The text is a short address by antipope John XXIII to an international Ciceronian congress in Rome (April 7, 1959). He courteously praises the participants, encourages the study and love of Cicero and classical Latinity, laments the neglect of the humanities in favour of technical utilitarianism, and presents Cicero as a noble precursor whose moral and philosophical insights harmoniously prepare for Christianity, culminating in a pious wish for spiritual and human benefits for the audience.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this seemingly refined encomium of Cicero reveals the spiritual program of the conciliar revolution: the subtle enthronement of humanism alongside, and above, the Kingship of Christ, replacing supernatural Catholicism with a cultured, literary naturalism.
John XXIII’s Ciceronian Flattery as a Manifesto of Literary Naturalism
Humanist Compliments Masking the Usurpation of Magisterial Authority
Already the historical and doctrinal setting unmasks this allocution. In 1959, the same John XXIII who had only months earlier announced his intention to convoke the future Vatican II now appears as a benign patron of classical letters. Yet the Church before 1958 teaches with absolute clarity:
– that the Roman Pontiff’s first duty is to guard, defend, and explicate the deposit of faith (*depositum fidei custodiendum*), not to function as honorary president of literary societies;
– that all teaching issuing from the Apostolic See must explicitly subordinate all human culture to the social reign of Christ the King (Pius XI, Quas primas, 1925.12.11);
– that the gravest enemy of the faith in modern times is precisely the exalted naturalism, rationalism, and cult of human progress condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (1864).
Against this background, note the core elements of this speech:
– Warm congratulations for “splendid” Ciceronian studies.
– A lament over technocratic mentality and the neglect of humanities.
– A call to recover what “cultivates and adorns” the human spirit.
– The suggestion that Greek and Roman wisdom were an “aurora” to the Gospel, and that Cicero occupies “an eminent rank” in that preparatory role.
– An emotional appeal via Augustine’s testimony about Cicero’s lost work “Hortensius.”
– A final paternal blessing linking love of ancient wisdom with choosing enduring goods.
Nothing in isolation sounds heretical; indeed, properly integrated into Catholic doctrine, such affirmations could be legitimate. But here they are partial, displaced, and weaponised. The allocution becomes the emblematic technique of the conciliar sect: speak politely, invoke a few pious allusions, but evacuate the supernatural note of the Magisterium, conceal the necessity of the true faith, and enthrone cultured man at the centre.
This is not authentic papal teaching; it is a literary curtain behind which the demolition of the Catholic order proceeds.
Factual Level: The Selective Construction of a “Baptised Humanism”
1. Ciceronian studies as quasi-salvific
John XXIII extols the congress for investigating Cicero more deeply and communicating that “light” to many. He cites with approval Cicero’s own praise of studies nourishing youth, consoling old age, adorning prosperity, comforting adversity, etc.
“These studies nourish youth, delight old age, adorn success, provide refuge and consolation in adversity, delight at home, do not hinder outside, spend the night with us, travel with us, go to the countryside.”
Catholic doctrine can acknowledge the legitimate value of humane letters. But the integral Magisterium is unambiguous that no culture, however noble, occupies a quasi-sacramental role. Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII repeatedly condemn the pretension of natural culture to replace, relativise, or parallel Revelation.
Here, however, the speech:
– attributes to Ciceronian studies an almost universal spiritual utility without sharply subordinating them to the Most Holy Sacrifice, the sacraments, and dogmatic faith;
– treats the congress and its work primarily as something to be “strongly congratulated,” rather than warning that pagan authors are dangerous when not strictly governed by Catholic theology and moral doctrine.
The omission is decisive: there is no reminder that pagan philosophy without Christ is impotence; no assertion that all authentic wisdom must bow before the Incarnate Word; no indication that the highest “studia” are theology and asceticism, not philology.
2. Misuse of Augustine’s “Hortensius” episode
John XXIII cites Augustine’s testimony regarding Cicero’s “Hortensius”:
“That book changed my feelings and altered my prayers to You Yourself, O Lord, and made my desires and wishes different. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible ardour of the heart I longed for the immortality of wisdom.”
But Augustine himself immediately laments that the name of Christ was not there, and that he remained in error until corrected by divine Revelation. The true Catholic reading is: Cicero’s work stirred a natural desire for wisdom, but only supernatural truth in Christ saves.
John XXIII truncates this trajectory. He instrumentalises Augustine’s path merely to validate classical letters, not to assert the absolute necessity of explicit Christian doctrine over them.
3. False equilibrium between classical wisdom and the Gospel
The allocution claims that, by God’s providence, the wisdom of Greeks and Romans was often like a dawn announcing Christ, and locates Cicero in an eminent place among such “forerunners.”
To the extent this echoes the Fathers’ recognition of *semina Verbi* (seeds of the Word), it is partially correct. But here it is crafted without:
– distinguishing sharply between fragmentary natural insights and the supernatural virtue of faith;
– warning that natural wisdom, when idolised, becomes the matrix of rationalism and modernism condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi (St Pius X, 1907).
