John XXIII’s allocution of 25 September 1959 at the Anselmianum on the Aventine is an apparently pious exhortation to Benedictine abbots and monks: it recalls the historical merits of the Order, praises “ora et labora,” extols the Divine Office and liturgical prayer, commends studies, education, missionary work, and unity of the Benedictine family, and urges fidelity to St. Benedict while being open to “new technical inventions” and “new apostolic initiatives.” Behind this mild, mellifluous monastic tableau stands the inaugural program of the conciliar revolution, cloaked in liturgical incense: a subtle displacement of supernatural Catholic militancy by a placid, horizontal, adaptable spirituality perfectly fitted to the coming neo-church.
Subtle Preparation for Revolution under the Veil of Benedictine Piety
This text must be read in its true context: the beginning of the usurping reign of John XXIII, architect of the “aggiornamento” and convoker of Vatican II, whose course would enthrone precisely those errors condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium: *religious liberty, ecumenism, doctrinal evolution, democratization of the Church, exaltation of man.* The allocution is thus not an innocent monastic encouragement, but a programmatic gesture: to bend one of the most venerable pillars of Catholic tradition—the Benedictine Order—towards the conciliar project.
Already the very source (Holy See site, official “speech” of John XXIII) places us in AD mode: we are dealing with an official act of the conciliar usurpation, demanding a total theological unmasking.
Historical Praise Emptied of its Supernatural Edge
On the factual level, John XXIII begins by acknowledging what is true:
“We know how much the Catholic Church owes to your Order; we know that the name of your holy Founder and the splendid deeds of his monks resound through history, since, after the fall of the Roman Empire, they cultivated barbarian peoples and lands with the cross and the plough, enlightening them with the Gospel and restoring them to civilized life.”
So far, this is a correct—though highly selective—reminder. But note what is systematically absent:
– No explicit profession that the one, holy, Catholic, apostolic Roman Church alone saves, and that Benedictine labors were ordered to subject nations and cultures to the visible reign of Christ the King.
– No clear assertion that the aim of “civilization” is the public recognition of the social Kingship of Christ and submission of laws and institutions to divine and ecclesiastical law, as solemnly taught by Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors and by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*. Pius XI thunders that “lasting peace will never be possible unless individuals and states recognize and obey the reign of our Savior” (Quas Primas). John XXIII replaces this with a muted cultural compliment.
The narrative is subtly redirected: the Benedictines are praised primarily as instruments of culture and humanization. The central theme of pre-conciliar teaching—that monastic and missionary labor aims at the objective subjection of peoples and states to Christ’s Church—disappears. Instead of stating that nations are bound to reject error and embrace Catholic truth (condemining religious indifferentism, cf. Syllabus, prop. 15–18), the allocution glides into a harmless memory of “civilis cultus.”
This is not accidental. It prefigures the conciliar inversion later systematized: from the Church demanding that society conform to Christ, to the Church presenting herself as cultural leaven in a pluralist, religiously neutral order—a thesis explicitly anathematized by the Syllabus (props. 55, 77–80).
Liturgical Language as Aesthetic Sedation
John XXIII devotes significant space to praising the Divine Office, nocturnal prayer, the psalter, and Benedictine observance. At first glance, nothing seems amiss: he cites the Rule (ch. 19, 43), alludes to night vigils, underlines that in the silence of the world the monastery lives in true supernatural life.
But observe how the rhetoric functions:
– The language is warm, contemplative, affective, but studiously non-combative.
– There is no denunciation of the rapidly escalating modernist errors already condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and *Pascendi*. No warning against rationalism, immanentism, the poisoning of Scripture and liturgy.
– No mention of hell, judgment, mortal sin, or the need to combat heresy and protect the flock.
The Benedictine choir is reduced to a gentle, pacifying “background of prayer” for a world in turmoil, but there is no call for doctrinal war. Yet the monastic tradition, from St. Benedict to the Cluniacs, from St. Peter Damian to the Counter-Reformation, was never a neutral soundscape; it was a fortress of dogma and penance, a militant bastion against error and corruption.
The omission is damning. At the very moment when the Church (on the visible level) is being infiltrated by modernism and freemasonic principles—long exposed by previous pontiffs—John XXIII caresses monastic ears with poetic images while refusing to arm them with doctrinal clarity. Silence where the shepherd must shout is not humility; it is betrayal.
Misuse of “Ora et Labora”: From Supernatural Mission to Natural Activism
A crucial passage:
“Your motto is ‘Ora et labora’; for you, first is to pray to God, then to busy yourselves with external works and devote all your strength to various works of the apostolate.”
The classic Benedictine mottos, rightly understood, subordinate all labor and apostolate to the opus Dei and to the strict observance of the Rule, within a contemplative, penitential framework. The allocution, however:
– Immediately pushes from “ora” into “external works,” “varia apostolatus opera,” parallel to the conciliar exaltation of activism, dialogue, and horizontal “engagement.”
– Mentions studies, youth education, parish work, and missions “even among peoples separated from this Apostolic See,” yet again without insistence on their obligation to return to the one true Church and reject schism and heresy.
