On September 26, Cardinal Robert McElroy delivered a speech titled “A Social Contract for the Digital Age” at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Washington, D.C. The talk summarized how the concept of social contract needs to be expanded and applied to Artificial Intelligence, based on Catholic Social Teaching.
I am not objecting to the document in its general thrust, but there is a serious problem near the conclusion, when McIlroy touches on the operative concept of “the social contract.” We read the following:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw the concept of the social contract as a reflection on the need to root the governance of society in the general will of the people as a whole. It was a challenge to the divine rights of kings, to the belief that the right to govern belonged to elites, and to the assertion that the power of governance belonged in an unfiltered and undifferentiated way to the masses as a whole. [] Immanuel Kant spoke to the importance of this social contract specifically concerning the dominance of a scientific elite in determining the future of our world. “I myself am a researcher by inclination. I feel the entire thirst for cognition and the eager restlessness to proceed further in it, as well as the satisfaction of every acquisition. There was a time when I believed this alone could constitute the honor of humankind, and I despised the rabble who knows nothing. Rousseau has set me right. 1
As a Catholic political philosopher, this passage leapt off the page when I read it. Before presenting my critique, I do wish to emphasize that this is only a small part of the lecture. Nonetheless, considering that Cardinal McIlroy has a doctorate in political science, in addition to a doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, I did not think it unfair to emphasize the seriousness of the error here from a Catholic standpoint.
The development of contractual theories of government, which place inherent limits on the powers of government and recognize the God-given dignity of each person through rights, is one of the most important developments in the history of political thinking. We especially owe the development of these theories to Catholic thinkers.
Although the Greeks first spoke of democracy, they never really developed a theory of government emphasizing two important elements: a government with limited powers and one recognizing inherent rights. Constitutional government, with a contractual basis, was developed in theory and practice in the Middle Ages. Two key notions were the notion of an implied contract between ruler and subject. The second was the limitation placed on the ruler by the higher laws, natural and divine.2
In fact, virtually every concept we associate with democratic government was developed in the pre-modern, Catholic context: the notion of a higher law, limited kingship, popular sovereignty, contractual government, and the right of resistance.3 Unfortunately, these truths remain widely unrecognized in the political theory world, where credit is normally given to Locke in the Anglo-Saxon world and Rousseau in the French.
In terms of a more specific philosophical development, this was occasioned by the divine right of kings theory, a totalitarian theory most associated with King James I of England, who wrote The True Law of Free Monarchies in 1598 to defend the theory. It was totalitarianism dressed up in biblical and religious garb.
It was the Jesuits—most notably Robert Bellarmine in De Laicis (1586) and Francisco Suárez, in De Legibus, ac Deo Legislatore (1612)—who developed a full theory of contractual government rooted in popular sovereignty. God does not give political authority directly to kings or regimes. The people are the original repository of political authority, and they transmit that authority normally to a regime. The regime is of human law, and, most notably, always under the higher laws, the natural and the divine.
It is a marvelous philosophical doctrine because it roots political authority in human nature itself. Human authority is real and should normally be obeyed—but it is never without limits. Unfortunately, one would be very hard-pressed to find a political philosophy textbook with references to these important works, which continually bolsters the myth that popular sovereignty and everything to do with democracy are Enlightenment concepts that come from Locke and Rousseau (although with significantly different interpretations).
Now on to Rousseau, writing almost 200 years after Bellarmine and 150 years after Suárez. This is an Enlightenment theory that makes no reference to the prior social contract theories. Briefly, the theory has enormous problems, which come from two sources. Consider Rousseau’s own words:
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.4
This is indeed quite a problem, and one which Rousseau never solved. Rousseau, following previously constructed theories of the state of nature, rejected the Catholic and medieval notions that political authority was a direct outgrowth of the social nature of human beings. For him, there is no authority at all prior to the creation of civil government. He wanted to create a theory of government in which a person loses none of his allegedly original and limitless freedom. Many have concluded that you simply cannot do it, on the commonsense supposition that political authority must place some limits on individual liberty.
Yet, at the same time, Rousseau’s theory is equally adamant about the authority of government. In his formulation, people freely unite to create a “general will,” which is an abstruse theoretical formulation not easily defined. It is essentially what everyone wills so long as they are not corrupted by evil passions or bad education. Many have wondered how such a notion would be translated into practice via political institutions. We then get the following formulation: “Just as nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members.”5
What we have is an internally contradictory theory, which is, on one side, anarchism and on the other absolutism. But for our purposes, the point is that this government “by the people” is essentially without limits. Lurking in the background is the rejection of original sin. Rousseau thought all the problems could be solved by good education. Unlike the Jesuit theories and the wisdom of the long-developing contractual tradition, Rousseau did not see fit to build any limits on the power of the people.
