Two Leos: The Popes, Technology, and the Battle for Humanity’s Future

By Robert J. Hutchinson

When Robert Francis Prevost stepped onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on May 8, 2025, and announced that he would be called Leo XIV, Catholics around the world asked the same question: why Leo?

The answer reaches back more than a century, to a remarkable Italian nobleman named Vincenzo Pecci who became Pope Leo XIII and changed the Church’s relationship to the modern world forever. In Two Leos, veteran Catholic author Robert J. Hutchinson — author of When in Rome, Searching for Jesus and The Dawn of Christianity — offers the first dual biography of these two extraordinary popes, tracing their parallel lives across two centuries and two civilizational crises: the Industrial Revolution that shattered the old social order, and the artificial intelligence revolution that is reshaping ours. Along the way, Hutchinson tells the story of Catholic social teaching itself — what it is, where it came from, and why it may be exactly what the world needs now.

Two Popes, Two Revolutions

For two thousand years, the Roman popes have stood as a prophetic voice against the delusions and barbarisms of empires, proclaiming the simple truth that every human being is precious in the eyes of God and cannot be used as a pawn in whatever schemes kings, CEOs, or government bureaucrats may have in mind.

Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) grew up in a world of peasant agriculture and parish-centered communities—a pre-industrial economy whose logic shaped everything he later wrote. When the Industrial Revolution destroyed Europe’s agrarian economies and reduced millions to slavery in urban factories, Leo responded with Rerum Novarum (1891), the landmark encyclical that rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and revolutionary socialism, insisting that workers have natural rights to association, living wages, and property—and that the state has obligations to protect those rights.

Pope Leo XIV grew up in suburban Chicago as the sexual revolution reshaped American societies and dissolved stable immigrant Catholic communities. A missionary for 13 years during Peru’s bloody civil war against Marxist revolution, he witnessed the effects of a globalized economy in the faces of poor children.  His choice of name signaled a conscious resumption of Leo XIII’s moral crusade —this time to confront the globalized economy, artificial intelligence, and the rise of new reproductive technologies that make Brave New World look tame.

What This Book Does

Two Leos is a work of political philosophy in the form of a dual papal biography. It traces how two popes, separated by more than a century, confronted the same fundamental crisis: What happens when technological revolution makes human beings expendable? Leo XIII watched industrial capitalism reduce workers to interchangeable units in a factory system. Leo XIV is watching artificial intelligence do the same to knowledge workers, genetic engineering redefine what it means to be human, and a globalized economy subordinate entire nations to corporate profit margins. The book doesn’t prescribe a single political program.  Rather, it asks whether any system that treats persons as means rather than ends can be made just, and what it would take to build one that does.

What You’ll Find Inside

• How Leo XIII used thirty—two years of “exile” in Perugia to develop the intellectual framework for modern Catholic social teaching
• Robert Prevost’s formation in Peru during the Shining Path insurgency, and what it taught him about just war, violence, and institutional competence
• The Church’s long argument with liberalism—from the Enlightenment through Vatican II to today’s post—liberal moment
• Why Rerum Novarum’s rejection of both capitalism and socialism remains the most intellectually serious alternative to libertarian individualism and collectivism
• Leo XIV’s early statements on AI, migration, genetic engineering, and the “culture of death”—and whether papal humanism has the resources to be right about the second Industrial Revolution

About the Author

Robert J. Hutchinson has spent thirty years writing about the Catholic Church and the origins of Christianity. He is the author of When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City (1998), Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (2015), and The Dawn of Christianity (2017). Hutchinson studied philosophy as an undergraduate, moved to Israel to learn Hebrew, and earned an MA in theology. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in philosophy at a European university.

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Robert J. Hutchinson defends his M.Phil dissertation, What is Faith, on October 21, 2025, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Why do some people live with a deep confidence in life and in their ultimate destinies? Why do others struggle with doubt and anxiety about the future?

The Philosophy of Religion may provide an answer: I propose that faith comes in two forms, what I like to call Metaphysical and Religious.

What Faith Really Means

Most people think faith means accepting religious doctrines without evidence.

But this misses something crucial about how faith actually works.

Faith, at its core, simply means trust.

When you sit in a chair, you have faith, that is, you trust, that it won’t collapse.

When you drive on the freeway, you have faith that other drivers will follow the rules of the road.

When you marry someone, you have faith in them despite incomplete knowledge of their character.

All these involve the same basic elements:

• Making a decision based on partial information
• Taking calculated risks
• Trusting despite uncertainty
• Building habits of reliance over time

Faith works in the same way.

It’s about trusting in God and what God has revealed, not blind belief in propositions.

