This short Latin letter of John XXIII commissions Aloisius Iosephus Muench as papal legate to preside over celebrations in Malta marking nineteen centuries since the shipwreck and apostolic preaching of St Paul on the island. It praises Malta’s natural and supernatural gifts, extols its historical fidelity to the Catholic faith, and exhorts that all private and social life be founded solely on Jesus Christ, as preached by the Apostle, concluding with a so‑called “apostolic blessing.” The entire text, though seemingly pious and scriptural, functions as a sacral varnish applied by the initiator of the conciliar revolution, transforming an authentic Pauline memory into an instrument for consolidating the nascent neo-church of aggiornamento and humanist diplomacy.
UNDEVIGINTI SAECULA: John XXIII’s Maltese Piety as Preludium to Revolt
Historical Commemoration Requisitioned as Legitimization of a Usurping Authority
On the factual level, the letter appears harmless: the usurper John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) designates Aloisius Muench as his legate for the celebrations of the nineteenth centenary of St Paul’s arrival in Malta; he recalls Acts 28:1‑11, lauds Malta’s hospitality, confesses its long-standing Catholic faith, and urges perseverance in Christ as foundation of private and social life.
Key elements (translated, with original in italics for reference) include:
“Nineteen centuries having been completed this year since the Apostle Paul, having suffered shipwreck, was brought to the island of Malta and with rich fruit there announced the Gospel of Christ…”
“Whatever may happen, this will be equally just and of lasting profit for the Maltese: that no other foundation be laid for private and social life except that which has been laid for them by the most holy Apostle, Jesus Christ.”
At first glance, such statements echo authentic Catholic doctrine, resonating with *1 Cor 3:11*: “For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus.” Yet precisely here lies the perfidy: orthodox phrases are conscripted to cloak a radically subversive project. The same John XXIII who in 1960 clothes himself in Pauline language is the architect of the paramasonic structure that will, within a few years, enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man against the binding magisterium of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
Thus, the historical commemoration is not neutral; it is exploited as a liturgical and symbolic endorsement of a counterfeit “pontificate” and of the conciliar process already in motion. The gesture “We send Our Legate” presupposes a valid papacy; but *nemo dat quod non habet* (no one gives what he does not have). A manifest modernist, elected to revolutionize doctrine and worship, cannot by pious rhetoric rehabilitate his authority in the eyes of those who know the pre‑1958 magisterium.
The Use of Orthodox Vocabulary to Mask a New Religion
On the linguistic level, this letter is a textbook exercise in what Modernism—as exposed by St Pius X in Pascendi and condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu—does best: retaining Catholic words while silently evacuating their dogmatic content.
1. Strategic appeals to Tradition:
– The text highlights Malta as a land where the Catholic faith “shines with pure soundness” and is compared to a rock stronger than the sea waves:
“catholicam fidem, quae pura sanitate fulget et per saeculorum cursum insidiis non territa, rupe maris undis percussa firmior est”
– This imagery would be unobjectionable if not spoken by the very man preparing to convoke Vatican II with the programmatic rejection of the “prophets of doom” and the hermeneutic of rupture in practice, disguised as “renewal.”
2. Quiet substitution of magisterial gravity with sentimental humanism:
– St Paul is invoked; Malta’s natural beauty and “good disposition” are praised; but the letter carefully avoids explicit doctrinal militancy against the very errors that, by 1960, are ravaging Christendom: laicism, socialism, naturalism, Masonic infiltration.
– Compare with Pius IX’s Syllabus Errorum (1864), which condemns the separation of Church and State (prop. 55), religious indifferentism (15–18), and liberal “progress” (77–80). John XXIII, facing the same forces, offers only soft compliments and diplospeak.
3. Controlled vocabulary designed to reassure:
– Expressions like “Christian name’s bulwark”, “bond of concord”, “pledge of happiness” are deployed without the hard doctrinal edges of pre‑1958 papal language that unambiguously anathematized error and condemned the sects warring against the Church.
– Where St Pius X thunders against Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies”, Roncalli’s letter is antiseptic, without dogmatic teeth. The tone is irenic, civic, courteous—precisely the style that prepares the moral disarmament of Catholics.
The tactic: by sounding Catholic, the usurper normalizes his position and acclimatizes the faithful to a counterfeit magisterium. Verba catholica, mens haeretica (Catholic words, heretical mind).
Omitted Combat: The Silence that Betrays Apostasy
The gravest indictment against this letter is not what it says but what it refuses to say.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958:
– By 1960, the world witnesses:
– Militant atheistic communism and socialist governments persecuting the Church.
