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Welcome to What Matters Most, episode 5 of our fifth season. You were just listening to Dr. Jane Barter, a professor in the University of Winnipeg Religion and Culture department and Joint Masters Program Chair. I’m Dr. John Martens, the host of What Matters Most and Director for the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at UBC in Vancouver. In this episode I speak with Jane Barter about Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. This is the fourth episode on What Matters Most to discuss the encyclical and like our previous episodes, new ground was broken in my understanding of the encyclical during this conversation. I walked through the encyclical on my own a few months ago, and then I spoke to two ethicists, Drs. Tisha Rajendra and Ruben Rosario Rodreiguez, on AI, migration, war, and whatever else came up for them in their readings. The third episode dedicated to Magnifica Humanitas featured St. Mark’s theology faculty and our conversation focused a lot on the anthropology of the document, the role of education, about AI and with AI, the problem of deep fakes and how that impacts especially women and children, and how one builds a civilization of love, grounded in truth and humanity, in contrast to the forces that desire power, the technocratic paradigm, and increasing calls for warfare. This episode with Jane Barter focused a lot on the human cost of AI, something I toyed with as a title for this episode, and the way the inherent dignity of human beings is constantly under threat by the structures of sin, now found in AI, which is manifested in violence against people militarily, such as in Gaza, and in the violence of work in which people are increasingly seen as things to be monetized and surveyed. This is a powerful episode.

Dr. Jane Barter’s (she/her) research interests include political theology, contemporary, Christian thought, theopolitics, religion, and memory. Barter’s research bridges the fields of Christian theology, political theology, decolonial, and feminist thought. Her work engages Christian thought and history with contemporary ethical and political questions, with particular attention to the context of colonialism.

She has published three monographs, including her a recent book on witnessing to political atrocity, Theopolitics and the Era of the Witness (Routledge. 2025). She recently co-edited (with Doris Kieser, St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta) a special volume of the Journal of Moral Theology on the papal visit and apology to survivors of Residential Schools in Canada. She is also general editor of the forthcoming (2026) multi-volume T & T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (Bloomsbury Press). She is currently working on a new book, The Pope’s Two Cities: Babel and Jerusalem in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

The word I was struggling to find to describe my conversation with Jane was “generative.” I used the word productive, but that sounds too much like the work of a factory and I was aiming for something more creative. Generative was the word. Jane delved into aspects of the document that I had not seen with as much clarity as she brought, including Christian theologies of labour and whether Catholic theology is too optimistic about the rights of labour being respected in the time of AI and digital capitalism. She spoke clearly about the alienating and corrosive impacts of technocratic capitalism and the forms of enslavement taking place under technocratic capitalism. But she also noted that Pope Leo in his recognition of this is doing something new, that the role of work is a central element of his papacy and that Leo is acknowledging that the treatment of labour under digital capitalism is foundationally abusive and that AI perpetuates a value system of some people being considered more valuable than others. But Leo is pushing back against that, not the first pope to do so for certain, but also interpreting CST as grounded in a preferential option for the poor.

AI supports violence, against the environment and against people. There are also military victims of AI, as Jane described the use of it in Gaza and being”chillingly discriminate in how it kills human beings.” She said, “we don’t see the victims of AI…the human and environmental exploitation.” Human labour, that is, human beings, becomes another thing to be optimized.

She also spoke about the encyclical falling short, even though she had praise for much of it, and it was on the issue of speaking too abstractly about human dignity and not concretely enough about the politics necessary to overcome AI, the technocratic paradigm, and the violence it is unleashing. It remains she said too idealized, too focused on the heavenly Jerusalem, not enough on the Jerusalem here on earth. To focus too much on ideal humanity, even too much the idealization of Mary, shifts our gaze from the human cost of war in Gaza, of the Mary of Gaza, the many Marys of Gaza.

The culture of encounter she said is eschatological; yes, we hope for a life in the world to come, but this does not allow us to abdicate our responsibility to life here on earth and to make that life better for all. Yes, the inherent dignity of human beings is always, has always been, under threat by the structures of sin, but there is something new that has been unleashed by AI. Jane spoke of us being on the precipice of something new that cannot necessarily be answered by the old answers of CST, that something new might have to be created. This is our work, our human work, and it is a threat but also a challenge that we can answer. People have power.

A few links regarding documents and people that were mentioned in this episode.

Sura 19 Maryam;

Mary of Gaza;

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. This is a podcast about big questions, about big issues, about what matters most to people, what’s important to you, what gets you up out of bed in the morning or keeps you up late at night wondering. We are looking at these big questions and big issues through the lens of individual stories and individual lives. Religious traditions and institutions might be systems, ancient and modern, but people are people and religion lives in and through people. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. And how they like to worship.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Let us know what you want to discuss next on the Podcast in general or on Pop Culture Matters. Follow us at our Instagram page @stmarkscce or our new Facebook page Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s, and drop us a line as to what you want to see or hear. Or email us with your suggestions to [email protected]

A few thanks are in order. First of all, I am grateful to Martin Strong, who guides me in the podcasting world and joins me for the Pop Culture Matters regularly. Second, the episodes are edited, engineered, and produced by Kevin Eng who is the first listener to all the episodes and my consultant for each episode, especially with the snippets that begin each episode. Thank you, Kevin, for all of your expertise and support. Finally, to the Fang Fang Chandra, the CCE assistant, who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.

I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are interested in donating yourself to the CCE, please check out the CCE website where you can find the donate button on the top right corner. We are a non-profit organization, and all donations over $20.00 are tax deductible. Or support us on Patreon. If you do not know what Patreon is, ask your children or your grandchildren!

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Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most. This work matters, so thanks for being a part of it.

Dr. John W. Martens</