reality” or “realities” 51 times. In his apostolic exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Francis uses these words 39 times. Compare this to his two immediate predecessors, two pontiffs reknowned for their efforts to defend reality against the various forms of relativism and secularism that would deny it. In Caritas in veritate, Benedict uses these words a scant 14 times. John Paul II, in Fides et ratio, uses them 30 times, and only 12 times in Evangelium vitae. For a man perceived by many to be more tolerant and inclusive, Pope Francis is quite concerned with getting at truth and reality, even compared to his predecessors. 

Sometimes there are stylistic or thematic reasons that explain word choice in Laudato Si. To begin with, word choice in the writings of Pope Francis is often limited and redundant. Pope Francis is not an academic like John Paul II or Benedict XVI before him. Moreover, Pope Francis uses certain words to describe concerns that are specific to his papacy. For example, Pope Francis often expresses concern about what he styles “cultural imperialism.” Cultural imperialism is the use of wealth and influence by countries in the Northern Hemisphere to manage how nations of the Southern Hemisphere live and act in the world. Francis is opposed to this form of imperialism, and so he will often write of cultural, historical, or intra-national “realities” that must be taken into consideration or kept in balance. And finally, the emphasis that Pope Francis places on dialogue entails that diverse persons and groups will bring to a conversation different conceptions of reality that are then subject for discussion. So, in the course of describing this type of dialogue, Francis makes regular use of the words “realism,” “reality,” or “realities.”

Nonetheless, Francis makes reality a centerpiece of his arguments. He begins Laudato Si with a reference to the concern for reality taken by Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and St. Francis of Assisi. Each of these leaders insisted that reality cannot become a mere object for human use and consumption. Pope Francis is clear that his encyclical is in conformity with their various approaches to the issue of reality viewed through the lens of ecology. Then, in §62, Francis writes “science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both.” He continues to develop a creation theology, and then in §75, Francis tells us that “A spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable . . . [whenever this happens] human beings will always try to impose their own laws and interests on reality.” Francis will insist that we do this—the forgetting of God and the manipulation of reality—through a technological paradigm that distorts our view of reality and renders true integral ecology an impossible aim.  

As I understand Pope Francis, this forgetting of God in conjunction with our modern technological prowess work together to create what he styles “an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm” (§106). What Francis describes here is an epistemology, one that does damage to the relations between God, human beings, and creation. He speaks of a tendency, conscious and unconscious, “to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society” (§107). Let me say that I think Francis could have developed these ideas further; and perhaps with more precision. He is painting a picture in broad strokes (which I do believe makes the encyclical more accessible than others). But for a better critique of the epistemological roots of our distortion of reality, it is best to turn to John Paul II. Technology is a focus of his argument in Laborens exercens, and even more so in Fides et ratio, where he speaks of Christians who strive to “make their way amid the pressures of an immanentist habit of mind and the constrictions of a technocratic logic” (§15). 

There is much continuity between Francis and John Paul II. Like Francis, John Paul II traced our distortion of reality to a bad technological epistemology. In Fides et ratio, John Paul writes of:

The mistaken belief that technology must dominate all. It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being. (§5)

The consequence of this type of technological thinking that forsakes the transcendent for the immanent are forms for agnosticism and relativism. For John Paul II, the technological mindset is of spiritual consequence. Francis agrees, and writes in two sections of a practical relativism that results from the technological paradigm and allows humans to see other humans and the environment as objects fitting for use. Moreover, the technocratic mindset damages the “transcendent dimension of our openness to the ‘Thou’ of God” (§119).

Before developing this understanding of the spiritual repercussions of a technological epistemology further, I want to say a bit more about what is central—and perhaps novel—to Francis’s critique of technology. Francis primarily references the works of three persons in his critique of technology. The first two are his immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II. The third is Romano Guardini. I want to propose the influence of a fourth person, unreferenced but whose ideas seem to be lurking in the background. Consider the following passage from Laudato Si:

We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build (§107).

