National Catholic Register portal (May 21, 2026) reports that Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, warned at a conference held at the Pontifical Urban University that AI deepfakes pose a threat to authentic human encounter. The conference, titled “Preserving Human Voices and Faces,” was organized by the Dicastery for Communication and preceded the release of “Pope” Leo XIV’s anticipated encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. Bishop Paul Tighe expressed hope that this document would initiate dialogue and keep “the human at the center” of AI development. This spectacle of concern from the conciliar sect reveals, upon examination through the lens of integral Catholic theology, a profound spiritual bankruptcy: the neo-church, having abandoned the supernatural order and the true reign of Christ the King, now scrambles to address technological symptoms while ignoring the root cause of modern civilization’s collapse — the expulsion of God from public and private life.
The Reduction of the Human Person to Mere “Encounter”
The language employed by Cardinal Mendonça is revealing in its poverty. He speaks of deepfakes altering “the very grammar of the human encounter” and damaging “the social, cultural, and political fabric of societies.” This vocabulary is drawn entirely from the lexicon of secular humanism and phenomenological philosophy — not from Catholic theology. The integral Catholic understanding of the human person is not reducible to “encounter” or “relationship” in the abstract, as if these constituted the summit of human existence. The Church before 1958 taught with crystalline clarity that man is a creature composed of body and soul, created by God, endowed with an intellect ordered to the truth and a will ordered to the good, and destined for eternal beatitude through the grace of Jesus Christ. The “human encounter” that matters supremely is not a horizontal phenomenon between two subjects but the vertical encounter of the soul with God through faith, the sacraments, and the theological virtues.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely because the peace and order of human society depend upon the recognition of Christ’s royal authority over all nations, families, and individuals. The cardinal’s language, by contrast, operates entirely within a naturalistic framework — one that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as the error that “the entire government of public schools… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power” (Proposition 47), and that “the best theory of civil society requires that… education… be freed from all ecclesiastical authority” (Proposition 48). The conciliar sect has internalized these condemned errors so thoroughly that its highest officials cannot even articulate a coherent vision of the human person without recourse to the vocabulary of secular anthropology.
The Omission of the Supernatural Order: Silence as Apostasy
What is most striking about the reported conference — and what constitutes the gravest accusation against its organizers — is the complete absence of any reference to the supernatural order. Not a single mention of sin, grace, the sacraments, the state of the soul, the reality of demonic influence, the necessity of prayer and mortification, the authority of the true Magisterium, or the kingship of Christ over the technological order. This silence is not accidental; it is the defining characteristic of the post-conciliar apostasy. St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the fundamental error of Modernism as the denial that religion is rooted in the supernatural order, reducing it instead to human experience and sentiment. The Modernist, St. Pius X taught, “places the origin of the religious sense in a need of the divine” that is merely natural, and treats dogma as “a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Lamentabili, Proposition 22) — not as divinely revealed truth preserved by the infallible Magisterium.
When Cardinal Mendonça warns that deepfakes can have “painful consequences on the destiny of individuals,” he reveals the horizon of his concern: temporal, horizontal, and naturalistic. The true destiny of the human person — eternal salvation or eternal damnation — is nowhere in view. The Church before 1958 would have framed the question of AI and deepfakes within the context of the moral law: the Eighth Commandment’s prohibition against bearing false witness, the virtue of truthfulness, the duty of justice in communication, the danger of scandal, and the reality that technology, like all created things, must be ordered to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The Council of Trent taught that the sacraments are not mere signs but true instruments of grace, and that the Church possesses the authority to govern all matters pertaining to faith and morals — including, by extension, the moral implications of technological development. The conciliar sect, having gutted the sacramental system through the post-1960s liturgical revolution and having abandoned the Church’s claim to jurisdiction over temporal affairs, is reduced to issuing vague warnings about “encounter” and “relationship” — concepts that belong to the world of Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel, not to the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The “Dialogue” Heresy and the Abdication of Magisterial Authority
Bishop Paul Tighe’s statement to EWTN News is particularly revealing of the conciliar mentality. He said that “Pope” Leo XIV intends to “initiate a dialogue” and “create an environment where all the various people who have a part in the development of AI are attentive to keeping the human at the center.” This language of “dialogue” is the hallmark of the post-conciliar revolution and represents a direct repudiation of the Church’s perennial teaching mission. The Church does not “initiate dialogue” with the world on matters of faith and morals; she teaches, governs, and judges with the authority received from Christ: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations… teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). The very concept of “dialogue” as employed by the conciliar sect presupposes that the Church does not possess definitive truths to proclaim but rather perspectives to offer — a notion that St. Pius X unequivocally condemned as the error that “the Church, in condemning errors, has no right to require any internal assent from the faithful to the pronouncements issued by the Church” (Lamentabili, Proposition 7). Bishop Tighe’s framing reduces the papal magisterium to that of a moderator in a panel discussion, rather than the Vicar of Christ who speaks with the authority of the supreme judge in matters of faith and morals, from whose sentence there is no appeal.