Two Different Sources of Trust

Here’s where it gets interesting. People develop trust in God from two very different sources of evidence – what philosophers call impartialist and partialist.

Metaphysical Faith (MF) comes primarily from “impartialist” evidence and experiences most people can access.

The wonder you feel looking at a starry night sky.

Your sense that moral “facts” exist: for example, that torturing babies is always wrong regardless of what people think about it.

The intuition that effects must have causes.

The feeling that life has meaning and purpose.

These experiences cross religious boundaries. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and even many non-religious people all share them.

They point toward something greater than ourselves.

Religious Faith (RF) is trust in God based on the partialist evidence and experiences of particular religious communities and their teachings.

The testimony of prophets like Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad. Sacred texts like the Bible, Torah, or Quran. The authority of religious institutions and their interpretations. Private mystical experiences within specific traditions.

These sources are limited to particular groups. They’re not accessible to everyone in the same way.

Why This Distinction Matters

Understanding these two types of faith, Metaphysical and Religious, helps explain several puzzles about how people view God and their own lives.

First, why do people from different religions often seem to share similar outlooks?

They may disagree about specific doctrines. But they often share a deep trust in life’s ultimate goodness and in the divine source of that goodness.

This reflects, I believe, their shared Metaphysical Faith.

Second, why do some people lose their faith, their trust in God, when they question religious teachings?

The answer is that they are confusing their Metaphysical Faith with their Religious Faith.

When particular religious beliefs are challenged, some people mistakenly think that means all trust in God must go.

But questioning specific religious claims doesn’t require abandoning all hope. Quite the opposite.

Third, why do some supposedly “non-religious people” still live their lives with confidence, joy and an overwhelming sense of purpose?

They may reject organized religion while maintaining a Metaphysical Faith.

They do trust in God, however they conceive God to be, while questioning the teachings of a given religion.

The Complexity of Real Belief

Most believers actually combine both types of faith.

For example, a Christian might trust in God because of:

… wonder at the universe’s complexity (Metaphysical Faith)

… belief in Jesus’s resurrection (Religious Faith)

… moral intuitions about love and justice (Metaphysical Faith), and

… the authority of their church’s teaching (Religious Faith)

These different sources of faith complement and reinforce one another.

Yet they’re logically separate. You can have one without the other.

What This Means for Our Divided World

This framework helps explain religious disagreement without dismissing anyone’s experience.

People can reasonably disagree about the specifics of Religious Faith.

The historical evidence for a particular religious claim is often contested.

Religious institutions sometimes conflict with one another.

Sacred texts often require interpretation that reasonable people dispute.

But Metaphysical Faith operates differently.

It’s based on widely shared human experiences.

It doesn’t require accepting anyone’s authority.

And it’s compatible with scientific investigation and rational inquiry (as are many forms of Religious Faith).

A More Honest Conversation

Perhaps our public discussions about religion would improve if we recognized this distinction.

Instead of asking, “Do you believe in God?” we might first ask:

“Do you trust that existence has ultimate meaning?”

“Do you feel wonder that points beyond the material world?”

“Do you sense moral truths that transcend human opinion?”

These questions get at what underlies Metaphysical Faith.

They’re less divisive than arguments about specific religions – whether God spoke to Mohammed or Joseph Smith received golden tablets.

They acknowledge the spiritual dimension of human experience.

And they don’t require accepting contested historical claims.

The Risk of Trust

Both types of faith, Metaphysical and Religious, involve genuine risk.

Metaphysical Faith could be mistaken.

The awe someone feels in the face of the cosmos could mean nothing special.

Religious Faith could be based on false claims about the founders of a religion.

But risk is unavoidable in human life.

We make countless decisions based on incomplete information.

We trust people who might betray us.

We commit to values that might prove hollow.

The question isn’t whether to take risks. The question is which risks are worth taking.

Living with Uncertainty

Perhaps the most honest position is to acknowledge that both types of faith involve uncertainty.

We don’t have complete mathematical proofs for God’s existence based on premises everyone accepts.

Yet in the face of uncertainty, it is still rational to base one’s life choices on the best evidence at someone’s disposal.

Faith, trust in God, is itself part of that evidence.

It allows people to live with confidence, hope, and a sense of purpose. It grounds their commitment to love, justice, and truth.

Whether that trust is justified remains an open question.

But it’s a risk many thoughtful people choose to take.

And understanding the two forms of faith helps explain why.

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history, including Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (Thomas Nelson), The Dawn of Christianity (Thomas Nelson), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery) and When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City (Doubleday). Email him at: roberthutchinson@substack.com

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When I was in college 30 years ago, philosophy was strictly an academic exercise and there were few resources available for people, like me, who view philosophy more as a way of life or avocation than as a job.

