The text, dated 8 December 1959 and signed by John XXIII, is presented as a paternal letter to the bishops of Lithuania on the 350th anniversary of the death of Bishop Melchior Giedraitis. It praises Giedraitis as a zealous Tridentine reformer, extols Lithuanian fidelity under persecution, laments atheist oppression, and encourages perseverance in sacramental life, catechesis in families, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Šiluva, culminating in an “Apostolic Blessing” to hierarchy and faithful. In reality, this document is an elegant veil: it instrumentalizes a genuinely Catholic figure and a suffering nation as a moral decor for the nascent conciliar revolution whose architect and symbol is John XXIII himself.
Appropriation of a Tridentine Bishop to Legitimize a Revolutionary Usurper
At first glance, the letter appears orthodox, even edifying: reverence for a Counter‑Reformation bishop, denunciation of communist persecutions, exhortations to perseverance, catechesis, the Most Holy Sacrifice, Marian devotion. The conciliar sect always begins with such language. Diabolus simiam Dei agit (the devil apes God): imitation in wording, negation in foundation.
Key moves in the text:
– John XXIII presents Melchior Giedraitis as a model bishop formed by the Council of Trent, zealous for doctrine, sacraments, catechesis, and loyalty to the Roman See.
– He recalls Lithuania’s heroic fidelity under persecution: exiled or imprisoned clergy, suppressed religious, confiscated property, eradicated Catholic education, promotion of atheism, censorship of Catholic press.
– He exhorts bishops and priests to constancy, to defend Catholic rights, to pass on doctrine, to unite closely around the “Roman Pontiff” and the “legitimate hierarchy,” to persevere in sacramental life and Sunday assistance at the Holy Sacrifice.
– He links this to Marian devotion (Šiluva) and concludes with an “Apostolic Blessing.”
All appears impeccably within the line of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII. But precisely here lies the tactic: the usurper uses the image of a thoroughly Tridentine bishop and a persecuted Church in Lithuania as a rhetorical shield while preparing, from Rome itself, the demolition of the very dogmatic, liturgical, and ecclesiological edifice that Giedraitis defended.
Historical and Factual Inversion: Praising What One Is Systematically Undermining
On the factual level, several contradictions emerge when this 1959 text is confronted with pre‑1958 Catholic teaching and the subsequent conciliar revolution which John XXIII inaugurated:
1. The letter praises Giedraitis as one who:
– Implemented the decrees of Trent.
– Restored ecclesiastical discipline.
– Fought errors and brought nobles back to obedience to the See of Peter.
– Promoted catechesis, built churches, strengthened sacramental life.
John XXIII’s later acts (convoking Vatican II, promoting aggiornamento, protecting and promoting notorious modernists) unleashed precisely what Pius X condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi: the dissolution of dogma into history, liturgical deformation, ecclesiological relativism, and collaboration with the enemies of the Church.
It is the height of irony—and therefore of spiritual deceit—to use a Tridentine confessor as a moral ornament for a pontificate whose defining work is the preparation of the overthrow of Trent’s doctrinal bulwark.
2. The letter laments state persecution:
“schools… in whose place others have been introduced, in which not only is Christian doctrine impeded, but the fantasies of atheism are propagated with great praise;”
Yet the same John XXIII’s conciliar project will:
– Promote religious liberty understood in the condemned sense of the Syllabus (propositions 15–18, 77–80): equality of cults in the civil forum, denial of the exclusive rights of the true Religion in the State.
– Open the way to the ecumenical relativism that Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI explicitly rejected.
– Lead to a climate where Christ the King is expelled not only from communist states, but from constitutions of once‑Catholic nations with the moral complicity and diplomatic orchestration of the conciliar sect.
Thus, he weeps over atheist propaganda in Lithuanian schools, while architecting a new orientation in which Catholic states are told—against Pius XI’s Quas primas—to renounce the integral and public reign of Christ and accept religious pluralism as an ideal. This is not pastoral solicitude; it is double speech.
3. The letter celebrates fidelity to “Roman Pontiff and legitimate hierarchy” among the Lithuanian faithful. This appeal is weaponized:
– Under true pontiffs (Pius IX–Pius XII), such fidelity meant adherence to anti‑liberal, anti‑modernist doctrine: Syllabus, Quas primas, Pascendi, Humani generis.
