The National Catholic Register, carrying a report from Catholic News Agency, reports that U.S. Vice President JD Vance, speaking at the Air Force Academy commencement on May 28, 2026, praised the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas by the usurper Leo XIV (Robert Prevost), echoing its warnings about artificial intelligence making life-and-death decisions in warfare. Vance told graduates that “decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines,” and that AI lacks moral conscience. Yet the same encyclical, while ostensibly defending human dignity, simultaneously declares the Church’s just-war theory “outdated” — a position that directly contradicts two millennia of Catholic moral theology and, not coincidentally, aligns with the conciliar sect’s broader project of dismantling every doctrine that stands in the way of globalist pacifism and moral relativism. The article, sourced from EWTN News and the National Catholic Register, presents this convergence of a secular politician’s prudential warnings with a usurper’s novel teaching as though it were a harmonious meeting of minds. It is nothing of the sort. It is the predictable result of a counterfeit magisterium whose every pronouncement, even when it accidentally grazes a true principle, is embedded in a framework of doctrinal subversion.
The Grain of Truth That Conceals the Mountain of Error
Let us begin where the article begins: with the narrow point on which Vance and the usurper agree. It is indeed true — trivially, obviously, and without any need for an encyclical to state it — that machines do not possess moral conscience, do not judge good and evil, and cannot bear responsibility for consequences. This is not Catholic teaching; it is common sense available to any sane human being since the invention of the abacus. That Leo XIV (Prevost) requires 8,000 words of bureaucratic prose to arrive at this banality tells us everything about the intellectual and spiritual poverty of the conciliar sect. Pius XI did not need an encyclical to explain that calculators lack souls; he wrote Quas Primas to proclaim the divine kingship of Christ over all nations — a truth no artificial intelligence will ever compute and no usurper will ever honestly teach.
Vance’s remarks, while superficially aligned with the usurper’s language, are in fact drawn from the natural law as understood by the American founding tradition — a tradition rooted, however imperfectly, in the Catholic natural law teaching of men like Robert Bellarmine and Francisco Suárez. When Vance says “decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines,” he speaks as a statesman appealing to the moral responsibility of persons. When the usurper says the same thing, he embeds it within a document that simultaneously eviscerates the Church’s own doctrine on the moral legitimacy of defensive war. The agreement is superficial; the frameworks are diametrically opposed.
The Just-War Theory Is Not “Outdated” — It Is Eternal
The gravest and most revealing element in this article is buried in the ninth paragraph, almost as an afterthought: the usurper Leo XIV (Prevost) declares the just-war theory **”outdated.”** Let the gravity of this statement sink in. The Church’s teaching on the conditions for a just war — developed over centuries by Fathers, Doctors, Popes, and theologians from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to St. Robert Bellarmine to Francisco de Vitoria to Francisco Suárez — is not a disciplinary guideline subject to revision. It is a logical corollary of the natural law and the Fifth Commandment. To declare it “outdated” is to declare the moral law itself outdated, since the right of a sovereign authority to defend its people against unjust aggression flows directly from the divine mandate to protect innocent life.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that lawful defense is not merely a right but a duty for those in authority. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, Q. 40), lays out the three conditions for a just war: legitimate authority, just cause, and rightful intention. This teaching was never merely “theory” in the pejorative modern sense; it was the moral theology of self-defense applied to the political common good. It is as binding today as it was in the thirteenth century, because the nature of man, the reality of evil, and the duty to protect the innocent have not changed.
The usurper’s language is revealing: he says the just-war theory has **”all too often been used to justify any kind of war.”** This is the classic modernist technique of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because unjust men have abused a true principle, the principle itself must be discarded. By this logic, the doctrine of the Real Presence should be discarded because some priests have profaned the Eucharist. The doctrine of papal infallibility should be discarded because some popes have been personally immoral. The technique is not argument; it is sophistry in service of pacifism — a pacifism that benefits only the powerful and the tyrannical, who never lack weapons but always lack conscience.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the violation of any solemn oath, as well as any wicked and flagitious action repugnant to the eternal law, is not only not blamable but is altogether lawful and worthy of the highest praise” (error 64). The usurper’s dismissal of just-war theory serves precisely this end: it removes the moral framework by which defensive violence can be judged just, leaving only the naked assertion that “force, violence and weapons reflect relational poverty.” But the Church has always taught that the failure to use legitimate force when innocent lives are at stake is itself a sin of omission. A father who refuses to defend his family from a murderer is not practicing “relational poverty”; he is practicing cowardice and dereliction of duty.
The Usurper’s Preferred Tools: Dialogue, Diplomacy, and Forgiveness
The usurper writes that **”humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.”** This is the language of the United Nations, not of the Catholic Church. It is the language of every modernist and liberal who has sought to reduce the Church from a divine institution with the authority to teach, govern, and judge nations into a non-governmental organization specializing in conflict resolution.
