Ioannes XXIII and the Programmatic Neutralization of Catholic Authority
The allocution of Ioannes XXIII at the solemn opening of the Roman Synod in the Lateran Basilica (24 January 1960) presents itself as a pious, historical-theological meditation: he recalls the Council of Jerusalem, surveys the history of ecumenical councils from Nicaea to Vatican I, explains the nature of diocesan synods, and solemnly inaugurates the Roman Synod as a preparatory and exemplary act in view of the announced “ecumenical council.” The entire discourse culminates in an apparent call to holiness, obedience, and prayer to the Holy Ghost for a fruitful synodal renewal of clergy and faithful in Rome.
Already in this introductory allocution, however, the essential infection of the conciliar revolution is visible: under the cover of continuity and tradition, Ioannes XXIII outlines a program that relativizes immutable discipline, instrumentalizes history, and prepares a pseudo-council whose spirit and fruits stand in direct rupture with integral Catholic doctrine before 1958.
Historical Rewriting as a Tool of Conciliar Self-Legitimation
On the factual level, Ioannes XXIII seeks to anchor his initiative in the precedent of the Council of Jerusalem and the chain of ecumenical councils:
He evokes the apostolic assembly (Acts 15) as paradigm: disputes are raised, Peter speaks, James concurs, unity emerges; then he sketches the line Nicaea–Constantinople–Ephesus–Chalcedon–medieval councils–Trent–Vatican I, and places the projected new council as the “twenty-first” in that series. In his words, such assemblies serve to clarify doctrine, strengthen discipline, and “adapt” apostolic action to the needs of the times.
At first glance, this appears orthodox. But the underlying manipulation is twofold:
1. Ioannes XXIII subtly dislocates the center of gravity:
– The Council of Jerusalem is presented primarily as a kind of pragmatic relaxation of burdens, an early “pastoral adjustment” regarding circumcision and Mosaic prescriptions, in order not to “impose a yoke.”
– This narrative is then made the hermeneutical key for later councils and for his own project: councils as places where one may alleviate or reconfigure “onerous” elements for new times.
2. He passes over in silence the decisive feature of every true council before the conciliar age:
– Each authentic council served first to condemn heresy, define dogma, and safeguard the integrity of faith.
– Nicaea: condemnation of Arius; Ephesus: condemnation of Nestorius; Trent: anathemas against Protestantism; Vatican I: definition of papal primacy and infallibility, and condemnation of liberal errors already exposed by Pius IX in the Syllabus.
– This element is conspicuously absent. Ioannes XXIII praises the line of councils, but sterilizes their doctrinal militancy. The word “anathema” does not appear; the drama of heresy is dissolved into bland talk of “questions,” “difficulties,” and “adaptation.”
The silence is not accidental. A speech that truly stood in the line of Trent and Vatican I would have been forced, in 1960, to name and strike:
– atheistic communism,
– liberalism, naturalism, socialism, laicism,
– condemned in detail by Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors, 1864) and his successors;
– modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
Instead, Ioannes XXIII exalts the history of councils while omitting their principal function: the dogmatic and disciplinary sword. This falsification is itself a betrayal of the very councils he invokes.
Linguistic Softening: Pious Eloquence as Veil for Doctrinal Evacuation
The allocution’s language is deliberately smooth, sentimental, and non-confrontational. This is not a secondary aesthetic choice; it is a sign of theological orientation.
Key features:
– Constant emphasis on:
– “new outpouring of grace,”
– “new growth of Christian life,”
– “joy,” “serene sweetness,” “laetitia,”
– “docility,” “promptness,” “devotion.”
– Systematic avoidance of:
– precise naming of reigning doctrinal errors;
– denunciation of modernism, liberalism, religious indifferentism, naturalism, Freemasonry, communism;
– reference to punishments, divine justice, hell, or the necessity of belonging to the true Church for salvation.
Even when he briefly acknowledges “errors” in earlier centuries, he speaks abstractly and historically, without the sharpness of Trent or St. Pius X. The rhetoric is that of a spiritualized bureaucracy: rich in adjectives, poor in dogmatic edge.
This style is intrinsically opposed to the integral Catholic manner of teaching, which binds charity to clarity and denunciation of error. Pius IX, in condemning the liberal thesis that the Pope should reconcile with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Syllabus, prop. 80), speaks with crystalline exactitude and judicial force. St. Pius X, against modernists, applies excommunication and names specific propositions. Ioannes XXIII, on the contrary, prepares a “council” program without one syllable of concrete condemnation.
