John XXIII’s Latin letter to Caesarius D’Amato announces and encourages celebrations in Rome for the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of the Apostle Paul’s arrival in the city, praising the Romans who welcomed Paul, extolling Paul as intrepid defender of the Gospel, recommending solemn liturgies, conferences, and devotions, and imparting an “apostolic blessing” upon those who will organize and attend these commemorations.
Behind this apparently pious commemoration stands the usurper John XXIII, who instrumentalizes the Apostle of the Nations to gild the nascent conciliar revolution, emptying Pauline doctrine of its hard, supernatural, anti-worldly edge and replacing it with innocuous rhetoric that serves the emerging Church of the New Advent rather than the Kingdom of Christ the King.
St. Paul Invoked Against St. Paul: The Revolutionary Subversion of the Apostle of the Nations
Historical Commemoration as a Mask for the Coming Subversion
On the factual level, the text seems, at first glance, unassailable: it recalls Paul’s desire to see Rome (Romans 1:11-12), his perilous journey, his arrival on the Appian Way (Acts 28:14-15), the reverent welcome of the Roman Christians, and the glory of Rome as city of Peter and Paul whose relics it guards. It exhorts:
“That City, illustrious for so many annals and titles, is above all happy, thrice happy, because it had Peter and Paul, Princes of the Apostles, as teachers and devoutly preserves their mortal remains.”
The letter then urges:
“Let sacred solemnities be celebrated, gatherings held, discourses delivered, so that in the clearest light it may be set forth how much honor and greatness this coming to Rome brought.”
As bare historical recollection, none of this is objectionable. The problem is precisely what is omitted and how the Apostle is selectively framed. This text is dated December 15, 1959—between the announcement and the preparation of the so‑called Second Vatican Council. From the perspective of *integral Catholic faith*, this letter must be read not as an isolated devotional piece but as an early brick in the architecture of conciliar deception: the Apostle of the Nations is sentimentalized and depoliticized to prepare a new cult of “Paul” amputated from his dogmatic and disciplinary intransigence.
The encyclical Quas primas teaches that peace and order for nations are possible only in the reign of Christ the King, publicly acknowledged and obeyed. Pius XI ties this reign inseparably to the authority and teaching power of the true Church. Here, however, the usurper’s rhetoric about Paul steers deliberately away from the concrete social Kingship of Christ and toward a safe, cultural, “commemorative” Pauline symbol usable for a conciliar sect that will soon enthrone religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
Sentimental Devotion Without Conversion: The Betrayal of Pauline Severity
The linguistic choices are decisive. Paul, in Scripture, burns with supernatural severity: “If any man preach a gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:8-9); he divides light from darkness, Church from world, truth from error, grace from sin. His epistles thunder against fornicators, heretics, Judaizers, corrupters of doctrine, and he commands separation from those who bring another doctrine (cf. Titus 3:10-11; 2 Thess 3:6).
By contrast, John XXIII’s letter moves in a carefully sanitized register:
– Paul is “acerrimus propugnator Evangelii Christi” (most ardent defender of the Gospel) – true, but immediately neutralized into a generic exemplar.
– The faithful are encouraged to “deepen” Paul’s teachings and efforts “in their marrow” through celebrations and conferences.
– There is praise for the Roman Christians’ reception of Paul as an example of “humanity” and “reverence.”
Conspicuously absent is any echo of Paul’s concrete denunciations of false gospels, false brethren, and worldly wisdom. There is no invocation of his anathemas, his demand for doctrinal separation, his insistence on *obedientia fidei* (obedience of faith) against human opinion, no mention of his teaching on the subordination of earthly powers to Christ and His Church. The Apostle is detached from his uncompromising ecclesiological and moral doctrine and reduced to a luminous, edifying figure.
This selective rhetoric is not accidental. It reveals a program: to create a “Paul” who blesses a conciliatory aggiornamento instead of judging and anathematizing it.
Silence on the Supernatural Combat: The Gravest Indictment
The greatest accusation against this text is its silence. On the eve of the Council that would unleash upon souls the poison condemned already by Pius IX in the Syllabus and by Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi, one would expect any true Successor of Peter commemorating the Apostle of the Nations to:
– Warn against liberalism, indifferentism, rationalism, and the cult of “progress,” all already solemnly condemned.
– Recall Paul’s anathema upon any falsification of the Gospel.
– Affirm the exclusive necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, against the rising ecumenical betrayal.
– Proclaim the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ as King of societies, as Pius XI had just done a generation before.
– Call sinners to repentance, penance, the state of grace, underlining judgment and hell as Paul does.
