Vatican News portal (June 3, 2026) reports on Taylor Black, Microsoft’s Director of AI and Venture Ecosystems, who presents the newly usurped “pope” Leo XIV’s encyclical *Magnifica humanitas* as a useful anthropological tool for Big Tech’s artificial intelligence development, particularly in shaping children’s cognition and behavior. The article reveals the seamless collaboration between post-conciliar structures and Silicon Valley corporations, framing the Church’s alleged “deep experience” of the human person as a marketable resource for designing systems that form users at a deeply personal level. This is not a dialogue between faith and reason, but the capitulation of the conciliar sect to the transhumanist project, dressed in the language of Catholic anthropology while stripping it of all supernatural content.
The Absence of the Supernatural: A Deliberate Amputation
The most glaring and damning feature of the entire article is what it never mentions. Nowhere in Taylor Black’s extensive commentary, nor in the Vatican News presentation of his remarks, is there any reference to the supernatural life, the state of grace, original sin, baptism, the sacraments, the soul’s destiny for eternal beatitude, or the reality of Satan and the spiritual warfare that defines the Catholic understanding of the human person. The “anthropology” that Black extracts from Leo XIV’s encyclical is a purely naturalistic anthropology — one concerned with prefrontal lobe development, cognitive formation, and voice modulation. This is not Catholic anthropology. It is the anthropology of behavioral psychology and cognitive science, baptized with the name of a “pope” whose authority derives from the conciliar revolution.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught with absolute clarity: “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 reign of Christ the King is not a metaphor for better user interface design. It is the objective, public, social, and juridical reality that demands the submission of every human intellect, every institution, and every technology to the Divine Law. Black’s framing reduces the “deep experience of the human person” that the Church allegedly possesses to a set of product design principles — a consumer anthropology optimized for user retention and market success. This is the abomination of desolation speaking in the temple of God: the transformation of the Church’s sacred deposit into a corporate asset.
The “Child” as Product User: A Naturalistic Reduction
Taylor Black’s central concern, presented approvingly by Vatican News, is the effect of AI on children, whom he describes as lacking a “completely formed prefrontal lobe until they’re in their early 20s.” The analogy he offers is revealing: AI is like “leaving your kid alone with a brilliant but morally ambiguous adult friend.” The problem, in Black’s framework, is not that AI systems are designed by corporations whose fundamental purpose is profit extraction and behavioral manipulation, nor that these systems operate according to probabilistic algorithms trained on data sets reflecting the moral chaos of a post-Christian civilization. The problem is framed as one of developmental readiness — children lack the “equipment to make that discernment as well as we fully formed adults might.”
This is a purely naturalistic, materialist framework dressed in Catholic-speaking language. The Catholic understanding of the child is not that of a cognitively deficient adult whose prefrontal cortex has not yet matured. The Catholic understanding, rooted in the teaching of the Church Fathers and the Magisterium, is that the child is a rational soul created in the image of God, capable of receiving sanctifying grace through baptism, and in need of formation in the faith — not merely protection from morally ambiguous chatbots. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (proposition 57) and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58). The entire framework Black employs — in which the child’s relationship to technology is assessed purely in terms of cognitive development and discernment capacity — is precisely the kind of evolutionary, progressivist thinking that the pre-conciliar Magisterium condemned.
The article’s silence about the sacramental life as the true foundation of the child’s formation is not an oversight; it is the defining characteristic of the conciliar sect’s apostasy. Where is the mention of First Confession? Of the Most Holy Eucharist as the true food of the soul? Of the necessity of catechesis in the unchanging doctrines of the faith? Of the reality that a child in the state of grace, assisted by the Holy Ghost, possesses more true “equipment for discernment” than the most advanced AI system trained on the sum total of corrupted human data? These omissions are not accidental. They are the inevitable fruit of a Church that has abandoned its supernatural mission in favor of a naturalistic humanism indistinguishable from secular corporate social responsibility programs.
The Leonum Institute: A Paramasonic Structure in Academic Garb
Taylor Black serves as the “inaugural Director of the Leonum Institute for AI and Emerging Technologies at the Catholic University of America.” The name itself — “Leonum,” derived from “Leo” — signals the personality cult that defines the conciliar sect, in which each usurper “pope” generates a new institutional apparatus bearing his name. The Catholic University of America, like virtually all Catholic institutions in the United States, has been under the control of the conciliar apparatus since the 1960s. Its “Catholic” identity is a brand, not a reality.
The Leonum Institute’s purpose, as described in the article, is to bridge “the theory that the Vatican is able to propose and the practice that we as builders have to go through when we’re actually putting hands to keyboard or voice to agent when developing these tools.” This is not the Church exercising her divinely appointed authority to teach, govern, and sanctify. This is a consulting arrangement between a corporate technology firm and a post-conciliar religious institution, in which the latter provides “anthropological insight” to improve product design. The encyclical itself, according to Black, “calls out the moral and cultural and societal weight of the work that these developers are doing.” In other words, the “papal” document is being used to legitimize the AI industry’s self-regulatory framework, providing theological cover for corporations whose business model depends on the systematic manipulation of human cognition.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, 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 entire premise of the Vatican News article — that the “Church’s” relationship with AI developers should deepen through “hard conversations in the actual building” — is precisely this condemned error. The Church does not “dialogue” with builders of systems designed to reshape human cognition. The Church judges such systems according to the immutable standard of divine law and condemns what is contrary to it.