The choice of words exposes the agenda:
– He repeatedly highlights that Christ did “not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17), using this not to ground the permanence of divine law, but as a frame to justify possible “mutations” of disciplinary and ritual forms.
– He speaks of “certain accidental elements” that may be attenuated according to the times, while asserting that doctrine remains. Yet he never defines clear limits; everything is couched in vague distinctions between immutable truth and “secondary” disciplinary matters.
This vagueness is the breeding ground of modernism:
ubi cessat distinctio, incipit corruptio (where distinction ceases, corruption begins).
Theological Ambiguity: The Trojan Horse of “Adaptable” Discipline
The core theological danger appears where Ioannes XXIII speaks about change.
He acknowledges:
– The doctrine of Christ does not change.
– The Church safeguards and interprets that doctrine.
– Certain disciplinary and accidental elements may be adapted.
In itself, this distinction is traditional: the Church has always recognized the mutability of merely ecclesiastical discipline.
But here the distinction is employed in a deliberately elastic and unguarded manner that, in context, becomes a program for relativization:
1. Ioannes XXIII offers no principled boundary between:
– authentic, limited disciplinary adaptation, subordinated to doctrine and serving its defense;
– and the radical deformation of liturgy, canon law, ecclesiology, religious liberty, ecumenism, and sacramental practice, which the later conciliar sect in fact implemented.
2. His invocation of Mt 5 (“You have heard… but I say to you…”) is subtly misused:
– Our Lord deepens and intensifies the moral law; He does not relax it.
– Yet Ioannes XXIII places this text near the idea that some things that were once stressed may now be mitigated. Without saying it crudely, the rhetorical movement suggests an opening to “lightening burdens,” to softening rigor.
3. He does not reaffirm:
– the absolute obligation of states and societies to publicly recognize and obey Christ the King, as taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas, where it is solemnly declared that peace and order are impossible where the Reign of Christ is rejected;
– the condemnation of the separation of Church and State (Syllabus, prop. 55);
– the exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the one true Church (Syllabus, props. 15–18, 21).
On the contrary, the entire tone of this allocution aligns with that mentality which Pius IX anathematized: the desire to “come to terms with modern civilization,” to adjust the visible form of the Church so as to be more acceptable to the modern world, under the pretext of pastoral expediency.
The theological failure is therefore structural:
– By refusing to name and condemn modernism and liberalism, Ioannes XXIII effectively disobeys the binding anti-modernist magisterium.
– By invoking “adaptation” without strict doctrinal safeguards, he opens the door to all those post-1958 novelties—religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical revolution—which directly contradict the pre-conciliar magisterium.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). When discipline is subverted, doctrine in practice is denied. Ioannes XXIII spiritually disarms the faithful precisely by celebrating a future “council” that, rather than striking error, will reconcile with it.
Silence on Modernism and Freemasonry: The Gravest Omission
The symptomatic level is decisive: what Ioannes XXIII does not say is the most incriminating.
In 1960, the following were undeniable realities:
– the worldwide spread of atheistic communism,
– militant laicism and secularization of legislation,
– the infiltration of liberal, rationalist, evolutionary theology,
– the systematic attack of Masonic forces against the temporal and spiritual rights of the Church—already unmasked by preceding Pontiffs.
Integral Catholic doctrine demanded:
– explicit reaffirmation of the condemnations in the Syllabus of Pius IX;
– renewed application of Lamentabili and Pascendi against modernism;
– open denunciation of religious indifferentism, false ecumenism, and naturalistic “human rights” ideologies that dethrone Christ the King;
– resistance against the cult of man and any attempt to subordinate the Church to worldly powers and opinions.
In this allocution:
– Not one direct mention of modernism.
– Not one explicit reference to the Syllabus.
– Not one warning against the errors condemned by St. Pius X.
– Not one unambiguous indictment of Freemasonry, despite documented papal teaching that attributes the contemporary war against the Church largely to Masonic sects.
– No clear reassertion that salvation is exclusively in the Catholic Church, and that error has no rights.
This silence, in the precise historical moment where clarity was imperative, is not “pastoral prudence.” It is complicity by omission. When a putative supreme pastor calls a synod and a council without binding them, from the outset, to the anti-modernist line, he reveals his project: to neutralize it.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent). When faced with condemned novelties and does not reject them, a leader abandons his post.
Misuse of the Roman Synod: Ritual Legitimization of a New Ecclesial Paradigm
Ioannes XXIII presents the Roman Synod as:
– the first diocesan synod of Rome since Trent,
– a model of “sacred tablets” (praescripta et statuta) adapted prudently to the conditions of modern times,
– a luminous preparation for the forthcoming “ecumenical council.”
