The National Catholic Register reported on May 5, 2026, that U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch expressed Washington’s willingness to accept input from the Vatican on artificial intelligence regulation. Speaking at a conference held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Burch stated: “I think the U.S. very much is leading with our corporate technological leadership, with our AI industry. And we want to find ways to cooperate with both governments and welcome, certainly, the input of the Holy See to that conversation.” The ambassador also suggested that if Leo XIV were to visit the United States, a stop in Silicon Valley would be appropriate. The entire exchange reveals the conciliar sect’s characteristic obsession with relevance in the temporal order while remaining silent on the supernatural mission of the true Church—a mission that has nothing to do with regulating machines but with saving souls.
## The Idol of “Cooperation” Replaces the Mandate of Christ the King
The language employed by Ambassador Burch is saturated with the vocabulary of the post-conciliar revolution: “cooperation,” “dialogue,” “shared interests,” “fraternity.” These are not Catholic terms of diplomacy; they are the liturgical vocabulary of the new ecclesiology inaugurated by John XXIII’s *Ad Petri Cathedram* and consecrated by the Vatican II declaration *Dignitatis Humanae*, which elevated religious liberty—the right of the human person to be free from all coercion in matters of faith—to the status of a conciliar dogma, thereby condemning the perennial teaching of the Church. Pope Pius IX, in the *Syllabus of Errors*, condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (proposition 77), and further condemned the notion that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (proposition 80). The ambassador’s framing of U.S.-Vatican relations as a partnership of “two roles in the world” that “can be productive and helpful” is precisely the kind of naturalistic reduction of the Church’s mission that the pre-conciliar Magisterium consistently anathematized.
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, taught with absolute clarity that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “it matters not whether individuals, families, or states, for men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” The Church does not “cooperate” with secular powers as one soft-power actor among many; she teaches, governs, and judges with the authority received from Jesus Christ, who declared: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matt. 28:18). The ambassador’s description of the Holy See as a “soft power” and “custodian of a rich heritage of Catholic social teaching” reduces the Church—the Mystical Body of Christ, the one ark of salvation—to the level of an NGO or a think tank. This is the ecclesiology of *Gaudet Mater Ecclesia*, John XXIII’s opening address to Vatican II, which spoke of the Church as needing to “catch up with the times” rather than proclaim immutable truth to a fallen world.
## The Myth of Moral Leadership Without the True Faith
Perhaps the most revealing passage in the cited article is the endorsement by Vice President JD Vance of the conciliar sect’s capacity for moral leadership on AI: “The American government is not equipped to provide moral leadership, at least full-scale moral leadership, in the wake of all the changes that are going to come with AI. I think the Church is.” This statement, while flattering to the ears of modernist clerics, is built upon a foundation of sand. The “Church” to which Vance refers is not the Catholic Church founded by Christ—it is the conciliar sect that has, since 1958, systematically dismantled the integral Catholic faith. Can an institution that has embraced *Dignitatis Humanae* (religious liberty), *Nostra Aetate* (the dignity of non-Christian religions as rays of the Truth), and *Unitatis Redintegratio* (ecumenism as a path to unity with heretics and schismatics) provide “moral leadership” on any subject? An organization that cannot define the boundaries of its own faith, that refuses to teach that “outside the Church there is no salvation” (*Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215), and that has condemned the very concept of the social reign of Christ the King in favor of “dialogue” with the world—such an organization is morally bankrupt and incapable of providing guidance on artificial intelligence or anything else.
St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*, condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (proposition 57), but he equally condemned the proposition that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58). The conciliar sect has embraced the latter proposition wholesale. Its “moral framework” for AI will inevitably be built on the same modernist foundations that produced *Amoris Laetitia*, *Fratelli Tutti*, and *Laudato Si’*—documents that subordinate revealed truth to the spirit of the age, that treat objective moral law as a set of “principles” to be applied with “pastoral discernment,” and that reduce the supernatural life of grace to a vague humanitarianism.