– Denounce secret societies and paramasonic sects undermining Church and state, as Pius IX and Leo XIII did, fully consonant with Paul’s warnings against “the mystery of iniquity.”
Instead, what do we find? An exhortation to pageants, conferences, and pious recollections, without a single explicit mention of:
– The necessity of *state of grace*,
– The horror of mortal sin,
– The danger of heresy and schism,
– The Four Last Things,
– The unbending rule of faith: *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* (outside the Church no salvation).
The Apostle who wrote with tears of “many walking… enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil 3:18), whose “end is destruction,” is pressed here into service as a ceremonial patron of a “celebration” devoid of battle lines. Such silence, precisely at that historical moment, is not benign; it is damning. It manifests the mentality later unmasked as Modernism’s praxis: suppress the supernatural combat, reduce everything to culture, memory, and “spiritual enrichment,” and then, under that incense, architectonic changes can be slid into place.
Appropriation of St. John Chrysostom: Glossing Holiness to Legitimize the Usurper
The letter cites St. John Chrysostom on Paul, affirming that Paul’s soul is a spiritual garden overflowing with grace, a *vas electionis* (chosen vessel), whose preaching waters souls and causes virtues to sprout. But this patristic praise is weaponized subtly: by aligning the new festivities under John XXIII’s “apostolic blessing,” the text implies continuity between Paul’s supernatural fecundity, Chrysostom’s luminous orthodoxy, and the authority of the one promoting the celebrations.
Here lies the perversion: Paul and Chrysostom are deployed as ornaments to decorate a magisterial imposture. The patristic citation, perfectly orthodox in itself, is placed into the service of a structure that is already preparing to contradict the very principles guarded by Chrysostom and Paul:
– Chrysostom feared nothing more than doctrinal compromise and human respect; John XXIII became emblematic for his programmatic “pastoral” softness and his refusal “to be prophets of doom” while the world and clergy drowned in heresy and immorality.
– Paul anathematized false gospels; John XXIII will inaugurate an assembly that enshrines religious liberty and ecumenism, negating the unicity of the true Church in the order of public law—positions condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, propositions 15–18, 77–80).
It is a classic Modernist tactic: *praeparatio affectus*—prepare the emotions through venerable language and saints’ names, so that when doctrines and disciplines shift, the faithful’s sensus fidei is numbed.
From the Kingdom of Christ to the Cult of Memory: Naturalistic Reduction
The theological core of the distortion is a reduction of supernatural realities to commemorative naturalism. The letter emphasizes:
– honor and cultural greatness of Rome for having received Paul,
– the “happiness” of the city possessing the relics of Peter and Paul,
– the spiritual benefit of meditating on Paul’s example.
All true in themselves—as far as they go. But they are severed from the integral doctrinal horizon that the pre-1958 Magisterium tirelessly insisted upon:
– Pius XI in Quas primas: peace and order in society depend on public recognition of Christ’s rights and the submission of laws and institutions to His law; secularism is a “plague” to be condemned.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus: religious indifferentism, separation of Church and state, and the deification of human reason and “progress” are condemned as mortal errors.
– Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi: every attempt to historicize, relativize, or “evolve” doctrine is anathematized as Modernism, “the synthesis of all heresies.”
John XXIII’s letter says nothing that collides verbally with those teachings, but its tone and focus are telling: no clarion assertion of the rights of Christ the King over nations, no denunciation of liberalism, no reaffirmation that the honor of Rome lies in its doctrinal fidelity and subjection to the See of Peter according to tradition. It exalts Rome largely as a locus of memory and prestige: *Urbs, tot illustris fastis et titulis*. This rhetorical re-centering—from Rome as throne of truth and jurisdiction, to Rome as heritage site and spiritual-cultural capital—is precisely the spirit that will later allow the conciliar sect to present itself as historical continuation while betraying doctrinal substance.
The shift is from *regnum Christi* (kingdom of Christ) to “Pauline year,” from submission to the divine law to conferences and pageants. This is naturalism: treating the mysteries and saints as resources for human edification and communal identity, not as supernatural imperatives demanding conversion, obedience, and warfare against error.
Systemic Erasure of Anathema: St. Paul’s Sword Broken by Conciliar Humanism
At the symptomatic level, this letter illustrates the internal logic of the conciliar revolution:
1. Elevate a sanitized image of Apostles and Fathers that emphasizes:
– dialogue,
– journeys,
– “encounters,”
– human warmth.
2. Erase or marginalize:
– anathemas,
– condemnations,
– juridical authority,
– absolute doctrinal claims,
– the supernatural gravity of error and heresy.
3. Use this selective image to legitimate:
– opening to the world,
– ecumenism with heretics and schismatics,
– relativizing of dogma under “development,”
– restructuring of the hierarchy into collegial-democratic patterns.