Today, however, all that has changed.

There are three or four excellent “magazines” about philosophy – such as Philosophy Now and The Philospher’s Magazine – that are filled with funny, off-beat, irreverent articles about philosophical topics. A number of top-rate publishing houses, mostly in the UK, such as Routledge and Blackwell Publishing, produce books aimed at a general philosophical readership.

There are philosophy radio programs such as Philosophy Talk… coffee houses… salons… adult education classes… and literally hundreds of websites for the interested reader. There are even philosophy comic books, such as LogiComix about the life of British logician Bertrand Russell. It’s simply amazing. It’s a golden age of philosophy, I think.

The irony, however, is that there is still no solid consensus on what, precisely, philosophy actually is. In its historical and etymological sense, philosophy is literally “love (philia) of wisdom (Sophia),” and that is always how I have looked upon it. Philosophy, for me, is the attempt to reflect upon experience in order to understand more about life and how we are to live. My aims, like those of Socrates, are primarily practical: I want to understand the world and myself to live better.

Today, there are three, perhaps four major “schools” or approaches to philosophy, each with their own journals, intellectual heroes and methodologies. It is one of the scandals of contemporary philosophy that these schools are somewhat incommensurable, meaning they are so different in their approaches and ideals they are almost incapable of speaking to one another. It’s as though organic chemistry and 17th century French literature are forced to share the same offices and pretend they are the same discipline (I exaggerate but you get the point).

The first approach may be called, for lack of a better word, Traditional Philosophy: this is the approach now largely taught only in Catholic universities. It is primarily historical in orientation, a “history of philosophy” style in which students study the thought of, say, the ancient Greeks, and Descartes, the British empiricists, Kant, Hegel and so on. There is very little attempt to think through how the thought of these philosophical greats can be reconciled. The idea appears to be that by working through all of these great thinkers, eventually the student will come to his or her own philosophical conclusions — although there is really no fixed “method” or approach given for doing so. I always think of this as the University of Chicago or Great Books approach. A variation of this approach is Catholic philosophy, including various schools of Thomism (such as the Transcendental Thomism of Joseph Maréchal, Karl Rahner and, my own guru, Bernard J.F. Lonergan)

The second major approach to philosophy today is what is known as Continental Philosophy. This is the philosophy that is most commonly taught in Europe and, again, in some Catholic universities in the U.S. In practice, it means primarily the philosophical systems of phenomenology, existentialism, so-called “critical theory” and their postmodern descendants. When I was in college, this is what I studied (in addition to traditional philosophy). We read the classic texts of phenomenology as well as such trendy philosophers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, Edith Stein and others. Today, those names have largely been replaced by those of postmodern French thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard. While classical Husserlian phenomenology does attempt to “solve” major philosophical problems and actually be a descriptive science, in practice students of Continental Philosophy, like their Traditional Philosophy counterparts, spend much of their time studying the works of individual thinkers and writing papers on aspects of their thought. (There is a greater interest in Continental Philosophy in social and political questions, however.)

The third and allegedly dominant approach to philosophy today is Analytic Philosophy. This is the philosophy most commonly taught in the UK and in major U.S. universities. Built upon the infrastructure of British empiricists such as David Hume, Analytic Philosophy appeared in the early 20th century through the work of such thinkers as Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. When I was in college, I found Analytic Philosophy to be mostly unintelligible gibberish. The emphasis on symbolic logic and the solving of trivial intellectual “puzzles” was, to me, an absurd waste of time.

In the past few years, however, I’ve been reading more about Analytic Philosophy and I am now much more impressed. Analytic Philosophy has matured over the past few decades and is now more of a philosophical “style” than it is a collection of doctrines. The style is more like that of my hero, Bernard J.F. Lonergan, in that Analytic Philosophy is much more interested in actually solving philosophical problems than it is in clarifying the thought of past philosophers. Thus, Analytic Philosophy is characterized by a thematic, rather than a “history of philosophy,” approach. It uses or creates a specialized technical vocabulary to elucidate the various “options” available in any given philosophical issue… marshals the evidence in favor or against those options… and then attempts to actually “settle” the issue. It’s actually quite refreshing.