– Freemasonry’s deep entrenchment in political and cultural structures, explicitly identified as the “synagogue of Satan” by Pius IX and repeatedly condemned by Leo XIII.
– The rapid erosion of confessional states, the enthronement of laicism, and educational systems de‑Catholicized in defiance of the magisterium (cf. Syllabus, 39–48, 55).
– Inside ecclesiastical structures, the spread of precisely those modernist exegetical, doctrinal, and liturgical trends condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
Yet John XXIII, addressing Malta—historically a bastion against Islam and heresy—offers:
– No condemnation of Socialism, Communism, or Freemasonry.
– No reaffirmation that the State must, under pain of sin, publicly recognize the true Church and Christ as King, as taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas, who declared that peace is impossible unless public life submits to the reign of Christ.
– No warning against religious indifferentism or false ecumenism.
– No mention of the need for the Most Holy Sacrifice offered in the traditional Roman rite, or of the sacraments as necessary means of grace.
– No reference to Last Things: judgment, hell, the necessity of dying in the state of grace.
– No exhortation to resist the errors overwhelmingly condemned in the documents of the pre‑conciliar magisterium.
Instead, we read a polished and devout-sounding invitation that Malta lay its “private and social life” on Christ—beautiful words, emptied of concrete content, perfectly adaptable to the future conciliar slogans of “religious liberty” and “dialogue”. This is the silence of betrayal.
Silentium de supremis rebus—silence about the essential supernatural realities—is not prudence; it is complicity. The omission of the explicit war against Modernism, so insistently demanded by St Pius X, reveals this letter as part of the systematic anesthetization of the Catholic conscience.
Theological Disjunction: Authentic Magisterium versus Conciliar Preludes
Let us confront the letter’s implied theology with the binding doctrine prior to 1958.
1. On the Kingship of Christ:
– The text alludes to Christ as the sole foundation of social and private life. That in itself is in harmony with Quas Primas, where Pius XI teaches that laws, institutions, education, and public life must adhere to Christ’s rights; secular neutrality is condemned.
– But John XXIII’s letter omits every practical conclusion demanded by that doctrine:
– No insistence that Malta’s civil laws must confess the Catholic religion as the only true one.
– No assertion that non-Catholic worship has no public right.
– No warning against the liberal thesis condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus 77–80).
– Thus the Pauline foundation is reduced to a vague moral principle. This is how Modernism operates: what appears orthodox is subtly severed from its obligatory juridical and doctrinal consequences.
2. On the nature of the Church:
– The letter presents Malta’s fidelity to the “Catholic faith” as continuous and unbroken, while the signatory simultaneously prepares a council that will:
– Teach religious liberty (Dignitatis humanae) in direct contradiction to prior magisterium.
– Abandon the condemnation of Protestantism and of national churches separated from Rome (contrary to Syllabus 18, 37).
– Lay the ideological basis for the liturgical devastation and doctrinal relativism that will follow.
– If Malta is to remain, as the letter says, “Christian name’s bulwark”, it must cling to that immutable doctrine. But the same hand that praises its fidelity intends to subject it to conciliar aggiornamento—i.e., to detach it from that very pre‑1958 doctrinal foundation.
3. On Apostolicity:
– The letter invokes St Paul as “sower and herald” of the faith in Malta.
– Authentic Catholic theology: apostolic succession is not merely historical continuity but fidelity to the same doctrine, sacraments, and worship.
– John XXIII’s program—culminating in the new rites of orders (1968), new “Mass” (1969), and ecumenical syncretism—severs real apostolicity.
– To use St Paul as an ornament while preparing to replace the Unbloody Sacrifice with a protestantized banquet, and dogmatic clarity with pastoral ambiguity, is a theological lie.
Here the principle of St Robert Bellarmine, cited in the integral Catholic tradition, applies: 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). The one who lays the foundations of a religion contrary to the solemn teaching of his predecessors cannot be Vicar of Christ. The Maltese letter attempts to fuse the authority of Paul with the authority of Roncalli; the two are irreconcilable.
Language as Soft Weapon: Pastoralism against Dogma
On the linguistic and rhetorical plane, the letter manifests key symptoms of the conciliar mentality:
– Excessive emphasis on:
– “Memorial celebrations”
– “Magnificent praises”
– “Gratitude”
– “Good natural qualities” of the islanders
– Minimal emphasis on:
– Sin
– Error
– Heresy
– Need for penance
– Threat of damnation
This sentimental “pastoralism” mirrors the very tendencies condemned in Lamentabili:
– The reduction of dogma to historical or practical symbols (prop. 26: “dogmas of faith are to be understood according to their practical sense”).