We can dispute how much Rousseau is to blame for subsequent developments, but this is the thinking that leads to the Reign of Terror and all subsequent Marxist totalitarianism, which always claims to be acting in the name of “the people.” Clearly, Rousseau’s social contract theory is the least Catholic of any possible formulation. There is no natural or divine law to limit it, and in practice means the rule of the people by whoever holds the reins of power.
This is what is so baffling about Cardinal McIlroy’s formulation.
He is aware that there was a divine right of kings theory, but when he goes for a counter-theory, he bypasses all Catholic thought, much of its practice, and ignores the great Jesuit treatises on the subject. It was sad because it would have been a perfect time to instruct the audience about the Catholic Jesuit contractual theories, which were, in fact, the greatest opponents of divine right theory. Particularly today, many younger Catholics have an inadequate intellectual formation and so distance themselves from their Church. They are taught to be ashamed of their Church, especially when the conversation turns to politics, where they are taught that Catholicism did nothing but resist democratic ideas.
It is shocking to see a Catholic cardinal appealing to Rousseau’s theory of the social contract as apparently some sort of model for Catholic thought today. A wonderful opportunity was, sadly, lost. Worse, the Cardinal makes the suggestion that Catholic social teaching is somehow compatible with Rousseau’s ideas.
To add insult to injury, the Catholic world is supposed to get excited about Rousseau on the authority of Immanuel Kant, who in the account given converted Kant from his elitism. This is the same Kant who made a career rejecting the entire tradition of metaphysics from Augustine through Aquinas and the great Spanish scholastics, preparing the way for the standardization of anti-metaphysical philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, effectively sidelining Catholic thought.
Endnotes:
1 Cardinal Robert McIlroy, “A Social Contract for the Digital World,” September 26, 2026.
2 See Brian Tierney, Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982). This book is an excellent treatment of the medieval origins of constitutional government.
3 For a good summary, see J.N. Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius. (New York: Harper, 1965).
4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 6.
5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 14-15.
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One can expect little in the way of Catholic thinking in the spirit of Tradition from Bobby McElroy.
Man’s existence has NO meaning apart from his relationship to God. Unfortunately, too many modernists in the Catholic Church operate as if Man were God. And that includes bishops with doctorate degrees. Rousseau spoke nothing about theological anthropology.
“There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position – a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Oprah’s protege has just entered the conversation.
~With kudos and compliments to TPR:
What does the Cardinal have in common with Kant and Rousseau? What comes to mind is the lack, or even abandonment, of fatherhood.
Fathers who imitate the Heavenly Father desire to care for children, physical and spiritual. “By their fruits you shall know them.” (Mt. 7:16) Jean-Jacques Rousseau abandoned all five of his newborn children with his baby mama, Thérèse Levasseur, sending them to the Paris Foundling Hospital. Kant had no children. Perhaps this was best considering how stuck he was in his head. What about the Cardinal? His speech is another example of his abandoning his spiritual children, choosing radical political philosophy as the subject to address the youth at St. Anselm’s Abbey School. Rousseau would be proud of him.
On this feast of St. Thérèse, consider her example as the childlike Little Flower in the heart of the Church. May she intercede for the Cardinal to act like a spiritual father, giving Christ to his flock, instead of the soul-killing philosophies of sterile ideologues.
Dr. Rourke is quite correct. Applying James’s wisdom (3:11) to Cardinal McElroy’s disdain for the higher law and for its erudite expositors, we recall the piercing question: “Can both fresh water and saltwater flow from the same spring?” The point is that evil cannot flow from goodness, and corrupted sources cannot yield purity. We are left, then, with a conundrum: Does the cardinal not know, or does he not care?
We read: “It is shocking to see a Catholic cardinal appealing to Rousseau’s theory of the social contract as apparently some sort of model for Catholic thought today.”
Three points and a summary:
FIRST, Indeed! Especially when under Rousseau’s Social Contract, those who dissent from the consensus should be “forced to be free.” And then there’s McElroy’s ivory tower appeal to the idealist Kant who replaces our intelligent access to reality with only our intermediate ideas about reality. Surely this is the lingering influence of the Kantian theologian Karl Rahner on so many pliable seminarians of yesteryear.