Here lies a precise tactic:
– By clothing his future revolution in the forms of the Roman See and the Lateran Cathedral (mother and head of all churches), Ioannes XXIII seeks to confer on his planned conciliar event a counterfeit aura of continuity and orthodoxy.
– The emphasis on the noble antiquity of Roman clergy, the dual field of their concern (universal governance and care of souls), and the call for updated norms works psychologically as a guarantee: “It is Rome herself that renews; therefore it is safe.”
But the content betrays the strategy:
– No doctrinal tightening.
– No reintroduction of the full rigour of anti-liberal, anti-modernist teaching.
– No return to the spirit of Trent in discipline and catechesis.
– Instead: a technocratic enumeration of “eight sections” (priesthood, magisterium, liturgy, sacraments, apostolic action, youth formation, sacred arts and goods, charitable institutions), all to be reviewed in view of current circumstances.
By itself, such organization is not evil. The evil consists in the trajectory:
– Without absolute doctrinal anchoring, “updating” the norms on liturgy, magisterium, apostolate, youth, and charity easily becomes the corridor to:
– desacralized worship;
– dilution of magisterial authority into collegial “listening” structures;
– horizontalized “apostolate” oriented primarily to temporal concerns;
– pedagogy emptied of dogma and oriented to naturalistic “values”;
– “charity” detached from the supernatural end, reduced to humanitarianism.
We know historically that precisely these perversions exploded in and after the conciliar process initiated by Ioannes XXIII. His allocution functions as a script: preserve the décor, change the substance under the label of pastoral reform.
Ecclesiology Flattened: Clergy and Laity Without Militant Hierarchy
The allocution briefly touches on the relation of clergy and laity in the Synod:
– he recalls that during synodal acts a deacon calls laity to leave, marking the distinction;
– he rejects the idea of an opposition between clergy and lay faithful;
– he affirms that the Church is a “societas perfecta,” with all sharing spiritual goods, and that the ordained priesthood is divinely instituted as mediator for the sanctification of the people.
At first glance this seems solid. But again, ambivalence and omission prevail:
1. The definition of the Church as *societas perfecta* should logically be linked to:
– her right and duty to legislate independently of the state;
– the condemnation of the separation of Church and State;
– the necessity of public recognition of the Church’s authority in doctrine, education, and moral law.
Ioannes XXIII does not draw these consequences. The language of “perfect society” is uttered without its anti-liberal teeth. It becomes a hollow formula, easily co-opted later to justify collegial and democratic deformations.
2. He does not stress:
– that lay faithful must submit intellect and will to the authentic Magisterium, including its non-definitive teachings, as Pius IX clearly insists;
– that theological and disciplinary norms are not subject to negotiation with so-called “public opinion” or “needs of the times.”
The synodal framework he praises becomes, in the conciliar sect that follows, the matrix of democratized “participation,” advisory bodies, “listening processes,” and endless dialogical structures which erode hierarchical command and transform the Church into a consultative association.
By not fortifying the absolute hierarchical constitution of the Church against modern democratizing tendencies, Ioannes XXIII indirectly nourishes them. The rhetoric of unanimity, sweetness, joint prayer without clear emphasis on submission to immutable doctrine becomes the spiritual architecture of a pseudo-ecclesial parliament.
Invocation of the Holy Ghost: Pious Cover for a Pre-Programmed Revolution
Particular gravity lies in the way Ioannes XXIII appeals to the Holy Ghost:
He urges:
– common chanting of the Veni Creator Spiritus,
– intense prayer during the three days of the Synod,
– trust that the Spirit will guide the drafting and reception of new norms.
The formula sounds orthodox; yet, placed in context, it is deeply abusive:
– The same Holy Ghost, through St. Pius X, had just a few decades before:
– condemned modernist theses in Lamentabili sane exitu;
– demanded an anti-modernist oath from clergy;
– reaffirmed the binding character of previous condemnations.
– To invoke the Paraclete as sanction for a process that:
– refuses to reaffirm those condemnations,
– prepares a council later used to rehabilitate many of the condemned errors under new veneers,
– and shifts from dogmatic clarity to undefined “aggiornamento,”
is to misuse God’s Name as a rubber stamp for human designs.
Spiritus Sanctus non est auctor contradictionis (the Holy Ghost is not the author of contradiction). He cannot inspire that which converges toward doctrines and practices already judged pernicious by the ordinary and extraordinary Magisterium.
