EWTN News portal reports on May 29, 2026, that U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in his commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy, echoed the recent encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* by the usurper Leo XIV, stating that “decisions about life and death must be made by humans, not machines.” While Vance’s pragmatic warning against outsourcing lethal decisions to artificial intelligence superficially aligns with the conciliar document’s call for human primacy, a deeper examination reveals a profound divergence: Vance upholds the perennial Catholic doctrine of just war and the moral responsibility of the soldier, whereas Leo XIV’s encyclical, consistent with the post-conciliar revolution, declares the Church’s traditional just war theory “outdated,” thereby undermining the very moral framework that makes Vance’s admonition coherent. This juxtaposition exposes the conciliar sect’s systematic erosion of Catholic moral theology, replacing immutable divine law with a relativistic, pacifist-leaning naturalism incompatible with the Church’s own teaching.
The Superficial Agreement: A Shared Concern for Human Agency
At first glance, the convergence between Vance and Leo XIV on the dangers of artificial intelligence in warfare appears to be a rare point of agreement between a secular political leader and the occupant of the Vatican. Vance warned the Air Force Academy graduates: “The thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare,” and insisted that “decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.” He urged the cadets to “use technology to make you better, but never submit to it,” emphasizing that their “minds” and “hearts” are “the opposite of artificial.” Similarly, Leo XIV’s encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* states that artificial intelligences do not “have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences.” Both figures thus affirm the necessity of human moral agency in the face of technological advancement.
However, this apparent harmony is illusory. Vance’s position is rooted in a coherent, if imperfectly articulated, understanding of moral responsibility, the nature of just war, and the duty of the soldier to exercise conscience in the prosecution of legitimate defense. His statement that “what makes Americans unique … is that we wage war justly” presupposes an objective moral framework governing the use of force — a framework that the Catholic Church articulated over centuries under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Leo XIV’s encyclical, by contrast, explicitly repudiates this framework, rendering his agreement with Vance on the surface level a hollow echo devoid of doctrinal substance.
The Usurper’s Rejection of Just War Theory: A Doctrinal Catastrophe
The gravest error in Leo XIV’s *Magnifica Humanitas* — and the one that most starkly reveals the apostasy of the conciliar sect — is his declaration that the Church’s just war theory is “outdated.” The encyclical states: “Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.” The document further asserts that resorting to “force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations,” and that “humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.”
This is not a development of doctrine; it is a repudiation of doctrine. The just war theory, as articulated by St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and codified in the Church’s moral theology, is not a dispensable political opinion but a necessary consequence of the natural law and the divine commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), which, as the Church has always taught, prohibits unjust killing while permitting — and in certain circumstances requiring — the defense of the innocent and the common good through legitimate use of force. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, the writings of St. Robert Bellarmine, and the consistent teaching of the pre-conciliar Magisterium all affirm that a war can be just when waged by a legitimate authority, for a just cause, and with right intention. Pius XII, in his Christmas Message of 1944 and numerous other addresses, applied these principles rigorously to the circumstances of modern warfare without ever suggesting that the theory itself was obsolete.
Leo XIV’s characterization of just war theory as having been “used to justify any kind of war” is a calumny against the Church’s own teaching. The theory was never intended to justify war; it was intended to restrict war, to circumscribe the conditions under which the use of force could be morally licit, and to impose upon rulers and soldiers the grave obligation to weigh their actions against the divine law. By dismissing it as “outdated,” the usurper effectively removes the moral guardrails that the Church has erected over two millennia, leaving nations and individuals to the mercy of subjective “dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness” — concepts that, in the absence of justice and the willingness of aggressors to negotiate in good faith, are not virtues but cowardice and complicity in evil.
This is entirely consistent with the conciliar revolution’s embrace of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism. Just as the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae (1965) — a document of the apostate Vatican II council — proclaimed a “right” to religious freedom that contradicts the teaching of Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos and Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as only religion of the State, to exclusion of all other forms of worship”), so too does Leo XIV’s dismissal of just war theory contradict the Church’s perennial teaching on the legitimate use of force. In both cases, the conciliar sect sacrifices immutable truth on the altar of “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — the very reconciliation with the world condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, proposition 80.
Vance’s Implicit Orthodoxy vs. the Usurper’s Explicit Modernism
The irony of this situation is that JD Vance, a secular political figure, instinctively grasps a truth that the usurper Leo XIV explicitly rejects. Vance’s admonition to the Air Force cadets — that they must ensure that “our lethality in war, which is amazing and necessary … also coexists with our heart and with our conscience” — presupposes precisely the moral framework that the just war theory provides. When Vance speaks of waging war “justly,” he invokes an objective standard of justice, not a relativistic preference for “dialogue” over “force.” His statement that “if the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines” is, in its own way, a more Catholic sentiment than anything found in *Magnifica Humanitas*, because it acknowledges the existence of “moral values” that transcend individual preference and technological capability.