Now, compare Francis’s words to this passage from Martin Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology:

The forester who, in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all appearances walks the same forest path in the same way as did his grandfather is today commanded by the profit-making in the lumber industry, whether he knows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their turn, set public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set configuration of opinion becomes available on demand.²

Heidegger, in his essay, attempts to identify the essence of technology. In doing so, he argues that our two common views—that technology is a means to an end and that technology is a human activity—are wrongheaded. Neither the instrumental nor the anthropological definition of technology goes deep enough. The essence of technology belongs to the process of revealing reality and truth. Heidegger calls the essence of technology enframing (Gestell): an ontological lens through which we discover, understand, and interpret truth. Through this enframing, truth is no longer revealed to us by nature (or by God, the theist would say) but rather is truth seen as a product of our own world building. Through the technological lens, we come to see the world as a “standing-reserve”, a world of parts and pieces to be manipulated. In a provocative passage, Heidegger tells us that the essence of a hydroelectric plant on the Rhine transforms the truth of the Rhine from a beautiful river into a “water power supplier.” Heidegger agrees with John Paul II on this important point: technology severs us from being. And in the language of Pope Francis, technology severs us from God.

This means that the essence of technology is not neutral, as Pope Francis makes clear in Laudato Si. We enframe everything—the environment, history, God, and ourselves—through the technocratic paradigm. As Francis says:

Technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant (§110).

We come to see the world as a random collection of parts, ready for assimilation and use as we see fit. Importantly, because our root problem concerns not technology but the essence of technology, technology itself cannot save us from our impending ecological crisis. We need to recapture, we might say, a better framework through which to encounter reality. In our current technological situation, “it becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life” (§113). 

This inability to recover depth in life is a spiritual problem. Francis identifies many types of problems in Laudato Si. In the realm of practice, there is the pressing moral concern for the well-being of nature and the human person. And in the realm of theory, there are philosophical and theological problems. The modern rejection of realism for forms of relativism or idealism is a philosophical problem. The notion that we live in a universe of chance and not purpose, or that human dominion over nature is absolute because of how we read and interpret the book of Genesis are theological problems. These are problems that John Paul II (our philosopher pope) and Benedict XVI (our theologian pope) worked out through decades of writing and analysis. 

But Francis (it seems to me) is neither a philosopher nor a theologian. He is first and foremost a pastor. So, I cannot help but read Laudato Si through as an encyclical drafted by a pastor. Pope Francis is exceptionally concerned for the spiritual and material well-being of the faithful. He thinks that technology harms the human person. And Pope Francis believes that one way in which technology harms the human person is through a process of enframing that severs Christians from engaging with the beauty of creation; our relationship with the created world is filtered through the lens of technology. A constant theme of Laudato Si is the reality that an improper understanding of creation deleteriously effects the spiritual life. 

Let me develop the argument this way. In the Summa contra gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas writes that the consideration of creation is of great help to personal faith. He gives four reasons for this: the consideration of creation informs us of God’s wisdom, of God’s power, of God’s goodness, and lastly it “endows men with a certain likeness to God’s perfection” (SG 2.2). This leads Thomas to conclude that “the consideration of creatures has its part to play in building the Christian faith.” We need creation in order to know God. Pope Francis affirms that we know of God’s goodness, power, and wisdom through creation in sections 72-77 of Laudato Si. 

But a proper appreciation for creation does more than build and develop faith, according to Aquinas. It also corrects errors in faith. What kind of errors? Thomas lists four. The first is through ignorance, to claim that nothing exists beyond the physical, and so the first cause of creation is necessarily some physical thing or process. Secondly, through ignorance of creation a person might ascribe aspects of creatureliness to God and godliness to creatures. Thirdly, through a form of ignorance of creation that leads a person to claim that actions occur not through God’s will but through some natural process. This limits God’s power, and the efficacy of his providence. Fourthly, through ignorance of creation a person might come to believe that he or she is subject not to God, but to some other aspect of creation. St. Thomas uses astrology as an example of this error. 

Thomas concludes that “It is, therefore, evident that the opinion is false of those who asserted that it made no difference to the truth of the faith what anyone holds about creatures, so long as one thinks rightly about God” (SG 2.3). There are important implications here. Creation is God’s first act of revelation. Creation is essential to our faith, to our ability to know God. What St. Thomas is telling us is that all aspects of God’s second revelation—the words and deeds of salvation history as recorded in scripture—are insufficient for a proper knowledge of and relationship with God. God through creation reveals himself to the world. We need creation to know and love God. 