– The aversion to precise doctrinal judgments against errors, replaced by inclusive rhetoric.
Thus, even in a short commemorative letter, we see the method of the conciliar sect:
– No explicit breach with prior teaching—only its effective paralysis through silence and euphemism.
– No open denial of defined dogmas—only a studied refusal to wield them as weapons against the enemies of Christ the King.
Qui tacet cum loqui debeat, consentire videtur (he who is silent when he ought to speak, seems to consent). This document exemplifies that criminal silence.
Malta as Symbol: From Fortress of Christendom to Laboratory of Neo-Church
Symptomatically, Malta is chosen as liturgical theater:
– Historically:
– Fortress of the Faith, bastion against Islam, the Knights Hospitaller, heroic resistance against the Crescent.
– Land whose Catholic identity is not decorative but constitutive.
– Roncalli’s strategy:
– By sending a legate and draping Malta’s history with his authority, he overlays genuine Catholic heroism with conciliar legitimacy.
– The letter insists that the nineteenth centenary be celebrated under his aegis, as “Our Person”, thus claiming continuity: St Paul → Roman primacy → John XXIII.
But:
– If the one who signs is architect of reforms that contradict prior magisterium, then this claimed continuity is a fraud.
– The more ancient and noble the Catholic tradition of a place, the more valuable it becomes for the conciliar sect as a symbolic hostage: if Malta obeys John XXIII, then Roncalli’s pseudo-papacy can masquerade as heir of St Paul himself.
There is no call here that Malta reject liberalism, condemn Freemasonry, restore confessional legislation, defend the indissolubility of marriage against civil usurpation, reject false “rights of man” hostile to the rights of Christ. Instead, a bland blessing is extended also to “magistrates,” without defining their duty to Christ the King and His one true Church. This is the very “reconciliation with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus 80).
In effect, the letter invites Malta to remain a “bulwark”—but emptied of its teeth, reduced to a picturesque memory domesticated by the neo-church.
Counter-Witness to the Pre‑1958 Magisterium
Placed beside the voice of authentic Popes, this text’s insufficiency becomes evident:
– Where Pius IX exposes the sects’ machinations and declares their program satanic, John XXIII is silent.
– Where Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and Humanum Genus clearly defines the duties of states towards the true religion and denounces Freemasonry, John XXIII contents himself with pastoral courtesies.
– Where St Pius X in Pascendi commands bishops to root out Modernists, John XXIII elevates, flatters, and surrounds himself with them.
– Where Pius XI in Quas Primas insists on public, juridical subjection of nations to Christ, John XXIII reduces kingship to a vague “foundation” without application or anathema.
This letter is therefore not a harmless devotional flourish, but a discreet contradiction in act of the prior magisterium: the Catholic form without its Catholic force.
Apostolic Memory versus Conciliar Counterfeit
Finally, the appeal to St Paul must be reclaimed against this misuse.
– St Paul:
– Preached Christ crucified, scandal and folly to the world.
– Condemned false gospels with an anathema (*Gal 1:8–9*).
– Corrected St Peter to his face when the truth of the Gospel was endangered.
– Proclaimed that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
To invoke Paul for a ceremony presided over by a conciliar architect, wrapped in irenic clichés and bereft of anathemas, is grotesque. The Apostle of the Gentiles would anathematize the religious indifferentism, ecumenical relativism, and liturgical profanations that flow from the conciliar project inaugurated by this same John XXIII.
The true lesson for Malta—and for all nations—is not to bask in commemorative rhetoric issued by a usurping authority, but to:
– Return to the unaltered doctrine professed before the conciliar usurpation.
– Recognize that any “blessing” from a structure that has enthroned religious liberty, collegiality, and the cult of man is void of supernatural authority.
– Restore in public and private life the reign of Christ as taught unequivocally by the genuine Popes and Councils—without compromise with liberalism, modernism, or paramasonic ideologies.
Only then will Malta truly honour the Apostle who brought her the faith, and avoid sinking into the shipwreck prepared for her by those who counterfeit his voice.
Source:
Undeviginti saecula – Ad Cardinalem Muench, quem legatum deligit, ut celebritatibus praesit in insula melita agendis ob undeviginti impleta saecula, ex quo S. Paulus apostolus ad eam oram naufragus ad… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025