– Under John XXIII, “fidelity” is redefined as docile acceptance of the council that will contradict these magisterial landmarks in spirit and practice, and of a hierarchy that abandons their integral teaching.
The document thus subtly transfers the Lithuanian Catholics’ hard‑won obedience to the pre‑1958 papacy into a moral obligation to submit to the soon‑to‑be‑unleashed conciliar revolution.
In sum, the text’s apparent orthodoxy is factual camouflage. It praises what will soon be betrayed and co‑opts genuine Catholic heroism to legitimize a usurped authority preparing doctrinal and liturgical subversion.
Rhetorical Cosmetics: Pious Vocabulary in the Service of Neutralization
The linguistic texture is crucial. The letter is written in elevated ecclesiastical Latin; its tone is paternal, devout, sorrowful over persecution. Yet we must dissect the rhetoric.
1. Strategic exaltation of Giedraitis:
By highlighting that he:
“zealously observed the prescriptions of the recent Council of Trent; wholly devoted himself to pastoral duties; founded new parishes; built churches; promoted the splendor of sacred rites; and laboured to impart Christian doctrine to all social orders.”
John XXIII presents himself implicitly as the legitimate heir of Trent and of the anti‑heretical episcopate. But:
– A genuine successor of Trent would intensify the anti‑modernist line of Pius X and Pius XII, not convene a pastoral super‑council to “update” the Church in dialogue with the very errors already condemned.
– The use of a Tridentine exemplar functions as a rhetorical anesthetic: faithful are to see continuity where there is preparation for rupture.
This is a textbook example of hermeneutica fraudulenta: an outward appeal to continuity while internally preparing discontinuity.
2. Carefully selective indignation:
The text forcefully details communist brutality: exiled bishops, imprisoned priests and laity, suppression of Catholic education, confiscations, censorship. This indignation is legitimate—but partial:
– There is no mention that the same anti‑Christian principles are embodied in Freemasonry and liberalism already condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII as the intellectual and organizational matrix of such persecutions.
– There is no explicit re‑affirmation—precisely here, where it would be most needed—of the Syllabus’ condemnation of religious liberty, separation of Church and State, and the sovereignty of the people as source of law (propositions 39–40, 55, 77–80).
– The silence on these doctrinal anchors indicates a program: the enemy is atheistic communism only; liberal democracy and its false principles are left untouched, soon to be re‑embraced by the conciliar sect.
The rhetoric thus narrows the battlefield: persecution is lamented as a humanitarian and partial religious issue, but the full doctrinal diagnosis of Pius IX and Pius X—sectarian, Masonic, liberal conspiracy against the Church—is muted. This omission is not accidental. It prepares reconciliation with “modern civilization” precisely where the Syllabus and Pascendi forbid it.
3. Soft universalism, vague consolations:
The closing paragraphs desire better times, peace, concord, suspicion laid aside, all resting on “Christ’s religion.” The formula is orthodox in itself, yet:
– It lacks the clear insistence of Pius XI in Quas primas, that true peace is only possible when individuals and nations publicly submit to the social kingship of Christ in the Catholic Church.
– It reduces, at least rhetorically, the conflict to external political tensions, not primarily to doctrinal war between the Church and the anti‑Christian sects condemned by prior magisterium.
The tone is deliberately irenic, setting the stage for the conciliatory, equivocal language that will permeate the documents of the conciliar sect.
The letter’s language functions as a liturgical incense cloud: pious, moving, but designed to obscure the structural betrayal being prepared.
Theological Contradiction: Invoking Trent While Preparing Its Eclipse
From the standpoint of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the deepest fault of this text lies in the contradiction between what it verbalizes and what it structurally presupposes and anticipates.
1. Exploiting authentic Catholic figures:
Melchior Giedraitis is presented as:
“a true apostle in your nation, who promoted, strengthened, and deeply fixed in the souls of citizens the most holy religion of Christ.”
His concrete features:
– Zealous implementation of the Council of Trent.
– Combat against error.
– Return of nobles from heresy to obedience to the See of Peter.
– Promotion of catechism, sacred rites, parish structures.
This is exactly the model bishop praised by:
– The Council of Trent’s decrees on reform and on the sacraments.
– St. Pius X’s anti‑modernist teaching, which insists that pastors must defend immutable dogma, oppose novelty, and extirpate errors.
Yet John XXIII’s actual historical role:
– Rehabilitation and promotion of modernist theologians who had been rightly censured under Pius XII.