The supernatural hierarchy is flattened: contemplation and worship become a reservoir for generalized “apostolic works,” not the strict primary end to which other works are subordinated. The Benedictine is nudged toward being an efficient agent of conciliar pastoralism.
Pre-1958 teaching, by contrast, insists:
– The Church is a perfect society with divine authority and exclusive salvific mission (Syllabus, prop. 19–21).
– Apostolate is ordered to conversion, not coexistence; to separation from error, not recognition of false religions.
– Monastic life is primarily an ordered sacrifice of praise, a separation from the world to obtain graces for it, not an adaptation to every new human environment.
John XXIII’s emphasis prepares the reconfiguration of religious orders after Vatican II: leaving choir and habit, dissolving enclosure, transforming monks into social workers and liturgy into community animation.
“Openness” as Programmatic Trojan Horse
The allocution’s most revealing—and poisonous—sentence comes when John XXIII exhorts the Benedictines:
(English) “While you faithfully and fully, as is fitting, obey the original institutes and exhortations of your Legislator Father, you should nonetheless, with an open mind, not hesitate to embrace whatever good is suggested either by new technical inventions, or by what experience in our times shows to be useful, or finally by new undertakings of apostolate, begun in proper order.”
This is the manifesto line.
The clause begins with fidelity to St. Benedict, but immediately subordinates it to an undefined, elastic “open mind” embracing:
– “new technical inventions”
– “what experience in our times shows to be useful”
– “new undertakings of apostolate”
This is precisely the modernist method condemned by St. Pius X:
– The subjection of doctrine and religious life to the demands of “modern culture,” experience, and historical consciousness.
– The insinuation that past forms are insufficient and must be “updated” (*aggiornamento*) by praxis.
The phrase is deliberately vague; nothing is specified, no dogmatic boundaries are recalled. There is no reminder of the principle solemnly defended in *Lamentabili*: that doctrine and the divine constitution of the Church cannot be refashioned by historical experience or pastoral experiments; that *veritas non sequitur historiam* (truth does not trail behind history).
Instead, John XXIII legitimizes a mentality: religious orders as laboratories of adaptation—exactly what we see, post-1958, in the catastrophic self-demolition of monastic life, liturgy, and discipline.
This stands in radical tension with previous magisterial doctrine:
– The Syllabus of Errors condemns the thesis that the Church must “come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (prop. 80).
– St. Pius X condemns the idea that dogmas and ecclesial structures evolve according to human experience and needs (Lamentabili, props. 58–65).
– The Rule of St. Benedict itself commands stability, silence, obedience, mortification, and the primacy of the Divine Office—none of which implies morphing the order into a tool of every transient sociological innovation.
By inviting Benedictines to baptize “what experience in our times shows to be useful,” without strict doctrinal criteria, John XXIII opens the door for the very abuses that destroyed vocations and cloisters in the wake of the Council: liturgical vandalism, pseudo-ecumenical experiments, immersion in secular academia, dissolution of enclosure, psychological and sociological replacement of asceticism.
Erasure of Doctrinal Combat and Condemnation of Error
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic theology before 1958, the most devastating element in this allocution is not what is said, but what is carefully not said.
Given in 1959, after:
– The solemn condemnations of modernism by St. Pius X.
– The communist persecution of Catholics in many countries.
– The growing influence of masonic and secularist powers explicitly denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– The planned convocation of a council that would, in reality, enthrone religious liberty and ecumenism.
One would expect any authentic Roman Pontiff addressing the Benedictine Order to:
– Warn them against modern errors in philosophy and theology.
– Demand strict fidelity to scholastic doctrine and the anti-modernist oath.
– Urge them to resist secularization of education, condemned in the Syllabus (props. 45–48).
– Emphasize the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith and the duty to convert nations and separated communities.
Instead:
– There is no mention of the Syllabus of Errors.
– No reference to *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili*, or the anti-modernist oath.
– No denunciation of socialism, communism, Freemasonry, despite their well-documented attack on the Church.
– No insistence that states and peoples must submit to Christ the King (as taught in *Quas Primas*).
– No call to fight for the liberty of the Church against secular governments, though Pius IX had proclaimed that laws contrary to the divine constitution of the Church are “null and void.”
This is not benign neglect. This silence functions as practical abolition. By systematically omitting the doctrinal armory of the pre-1958 Magisterium, John XXIII effectively disarms the monks, suggesting a Church that no longer condemns, no longer unmasks heresy, but limits herself to interior warmth and “fraternal association.”
Such an attitude is diametrically opposed to the perennial teaching that the hierarchy has the grave duty to protect the flock from error, and that monastic communities are called to be doctrinally vigilant, not sentimental.
Horizontal “Unity” versus Supernatural Unity in Truth
John XXIII stresses the need for unity in the Benedictine Confederation:
“Let the plans you have established by joint counsel be put into practice, always preserving unity of souls… a prompt, peaceful, serene unity, which regards not those things which divide minds but those which unite them.”
This sounds irenic; but stripped of doctrinal qualifiers, it becomes a formula for relativism. Authentic Catholic unity is unity in:
– One faith (Eph 4:5), integrally professed.
– One sacraments and one hierarchical subordination to the true Roman Pontiff.
