The document “Grata recordatio” (26 September 1959), issued by the usurper John XXIII, superficially exhorts the clergy and faithful to the devout recitation of the Marian Rosary in October, recalls with sentiment the encyclicals of Leo XIII on the Rosary, commemorates Pius XII, underscores the alleged continuity of the Roman pontificate, invites prayer for peace among nations and for rulers, warns in generic terms against “laicism” and “materialism,” and asks special prayers for the Roman Synod and the coming “ecumenical council.” Its sweetened Marian and pacifist rhetoric, however, serves as a cosmetic veil for the preparation of a revolutionary project that will mutilate the Kingship of Christ, relativize immutable doctrine, and inaugurate the conciliar sect.
Sentimental Devotion as a Trojan Horse for Doctrinal Subversion
I. The Manipulated Legacy of Leo XIII and Pius XII
On the surface, John XXIII clothes his text with references to Leo XIII’s Rosary encyclicals and to the memory of Pius XII. He praises the Rosary as an “apt formula of prayer and meditation” and recalls the October devotions recommended by previous popes.
He writes (translation first):
“A pleasant remembrance frequently comes to Our mind from Our youthful years, of those Encyclical Letters which Our Predecessor of immortal memory Leo XIII, as the month of October was approaching, addressed many times to the entire Catholic world to exhort all to the devout recitation of the Marian Rosary.”
At first sight this appears orthodox. Yet precisely here lies the perfidy: the usurper seeks moral credit by draping himself in the mantle of true pontiffs in order to lead the flock in the opposite direction.
1. Factual and theological contrast:
– Leo XIII, in his encyclicals on the Rosary, inseparably connected Marian devotion with:
– the affirmation of the social Kingship of Christ,
– the condemnation of Freemasonry and laicism,
– the denunciation of religious indifferentism and liberalism,
– the exaltation of the unique, exclusive rights of the Catholic Church.
– Pius XI in Quas primas taught with adamant clarity that peace is impossible where Christ does not reign socially and politically; the only remedy for modern apostasy is the public submission of states to Christ the King.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum condemned the separation of Church and State, liberal “freedom of cults,” and reconciliation with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (prop. 80).
The text of “Grata recordatio” deliberately evacuates this doctrinal density. Marian piety is severed from explicit confession of the exclusive claims of the true Church and of Christ’s royal rights over nations. The Rosary is reduced to a generic “effective prayer” for peace, “mutual respect,” “fraternity,” and “social good” without being anchored in the dogmatic conditions of true peace: subiectio populorum ad legem Christi et ad unam veram Ecclesiam (the submission of peoples to the law of Christ and to the one true Church).
This soft-spoken appropriation of Leo XIII and Pius XII functions as a false continuity: the external vocabulary is maintained, the doctrinal spine is removed. It is the embryo of the later “hermeneutic of continuity,” i.e. the modernist method condemned by St. Pius X: preserving the words while overturning the meaning.
2. The false demonstration of “perpetuity”:
John XXIII juxtaposes the death of Pius XII and his own election as evidence that, while human things collapse, “the Roman Pontificate” remains intact. But continuity of the institution is not proven by mere succession in an office; it requires continuity of faith. As Catholic theology before 1958 unanimously teaches:
– A manifest heretic cannot be Pope, because he cannot be head of that of which he is not a member (Bellarmine, summarized in the provided “Defense of Sedevacantism” file).
– Public defection from the Catholic faith vacates office ipso facto (1917 Code, can. 188.4).
When one who launches and drives the conciliar revolution, opens the way for religious liberty, collegiality, false ecumenism, and the cult of man, dares to present himself as the guarantor of indefectibility, we are not seeing Catholic doctrine, but a propaganda narrative to anesthetize resistance. The attempt to wrap this in the Rosary is especially odious: a Marian mantle sewn to cover modernist poison.
Thus the first fundamental perversion of this encyclical is the instrumentalization of Marian devotion to legitimize an authority that prepares to betray the very faith Mary guarded.