The only problem with Analytic Philosophy from the perspective of a traditional philosopher or “lover of wisdom” is that it’s still focused primarily on trivial problems or mere puzzles (perhaps because those are the easiest ones to “solve”).  The cure for this tedium has been, over the past several years, the appearance of those popular philosophy journals and publishing houses I mentioned earlier. Precisely because they are aiming at a wider audience, the popular philosophy authors have to turn their attention to the Big Issues that interest real people – and thus are forced by the market to abandon the tedium beloved by academics and use their philosophical skills to address topics people actually care about. An example of how wonderful this can be is a book I am reading right now, Michael Sandel’s magisterial Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? It’s clear, concise, lays open the various options available on contentious issues, concerns serious subjects (what is justice?) and doesn’t resort to pretentious displays of symbolic logic to make its points.

These days, I mostly read good Catholic philosophy (such as can be found in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly or Method: A Journal of Lonergan Studies) and “popular” analytic books such as Justice or those produced by Routledge.  I still can’t read academic analytic philosophy journals.  I tried subscribing to Faith and Philosophy, the (mostly analytic) journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, but found it deadly dull and exhibiting the worst aspects of analytic pretentiousness.  Here’s a sample, taken from John Turri’s essay, “Practical and Epistemic Justification in Alston’s Perceiving God” (July 2008, p. 290):

“Alston’s thesis is that putative perceptions of God often justify beliefs about God.  A subject S has a putative perception of God when S has an experience e in which it seems to S that God appears to S as P.  If, based on e, S forms the “M-belief” that God is P, then S has a justified belief that God is P.  An M-belief is a belief that God is P, which is based on a putative perception of God.  (I will often substitute ‘q’ for the proposition that God is P.)

My reaction to writing like that is the same as George Will’s: Just because life is absurd that doesn’t mean philosophy should be as well.

I don’t mean to pick on John Turri, whom I am sure is a great guy and a lot smarter than I am. But this sort of stuff is meant solely for professional philosophers in universities… and is largely what turns people off to philosophy as an academic discipline.  If Socrates had spoken like that, they probably would have forced him to drink hemlock much earlier and philosophy would never have gotten off the ground.

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The debate over Evolution, Creation and Adam and Eve is one of my least favorite topics.  That’s because I’ve accepted the theory of evolution ever since fourth grade, when it was first explained to me in science class by a Dominican nun.

As a result, debating evolution feels a lot like debating the Pythagorean theorem: It’s something I studied 40 years ago… long ago accepted… but makes my head hurt even thinking about.

This is one of the many differences between Catholics and Protestants, I’ve found.  Catholics rarely if ever think about evolution.  For Protestants, it’s one of their favorite subjects, a principal “litmus test” for theological orthodoxy in many churches.

It took the agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrmann nearly 20 years of rigorous graduate education before he could finally come to accept what I learned in fourth grade:  that human beings have existed on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years… and their physical bodies likely developed out of more primitive animal forms.

When I was in high school, one of my Jesuit teachers showed me a copy of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani generis in which the pope explained that “the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” is not incompatible with Christian faith as revealed in the Biblical texts.  Here is the key section (36):

For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter – for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.

The key point for Catholics, the pope explained, is that human beings are all descended from a real, historical, single human pair (called in Hebrew ha-adam and Hava, Adam and Eve), however they may be conceived.

Theologically, this belief is known as monogenism, the view that human beings are descended from a single couple.

Ironically enough, scientists in the 1950s were leaning toward another viewpoint, that of polygenism, the belief that the human race developed from many different independent groups.  I have to admit, to my teenage mind, the theory of polygenism seemed much more plausible.  After all, doesn’t it make more sense that there were many different groups of primates all over the world and humans “evolved” independently from those groups?

Nevertheless, I’ve never had any problem believing in both the Genesis account of creation and in various scientific theories of evolution.  Neither of the twin fundamentalisms in this debate — that of some evangelical Protestants or that of atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins — appealed to me.

Pope Pius XII’s explanation made more sense to me:  The first 11 chapters of Genesis, the pope explained, do not conform “to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time” yet constitutes history in “a true sense.”

The inspired text, he added, “in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.”

Precisely:  Genesis is …

(1) a “popular description of the origin of the human race,” using

(2) “simple and metaphorical language,” that nevertheless contains

(3) “principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation.”

