In Charles Dickens famous short novel “A Christmas Carol,” the main protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, responds to his former partner in life, Jacob Marley, a ghost now from the dead, “You were always a good man of business, Jacob.” Marley admonishes Scrooge with a lament and reproach after considering his own past exploits in making their business profitable at the expense of others: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

Bishop Bernard E. Shlesinger III

In every age, there is a need to consider what all of our striving is leading to. Are we to tear down our barns and build them bigger to store up an abundant harvest (see Luke 12:16-21)? Do we forget about the universal destination of goods in the pursuit of progress and wealth?

During the industrial revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries, we saw how unprecedented economic prosperity tended to see the human person as expendable for the sake of profiting a few industrialists. But the cost to human dignity was high as unregulated economic gain created harsh, dangerous and unhealthy working conditions. Slums and overcrowded tenements created unhealthy living conditions. Children as young as 6 years of age were denied education and employed in factories, mines or textile mills, and industrial pollutants led to respiratory diseases that shortened lifespan.

This rise in industry without wise regulation led to voices such as the novelist Charles Dickens to raise consciousness about the conditions in which people worked and lived. Eventually, Pope Leo XIII would lend his prophetic voice and teaching office to address human dignity as it related to labor in his famous encyclical “Rerum Novarum.”

It is true that we cannot stop progress nor should we. But, wisdom will always be needed in regulating it lest we succumb to injustice towards the vulnerable or even toward the future generation. For example, unregulated human activity led to the almost extinction of the American bison (buffalo) before a conservation movement stepped in with regulation.

Today, we can see the need for wisdom to discern other forms of regulation to ensure that our common home will be habitable for the next generation. The encyclical “Laudato Si’” by Pope Francis was written to challenge unregulated activity of man that may lead to irreparable damage to our common home.

As we face further challenges with the rapid growth of AI, one might study “Antiqua et Nova,” read Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” and become acquainted with the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

Pope Leo reminds us that technology is never neutral as it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Pope Leo states, “Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice.”

Yes, you cannot stop progress but let us progress in charity toward one another and ask God for the wisdom to know how best to regulate human activity that promotes human dignity and the common good.