National Catholic Register portal (May 20, 2026) reports on the growing influence of Jesuit Father Bernard Lonergan and French philosopher René Girard among Catholic tech leaders grappling with artificial intelligence. The article presents these two thinkers as “pivotal players” in shaping a Catholic response to AI, highlighting Lonergan’s analysis of human cognition and Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” as frameworks for distinguishing human intelligence from machine simulation. It notes that figures like Microsoft’s Taylor Black and venture capitalist Peter Thiel draw upon these thinkers, and speculates that the upcoming encyclical from Leo XIV may cite them. The article frames this as a positive development, suggesting these thinkers help Catholics navigate the challenges of AI while preserving human dignity. However, beneath this veneer of intellectual engagement lies a profound abandonment of supernatural faith, a capitulation to modernist anthropology, and a dangerous flirtation with systems that, by their very nature, cannot possess the God-given faculties they purport to analyze—all while ignoring the only true source of wisdom and the ultimate destiny of man: Jesus Christ, Our Lord and King.
The Abdication of Supernatural Anthropology: Reducing Man to a Machine Among Machines
The entire premise of the article rests upon a fundamentally naturalistic and modernist anthropology—one that implicitly denies the supernatural constitution of the human person. By seeking to distinguish human intelligence from artificial intelligence through the frameworks of Lonergan and Girard, the article reduces the *imago Dei* to a set of cognitive operations and desire patterns that can be analyzed, replicated, or at least compared with machinic processes. This is a grave error.
Man is not merely a thinking or desiring machine; he is a creature made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with an immortal soul, intellect, and will, ordered toward the Beatific Vision. As the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches, man’s ultimate end is to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him forever in the next. The article’s focus on “metacognitive strategies” and “mimetic desire” as the defining features of humanity is a reductionist absurdity that ignores the supernatural order entirely.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), explicitly condemned the secularism and laicism that seek to remove Christ and His law from human society. He wrote:
“When God and Jesus Christ – as we lamented – were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
The article’s entire discussion of AI takes place within this godless framework, where the “perennial questions about what it means to be human” are debated without any reference to man’s creation by God, his fall through Original Sin, his redemption through the Precious Blood of Christ, and his supernatural destiny. This is not a Catholic response to AI; it is a secular humanist response dressed in Catholic vocabulary.
Lonergan: A Modernist Jesuit in the Line of Rahner
The article presents Bernard Lonergan as a faithful applicator of St. Thomas Aquinas to the modern context. This is a gross misrepresentation. Lonergan was a product of the very modernist currents that the Church has consistently condemned. His emphasis on “experience,” “understanding,” “judgment,” and “decision” as the structure of human cognition bears the unmistakable imprint of the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907).
St. Pius X condemned the modernist proposition that
“Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God”
(Proposition 20) and that
“The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort”
(Proposition 22). Lonergan’s entire epistemological project, with its focus on the subject’s cognitive operations as the locus of meaning, aligns precisely with this condemned modernist framework. His “insight” is not the supernatural gift of faith or the infused gifts of the Holy Ghost; it is a purely naturalistic analysis of human cognition that, at best, remains within the confines of philosophy and never ascends to the supernatural order of theology properly so understood.
Moreover, the article notes that Lonergan was “overshadowed by other 20th-century Jesuits like the controversial Father Karl Rahner.” This is a telling admission. Rahner is widely recognized as one of the principal architects of the theological revolution that produced the conciliar sect. His transcendental theology, with its anonymous Christianity and existential ethics, is a synthesis of modernist errors. That Lonergan is placed in the same lineage—and indeed, that his thought is now being rehabilitated as a tool for the neo-church’s engagement with AI—is a clear indication that his thought is fundamentally incompatible with the integral Catholic faith.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that
“Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason”
(Proposition 5). Lonergan’s entire project, with its emphasis on the development of human understanding and the need to adapt Thomism to the “modern context,” is a manifestation of this condemned error. His thought is not a faithful application of Aquinas; it is a corruption of it, filtered through the lens of modernist subjectivism.
Girard: A Heretical Theory of Desire Without Christ the King
René Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” fares no better under the light of Catholic doctrine. The article describes Girard’s proposal that human desire is not spontaneous but arises from copying others. While this may contain a grain of psychological observation—fallen human nature is indeed prone to envy and imitation of sin—Girard’s framework, as presented and applied in the article, is fundamentally naturalistic and devoid of supernatural content.
The article quotes Luke Burgis stating that
“AI has become a model of desire”
and warns of the danger of allowing AI to shape human desires. But the article and its cited thinkers never once mention the only true Model of desire: Jesus Christ, the God-Man, Who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. As Our Lord Himself declared, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Girard’s theory, as applied in Silicon Valley, remains entirely within the horizontal plane of human-to-human or human-to-machine interaction. It never ascends to the vertical plane of man’s relationship with God. Burgis is quoted as saying that
“We desire the beatific vision. We desire to be in communion with God.”
But this statement, while true in itself, is entirely disconnected from the rest of the article’s framework. There is no mention of grace, of the sacraments, of prayer, of the necessity of the Catholic Church as the sole means of salvation, of the reality of sin and the need for repentance. The “beatific vision” is reduced to an abstract philosophical concept, not the concrete supernatural end to which every human soul is ordered and which can only be attained through the merits of Christ and the ministration of His Church.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, proclaimed that
“Christ reigns in the minds of men, not so much because He possesses a profound intellect and vast knowledge, but rather because He Himself is Truth, and men must draw truth from Him and accept it obediently.”
