Laudato si’ @ 10: The Promise & Peril of Technology with Eugene McCarraher and Tony Mills
October 15, 2025
7–8:30PM
Information Commons 4th Floor, Lake Shore Campus
For our mid-October dialogue, the Hank Center convened (in partnership with John Carroll University) the sixth installment of our year-long celebration of Pope Francis' landmark encyclical, Laudato si' on its 10th anniversary. We welcomed Eugene McCarraher (Villanova University) and Tony Mills (University of Notre Dame) to discuss "The Promise and Peril of Technology: Laudato si', AI, and the Experience of Being Human." Are there forms of technology that can help us, if not save us? What critical insight was Pope Francis disclosing in his critique of the “technocratic paradigm” in Laudato si'? What are the spiritual and social risks of a saturated digital culture? Of the "enchantment" and fetishization of AI? As ever, technology gives so many gifts, but digital technologies are a markedly different version in that they transform our fundamental sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the costs of these socially embedded technologies? Who (and what) are we becoming in an increasingly disembodied world?
Please join us in person or register for the Livestream online.
About the speakers
Eugene McCarraher is professor of humanities and history at Villanova University. A professor at Villanova since 2000, he teaches a variety of courses on economics, culture, technology, and religion, as well as courses on U.S. history. He completed his doctoral study at Rutgers University under the direction of Jackson Lears. His research has focused on social thought, capitalism, and religion in the United States. He has received fellowships from the Lilly Foundation the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition to his scholarly work, he has published reviews and essays in Commonweal, Dissent, the Baffler, the Nation, the Hedgehog Review, and Raritan. His two books are Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (Cornell University Press, 2000) and The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019).
M. Anthony (Tony) Mills is Associate Professor of the Practice at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values as well as a senior fellow and founding director of the Center for Technology, Science, and Energy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His research concerns the federal government’s role in science and innovation, the relationship between scientific expertise and democratic governance, and the ethical, societal, and policy implications of science and technology. Mills is concurrently a senior fellow at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, an affiliated scholar of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University, and a scholar associate of the Society of Catholic Scientists. He also serves as a Member of the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.