In his Address to the Diplomatic Corps two days ago, Pope Leo singled out the importance of ensuring the connection between words and reality. The “meaning of words” is this connection of words to reality. Pope Leo stated:

Rediscovering the meaning of words is perhaps one of the primary challenges of our time.  When words lose their connection to reality, and reality itself becomes debatable and ultimately incommunicable, we become like the two people to whom Saint Augustine refers, who are forced to stay together without either of them knowing the other’s language.  He observes that, “Dumb animals, even those of different species, understand each other more easily than these two individuals.  For even though they are both human beings, their common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; so that a man would more readily converse with his dog than with a foreigner!” [6]

Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid, and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous. Language is no longer the preferred means by which human beings come to know and encounter one another. Moreover, in the contortions of semantic ambiguity, language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents. We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally. Only in this way can authentic dialogue resume without misunderstandings. This should happen in our homes and public spaces, in politics, in the media and on social media.

[6] Saint Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XIX, 7.

These reflections emerged out of a discussion of multilateralism in foreign relations and returned back into that topic. The problem of the connection of words to reality is, of course, also central to the challenges posed by generative artificial “intelligence” that Pope Leo has highlighted from the beginning of his pontificate. This problem is at the heart of so much else, as Pope Leo explains further on in this address, including many challenges that those of us in the legal profession need to aid our societies in confronting.