This makes the technological paradigm all the more dangerous to our spiritual lives. No longer is truth revealed to us by God through nature but rather the truth becomes a consequence of our own human activity because the essence of technology begets a process of enframing. Creation is no longer perceived as an intricate and beautiful whole that reveals the glory of God but rather as a collection of parts for human use. And because of our technological enframing, knowledge of God is left out of the picture. As a result, personal faith in God cannot develop properly. 

I think this is why Francis is so keen on talking about the search for depth in life, or why Francis quotes Benedict XVI when he writes that “the external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast” (§217). Pope Francis continues: “the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion” (§217). And this is why I believe that Francis views our current situation first and foremost as “a cultural, spiritual, and educational challenge” (§202). We have rejected the reality that God reveals to us through nature. True change, Francis insists, will take spiritual conversion. Though Francis seems comfortable working with world leaders on large scale policy initiatives concerning our current environmental crisis, I think it is a mistake to assume that Francis undervalues the need for greater faith. Faith, more than any other feature of the human person, is Francis’s point of departure in Laudato Si. 

There is in Laudato Si a remarkable concern for a Christian faith that is harmed through our use of technology in modern society. Pope Francis is concerned with our inability to recognize reality for what it is; he considers us severed from the world as God intends us to know it. Pope Francis traces our inability to recognize reality as the consequence of a technological epistemology. A technological epistemology arises from the essence of technology, hinted at by Guardini but better presented by Heidegger. The essence of technology is enframing—a vision of the created order as a collection of parts fit for use—and our enframing gives us a distorted view of creation. Creation is God’s first act of revelation, and St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that a proper view of creation is essential for good faith. The claim of Laudato Si is that we have a spiritual crisis at the root of our ecological crisis, and Pope Francis is well-attuned to our current Christian reality because he is first and foremost a pastor. 

I want to close with two references to an essay written many years ago by then Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina. In 2003, Bergoglio contributed an essay to an anthology entitled A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani. In the essay, Bergoglio begins by referencing the effect that Fr. Giussani—who founded the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation—has had on his priesthood. Bergoglio said that Giussani helped him to pray and helped him to be a better Christian. And then Bergoglio writes the following. I am going to quote him at length here, because I am not sure anything better represents the life of Pope Francis life as a priest and a pastor. Bergoglio says:

. . . One of the difficulties of our supermarket culture—where offers are made to everyone to hush the clamoring of their hearts—lies in giving voice to those questions of the heart. This is the challenge. Faced with the torpor of life, with this tranquility offered at a low cost by the supermarket culture (even if in a wide assortment of ways), the challenge consists in asking ourselves the real questions about human meanings, of our existence, and in answering these questions. But if we wish to answer questions that we do not dare to answer, do not know how to answer, or cannot formulate, we fall into absurdity. For men and women who have forgotten or censored their fundamental “whys” and the burning desire of their hearts, talking to them about God ends up being something abstract or esoteric or a push toward a devotion that has no effect on their lives. You cannot start a discussion of God without first blowing away the ashes suffocating the burning embers of the fundamental whys. The first step is to make some sense of the questions that are hidden or buried, that are perhaps almost dying but that nevertheless exist.³ 

In this passage, we see so many of the ideas that we now associate with Pope Francis: consumerism and supermarket culture; an interior and seemingly existential kind of religious faith; the effect of culture on person and society; the need for change and action to be concrete; the need for faith to be a transcendent reality. 

If this is how Pope Francis views the world, and if this is how he conceives of religious faith, then I believe it is all the easier to understand his critique of technology. To the extent that technology interferes with our relationship to reality—to creation, God’s first act of revelation— technology harms the spiritual life. As a consequence, the spiritual life becomes the place where the seeds of cultural, social, political and economic change are sewn. Let me close with one more excerpt from this essay. Cardinal Bergoglio writes:

Pope Luciani once said that the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it puts categories and norms in the place of wonder. But wonder comes before all categories; it is what leads me to seek, to open myself up; it is what makes the answer—not a verbal or conceptual answer—possible for me. If wonder opens me up as a question, the only response is the encounter, and only with the encounter is my thirst quenched. And with nothing else is it quenched more. 

Our modern technological epistemology has worked to sever us from the wonder of creation, and so has severed us from the wonder of encountering God.

1. Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. p. 160.

2. Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology.” p. 8.

3. A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani, ed. by Elisa Buzzi. Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. p. 80.