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There are many different ways of life, of course, and each person has to choose the way that fits his or her personality and intuitions about what life is all about and how to be happy. There is the way of the adventurer. The way of the businessman. The way of the scholar or priest. There is the way of the artist or mystic. There is even Gurdjieff’s Way of the Sly Man, the secret mystic who lives like an ordinary business man. But because I studied Aristotle at a young age, I’ve always been persuaded that, when considering how to “structure” your life, you should consider how best to use whatever God-given talents you’ve been given. In his Nicomachian Ethics (1095a15–22), Aristotle said that happiness (eudaimonia) comes from the full exercise of your powers… from using your gifts… and I’ve always thought that is true. And that is why, for me personally, one of the dominant themes of my life has always been what I call balance – the attempt to arrange your life, in so far as its possible, so that you have some balance in life and are able to use as many abilities as possible. Perhaps this is actually the Way of the Dilettante but I prefer to think of it as the Way of the Renaissance. In other words, I wanted a life in which I could marry, raise a family, think, create, study, make money, travel, play sports, stay in shape, play music, read books, and, in general pursue my interests and passions. I tried to make choices, as life went on in its haphazard way, that created conditions in which this multi-faceted, balanced life would be possible.

For example, I knew early on that I wanted to be my own boss – both because I would probably make more money with my own businesses but also because it meant I would have more free time, the ability to travel, the ability to see my children growing up, and so on. As a result, I never really pursued any sort of corporate job or career. This has its disadvantages, of course. We’ve always had to pay for our own health insurance and medical costs, for example – and to this day marvel when friends complain about their $30 “co-pays” and rising insurance costs. We paid for each of our children’s deliveries, about $5,000 each, almost literally in cash. We’ve also had to create our own Defined Benefit Pension Plan with its myriad federal regulations, its mandatory reporting requirementss, its frequent demands for cash, and what I like to call the “adult supervision” of a professional pension fund administrator – a delightful woman, the “dragon lady,” who is an Orthodox Jew and who does her best to keep us out of trouble with the Feds.

But overall, being self-employed, in my opinion, gives you many more opportunities for the “full exercise of your powers” and be happy than working in a nine-to-five corporate job. I am revisiting all these issues afresh because, as I write these words, my eldest son is plotting his own career trajectory in the corporate world of high finance – and I marvel both at his ambitious determination and at the assumptions that underlying his plotting. It is so utterly alien to my own way of life – trying to fashion a career in a corporate setting – that I am only now appreciating the stubborn but quite deliberate choices that went into our way of life.

Another part of living a balanced life is making money – not a lot of money, perhaps, but enough to provide a safe and comfortable home, in a quiet and secure neighborhood, and so that you can afford such luxuries as sports teams, music and language lessons, health care, good schools and so on. If you want to marry and raise children – which, for most people, is the most realistic path to becoming a decent human being and whatever enlightenment is granted us on this earth — a minimum amount of money is a requirement. The practical upshot of this, for me, was that I didn’t want to choose businesses or jobs that would make me too poor. I’ve never really been all that materialistic (as anyone who sees the old truck I drive or my clothes would confirm) but I do like to travel, buy books, study Aikido and philosophy in my spare time, and provide educational opportunities for my children. This meant that my wife and I had to figure out how to make money – and thus becoming a starving artist wasn’t a choice I was prepared to make. I admire artists for their single-minded dedication to their art… and I actually would encourage anyone with serious talented to pursue art or music as a career choice… but you still have to earn a living, artist or no.

When young people call me up, as some do, and ask me if they should become writers, I always say the same thing: Absolutely! It’s the best way of life in the world! My only caveat is that, to be happy, most people will want to marry and have children, to exercise all of their powers – not just their artistic ones – and that you therefore have to balance your artistic pursuits with the need to make money and provide a comfortable home. You want to enjoy your body and stay in shape. Play tennis or softball. Go to yoga classes. This is self-evident to many people but not to all, especially not to all of my children. When you are young and idealistic, you want to give yourself over to a great artistic passion or project – to spend years working on plays that never get produced, or a great novel, or painting, or a rock band. In your early twenties, that’s what you should do – test out your abilities and explore different ways of making a living. But if you want to have a happy life, you need to know that you have to balance the desire for creative pursuits with the need to make a decent living – not to “sell out” but in order that you can “exercise your full powers,” so you’re able to become a full human being.

Again, I am only thinking about these issues because I have so many children. But I really do believe balance in life is essential, perhaps even a key to happiness – even if you decide that your talents lie in science, or engineering, or medicine. For example, my eldest daughter is thinking about becoming a doctor. My wife likes this idea because her sister is a doctor and she likes the economic security that being a doctor can provide to women, especially in an increasingly competitive global economy. I think that’s great, of course, and will do everything I can to help my daughter through medical school, if she decides to pursue that course. My only caution to her would be to strive for balance – to think about how to balance the demands of a medical career with the needs and expectations of family life, her musical talents, her passion for swimming and athletics. Medicine is a fairly demanding and monomaniacal profession… but I know it’s possible to build a balanced life as a doctor, as my younger brother and my sister-in-law have proven. But it takes effort and deliberate choices.

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