Governing an era: Magnifica humanitas
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This preface commemorates the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the founding document of the Church's Social Doctrine (CSD), approached here from an explicitly epistemological standpoint: the doctrinal tradition is examined not only as moral or pastoral heritage, but as a living program of rigorous knowledge production about the human person, society, and their historical challenges. Against that horizon, the Decálogo Magnifica Humanitas is introduced—ten principles distilled from the papal social magisterium spanning Leo XIII to Pope Francis—and proposed as a heuristic framework for contemporary scientific research. The see-judge-act method is reread as an epistemological protocol with precise methodological equivalents: empirical diagnosis, normative judgment, propositional intervention. The principles are projected onto three urgent challenges: artificial intelligence, forced migration, and the ecological crisis. Neuroscientific evidence—on dignity, empathy, justice, and stress—is incorporated as convergent empirical confirmation of the values the CSD postulates. The Decalogue is offered as an analytical instrument for researchers, educators, pastoral agents, and policymakers.
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