– Convocation of a council whose practical outcome would be the dilution of precisely those Tridentine lines: abandonment of Latin and the sacrificial character of the Most Holy Sacrifice in practice, democratization of ecclesial structures, ecumenical relativization of dogma.
Accordingly, to invoke Giedraitis here is theologically perverse: a prefiguration of using the saints and martyrs of Tradition as decorations for the program that dismantles their work.
2. Silence on Modernism: the real enemy
The most damning omission:
– Not one word naming Modernism, the “synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X, Pascendi), whose infiltration was already denounced before 1958 within seminaries, universities, and episcopates.
– Not one explicit reaffirmation of Lamentabili sane exitu or the anti‑modernist oath as binding.
– Not one warning that the suffering Lithuanian faithful must guard themselves not only against atheist persecution, but also against doctrinal corruption emanating from compromised clergy, theological faculties, and false irenic voices.
This total silence is theologically telling. The document speaks against external enemies (atheist state) while ignoring the internal virus (modernism) that Pius X and Pius XII had unmasked. It directs Lithuanian fidelity exclusively upwards to Rome—as if Rome herself were guaranteed to be immune to the very errors her prior pontiffs exposed—at the moment when Rome is about to become the epicentre of doctrinal and liturgical revolution.
In doing so, the letter subtly neutralizes legitimate vigilance: it forms consciences to think that loyalty to whoever occupies the Roman See is always safe, even when that occupant overturns prior magisterium. This is precisely what the integral Catholic faith and sound theology—summarized by theologians like St. Robert Bellarmine—reject: a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, for non potest esse caput qui non est membrum (he cannot be head who is not a member).
3. Misuse of obedience and the “legitimate hierarchy”
By praising Lithuanian fidelity to the “Roman Pontiff and legitimate hierarchy,” the letter exploits a principle that is correct only when those terms correspond to reality:
– The pre‑1958 Church teaches that the faithful owe true obedience to the Roman Pontiff when he commands in continuity with Tradition and does not subvert faith or cult.
– The same Tradition teaches that a pope manifestly deviating into heresy cannot be obeyed in that heresy, and indeed ceases to hold office.
The letter’s logic, however, anticipates the conciliarist deformation:
– Any occupant of Rome is presumed legitimate.
– Any hierarchy in outward union with that occupant is presumed legitimate.
– Therefore, fidelity to them becomes an absolute moral demand, regardless of doctrinal rupture.
For a people like Lithuania—trained in heroic obedience by true pontiffs—this rhetoric is a trap: it prepares them to accept, as an act of fidelity, the future conciliar subversion of catechesis, liturgy, and morals, introduced by the very structures “occupying the Vatican.”
The letter thus weaponizes obedience against Tradition.
Symptom of Systemic Apostasy: Naturalization, Humanitarianism, and Controlled Piety
This document is an early symptom of the broader pathology of the conciliar sect.
1. Reduction of the conflict to the external
The persecutions listed are real: exiles, imprisonments, closures, propaganda of atheism. But they are framed predominantly as:
– Violations of “rights” of the Church.
– Hindrances to sacramental ministry.
– Obstacles to catechesis.
Missing:
– A full doctrinal denunciation of the anti‑Christian ideology in both communist and liberal‑masonic forms (precisely described by Pius IX and Leo XIII as an organized war of secret sects against Christ and His Church).
– An explicit reminder that states have the grave duty, by divine law, to recognize the one true Church and publicly submit to Christ the King (Quas primas: peace and order cannot exist where His rights are denied).
– A warning that “human rights” language, detached from the rights of God and the truth of the Catholic faith, is itself a poisoned instrument used by revolutionary sects.
Instead, we see a careful restriction: the evil is the atheist regime “over there,” while the doctrinal principles of liberal modernity are left untouched, soon to be embraced under the vocabulary of “dialogue,” “dignity,” “freedom.”
2. Controlled orthodoxy in devotions
Marian devotion: the letter appeals to the Immaculate Virgin and to the cult of Our Lady of Šiluva, recognized among Lithuanian Catholics. On the surface, traditional and sound. Yet:
– Marian devotion is invoked as consolation and support, but not as the banner under which to wage doctrinal war against the errors Pius X named.
– Pious devotions become “safe zones” where the faithful are pacified, while at the doctrinal level preparations are made for ecumenism, religious liberty, and dogmatic relativization.