The “Human at the Center” Without God: A Contradiction in Terms
The aspiration to keep “the human at the center” of AI development sounds superficially appealing, but upon examination it is either meaningless or heretical. If “the human at the center” means the human person as understood by Catholic theology — a creature made in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by Christ, sanctified by grace, and ordered toward eternal beatitude — then it necessarily places God at the center, for the dignity of the human person is derived entirely from its relationship to the Creator. If, however, “the human at the center” means the autonomous, self-determining subject of Enlightenment philosophy — the man who is “law to himself” (Pius IX, Syllabus, Proposition 3) — then it is nothing other than the “cult of man” that the pre-conciliar popes consistently condemned.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that the reign of Christ extends over all human affairs without exception: “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” There is no domain — technological, cultural, or political — that falls outside the sovereignty of Christ the King. The conciliar sect’s attempt to address AI “keeping the human at the center” while remaining silent about Christ’s kingship over technology is not merely an omission; it is a practical denial of the very doctrine that Pius XI defined as essential to the Catholic faith. It is the implementation of the secularist error condemned by Pius IX: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Syllabus, Proposition 55) — extended now to the separation of Christ from the domain of technological development.
The Anticipated Encyclical: Magna Cum Nihilo
The anticipation surrounding Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas must be evaluated in light of the entire trajectory of post-conciliar documents. Since John XXIII convoked the Vatican II revolution, the structures occupying the Vatican have produced a continuous stream of documents that employ Catholic vocabulary to advance modernist content — documents that speak of “man,” “dignity,” “dialogue,” and “progress” while remaining silent about sin, grace, the sacraments, the Real Presence, the necessity of conversion, and the social reign of Christ the King. The pattern established by Gaudium et Spes, Dignitatis Humanae, and subsequent conciliar texts is one of systematic ambiguity — language that can be read in either a Catholic or a modernist sense, thereby accommodating both those pretending to be traditional Catholics and outright apostates within the same institutional framework.
Given this established pattern, and given that the conference preceding the encyclical’s release featured not a single reference to the supernatural order, the sacraments, prayer, or the authority of the true Magisterium, there is every reason to expect that Magnifica Humanitas will follow the same trajectory. It will likely employ elevated language about the “dignity of the human person” while failing to define that dignity in terms of the soul’s relationship to God. It will likely call for “ethical guidelines” and “dialogue” while abdicating the Church’s duty to pronounce definitive moral judgments. It will almost certainly remain silent about the root cause of the technological crisis: the rejection of God’s law by individuals and societies, the loss of the sense of sin, and the expulsion of Christ the King from the governance of nations.
The Real Danger: Not Deepfakes but the Abandonment of Truth Itself
The irony of the conciliar sect’s concern about AI deepfakes is that the structures occupying the Vatican have been producing institutional “deepfakes” for over six decades. The post-conciliar liturgical revolution presented a fabricated rite of Mass — the Novus Ordo of 1969 — as if it were the authentic liturgy of the Catholic Church, a liturgical deepfake that has deceived hundreds of millions of souls. The post-conciliar catechisms presented a fabricated theology — one that denies the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, embraces religious liberty, and promotes ecumenism — as if it were the perennial teaching of the Magisterium. The post-conciliar canonizations — including figures like John Paul II, a heretic and apostate, and Maximilian Kolbe, who died not for the faith but for a fellow prisoner — are hagiographical deepfakes that present false models of holiness to the faithful.
St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili that “the interpretation of Holy Scripture given by the Church, while not to be scorned, is nevertheless subject to more exact judgments and corrections by exegetes” (Proposition 2) — a proposition he condemned as heretical. The entire post-conciliar project has been one of systematic “correction” of the Church’s perennial teaching by the “exegetes” of Modernism, resulting in a counterfeit Catholicism that retains the external forms while hollowing out the substance. The deepfake Cardinals and Bishops of the conciliar sect, who present themselves as successors of the Apostles while teaching doctrines condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium, are the original and most dangerous deepfakes — far more consequential than any AI-generated video.
Conclusion: The Remedy Is Not Dialogue but Restoration
The remedy for the crisis of AI deepfakes — and for the broader crisis of technological civilization — is not “dialogue” or “keeping the human at the center.” The remedy is the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King, the re-establishment of the true Mass and sacraments, the proclamation of integral Catholic doctrine without compromise, and the recognition that all human activity — including technological development — must be ordered to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. As Pius XI declared: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Until the structures occupying the Vatican undertake this restoration — which, given their institutional commitment to Modernism, they will never do — their pronouncements on AI, deepfakes, or any other topic will remain what they have always been: the empty words of men who have abandoned the truth and now seek to manage its consequences.
Source:
Vatican Warns That AI ‘Deepfakes’ Threaten the Human Experience (ncregister.com)
Date: 21.05.2026