II. Linguistic Sugarcoating: Piety as a Disguise for Revolution
The rhetoric of the document is intentionally soft, affective, and irenic: “sweet remembrance,” “pleasant memory,” “loving Mother,” “mutual respect,” “fraternal union of peoples,” “solid peace,” “better times,” “opportune and wise remedies.” The language avoids sharp doctrinal antitheses; it caresses instead of defining.
Linguistic symptoms of the modernist mentality:
1. Vagueness instead of dogmatic precision:
– The call for peace and fraternity is detached from the obligation of nations to recognize the true religion. Where Leo XIII and Pius XI explicitly insist that states must publicly honor Christ and submit legislation to His law, John XXIII reduces the matter to a naturalistic rhetoric of civil and social good.
– There is mention of “eternal laws from God” only in passing, without drawing the necessary consequences: condemnation of false religions, rejection of pluralism, assertion of the Catholic confessional state. The vocabulary is intentionally moderate to be acceptable to non-Catholic and secular sensibilities.
2. Horizontal, anthropocentric overtones:
– The text praises missionaries and seminarians in terms that emphasize “mutual respect” and “fraternal union” rather than the conversion of infidels to the one true Church. The missionary is presented more as a functionary of supra-confessional humanitarianism than as herald of the exclusive salvific order of the Catholic Church.
– References to “civil and social good” and “solid peace” are not explicitly subordinated to the finis ultimus (final end), but put on the same rhetorical level, blurring the hierarchy of ends.
Such language is historically the prelude to the conciliar distortion that will follow: replacing the supernatural, Christocentric, dogmatically grounded order with indistinct appeals to “human dignity,” “universal fraternity,” “dialogue,” and “rights,” precisely the slogans anathematized in substance by Pius IX and dismantled by Quas primas and the Syllabus.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): when Marian piety is re-articulated in a tone that avoids condemning error and extolling the unique rights of Christ the King, the faithful are slowly re-educated to a religion of sentiments, compatible with liberal pluralism. That is exactly what this document undertakes.
III. Theological Distortion: Supernatural Words, Naturalistic Content
The encyclical sprinkles apparently orthodox elements:
– affirmation of God as author of life and law,
– condemnation (in very generic form) of “laicism” and “materialism,”
– reminder that souls are created for God,
– request that rulers not place hope in war.
Yet a closer look reveals the inversion: supernatural terms are employed to justify a practical program that is essentially naturalistic and politically conciliatory.
1. Subordination inverted:
Catholic doctrine (Pius XI, Pius IX, Leo XIII) teaches:
– States and rulers are morally bound to:
– profess the true religion,
– repress public error,
– order public life according to Christ’s law.
– “Liberty” detached from truth is condemned; indifferentism is a grave error.
– There is no genuine peace without submission to Christ: Oportet Christum regnare (“Christ must reign”).
In “Grata recordatio”:
– The appeals to rulers revolve around:
– considering the gravity of the times,
– avoiding war,
– adjusting civil and social laws to “needs of our times,”
– respecting “legitimate rights” of nations and their patrimony.
– Reference to God’s eternal laws is present, but it is not concretized in the concrete obligation of governments to recognize Catholicism as the only true religion and to reject pluralism.
Instead of reaffirming propositions explicitly opposed to the condemned thesis 77–80 of the Syllabus, this text uses formulas that are perfectly compatible with the very liberalism Pius IX rejected. There is no denunciation of the idea that “the Catholic religion should no longer be held as the only religion of the State” (prop. 77); no clear rejection of “civil liberty of every form of worship” (prop. 79). Silence here is connivance.
The gravest theological fault: a Marian-rosary rhetoric wrapped around an implicit acceptance of the liberal order, which the pre-1958 Magisterium branded as incompatible with the Kingship of Christ.