By selectively emphasising Cicero’s virtues and downplaying the radical rupture between pagan error and Christian Revelation, the speech constructs a pleasant myth of continuity — the same *hermeneutica pseudo-continuatis* later deployed to cloak the conciliar revolution.
Linguistic Level: Courteous Humanism and the Eclipse of the Supernatural
The rhetoric of this address is revealing.
1. Sentimental, horizontal emphasis
The key positive terms are “humanity,” “courtesy,” “honour,” “joy,” “splendid studies,” “cultivating and adorning” the spirit. The entire tone is civil, diplomatic, academic.
Almost entirely absent:
– sin,
– grace,
– conversion,
– the Cross,
– judgment,
– the necessity of the Catholic faith and sacraments,
– the social Kingship of Christ denouncing error.
Instead of the supernatural gravity of a Roman Pontiff reminding intellectuals that outside the true Church there is no salvation, we hear a benevolent cultural patron thanking them for doing something “worthy of the dignity of man.”
This is precisely the naturalistic register condemned by Pius XI in Quas primas, where he identifies as “the plague of our age” that society pretends to be “able to do without God” and substitutes natural ideals for the reign of Christ.
2. Reduction of divine truth to “what is worthy of human dignity”
John XXIII states that what “is more worthy of the nature and dignity of man” is to be sought, and in that context praises the humanities so that men not become cold machines. That formulation in itself could be acceptable; the problem is that:
– “dignity of man” is invoked as the central criterion, not the sovereign rights of Christ;
– there is no explicit submission of human dignity to the objective order of grace and to the authority of the Church as defined by Pius IX’s Syllabus: the Church is a perfect society endowed with proper and perpetual rights, independent of the state and of human fashions.
The language matches the later conciliar cult of “human dignity,” from which flow religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man. The allocution is an early specimen of this anti-theological vocabulary.
3. A pious varnish without doctrinal edge
Scripture appears fleetingly: Christ as the “Sun rising from on high” (Lk 1:78). Yet this reference is made primarily to decorate the claim that classical wisdom was an “aurora.” There is no doctrinal application: no call to submit intellect and culture to that Sun; no condemnation of error, as rightful papal allocutions so often contain.
The style is therefore a paradigmatic “clerical” humanism: religiosity without dogmatic clarity, kindness without condemnation of lies, anodyne spirituality inplace of supernatural militancy.
Theological Level: The Omitted Dogmas Speak Louder Than the Praises
Measured solely against pre-1958 magisterial teaching, the speech’s silences are devastating. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent) when doctrine demanded speech.
1. No affirmation of the unique truth of the Catholic religion
Pius IX condemned as error the claim that the Church cannot dogmatically define that Catholicism is the only true religion (Syllabus, prop. 21). Authentic papal teaching consistently:
– proclaims the exclusivity of the Church of Christ,
– warns men of damnation if they do not enter and persevere in her,
– subordinates all cultural achievements to her rule.
In this allocution:
– there is no assertion that Cicero’s virtues are nothing without baptism and faith;
– there is no admonition that all nations and cultures must submit to the sceptre of Christ the King (Quas primas);
– there is no teaching that the Church alone is the divinely constituted teacher and judge of letters, morals, and truth.
The result is a practical indifferentism: an impression that one can remain in a cultivated admiration for Cicero and “ancient wisdom,” comforted by a generic blessing, without any reference to the necessity of the integral Catholic faith.
2. No warning against pagan and naturalist errors
The Fathers and true Popes, when praising pagan literature, simultaneously warn of its errors and the danger it poses to souls. Here, the speaker:
– extols Cicero as recogniser of a Creator, of natural law, of virtues;
– fails to mention that Cicero also embodies philosophical errors and religious superstition incompatible with the Gospel.
Given the 20th-century explosion of secularism, modernism, Freemasonry, and the cult of autonomous reason, such omission is not innocent. It functions as implicit rehabilitation of natural theology severed from Revelation, the very axis of condemned liberal Catholicism.
3. No mention of Christ’s Kingship over society and culture
Pius XI, in Quas primas, solemnly taught:
– that public and private life must be subject to Christ’s laws;
– that nations must acknowledge His Kingship;
– that the exclusion of Christ from public life is the root of modern calamities.
Here, John XXIII speaks about:
– citizens devoted to calculations and machines;
– the need not to become cold, hard, loveless like machines.
He does not say:
– that states and intellectual elites sin gravely by excluding Christ and his Church from laws, education, and culture (Syllabus, Quas primas);
– that classical humanism detached from Christ becomes idolatry of man.
The horizontal complaint about “coldness” replaces doctrinal indictment of apostasy. It is the inverted Gospel: man as victim of technocracy, not as sinner before God.
4. Instrumentalising “praeparatio evangelica” to justify syncretic optimism
Yes, providence used certain Gentile insights to prepare some minds. But the same magisterium insists that:
– without explicit submission to Revelation, these insights are insufficient and easily perverted;
– after the advent of Christ and the foundation of the Church, persisting in purely natural religion is culpable blindness.
This allocution highlights the “aurora” dimension while muting the absolute finality of Christ and the Church. This is the incipient ecumenical method: dignify non-Catholic elements and leave the imperative of conversion in the shadows.