SECOND, McElroy’s appeal to Rousseau suggests the mindset of some Church higher-ups alongside the mindset of absorbent Islam (the harmonious convergence of religions?), which also appeals to an Original Innocence (“fitrah,” the “germ of Islam,” parallel to Rousseau’s “original and limitless freedom”). The difference is that under Islam it is the inscrutable Allah who is arbitrary–a non-Trinitarian/monolithic and non-relational monotheism and, therefore, the rejection of human freedom. But like Rousseau (“lurking in the background [his] rejection of original sin”), by rejecting original freedom Islam likewise rejects its abuse in original sin. Again, no need for conversion and redemption.
THIRD, under Islam’s freewheeling Allah, the so-called “principle of abrogation” replaces(!) philosophy’s non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction. But a margin for roundtable consensus building by elites. In Islam always under the tutelage of the untouchable Qur’an, rather than under Rousseau and Kant. Islam’s historical practice of Ijtihad, and of ijma as still observed by the minority Shi’ite sect.
At what point does Western process theology–the “hermeneutics of discontinuity”–rhyme and converge with Islamic self-contradiction? Surely AI will have an algorithm!
SUMMARY: About “learned ignorance” (John Courtney Murray’s term), we need to hear more about the presumptive convergence of religions versus the real world’s incongruous conjunction. So, in fairness, while we are newly reminded of human dignity and the call to build together a more harmonious future, what too of the permanence of human nature (say what?) and of moral absolutes in all things large and small (Veritatis Splendor)?
Seeing that Maximilien Robespierre was a big fan of Rousseau (and we all know how that turned out), it’s probably not a good idea for an “cardinal” to be looking to his ideas about the social contract as a model. You’d think this would be obvious, but I guess not.
Rousseau was a terrible man & totally wrong about human nature.
“For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong”. Rather, for you to be right, you need for [something] to be wrong. Ego however you define it does not create truth. The human intellect apprehends what is good and what is evil.
Feast of St.Therese today – of the ‘little way’ to whom the ‘Little daughter’ of Divine Will – Luisa who was devoted – her predecessor to the abundant truths in mysticism and its much greater light that our Lord planned to bless The Church in our times .
Many in The Church & outside of it too to become well familiar with the abundant truths revealed through Luisa – ? with the help of A.I. to go point by point to unmask the fallacies and errant understandings of all the philosophies of all times . Same to help young people not to be burdened much with the old wine skins , instead to be blessed with the new wine in good strong wine skins !
Meanwhile , our Mama to help bring all errant thoughts of all to The Lord to be purified to be in conformity with that of His – of praise to The Father, esp. of those who have abandoned the faith in light of the sufferings in this world .
The mysteries that might unfold around us all -? holy angels, who were to guard the gates of Eden to come help rebuild …resources of earth to be enough and more for all – not through human effort alone but as Reign of Divine Will … Such might be what at times get misunderstood as negligence in conveying truths on part of the Father figures .
Pope Francis – who too was misunderstood , now likely in much glory with the other Franciscan Sts and all , thanking our Lord for what moved France at the recent Papal visit – to be lasting fires that burn more brightly in hearts of the young and old in all nations ! FIAT !
The Old Testament provides an example of the failure to follow higher law. In Deuteronomy 17:14-20 limitations are placed on royal authority. In 1 Kings 11 King Solomon’s errors are covered, where he violated both the Scripture and the commands that God gave to him. Too many in the Church hierarchy act like King Solomon in disregarding God’s will as recorded in the Scriptures, trusting in their “lived experience.”
The Social Contract described by Rousseau has long been misconstrued by readers who beieve that he’s simply an extension of John Locke or Baron de Montesquieu. The General Will SOUNDS positively democratic, doesn’t it? But please read more closely the terms and conditions under which one enters a community governed according to the General Will, anoter of Rousseau’s slippery concepts. The GW is not simply what the people want, it is what’s good for them, and may well have to be imposed by the enlightened minority who know better. “Forced to be free,” to use another of Rousseau’s enigmatic terms And since one’s surrender to this notion of the community good must be absolute, without stipulations or conditions, the community based on the elusive idea of the common good through the General Will claims absolute power against each of its citizens, since the GW is always right, all the time. One consequence of such thinking was the Terror of the French Revolution, directed by Maximilian de Robespierre, one of Rouuseau’s most devout readers. I suggest that Cardinal McElroy carefully re-read the Social Contract before he makes any futhur favorable public references to Rousseau’s notion of the General Will.
McElroy never misses an opportunity, does he?