The letter’s total lack of Pauline severity is not an oversight, but a programmatic sign. The Apostle of the Nations becomes a proto-ecumenical pilgrim to Rome, a symbol of encounter and fraternity, rather than the hammer of heresies and terror of preachers of another gospel.
In Pius X’s terms, this is precisely the Modernist method condemned in Lamentabili: dogma and Scripture are reinterpreted as religious “facts” and symbols which the Church’s consciousness can rework for current needs. Here, Pauline history is mined as spiritual capital for a Church of the New Advent preparing to reconcile itself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization”—the very proposition (80) condemned in the Syllabus.
Authority Without Authority: The “Apostolic Blessing” of an Antipope
The letter concludes by offering an “Apostolic Blessing” as pledge of heavenly aid. But from the standpoint of the perennial doctrine applied to a manifest innovator:
– A public heretic or one who prepares to promulgate doctrines condemned by previous Popes cannot at the same time be the rule of faith; *non potest esse caput Ecclesiae qui est extra Ecclesiam* (he who is outside the Church cannot be head of the Church).
– The corpus of theologians such as St. Robert Bellarmine, and the canonical norm expressed in 1917 Code (canon 188.4), together with dogmatic principles on heresy, indicate that a manifest heretic loses jurisdiction and office.
– When such a man gives “blessings,” they are not acts of the authority of Christ but hollow gestures of a parasitic structure, a paramasonic pseudo-hierarchy occupying the buildings of Rome.
Thus, the “Apostolic Blessing” in this text is a counterfeit currency: its form is borrowed from the true Papacy; its content is emptied by adherence to the conciliar trajectory. The invocation of Paul and Chrysostom serves as spiritual cover for an authority already estranged from the integral faith it pretends to represent.
Contrasting with Pre-1958 Magisterium: The Unbridgeable Gulf
To see the full bankruptcy of the mentality manifest in this letter, compare its spirit with concrete pre-1958 teaching:
– Pius IX explicitly condemns the notion that:
– all religions are equal ways to salvation,
– Church and state should be separated,
– the Pope can reconcile with liberalism (Syllabus, 15–18, 55, 77–80).
– Pius X, in Pascendi and Lamentabili, condemns:
– the reduction of revelation to religious experience,
– evolution of dogma,
– subjection of Scripture and doctrine to historical criticism,
– any minimization of the Church’s right to judge and condemn errors.
– Pius XI in Quas primas:
– insists that states as such owe public worship and obedience to Christ,
– calls laicism a plague,
– ties peace to the social reign of Christ, not to dialogue.
In the 1959 letter:
– There is no reminder that Rome’s greatness is contingent upon fidelity to the unchanging faith.
– There is no application of Paul’s doctrine against the contemporary errors already rampant.
– There is no articulation of Christ’s rights over nations.
– There is only a generic encouragement to devotional and cultural activities.
This gulf is not simply a difference of emphasis; it signifies a different religion. The pre-1958 Popes speak as guardians of an objective deposit of faith, armed with anathema, law, and zeal for the glory of God and salvation of souls. John XXIII’s text breathes the atmosphere of a religious-humanitarian institution organizing centenaries. It is the voice of an emergent neo-church, for which saints and apostles are props, not commanders.
Conclusion: St. Paul Against the Conciliar Sect
If one reads this letter with Catholic eyes, it indicts itself. At the very moment when the world, infected with naturalism, rationalism, and masonic liberalism, needed the thunder of Paul’s anathema and the steel of Pius IX, Pius X, and Pius XI, the man enthroned in Rome offers ceremonial platitudes and an “apostolic blessing” without doctrinal teeth.
– No warning that to corrupt the Gospel is damnable.
– No affirmation that Christ’s Kingship must shape public law.
– No denunciation of the very principles soon to be canonized by the Council he convened.
– No call to penance, to the Most Holy Sacrifice, to separation from heresy.
This is the spiritual and theological bankruptcy of the conciliar mentality in nuce: using the lexicon of Tradition to escort souls toward a new religion. Against this betrayal, the real Apostle Paul stands as accuser, not mascot. His inspired words, preserved and defended by the pre-1958 Magisterium, condemn the counterfeit “Paul” invoked by the conciliar sect and expose John XXIII’s letter as a polished stone in the great edifice of apostasy.
Source:
S. Paulus Apostolus – Ad Caesarium D'amato, Episcopum Tit. Sebastenum in Cilicia ac S. Pauli de urbe Abbatem, undevicesimo revoluto saeculo ex quo Sanctus Paulus Apostolus Romam venit (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025