Catholic News Agency (December 27, 2025) reports on 2wai’s AI application enabling digital recreations of deceased persons, featuring commentary from Fr. Michael Baggot, LC, and Notre Dame’s Brett Robinson. While acknowledging potential “spiritual dangers,” the analysis remains imprisoned within naturalistic assumptions, reducing the gravity of this technological necromancy to therapeutic concerns rather than theological anathema.
Naturalistic Reduction of Grief to Psychological Process
The article frames Catholic objections primarily through therapeutic language – “disrupting the grieving process” and “emotional risks” – rather than ex cathedra condemnations of spiritual corruption. When Baggot admits AI replicas “cannot capture the full richness of the embodied human being,” he echoes Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950) on the soul-body unity, yet fails to denounce this practice as intrinsic evil violating the First Commandment. The Catechism reference to forbidden “conjuring” (CCC 2116) is neutered into ambiguity, ignoring Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors condemning those who “place the solace of human philosophy above the Cross of Christ” (Proposition 15).
MacLeod’s admission that some might use this technology without “getting hung up on it” constitutes pastoral negligence. The 1917 Code of Canon Law mandates excommunication for those “who presume to exercise the art of conjuring up the dead” (Canon 2322). The article’s therapeutic framing ignores how this technology fulfills St. Paul’s warning: “There shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3).
Eschatological Amnesia and the Denial of Particular Judgment
Nowhere does the analysis reference the Four Last Things – Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell – reducing the deceased’s eternal destiny to sentimentalized digital preservation. When Robinson suggests AI recreations might distort “belief that our eternal destiny rests with God,” he timidly skirts the heresy implicit in this technology: the denial of the particular judgment where souls are irrevocably assigned to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell.
Pius XI’s Quas Primas establishes Christ’s kingship over all creation, condemning technological usurpation of divine prerogatives: “The Roman Pontiffs have constantly repelled the attempts of those who sought to subject the Church of God to the power of the State” (§24). Creating digital ghosts constitutes rebellion against God’s sovereignty over life and death, echoing the modernist error condemned in Lamentabili Sane: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20).
Illegitimate Appeals to Conciliar “Authority”
The article cites “Pope” Leo XIV’s statement about grief requiring connection to the Lord – a vacuous platitude from an antipope whose very title mocks the Apostolic See. As Pius XII established, no heretic can hold papal office (Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis, 1945), rendering Leo XIV’s comments doctrinally void. The failure to note this invalidates any pretense of Catholic analysis, instead normalizing the conciliar sect’s false shepherds.
Fr. Baggot’s affiliation with Regina Apostolorum – a post-conciliar institution – further compromises his authority. When he suggests AI might “help us learn from their examples,” he ignores St. Thomas Aquinas: “It is unlawful to divine the future by consulting the dead, because this pertains to the worship of demons” (ST II-II Q95 A3).
Pastoral Cowardice in the Face of Technological Occultism
The experts’ refusal to issue definitive condemnations exposes their conciliar formation’s bankruptcy. MacLeod’s admission that some might use AI recreations without harm directly contradicts Leo XIII’s Humanum Genus (1884) forbidding all commerce with “spirits of any kind.” This hesitation mirrors Vatican II’s disastrous ecumenism, where doctrinal clarity was sacrificed for false compassion.
The article’s concluding question – whether AI avatars constitute forbidden necromancy – reveals the conciliar sect’s theological disintegration. Contrast this with Pius V’s Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio (1559): “Any cleric or layperson using divination… shall be utterly excommunicated.” Modern technology doesn’t nullify eternal truths – digital necromancy remains necromancy.
The Catholic Response: Ars Moriendi vs. Digital Desecration
Rather than technological simulacra, the Church offers the Ars Moriendi – the art of holy dying – and suffrages for souls in Purgatory. The article’s silence about Masses for the dead, rosaries, and the Communion of Saints demonstrates the conciliar sect’s abandonment of lex orandi, lex credendi. True Catholics reject this digital desecration, clinging to St. Augustine’s teaching: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee” (Confessions I.1) – not in algorithmic ghosts.
Source:
Should Catholics use AI to re-create deceased loved ones? Experts weigh in (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 27.12.2025