The Separation of Church and State: A Convenient Myth Deployed Selectively
Black’s response to criticism of Church-tech collaboration is particularly revealing. He dismisses such criticism as based on “the rather naive way in which the United States has separated Church and State,” which he describes as “a historical artifact” that “leaves religion, theology, and these deeper kinds of questions in an optional realm rather than in the real way in which all of us experience the need for the transcendent or the need for worship.”
This argument is a masterpiece of bad faith. The “separation of Church and State” that Black dismisses is, in its original American constitutional context, a prohibition on the establishment of a state church — it was never intended to banish religious considerations from public life, as the entire history of American jurisprudence and political rhetoric demonstrates. But Black’s purpose is not to defend the role of faith in public life. His purpose is to argue that corporate product development should be informed by religious anthropology — not because the Church has authority over the corporation, but because the corporation needs the Church’s “deep understanding of the human person” to build better products and retain customers.
The “transcendent” and “worship” that Black invokes are emptied of all specific Catholic content. There is no mention of the true God, the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. The “need for the transcendent” is a generic religious sentiment — precisely the kind of indifferentism that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (proposition 15), and “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (proposition 16). Black’s framework is not Catholic. It is the religious indifferentism of the marketplace, in which all “conceptions of the human person” are equally valid inputs for product design.
The Co-Creation Deception: AI as Demonic Imitation of Divine Creation
Perhaps the most theologically dangerous concept in the entire article is Black’s repeated use of the term “co-creation” to describe the user’s interaction with AI systems. “The user of our products now is co-creating their experience along with the thing that we have built.” “Co-creative acts with our products.” This language is not innocent. In Catholic theology, creation belongs to God alone — creatio ex nihilo. Man participates in God’s creative work only by grace, and even then, not as a co-creator in the proper sense, but as an instrument of Divine Providence. The application of the term “co-creation” to the interaction between a human being and a probabilistic algorithm trained on human-generated data is a demonic parody of the true doctrine of man’s participation in God’s creative work.
Black’s concern that AI can “change our voice or our face, sometimes pushing our real self to the side in favor of an ideal version” is presented as a practical design challenge, not as what it truly is: the technological realization of the serpent’s promise — “Eritis sicut dii” (Gen. 3:5). The AI system, in Black’s own description, offers the user an “ideal version” of themselves — a digitally perfected self that replaces the real, God-created self. This is not a tool. It is an idol — a manufactured image that the user is invited to worship in place of the true image of God in which he was created.
The article’s complete silence about the First Commandment — “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything” (Ex. 20:4) — in a discussion of technology that literally creates digital likenesses of human faces and voices, is the silence of apostasy.
The Dicastery Documents: Continuity as Camouflage
The article references “Antiqua et nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence,” released in January 2025 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education. These dicasteries are organs of the conciliar sect — the same structures that have systematically dismantled Catholic doctrine on religious liberty, ecumenism, and the relationship between the Church and the modern state. Their documents on AI, like all post-conciliar documents, employ the language of pre-conciliar Catholicism while emptying it of its proper content — the hermeneutics of discontinuity disguised as the hermeneutics of continuity.
The “Antiqua et nova” document, as presented in the article, “seeks to apply the Catholic Church’s deep experience and understanding of the human person to the emerging technology of AI.” But the “Catholic Church” that these dicasteries represent is not the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the conciliar sect — the “Church of the New Advent” — which has formally adopted religious liberty, ecumenism, and the dialogue with modern culture as its operative principles. To accept the “anthropological contribution” of this sect is to accept a anthropology stripped of original sin, stripped of the necessity of grace, stripped of the reality of eternal judgment, and stripped of the kingship of Christ over all human endeavors — including technology.
Conclusion: The Rubber Hits the Road in Hell
Taylor Black concludes by expressing his eagerness for “the rubber to hit the road” — for the deepening of the relationship between Vatican “theorists” and tech “builders.” This is the language of the corporate world applied to the supposed mission of the Church. The Church’s mission is not to “build” products alongside Microsoft. The Church’s mission, as defined by her Divine Founder, is “to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19). The Church does not need to “go deeper” into collaboration with AI developers. The Church needs to condemn the transhumanist project as a violation of the divine order and call the faithful to reject it.
Pius IX warned in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — this is condemned error number 80. The entire Vatican News article is a celebration of precisely this condemned reconciliation. The “pope” issues an encyclical that the AI industry finds “valuable.” The AI director praises the encyclical for helping him “keep users” and “build better products.” The Catholic University of America establishes an institute to bridge the gap between “theory” and “practice.” And nowhere — nowhere — is there any mention of the Most Holy Trinity, the necessity of baptism, the reality of sin, the existence of Hell, or the duty of every human being to submit to the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is not the Church engaging with the modern world. This is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, teaching technology corporations how to shape human beings according to the image of the Beast rather than according to the image of God.
Source:
Microsoft AI Director: Magnifica humanitas valuable for AI development (vaticannews.va)
Date: 03.06.2026