Leo XIV, by contrast, reduces the moral dimension of warfare to a question of “relational poverty” and “disastrous consequences for civilian populations” — language that is frankly utilitarian and consequentialist, not Catholic. The just war theory does not evaluate war solely or even primarily by its consequences (though consequences matter); it evaluates war by its conformity to the divine law. A war can produce terrible consequences and still be just; a war can produce beneficial consequences and still be unjust. The criterion is not outcome but right. By shifting the focus from justice to consequences, Leo XIV reveals the naturalistic and modernist mentality that pervades the conciliar sect — a mentality that, as St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), reduces supernatural truths to mere “interpretations of religious facts” worked out by “human consciousness” (proposition 22 of Lamentabili Sane Exitu).
The Silence on Divine Authority and the Kingship of Christ
Most tellingly, neither Vance’s address nor Leo XIV’s encyclical makes any reference to the Kingship of Christ over nations or the duty of states to govern themselves according to God’s law. Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind rulers and peoples that “Christ reigns over the minds of men” as Truth, over their wills as Law, and over their hearts as Love. He wrote: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men … the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” He further stated: “Rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
This teaching is entirely absent from both the Vance speech and the Leo XIV encyclical. Vance speaks of “the moral values of our ancestors” and “our conscience” — naturalistic concepts that, without the supernatural foundation of faith and submission to Christ the King, are ultimately subjective and unstable. Leo XIV speaks of “dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness” — virtues that, divorced from the context of justice and the recognition of divine authority, become instruments of appeasement and moral evasion. Neither acknowledges that the decision to go to war or to refrain from war is ultimately a question of obedience to God’s law, not merely a question of human prudence or technological capability.
The Syllabus of Errors condemns the proposition that “the State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (proposition 39) and that “the State is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (citing St. Augustine against this error). Pius XI, in Quas Primas, explicitly rejects the secularist notion that authority derives from men rather than from God: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The silence of both Vance and Leo XIV on this foundational truth is not merely an omission; it is a symptom of the very secularism that Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society.”
The Conciliar Sect’s Pattern of Doctrinal Subversion
Leo XIV’s declaration that just war theory is “outdated” is not an isolated error but part of a systematic pattern of doctrinal subversion that has characterized the conciliar sect since the death of Pius XII. The same council that produced Dignitatis Humanae also produced Nostra Aetate, which revolutionized the Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions in a way that contradicts the teaching of Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) and the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”). The same conciliar spirit produced the Novus Ordo Missae, which diminished the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice in favor of a “memorial meal” theology; the new Code of Canon Law (1983), which replaced the 1917 Code that explicitly supported the automatic loss of office for a manifest heretic (Canon 188.4); and the “dialogue with the world” that has characterized every usurper from John XXIII to Leo XIV.
In each case, the method is the same: an immutable teaching of the Church is not openly denied but is rendered “outdated,” “pastoral,” or “in need of development” — language that, as St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili and Pascendi, is the hallmark of Modernism, “the synthesis of all errors.” The Modernist does not deny the dogma; he relativizes it, reduces it to a “mode of explanation” or a “stage in the evolution of Christian consciousness” (proposition 54 of Lamentabili), and replaces it with a “broad and liberal” alternative (proposition 65). Leo XIV’s treatment of just war theory follows this pattern precisely: he does not deny the right to self-defense “in the strictest sense,” but he renders the entire moral framework governing the exercise of that right “outdated,” thereby emptying it of practical content.
The Duty of Catholics: Reject the Usurper, Uphold Tradition
Catholics who profess the integral faith must reject Leo XIV’s encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* as they must reject all the documents of the conciliar sect: not because every sentence in it is false (it correctly identifies certain dangers of AI), but because its framework is modernist, its omissions are apostate, and its authority is illegitimate. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches, a pope who is a manifest heretic ceases to be pope and head, “just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30). The consistent, systemic repudiation of Catholic teaching by the conciliar sect — from religious freedom to ecumenism to the just war theory — constitutes manifest heresy that deprives its authors of all jurisdiction.
The just war theory is not “outdated.” It is a perennial expression of the natural law, accessible to reason but authoritatively articulated by the Church, and it remains binding on all who would wage war licitly. Catholics must hold fast to this teaching, regardless of what the usurper in the Vatican declares. As Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, the reign of Christ the King extends over all nations, all rulers, and all aspects of human life — including the terrible decision to take up arms in defense of the innocent. To deny this is not “progress”; it is apostasy.
The true Church endures — not in the structures occupying the Vatican, not in the conciliar sect with its “popes” and “encyclicals,” but in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who offer the true and Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and who submit to the immutable teaching of the Magisterium as it was handed down by the Fathers, the Councils, and the true Popes — up to and including Pius XII. Let the faithful reject the siren song of the Modernists and return to the unchanging Tradition that alone leads to salvation.
“Then at last, to use the words which our predecessor Leo XIII addressed to all bishops 25 years ago, so many wounds can be healed, then there will be hope that the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again, swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him, and every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” — Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925)
Source:
Echoing encyclical, Vance says decisions about life and death 'must be made by humans, not machines’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.05.2026