Three Things Thursday: A Warm Take on Magnifica Humanitas

Like many people, I’ve been reading Pope Leo XIV’s first Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. It is long, it is expansive, and in many ways, it is daunting. Time will tell whether it is a worthy successor to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891), but it certainly continues (explicitly) in that tradition. There are already quite a few “hot takes” from various commentators on this document and I am sure that folks much more learned in matters of theology, “Social Doctrine“, and papal politics will have more thoughtful takes on this over the next year or so. I offer here a few warm takes on the letter that mainly focused on parts of the text that resonated most deeply with me. To be clear, I’m not Catholic and don’t have any particular faith commitment to this document, but it still struck me as a remarkable statement that speaks to many issues that haunt our contemporary society. Thing the First Over the last few months, I lost my father and this week we decided that our 13 year old “yellow dog”…