The essence of the allocution’s spiritual fraud is this:
– It clothes a humanly calculated project of adaptation, reconciliation with the world, and doctrinal weakening in the language of humble docility to grace.
– It invites clergy and faithful to emotionally attach themselves to this process as an act of obedience to the Holy Ghost, thereby disarming their critical adherence to prior magisterial norms.
Thus the invocation of the Spirit functions as a shield against legitimate doctrinal scrutiny—a hallmark of the conciliar sect.
Systemic Fruits: The Allocution as Matrix of Post-1958 Apostasy
Seen in light of subsequent events, this text is not an isolated pious speech; it is programmatic.
Its principal lines converge toward the systemic apostasy of post-1958 structures:
1. Replacement of dogmatic militancy with “pastoral” irenicism:
– Councils no longer as tribunals condemning error, but as stages of dialogue and accommodation;
– direct contradiction of the spirit and letter of Nicaea, Trent, and Vatican I.
2. Sacral forms used to consecrate a new religion:
– Lateran Basilica, Roman Synod, solemn hymns, all mobilized as liturgical scenery to authorize future subversion;
– *abusus in sacris* (abuse in sacred things), whereby holy things are pressed into service of an anti-traditional program.
3. Naturalistic and horizontal drift:
– Lockstep removal of references to the last ends (judgment, hell, necessity of grace and of submission to the true Church);
– emergence of a discourse in which the Church’s primary mission seems to be internal renewal, administrative updating, and generic spirituality.
4. Opening to the cult of man and religious pluralism:
– By refusing to reaffirm that “outside the Church there is no salvation” in its integral sense;
– by not condemning the thesis that states may be religiously neutral;
– by emphasizing forms and praxis over definitions and anathemas;
Ioannes XXIII prepares the theological and psychological terrain for the later glorification of “human dignity,” “religious liberty,” and “dialogue among religions” that contradict the Syllabus and Quas Primas.
5. Mutation of Magisterium into self-relativizing discourse:
– The allocution prefigures a teaching authority that presents itself less as a judge, more as a facilitator of processes;
– that praises tradition while effectively decapitating its binding force;
– that speaks incessantly of the Holy Ghost while sanctioning practical dissent from prior condemnations.
In sum, beneath the ornate Latin and appeals to synodal solemnity, Ioannes XXIII’s allocution is the ideological vestibule of the conciliar sect: it neutralizes the anti-modernist defenses of the pre-1958 Church and baptizes a new principle—adaptation without anathema, history without judgment, authority without edge.
Conclusion: Integral Catholic Faith versus Conciliar Sentimentalism
Measured against unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, the allocution stands condemned by its omissions, ambiguities, and misdirections:
– It exploits the authority of the Roman See to launch a process aimed at diluting that very authority.
– It appeals to apostolic and conciliar precedents while suppressing their doctrinal sharpness.
– It speaks of holiness and synodal renewal while remaining silent on the concrete enemies already denounced by the authentic Magisterium.
– It invokes the Holy Ghost as patron of an “aggiornamento” that history shows to have produced doctrinal confusion, liturgical devastation, and practical indifferentism.
The integral Catholic response must therefore be uncompromising:
– Reaffirm without mitigation the condemnations of liberalism, religious freedom (in the modern sense), indifferentism, and modernism as expressed by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– Confess the Social Kingship of Christ as proclaimed by Pius XI: true peace and order are possible only in the Kingdom of Christ; public law and institutions must submit to His dominion.
– Reject as illegitimate any “council,” “synod,” or reform that de facto contradicts prior, definitive magisterial teaching, regardless of the ceremonial splendor used to present it.
– Denounce the sentimental, non-dogmatic rhetoric of post-1958 structures as a sophisticated mask for rebellion against the faith once delivered to the saints.
Non nova, sed nove? In this allocution we do not see the timeless doctrine taught anew; we see sacred language placed at the service of a new, conciliatory religion. Where councils cease to condemn, where pastors cease to speak as judges of error, there the Church’s visible structures no longer reflect the voice of the true Shepherd, but the whispers of a world that refuses His yoke.
Against this, the faithful who hold to the integral Catholic faith must adhere firmly to the pre-1958 Magisterium, to the perennial condemnations and definitions, and refuse the seduction of eloquent speeches that offer “renewal” without repentance, “synodality” without anathema, and “Spirit” without Truth.
Source:
Sollemnis Romanae Synodi Inchoatio – Allocutio adstantibus Em.mis Patribus Cardinalibus urbisque clero et christifidelibus habita, priusquam coetus hymnum « Veni, Creator » decantaret, die XXIV m. Ian… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025