This instrumentalization of devotions is typical of the neo‑church: leave intact certain emotive external forms while hollowing out the doctrinal core, so that the faithful feel continuity and do not perceive the betrayal.
3. Family catechesis: true duty, concealed context
The exhortation that parents take responsibility for catechizing children when priests are impeded is entirely consonant with Catholic tradition. But:
– No warning is given that texts and orientations emanating from Rome itself may soon contradict what Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII taught.
– Parents are directed to rely on and trust a magisterial line about to be injected with modernist toxins.
The effect: strengthen family catechesis as an emergency measure, but under the assumption that the “official” doctrine remains what it always was—thus ensuring that, when the neo‑doctrine arrives cloaked as “development,” it can slip in under the seal of previously cultivated trust.
4. Absence of any true self‑critique of Rome
In a genuine Catholic document, written in 1959 fully in the spirit of Pius XII, one would expect, given the gravity of modern errors:
– A reaffirmation of the Syllabus and the condemnation of liberalism.
– A renewed condemnation of Modernism in line with Pascendi and Lamentabili.
– Clear directives to the Lithuanian bishops to safeguard seminaries and pulpits from any infiltration of these doctrines.
– A stern warning against compromise with communist regimes, and against any illusion that doctrinal concessions could protect the Church.
None of this appears. Instead, there is an immaculate “we in Rome” who only console, bless, and exhort, without any hint that treason might emerge from the center.
This silence is itself a sign of apostasy: the refusal to name the internal enemy at the very moment when it is about to seize the institutions.
Exposure of the Underlying Fraud: Continuity as Mask for Subversion
When this letter is read not in isolation, but in the full light of pre‑1958 doctrine and the ensuing conciliar revolution, its character becomes clear:
– It is not a merely local exhortation.
– It is part of a deliberate narrative strategy:
– To wrap the new regime in the mantle of pre‑conciliar Catholic vocabulary.
– To present John XXIII as a normal successor of Pius XII, devoted to Trent, Marian piety, persecuted peoples.
– To maintain the psychological and moral obedience of the faithful, especially those who have suffered for the faith, so that they will not resist when Rome begins to promulgate novelties irreconcilable with what previous popes taught.
This is why the integral Catholic faith must judge this text with unflinching clarity:
– The praise of Bishop Melchior Giedraitis is objectively right; but its appropriation by a revolutionary usurper is blasphemous manipulation.
– The lament over Lithuanian persecution is true; but it is weaponized to strengthen attachment to a structure that will betray the very faith for which Lithuanians suffer.
– The insistence on obedience to “Roman Pontiff” and “legitimate hierarchy” is Catholic in principle; but here it serves to prepare acquiescence to the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican.
– The retention of traditional language is deliberate: simulatio continuitatis (simulation of continuity) in order to smuggle in discontinuity.
According to the unchangeable principles affirmed by the pre‑1958 Magisterium:
– Christ is King not only of souls, but of societies; states must obey Him (Quas primas).
– The Church cannot reconcile Herself with condemned liberalism, indifferentism, or modernism (Syllabus, Pascendi).
– Dogma does not evolve; any “development” contrary to prior defined sense is false.
– A manifest heretic or promoter of heresy cannot be head of the Church nor rule over Her with binding authority.
Measured against these criteria, the letter of 8 December 1959 is not an innocent exhortation; it is an early, polished specimen of the conciliar sect’s method: dressing the wolf of aggiornamento in the fleece of Tridentine piety, so that the flock—Lithuania included—be led, unsuspecting, toward the precipice.
The faithful who honor the memory of Melchior Giedraitis and of all true Catholic confessors of Lithuania must therefore:
– Hold fast to the integral doctrine they professed and defended.
– Reject the later conciliar novelties which contradict that doctrine.
– Recognize that pious phrases and blessings issuing from a paramasonic structure that systematically undermines the faith possess no authority ex sese.
– Persevere not in sentimental fidelity to an office occupied by usurpers, but in genuine fidelity to the unbroken Magisterium of the true Church.
Only thus is the legacy of Giedraitis honored and the suffering of the Lithuanian faithful not betrayed on the altar of the conciliarist cult of man.
Source:
Ut Filiis – Ad Lithuaniae Episcopos, trecentesimo et quinquagesimo volvente anno a Pio Melchioris Giedraitis, Episcopi, obitu (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025