At a time when the quest for truth, justice, and freedom is more urgent than ever, a group of scholars, theologians, and students came together in Rome to ask: Will the 2025 Jubilee mark a turning point in the intellectual and spiritual pandemic which has plagued modern man for a quarter century? Is it still possible to reverse course amid a landscape of deviant anthropologies and secularized politics?    

The Acton Institute, with the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Faculty of Philosophy, held an international conference on “Truth, Justice, and Liberty in a Pluri-Anthropological World,” with more than 300 leaders in Church social thought.   

Dr. Michael Miller of the Acton Institute spoke at this conference on the “Five False Anthropologies” and the role the Church plays in responding to these societal changes.  

Michael Miller, Senior Research Fellow at the Acton Institute, noted that “The key questions around truth, justice, and liberty must be centered immediately on what it means to be a human being.”   

“The Church,” Miller said, “has key things to do, as it always has. I think it’s Saint Augustine who said something like, ‘Don’t wish to live in the future, don’t live in the past, be content with where God puts you.’ And the Church has the message, I would say, the good news. Part of the Gospel is the Good News—the Gospel about the human person, what it means to be a human person.’ 

He emphasized that “The Church has to teach anthropology. I think the Church must continue to teach and revive it, maybe even the theology of the body that John Paul II developed so well.”  

The organizing committee stressed that it was particularly important to have these conversations in the Eternal City. 

“Here of course in Rome,” Miller noted, “in the center of the Catholic Church, the center of the world really, we thought it was important to have this conversation where we talk about truth and justice, but from the lens of the human person created in the image of God.”  

Underpinning the entire conference was the certainty of Catholic truths and the need to share them with the wider society in these times of difficulty and confusion.   

Miller said, “I think that the clearest, most coherent and also most elegant vision of the human person, that aligns with our lived experience and gives us a mental model of how to navigate a complex world is Catholic anthropology, and so it’s something that we need to share.”   

As the Eternal City continues its preparations for the 2025 Jubilee, the conference invites us all to begin to prepare spiritually.  

Adapted by Jacob Stein 

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