Author: Christopher Longhurst

By Christopher Longhurst. A survivor of clerical child sexual abuse in the New Zealand Catholic Church recalledbeing told by a Catholic priest that clergy simply had to “take it on the chin” inresponse to abuse disclosures. I heard the same phrase from a Catholic priestmyself. While such remarks should not be mistaken for official Church positions, norassumed representative of all clergy, their recurrence across separate conversationsis striking. The apparent expectation that clergy be commended for taking abusedisclosures “on the chin” risks recasting accountability as an act of endurancedeserving sympathy, rather than a minimum obligation owed to those harmed. The expression…

By Dr Christopher Evan Longhurst KSO Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity),published this month, warns that AI risks concentrating power, narrowing humanfreedom, and placing too much authority in the hands of unaccountable systems. Yetthe document raises an uncomfortable question closer to home: when the Vaticancritiques concentrated moral authority, is it also critiquing itself? Magnifica Humanitas is an ambitious and rhetorically compelling intervention into theethical challenges posed by AI. Yet beneath its appeal to human dignity lies a deeperclaim: that the Catholic Church continues to claim a privileged role in interpretingwhat authentic human flourishing requires in the age…