– One submission to the Rule and tradition in religious life.
Unity cannot be built by ignoring what “divides minds” when those divisions pertain to faith, morals, and liturgy. To advocate a unity that explicitly shifts attention away from divisive questions is to prepare the Benedictines to accept:
– Coexistence of orthodoxy and error within their ranks.
– Doctrinal minimalism: focusing on vague “charity” while tolerating heterodoxy.
This anticipates the post-conciliar pseudo-ecumenical ethos, where “what unites us” is exalted while formal heresy and schism are no longer confronted. Such an approach is incompatible with the pre-1958 magisterial condemnations of indifferentism (Syllabus, props. 15–18) and the constant teaching that charity without truth is a lie.
Instrumentalizing Benedictine Authority for the Conciliar Agenda
The allocution repeatedly flatters:
– The “fraternal association” of the Benedictine Order.
– Their global presence in Europe, Africa, Asia, America, Australia.
– Their work among peoples “separated” from the Apostolic See.
Yet, at no point does John XXIII command them:
– To labor for the explicit return of the separated to the one fold.
– To reject false ecumenism.
– To refuse collaboration in structures that deny the Kingship of Christ.
He instead confirms their projects with his “best wishes and prayers,” turning the Benedictine Order into a moral prop for his pontificate and the coming council.
This is a classic modernist tactic: co-opting venerable symbols (Benedictine habit, Gregorian chant, “ora et labora”) while neutralizing their doctrinal content and bending them to a new theology. It is the same mechanism by which the conciliar sect later staged “tradition” as an aesthetic layer over heretical principles: religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, anthropocentrism.
Authentic pre-1958 papal teaching would have:
– Reaffirmed the immutable authority of previous condemnations.
– Bound the Benedictines to act as guardians of dogma against novelties.
– Warned that any “adaptation” risking the dilution of tradition is a betrayal.
This allocution does the opposite: it gives theological cover to adaptation precisely at the turning point.
Benedictine Asceticism Reduced to Moralistic Maxims
At the end, John XXIII quotes Thomas à Kempis:
“To obey quickly, to pray frequently, to meditate devoutly, to work diligently, to study gladly, to avoid distractions, to love solitude, make the monk devout.”
This sentence, in itself, is edifying. But once again:
– It is purely individual, moral, and psychological.
– It omits penance, mortification of the senses, hatred of the world’s spirit, doctrinal combat, and the exclusive service of the one true Church.
– It functions as a mild, undemanding caricature of monastic heroism: the monk as a tidy, disciplined religious professional, not as a living holocaust of reparation and a soldier of Christ.
Given the historical moment, such soft spirituality, detached from the concrete dangers of modernism, serves to anesthetize resistance and prepare monastic communities to accept reforms that, in practice, dissolved precisely obedience, prayer, solitude, and doctrinal firmness.
Symptomatic Fruit: From This Allocution to the Neo-Church Collapse
From the vantage point of unchanging Catholic doctrine, the allocution is symptomatic in four decisive ways:
1. Naturalization of the Church’s mission: The emphasis on culture, civilization, technical progress, and generic apostolate, without reaffirming the obligation of states and nations to submit to Christ, echoes the condemned liberal thesis that religion is a private, cultural force compatible with pluralism.
2. Silencing of anti-modernist doctrine: The absence of references to Syllabus, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili*, *Quas Primas*, and the anti-modernist oath, at a moment of maximal need, reveals an intentional abandonment. What the conciliar sect would later encode in documents, John XXIII here rehearses by omission.
3. Programmatic “openness”: The exhortation to embrace “what experience in our times shows to be useful” and new apostolic initiatives is precisely the motor of post-1958 doctrinal and liturgical subversion. Under such a principle, the divine constitution of the Church, the sacred liturgy, and monastic observance become manipulable variables.
4. Dissolution of militant identity: The Benedictines are invited to be harmonious, adaptable, universally collaborative, rather than intransigently Catholic. This mentality prefigures and accelerates the later decay: monasteries emptied, choir stalls abandoned, the Most Holy Sacrifice replaced or surrounded by modernist rites.
In light of pre-1958 Catholic teaching, such a text cannot be received as a genuine act of the Roman Pontiff guarding the deposit of faith. It is, instead, one of the early manifestos of the conciliar sect, instrumentalizing a venerable order to serve a program condemned by the very Magisterium it presumes to succeed.
The only coherent Catholic response is to:
– Measure every line by the immutable doctrine of the Church before 1958.
– Recognize that an exhortation which systematically avoids affirming those doctrines, while positively encouraging the principles leading to their erosion, stands outside the authentic Magisterium.
– Call Benedictines and all religious back not to “open-minded” aggiornamento, but to the integral, combative fidelity of their Founder, in full submission to the perennial Roman doctrine that brooks no compromise with liberalism, modernism, or the cult of man.
Source:
In Anselmiano Coenobio habita, in monte Aventino, adstantibus Abbate Primate ceterisque Abbatibus, Moderatoribus ac sodalibus quam plurimis Benedictini Ordinis, 25 Septembris a. 1959, Ioannes PP. XXII… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025