What the Vatican has done is convert an unresolved philosophical dispute into operational guidance. The phenomenological position — that consciousness requires lived, embodied experience and cannot be reduced to functional equivalence — has been debated in philosophy of mind for decades without consensus. Pope Leo XIV did not engage that debate; he closed it for his institution. The practical effect is that priests urged not to use AI for homilies are now operating under a doctrine that treats AI's experiential deficit as a theological fact. That is a structurally different…