## The Omission of What Matters Most
The article is entirely silent on the only question that a true Catholic—one who professes the integral faith before 1958—would ask about artificial intelligence: What is the moral status of these systems in light of the natural law and divine revelation? Can a machine possess a rational soul? Can it sin? Can it be saved? The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that “the soul is the form of the body” (*anima est forma corporis*), and that the rational soul is created immediately by God and infused into the body at conception. No machine, however sophisticated, possesses a rational soul, and therefore no machine is a person, no matter how convincingly it simulates human speech or behavior. To treat AI as a moral agent, or to speak of “AI and human dignity” as though the dignity of the machine were at stake, is to engage in a category error of the most dangerous kind—one that elevates the creature above the Creator and reduces the human person, made in the image and likeness of God, to the level of a biological machine.
Pope Leo XIII, in *Immortale Dei*, taught that “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each the highest in its kind, and each fixed within limits which are defined by its particular nature and special object.” The regulation of AI is a matter of the civil power, to be exercised in conformity with the natural law and the divine positive law. The Church’s role is not to “cooperate” with the state in crafting regulatory frameworks but to teach the moral principles that must govern all human action, including the development and use of technology. When the conciliar sect speaks of “AI for the common good,” it invokes a phrase emptied of all Catholic content, for the “common good” in Catholic teaching is not the utilitarian maximization of temporal welfare but the ordering of all things toward the supernatural end of eternal beatitude with God.
## Silicon Valley as Pilgrimage Destination
The ambassador’s suggestion that Leo XIV visit Silicon Valley is emblematic of the conciliar sect’s captivity to the world. The true Church has never sought relevance in the centers of worldly power; she has sought the conversion of souls and the salvation of the world through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the teaching of all nations. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not visit the centers of Roman power to seek their endorsement; He was crucified by them. The suggestion that the successor of Peter—if Leo XIV were the true Pope, which he is not, being the product of a series of invalid elections following the apostasy of John XXIII—should make a pilgrimage to the heart of the technological revolution is a perfect symbol of the conciliar project: the Church as chaplain to modernity, blessing what she should be condemning, and seeking relevance where she should be demanding submission.
Pius IX, in the *Syllabus*, condemned the proposition that “the injustice of an act when successful inflicts no injury on the sanctity of right” (proposition 61). The entire AI industry, built on the exploitation of human labor, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a technological oligarchy, and the systematic erosion of human dignity through surveillance, manipulation, and the replacement of human judgment with algorithmic decision-making, is a monument to injustice. The conciliar sect’s response is not to condemn this injustice in the name of Christ the King but to seek a seat at the table of power, to offer “moral principles” that will be ignored, and to baptize the works of human pride with the language of Catholic social teaching.
## The Silence on the Real Danger
The article mentions concerns about AI-powered “cyber warfare” and “global destabilization,” but it is entirely silent on the only true danger: the spiritual ruin of souls. The greatest threat posed by artificial intelligence is not economic disruption or military conflict but the further alienation of man from God. Every hour spent interacting with a machine that simulates human conversation is an hour not spent in prayer, in the study of sacred doctrine, or in the performance of works of mercy. Every system designed to predict and manipulate human behavior is a system that treats the human person—a being endowed with free will and an immortal soul—as an object to be controlled. The conciliar sect, having already abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church in favor of temporal activism, is incapable of recognizing this danger, let alone addressing it.
The true Church, the Church of all ages, teaches that “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). No regulatory framework, no matter how well-intentioned, can address the spiritual crisis of an age that has replaced God with machines. Only the integral Catholic faith—the faith of the Apostles, the faith of the martyrs, the faith of the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Trent—can provide the answer. And that faith is not to be found in the conciliar sect, which has traded the deposit of revelation for a mess of pottage called “dialogue with the modern world.”
Source:
US ‘Welcomes’ Vatican Input on AI Regulation, Says Ambassador Burch (ncregister.com)
Date: 05.05.2026