Top photo caption: Anthropic logo, a keyboard and a robotic hand are seen in this June 5, 2026, illustration. OSV News Illustration/Dado Ruvic, Reuters
By Charles Camosy, OSV News
Is society forgetting what it means to be human? In this time of artificial intelligence and new technology, John S. Grabowski, professor of moral theology/ethics at The Catholic University of America, has a new book “A Catholic Guide to Being Human.” He recently spoke with OSV News’ Charles Camosy about how an identity in Christ addresses the lack of self knowledge and confusion in the world over our own humanity.
— Charles Camosy: One might think that a book which serves as a guide to “being human” is sort of strange. Isn’t being human just what human beings do? Why do we need a guide?
— John Grabowski: It would be an understandable reaction to think that this topic and a book devoted to it is rather strange. After all, we don’t have to do anything to be human — it’s just what we are. Why indeed would we need some kind of guide?
But, in point of fact, we are deeply confused about what it means to be human. Over 60 years ago, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the pastoral constitution on the Church “Gaudium et Spes” noted that in spite of our growing scientific knowledge and technological prowess, we do not understand ourselves. As a result, we don’t know how to think about these technologies and how to use them well. The passage of decades and the emergence of new and still more powerful technologies has not changed this situation. It has compounded it.
The fact is that we cannot fully understand ourselves without God’s self-revelation to us in Jesus Christ. The same Council document notes, “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”
— Camosy: There is increasing attention to the idea that large language models (so-called artificial intelligences) may be persons of a sort. How should Catholics think about this kind of talk?
— Grabowski: This is a perfect example of the problem diagnosed by the council. Because we are unsure of what it really means to be human and what our final end is, powerful machines which can generate and compile data better than we can seem very person-like. That, in turn, tends to create either overblown optimism that AI will fix us, or inordinate fear that it will take over and enslave us. Think of all of the films Hollywood has given us over the years playing on these fears.
But, as Pope Leo XIV points out in “Magnifica Humanitas”: “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” They lack the ability to feel empathy or make moral judgments. While they are “useful tools,” they are not — and cannot be — persons. They lack the capacities and relational nature at the heart of personhood. They can only be somethings — not “someones.”
The very fact that this is even a question betrays the depth of our confusion about ourselves.
— Camosy: Speaking of technology, your book warns of all sorts of technological distortions of who we are as human beings when it comes to the creation of new human life. Why did this draw your particular focus and attention?
— Grabowski: I think that there are two reasons. One more practical; the other more substantive.
On a practical level, my primary area of teaching and writing over the years has been in the areas of marriage, family and sexuality. So, I think that I am more attuned to the ways in which our culture gets these things wrong because it is where my focus tends to be.
But on a deeper plane, I think that a consistent theme in Scripture is that when we lose sight of who God is, it shows up in a distorted understanding of sexuality. Conversely, disordered sexual practices very easily darken our minds, harden our hearts and draw us away from our Creator. This is why the Church sees sexual sin as always being serious in nature — not because of some underlying Puritanical mindset.
Sexual difference and fertility are deeply rooted in who we are as persons. They aren’t just biological or “skin deep.” After all, when we bring children into the world, we are cooperating with God in his creative work of creating human beings in his image and likeness. This is not a thing to take lightly. Our sexually differentiated bodies are made to give life and to express love.
Unfortunately, our culture tends to think of sex in terms of recreation rather than love and procreation. Fertility is often regarded as a disease to be treated through mechanical, chemical or surgical means rather than as a gift and blessing. When children are sought or wanted, sometimes it is as ornaments or accessories to adult happiness. Some people turn to the fertility industry to help them pursue “designer children” made to order according to specifications, of sex, race and abilities.
Modern contraception and fertility treatments share a common impulse with transhumanism. We seek to overcome our nature instead of to understand and live in accordance with it. We need the humility to seek and try to live according to God’s design for us as embodied men and women — not to find technological means to remake ourselves.
— Camosy: Let’s finish on something more positive. Where do you have the most hope for this vision of the human being taking root in our culture?
— Grabowski: I think that the key is evangelization. If it is true that “When God is forgotten … the creature itself grows unintelligible,” then it is also true coming to know God and his plan helps us to discover ourselves and our true dignity and destiny. Real humanism has God at its center. The fact that we are hearing and seeing reports of growing numbers of people entering the Church in places where the faith seemed to be waning is surely grounds for hope.
I also think of the fact that there is growing awareness of the potential harm done by screens and social media which are often used as substitutes for real human interaction and connection.
Finally, I see in the students whom I have the privilege to teach a real hunger for deep friendship, lasting love, and the beauty of marriage or consecrated life. They see the carnage that the sexual revolution has wrought in the culture and the destructiveness of hookup culture and pornography. They know that there is more for them and they want it.
Charles Camosy teaches moral theology and bioethics at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
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