Letters to the Editor
Nominalism redux
May 22, 2025
The papal name Leo has a laser-like precision to it. Pope Leo XIII was elected in 1878 at the height of the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age of robber barons and an impoverished proletariat.
He is renowned for his encyclical Rerum Novarum on the mutual responsibilities of labour and capital. He rejected socialism and unbridled capitalism in favour of the middle ground: the dignity of labour and the nobility of entrepreneurship.
Leo XIV, in his first meeting with the cardinals, identified AI as a crucial issue facing humanity, emphasizing its challenges to human flourishing, justice, and work.
He has a much bigger problem than Leo XIII—the same human tendency to be shaped by power. But then the robber barons were people.
Michael Dias,
Markham, Ont.
Do we need some laser-like Luddites? – the Editor.