Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports on Paul Scherz’s briefing to the “United States Conference of Catholic Bishops” (USCCB) about artificial intelligence, where he claims AI has “great potential to contribute to human flourishing” while warning against calling AI “persons or truly intelligent.” The presentation framed AI as a tool for healthcare, education, and pastoral ministry, acknowledging risks like algorithmic bias but insisting the Church must engage with this technology to answer “basic questions of what it means to be human.” The article parrots the conciliar sect’s ongoing surrender to technological messianism while paying lip service to vague “ethical concerns.”
Naturalistic Reduction of the Human Person
Scherz’s assertion that AI “shouldn’t be called persons or truly intelligent” betrays a deeper theological collapse. While correctly denying AI consciousness, he grounds human dignity in a secularized anthropology: “We’re made for relationship as created in the image of the triune God” is stripped of its supernatural weight. Missing is any reference to man’s telos toward beatific vision, the necessity of sanctifying grace, or the catastrophic effects of original sin on human reason. This aligns with Gaudium et Spes’ naturalism, which reduced the imago Dei to mere relational capacity (GS 12), discarding the dogmatic teaching that man’s dignity flows from his ordination ad Deum (Council of Trent, Session V).
The presentation’s healthcare analysis exemplifies this reduction. Scherz frets over AI’s diagnostic biases but ignores the ontological danger of entrusting medical decisions to systems designed by architects of the culture of death. When he laments that algorithms cannot provide “a gesture of closeness,” he unwittingly confesses the conciliar sect’s own failure: its post-Vatican II hospitals long ago abandoned the primary mission of saving souls through access to valid sacraments, reducing Catholic healthcare to secularized “compassion” divorced from the Last Things.
Education as Soulcraft Surrendered to Machines
In discussing Catholic schools, Scherz admits AI threatens to replace writing assignments but frames this as a mere pedagogical crisis rather than a spiritual catastrophe. The article quotes him:
“Writing essays forces a student to think, to organize ideas, to argue coherently.”
Yet this pragmatic concern ignores the deeper reality: authentic Catholic education forms souls through habitus, cultivating the intellectual virtues ordered toward Truth Himself (Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri). By treating AI as just another classroom tool, the USCCB tacitly endorses the dissolution of ratio fide illustrata – reason illuminated by faith – reducing education to skills acquisition.
Where are the warnings against AI-generated content promoting gender ideology, climate alarmism, or other modernist heresies? Where is the defense of Latin, Thomistic logic, or liturgical tradition as irreplaceable pillars of Catholic formation? Silence – for the conciliar sect long ago abandoned these weapons against the modern world.
Pastoral Ministry Delegated to Algorithms
Most damning is Scherz’s treatment of AI in pastoral work. The article notes:
“People are using AI to develop spiritual inventories or to provide spiritual direction… Catholic sites are using AI to provide laypeople with access to Church teaching.”
This constitutes formal cooperation with heresy. When “Church teaching” refers to the conciliar sect’s modernist doctrines – religious liberty, collegiality, ecuмenism – AI becomes a tool for amplifying apostasy.
The briefing’s vague concern about chatbots replacing “actual encounter with pastors” rings hollow. The USCCB itself bears responsibility for destroying the sacerdotal encounter through invalid sacraments, felt banners, and clown Masses. When Scherz warns pastors against using AI for homilies because it “would undermine the authenticity of the pastor’s witness,” he ignores that most conciliar “homilies” already lack authenticity, being politically correct motivational speeches stripped of dogmatic content.
Technological Utopianism as Modernist Heresy
The entire presentation operates within Vatican II’s subordination of the supernatural to the temporal. Scherz claims:
“The emergence of AI provides the Church with an evangelical opportunity… People are asking basic questions of what it means to be human.”
But this reduces the Church’s mission to anthropological commentary rather than the proclamation of Christ the King (Pius XI, Quas Primas). The true crisis isn’t AI’s rise but the conciliar sect’s abandonment of the societas perfectas doctrine, leaving it to babble about “ethics” while surrendering to transhumanism.
Nowhere does Scherz mention:
– AI’s role in global surveillance enabling persecution of faithful Catholics
– The diabolical inversion of ChatGPT “praying” with users across false religions
– The necessity of forbidding “AI sacraments” (already happening in Protestant sects)
– The abomination of machine-learning systems trained on heretical conciliar documents
This omission proves the USCCB’s complicity in building Babel. As St. Pius X warned: “The modernists substitute for faith a kind of religious sentiment… Thus the way is open to intrinsic evolution, whence comes the ruin of all religion” (Lamentabili Sane, 6). AI is merely the latest vehicle for this evolution toward the Antichurch.
Source:
U.S. bishops receive briefing on artificial intelligence (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 13.11.2025