Where in Holy Scripture does Our Lord recommend “dialogue” with Satan? Where does He recommend “diplomacy” with those who seek to destroy His Church? Christ drove the money changers from the temple with a whip. He called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” and “a brood of vipers.” He did not propose a diplomatic conference with Herod. The Apostles did not engage in dialogue with the Sanhedrin; they proclaimed, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, was explicit: **”The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.”** The reign of Christ extends to states as well as individuals, and states have the duty — not the option, the duty — to order their affairs according to God’s commandments. When the usurper replaces this with the bland vocabulary of “dialogue” and “forgiveness,” he is not updating the Church’s teaching; he is abandoning it in favor of the secular humanist framework that the conciliar sect has embraced since John XXIII opened the windows to the world.
Vance’s Rebuke and Its Insufficiency
The article notes that Vance previously rebuked the usurper for implying the U.S. was not engaged in a just war in Iran, saying **”it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”** This is a remarkable statement from a secular vice president, and it contains more theological instinct than the entirety of Magnifica Humanitas. Vance intuits that the man occupying the Vatican is speaking on matters beyond his competence — or, more precisely, beyond his authority, since no manifest heretic possesses any authority to teach the Church.
But Vance’s rebuke is fatally incomplete. He treats the problem as one of diplomatic carelessness — the usurper being “careless” with theological language. The problem is far deeper. The usurper is not careless; he is heretical. He is not making prudential errors in applying a valid doctrine; he is denying the doctrine itself. No amount of diplomatic caution will correct a man who has, by his own words, abandoned the Church’s perennial teaching on the morality of defensive war. The issue is not tone; it is content. And the content is apostasy.
The Article’s Omissions: What the Register Refuses to Say
The National Catholic Register’s article is a masterwork of conciliar journalism: it reports the facts selectively, omits all doctrinal context, and presents the usurper’s novelties as though they were organic developments of Catholic teaching. Nowhere does the article mention that the just-war theory is rooted in Scripture, the Fathers, and centuries of magisterial teaching. Nowhere does it quote St. Augustine, St. Thomas, or any pre-conciliar authority. Nowhere does it note that the usurper’s position represents a radical discontinuity with everything the Church taught before the conciliar revolution.
This is the hermeneutic of discontinuity disguised as news reporting. The Register does not do this out of ignorance; it does so because it is a house organ of the conciliar sect, and its editorial mission is to present every utterance from the Vatican as though it carried the weight of the Holy Ghost. When the usurper contradicts two millennia of doctrine, the Register either ignores the contradiction or frames it as “development.” When a secular politician accidentally speaks more truthfully than the usurper, the Register highlights the convergence and ignores the divergence.
The Deeper Apostasy: Reduction of the Church to a Moral Advisory Board
The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, as reported in this article, represents the culmination of the conciliar project: the reduction of the Catholic Church from the one true Church founded by Christ, with divine authority to teach all nations, into a global moral advisory board whose pronouncements are interchangeable with those of the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and the Aspen Institute. When the usurper warns about AI, he sounds no different from Bill Gates or Yuval Noah Harari. When he calls for “dialogue” and “forgiveness” in place of just war, he sounds no different from Ban Ki-moon or Kofi Annan.
The Church before 1958 did not issue encyclicals warning about technology in the manner of a Silicon Valley ethics committee. She proclaimed the kingship of Christ, the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of hell, the obligation of states to submit to divine law, and the infallible authority of the Roman Pontiff to bind consciences. The Church after 1958 issues encyclicals about artificial intelligence, climate change, and economic inequality — the transubstantiated social gospel of Modernism, dressed in the language of faith but empty of its substance.
Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (error 57) — not because the Church embraces the modernist cult of progress, but because she recognizes that truth does not change with man (cf. error 58). The usurper’s encyclical is built entirely on the premise that the Church must constantly update her teaching in response to technological developments — a premise that Pius X would have recognized as the evolution of dogma, the very heart of the Modernist heresy.
Conclusion: A Counterfeit Magisterium Produces Counterfeit Teaching
The convergence between JD Vance’s prudential warnings about AI and Leo XIV’s (Prevost’s) encyclical is not a meeting of minds. It is the inevitable result of a counterfeit magisterium that has abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church in favor of naturalistic humanism. Vance speaks from the natural law, imperfectly but sincerely. The usurper speaks from the conciliar playbook, wrapping novelties in the language of tradition and calling the result “Catholic teaching.”
The just-war theory is not outdated. It is eternal, because the duty to protect the innocent is eternal, because the moral law is eternal, and because the authority of the Church to teach on faith and morals is eternal. When the usurper declares it “outdated,” he does not update the Church; he exposes himself as a man who has abandoned the faith of his predecessors and embraced the spirit of the age.
Let the faithful take warning: when the conciliar sect speaks, even accidentally, a partial truth, it does so only to embed that truth within a framework of error so comprehensive that the truth itself becomes a vehicle for deception. The Register’s article is a perfect example: a true principle (humans, not machines, must make life-and-death decisions) is presented alongside a monstrous error (the just-war theory is obsolete), and the reader is expected to accept both as the authentic voice of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has but one response to such claims: non possumus. We cannot accept what contradicts the faith delivered once and for all to the saints. We cannot recognize the authority of a manifest heretic to teach, govern, or judge. And we cannot remain silent when the abomination of desolation, seated in the temple of God, proclaims itself to be something it is not.
Source:
Vance, Echoing Pope Leo’s Encyclical, Says Decisions About Life and Death ‘Must Be Made by Humans, Not Machines’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 29.05.2026