It’s almost amusing to observe McElroy’s slithering transformation. In a 1989 PBS segment on AIDS, McElroy expressed opposition to LGBT relationships. He criticized San Francisco’s recognition of LGBT couples as domestic partnerships, arguing that it destabilized traditional family structures. Now he’s arguing for libertine indifference regarding deviant sexuality. I guess you really don’t have to be a meteorologist to track prevailing winds.
But with his poorly concealed Rosseauvianism, he shows the inveteracy of his ideological pedigree. Your slip is showing, Comrade McElroy.
Robert Nisbet (in the 1940’s) argued convincingly in an essay “Rousseau and Totalitarianism” that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the primary intellectual forbearer of modern totalitarianism. He made the case that Rousseau fused John Locke’s radical individualism with the centralized authority of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, effective eliminating all voluntary and intermediate mediating associations (such as family, church, and community and fraternal organizations) to subordinate the individual to the sovereign state.
The result of the abolition of other mediating institutions, and subsidiarity with wholesale replacement by an omnipotent state that requires absolute fealty always end up with gulags and mass graves. Rousseau was Marx without materialist ornamentation.
This is why state idolaters always seek to demolish mediating institutions. Where demolition isn’t possible, they seek to debase and subvert them. Excusing Lindsay Clancy’s post-natal abortions is both an attack on motherhood and marriage. One can surmise that Killing three is a mockery of the Trinity.
Take away the family, the church, fraternal and voluntary associations and the individual stands alone and vulnerable against the rest of society, that proves every day that contra Rousseau, people are not good.
If anybody wants to understand Rousseau as a noxious predator and parasite “Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky” by Paul Johnson strips away the pretense of humanism.
The man is either intellectually or morally corrupt or compromised. His bizarre premise that Father Rosetti’s speculative inference that some aspects or manifestations of the UFO phenomenon might have demonological roots was some grave offense against Church doctrine requiring swift action just proves that McElroy isn’t even trying to conceal his authoritarian arrogance and capriciousness.
Masses weren’t the only thing that Francis beclowned. Making McElroy (while ignoring Chaput, for example) a Cardinal was one another step to make the College of Cardinals a clown college and “making a mess”.
I long ago stopped paying attention to anything said by cardinals of the Catholic Church who (denying Sacred Scripture and 2,000 years of settled Catholic moral teaching) state publicly that homosexual acts are not sinful and same-sex unions should be blessed by the Church.
It didn’t take Dr O’Rourke long to conclude that Cardinal McElroy’s intellectual development, inclusive of the Gregoriana, is not that of the Catholic scholastic tradition, rather that of progressive academia.
Maximilien Robespierre was a well trained lawyer and passionate defender of the poor. He was attracted to Rousseau’s idea of the intellectually free man, the ideology of the general will and collective interest of citizens. The common good.
McElroy, similar to Robespierre, has both an empathetic and a prurient interest in the poor, as do many liberals in their excessive advocacy. What is a form of deification similar to the current advocacy of illegal migrants.
When we make our advocacy for a good cause the solitary rationale for our worship of God we tend to place all our efforts on that good to the exclusion of God.
Blessings of Feast of Our Lady of Rosary – that gives us the grace to repeat with holy angels and Sts , the blessing words …
and gratitude to the author for the labor of love and its fruit as the book on Pope Francis, listed above, himself much devoted to Bl.Mother – hope it comes to attention & use of many.
Our Mother , Ark of the Covenant ‘that appeared in the sky’! Hope the Light of our times gives us an occasion to correct the wrong understanding of the incident related to the Ark, its builder Noah and family which in turn would help many to recognize the need for reverence towards persons that it is owed , Rosary to make reparation for the ‘beast like the leopard’ of scorn that has crept into the culture .
Good to see there is interpretation of the incident in a more merciful/ truthful simplicity in Hebrew writings – https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3139808/jewish/The-Firstborn-and-the-Curse-of-Canaan.htm
The extent of the debts also – towards the Incarnate Word and His Mother and how there is need for much reparation !
The first words spoken by the first few women and recorded in scripture – Eve , to the serpent- “we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden ”
Sarai – “Behold now ,the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.”
After above word of Eve, no recorded words of any woman till Sarai and no mention even of daughters of Noah and that of his sons !
All such & its effects to be undone in the glorious role and graces given through our Mother to help build the culture of love and respect for life and Godly relationships & its peace ! FIAT ! .
Our Mother –
“And ye can be like gods, declaring what is Good and evil”, is equivalent to, “every man can be a king”, sans Christ The King.
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
Christmas greetings to the members of the Roman Curia (21 December 2012) | BENEDICT XVI