Listen on: Fio (Catholic Spotify) | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

News / Updates:

* 🤝 We host a bunch of events. In cities like New York, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, and even Central Wisconsin. Check out our events here.

* 🇻🇦We released an emergency episode last Tuesday to break down the newest Encyclical of Pope Leo XIV: Magnifica Humanitas.

* ⭐ Check out last week’s episode of CF with Matt Ingold

* 🤖 We recently launched a bot to help you learn from ALL the content we’ve produced. Join the Guild today to gain access.

* 💸 Want to invest in other Catholic projects/companies/ventures? Subscribe (for free) to the Faithful Steward newsletter.

Join the Catholic Founders Guild Today

Get access to all CF Guild online events, the recordings, paywalled content, the CF Guild community/group chat, and CF Guild member directory.

Many members have reported doing business with other CF Guild members within months of joining.

With an annual membership fee of $100, it’s a total no-brainer to join. Consider this an association of Catholic business owners, not a high-commitment community that will sap your time.

Join today for $100 a year or $10 a month.

Intro to our Guests & the Point of Today’s Podcast

Zak Slayback is a Venture Capital Investor and well-read convert to Catholicism (2020).

Edmund Mitchell is a serial entrepreneur and is very plugged into the AI world, especially on the Catholic side of the scene.

We brought them on today to discuss their key perspectives on Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

We cover a wide range of topics, but we are just scratching the surface, so let me know if you’d like to hear another one of these.

God Bless & Happy Building!

~Silas Mähner

First time here? Learn more about our mission. And don’t forget to subscribe.

Select Quotes:

* “The fundamental anthropology that is proposed in Rerum Novarum […], is that the primary unit of society is man and his family.” - Zak Slayback

* “Unemployment is a grave evil. That is one thing that is noted in the document, citing back to John Paul II’s social encyclicals. Why is it a grave evil? Well, one, because work is a good thing for man.” - Zak Slayback

* “Pope Leo doesn’t give us the room to outsource our thinking to this document or outsource our thinking to any, you know, podcast or news clip, right? Like we I think sometimes we want to find a justification for things we’re already doing when often the opposite is the case, these encyclicals challenge us to change.” - Edmund Mitchell

* “The social function of credit remains irreplaceable. Finance for its own sake is fundamentally different from finance aimed at the development. Creation and evolution of work.” - Zak Slayback (Quoting from Magnifica Humanitas)

* “ROI maxing is not the purpose of being an entrepreneur. It shouldn’t be at least. It shouldn’t be the purpose behind making an investment.” - Silas Mähner

* “The call to action from the Holy Father is to develop more sustainable technologies, it’s not necessarily to tear the data. Centers down or to not build them.” - Zak Slayback

* “The decision to invest in one place rather than another, and one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice, and that’s italicized in the original document.” - Zak Slayback

* “Technology itself is one of the talents that we’re granted. And I was thinking a lot about the fact that we were intentionally put in this time of history to be to use the things that are at our disposal.” - Silas Mähner

* “We can use the tools that are at our disposal in our time and our own journey of sanctification is intentionally set up. to be in this time of history.” - Silas Mähner

Key Episode References:

Church Documents & Papal Teachings

Popes & Church Figures

Organizations, Projects & Media

* Digital Continent

* SENT Ventures

* The Faith and AI Project

* “Delete Magisterium AI Debate” by Matthew Sanders and Mark Barnes

* Catholic Answers<...