Christian Spirituality and Artificial Intelligence

Discernment in a Global Technological Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID24242765
AuthorsDomènec Melé (0000-0002-8212-8838, Business Ethics, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Av. Pearson, 21, 08034 Barcelona, Spain)
Year2026
Volume17
Issue11
Pages1254
Publication date2026-10-27
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel17111254
OpenAlexW7223987969
LanguageEN
References cited19

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly mediates work, knowledge, communication, education, and social relationships within a global economy organized around prediction, personalization, automation, and optimization. While AI ethics has focused on autonomy, fairness, accountability, and governance, less attention has been given to how AI-mediated environments affect spiritual development and the ultimate orientation of the human person. This article examines AI through Christian spirituality, drawing primarily on Catholic spiritual theology and Catholic Social Teaching, including recent ecclesial reflection, particularly Antiqua et nova and Magnifica humanitas. It develops an account centered on vocation, faith, hope, charity, virtue, communion, wisdom, and stewardship. From this perspective, it explores distinctions between information and wisdom, simulated interaction and communion, assistance and substitution, preference satisfaction and responsible freedom, and optimization and discernment. The analysis extends beyond explicitly religious applications of AI to its formative implications for work, education, relationships, and economic institutions. It proposes integral human development as a criterion for discernment, highlighting the unequal displacement of human presence and the ecological costs of AI infrastructure. Christian spirituality thus contributes a teleological and formative perspective on technological power, complementing ethical governance by clarifying the human goods and ultimate ends that technological development should serve.

AI ethics · Automation · Catholic social teaching · Christian spirituality · Communion · Discernment · integral human development · optimization · Personalization · preference satisfaction · responsible freedom · Stewardship · technological power · theological virtues · vocation · Wisdom · Artificial Intelligence · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Media, Religion, Digital Communication