The entire discussion of AI and desire in the article proceeds as if Christ has no claim on the human will, as if His royal authority over human societies—including the technological sphere—does not exist. This is the very “secularism” and “laicism” that Pius XI identified as the plague of modern times.
The Cult of Human Reason: A New Form of Idolatry
The article’s embrace of Lonergan and Girard as “aides for AI engagement” reveals a deeper spiritual malady: the idolatry of human reason and the implicit denial of the supernatural order. By treating AI as a phenomenon to be analyzed and engaged with on purely naturalistic terms—through cognitive science and desire theory—the article implicitly denies the reality of the spiritual world, of the warfare between the City of God and the City of Satan, of the reality of demonic influence and the necessity of supernatural grace.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that
“Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations”
(Proposition 3). The entire framework of the article—its reliance on Lonergan’s cognitive analysis and Girard’s desire theory as sufficient tools for “Catholic” engagement with AI—is a practical application of this condemned proposition.
The article never once mentions prayer, the sacraments, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, the reality of sin, the need for conversion, the necessity of the true Church, or the kingship of Christ over all creation—including the technological sphere. It is a thoroughly naturalistic, humanistic, and therefore anti-Catholic response to a modern phenomenon, dressed in the borrowed garments of Catholic intellectual tradition.
The Conciliar Sect’s Embrace of the World: A Fulfillment of Prophecy
The very fact that this article appears in the National Catholic Register, a publication of the conciliar sect, and that it eagerly anticipates an encyclical from Leo XIV on AI, is symptomatic of the profound apostasy that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
The conciliar sect, from John XXIII onward, has consistently embraced the world, its philosophies, and its technologies, rather than calling for the conversion of nations to Christ the King. The aggiornamento of Vatican II was precisely this: an updating of the Church to conform to the world, rather than a call for the world to conform to Christ. The article’s uncritical embrace of Lonergan and Girard—both products of the modernist intellectual milieu—and its anticipation of an encyclical from the current usurper antipope on AI, is a continuation of this apostate trajectory.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici gregis, described Modernism as
“the synthesis of all heresies”
because it reduces religion to subjective experience, denies the objective truth of dogma, and subordinates the supernatural to the natural. The article’s treatment of AI through the lenses of Lonergan and Girard is a perfect illustration of this modernist synthesis: the supernatural is entirely absent, the objective truths of faith are irrelevant, and the discussion proceeds entirely within the bounds of human reason and experience.
Furthermore, the article’s mention of Peter Thiel, a Protestant Christian, as a key figure in popularizing Girard’s thought in Silicon Valley, is a telling indication of the ecumenical spirit that permeates the conciliar sect’s engagement with the world. The false ecumenism condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928)—the idea that all religions are equally valid paths to God—is the operating assumption behind the article’s treatment of Catholic and Protestant thinkers as interchangeable resources for addressing a common technological challenge.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Omits
The most damning indictment of the article is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention of:
- The reality of Original Sin and its effects on human nature, including the intellect and will.
- The necessity of sanctifying grace for the proper functioning of human faculties.
- The role of the sacraments—particularly the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession, and Holy Eucharist—in sustaining and elevating human nature.
- The reality of demonic influence and the possibility that AI, as a product of human pride and rebellion against God, could be a tool of Satan to further deceive humanity.
- The Social Kingship of Christ and His authority over all human endeavors, including technology.
- The duty of Catholics to submit all human knowledge and activity to the judgment of the Church, not to the frameworks of modernist philosophers.
- The reality of the apostasy of the conciliar sect and the necessity of adhering to the true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith.
- The warnings of Our Lord in Scripture against the deception of the last times and the need for vigilance and fidelity.
This silence is not accidental; it is the hallmark of the modernist mentality that has consumed the conciliar sect. As Pope Leo XIII warned in Satis Cognitum (1896), the enemies of the Church are most dangerous when they operate from within, using the language of faith while denying its substance.
Conclusion: The Only True Response to AI
The only truly Catholic response to the rise of artificial intelligence is not to engage with it on the terms set by modernist philosophers and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but to proclaim the kingship of Christ over all creation and to insist that all human endeavors—including technology—must be submitted to His authority and the teaching of His Church.
Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas:
“If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society.”
The article’s entire framework is a denial of this truth. It seeks to navigate the challenges of AI without reference to Christ, without reference to His Church, without reference to the supernatural order. It is, in the words of St. Paul, “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5).
Catholics who remain faithful to the integral Catholic faith must reject the modernist frameworks of Lonergan and Girard, must reject the apostate structures of the conciliar sect, and must cling to the unchanging teaching of the Church: that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, that His kingdom shall have no end, and that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. The rise of AI, like all modern phenomena, must be evaluated in light of these eternal truths—not the transient speculations of modernist philosophers who knew not God.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Source:
The Patrons of Catholic ‘Tech Bros’: 2 Thinkers Shaping the Catholic Response to AI (ncregister.com)
Date: 20.05.2026