Symptomatic Level: A Proto-Manifesto of the Conciliar Sect’s Religion of Man
This short speech must be read as a symptom of a broader program, visible in John XXIII’s initiatives and in the subsequent conciliar construction.
1. From supernatural militancy to cultural diplomacy
Authentic pre-1958 Popes:
– denounced secret societies and Masonic sects as the “synagogue of Satan” coordinating attacks on the Church (cf. Pius IX’s explicit identification);
– exposed the errors of liberalism, socialism, indifferentism, rationalism by name;
– reasserted, against states and “modern civilization,” the sovereign rights of the Church and of Christ.
John XXIII, in contrast, addresses an international gathering — in Rome, at the heart of the Church — without a word about:
– Christ’s rights over cultures and nations;
– the errors of secular academia;
– the dangers of naturalistic exaltation of antiquity.
It is cultural diplomacy: he appears as universal chaplain of human culture, not the Vicar of Christ defending the flock. This is precisely the role assumed by the conciliar sect’s subsequent “popes.”
2. Preparation for religious liberty and false ecumenism
The following convergences are evident:
– The allocution accepts as self-evident an international, religiously undefined congress as an unproblematic good, requiring only praise;
– It celebrates a shared human heritage without clarifying that any truth found in it must be explicitly subject to Catholic dogma;
– It abstains from any insistence that the one true Church must be acknowledged as the authoritative interpreter and guardian of those natural truths.
This mental structure underlies the later doctrines of:
– “religious freedom” understood as a civil right for all cults,
– ecumenical collaboration based on “common values,”
– the so-called “dialogue with culture” in which Christ becomes optional.
Although the allocution predates the official decrees, it already sings their tune. The silence where pre-1958 doctrine demands thunder is the signature of systematic apostasy.
3. The cult of man in embryonic form
The speech’s central anxiety is not that souls are going to hell for rejecting the true faith, but that men risk becoming “cold, hard, without love” like machines if they neglect humanities.
This is anthropocentric: it shifts the axis from God’s offended majesty to man’s psychological impoverishment. That anthropocentric path culminates later in the famous exaltation of “man” by the conciliar sect — a direct contradiction of the constant Magisterium that condemns:
– any doctrine making human reason “the sole arbiter of truth” (Syllabus, prop. 3–4),
– any belief that progress or culture suffice for man’s perfection.
In this sense, the allocution is the courteous prelude to the liturgy, theology, and politics of the Church of the New Advent: elegant language dressing the rebellion against the supernatural order.
4. No exercise of authentic Petrine office: a sign of usurpation
A true successor of Peter speaking to such an assembly would:
– exhort scholars to submit their intellect to the Church;
– explicitly condemn modernist exegesis and rationalism (Lamentabili, Pascendi);
– remind them that Cicero’s best insights only confirm, in the natural order, the truths definitively taught by the Church;
– insist that all cultural goods serve the Most Holy Sacrifice and the salvation of souls.
Instead, John XXIII:
– flatters,
– encourages purely natural studies as a principal antidote to technocracy,
– offers a generic blessing without doctrinal requisites.
Such conduct is incompatible with the office defined by Vatican I (Pastor aeternus), where the Roman Pontiff must guard the deposit of faith and confirm brethren in the faith, not in literary admiration. The allocution therefore corroborates, on internal grounds, his status as an antipope heading a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
Reasserting the Integral Catholic Criterion Against Literary Modernism
From an integral Catholic standpoint, every positive element glimpsed in this allocution must be rescued from its modernist framing:
– Yes, humane letters can rightly “cultivate” the mind — but only when governed by *fides catholica* and ordered to the knowledge and love of Christ.
– Yes, Cicero’s affirmation of a Creator and natural law can be acknowledged — but only while explicitly denouncing his errors and insisting such natural insights are subordinate and insufficient.
– Yes, Augustine was moved by “Hortensius” — but his conversion came only through Scripture and the Catholic Church, which corrected the insufficiency of pagan moralism.
The speech does not articulate these essential subordinations. That is its theological bankruptcy. Instead of wielding Cicero as a servant of Christ, John XXIII wields Christ as a discrete ornament of Cicero. It is a refined betrayal: a cultivated mask over apostasy.
Therefore, the Catholic response must be:
– to reject the conciliar sect’s humanistic rhetoric as a counterfeit of genuine Christian humanism;
– to measure all such texts by the unaltered doctrine of Pius IX’s Syllabus, St Pius X’s Lamentabili and Pascendi, Pius XI’s Quas primas, and the perennial teaching of the Church Fathers;
– to reaffirm that only the true pre-1958 Magisterium — not the elegant speeches of usurpers — possesses binding authority.
Omnia instaurare in Christo (to restore all things in Christ) does not mean adorning the cult of man with Ciceronian cadences. It means subordinating Cicero, culture, and every human achievement to the crucified and reigning King, outside of whom there is no truth that saves.
Source:
Ad eos qui Romae primum Ciceronianum Conventum ex omnibus nationibus egerunt, 7 Aprilis 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025