2. The selective “supernaturalism”:
The encyclical insists that the Church’s actions are “moved by a heavenly inspiration” and not mere human politics. But this supernatural vocabulary is then bent to endorse aims expressed in purely natural terms: “mutual respect,” “fraternal union,” “peace among peoples,” “civil and social well-being.”
This is the methodological seed of the conciliar revolution:
– retain the word “supernatural,”
– reformulate the mission of the Church as collaboration in building a humanistic world order,
– fuse Marian piety with pacifist internationalism.
This contradicts the spirit and letter of documents like:
– Quas primas, where Pius XI explicitly opposes “laicism” and the exclusion of Christ from laws and institutions, demanding public recognition of His kingship;
– the Syllabus, which unmasks the utopia of reconciling the Church with liberal modernity.
“Grata recordatio” subtly prepares the opposite: reconciliation with those very principles under a Marian veneer.
IV. The Omitted Front: Internal Apostasy and Modernism
What the document does not say condemns it more loudly than what it says.
1. Total silence on modernism within the hierarchy:
– Not a word recalling the doctrinal war waged by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi.
– No warning against those in ecclesiastical ranks who disseminate evolution of dogma, relativization of Revelation, biblical criticism dissolving miracles and the historical Christ.
– No insistence that the first cause of wars and social dissolution is apostasy from the true faith and betrayal by clerics who have imbibed condemned errors.
Instead, John XXIII speaks as if the main problems were:
– philosophical systems “incompatible” with Christianity (without naming and condemning them explicitly),
– external socio-political tensions.
This is precisely what pre-conciliar Catholic doctrine rejects: ignoring the inner enemy. St. Pius X points to modernists within the Church as the primary danger. To speak about peace and Rosary without confronting the doctrinal corruption among bishops and professors is a culpable diversion.
2. No denunciation of Freemasonry and secret societies:
Pius IX, Leo XIII, and others explicitly unmask Freemasonry as the architect of secular apostasy and persecution, binding Catholics to intransigent opposition. The article provided in the Syllabus’ appended explanation highlights this conspiracy against the Church.
John XXIII’s text:
– never mentions Freemasonry,
– never unmasks the organized forces of anti-Christian subversion,
– prefers generic lament over “laicism” and “materialism” without naming the sects condemned by his predecessors.
Such omission, given the context of the 20th century and the impending subversion of the Council, is not accidental. It is a signal to the world: the new “pontificate” will not continue the combat of Pius IX–X; it will seek accommodation.
3. No warning about the centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice and state of grace:
The encyclical urges recitation of the Rosary, petitions to Our Lady, hopes for peace and fraternity. But:
– no stress that prayer is efficacious only if one lives in the state of grace;
– no call to frequent worthy confession to cleanse mortal sin;
– no insistence on the centrality of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary as the heart of Christian life;
– no reminder of the Four Last Things (death, judgment, hell, heaven) as the horizon of all social and personal choices.
Silence about these supernatural pillars is the gravest indictment. A Marian message that does not explicitly call souls back to sacramental life, penance, and obedience to everlasting dogma is reduced to devout decor for a naturalistic program.
V. The Symptomatic Preparation for the Conciliar Sect
The most revealing passage is the concluding exhortation: John XXIII explicitly asks that the Rosary be prayed for:
– the “Roman Synod”,
– the “ecumenical council” he is convoking,
so that the Church may receive “marvelous increase” and that even those “separated from this Apostolic See” may be attracted by the “reflorescence of Christian virtues.”
This line unveils the strategic function of the encyclical:
1. Pious coating for a revolutionary council:
– The faithful are mobilized under Marian banners to support an assembly that will, in fact, introduce:
– religious liberty (in contradiction with the Syllabus and Quas primas),
– collegiality against the monarchical structure of the Church,
– false ecumenism (treating heretical and schismatic communities as “sister churches”),
– the cult of man and the practical dethronement of Christ the King.
2. Abuse of Marian devotion:
– Instead of asking prayers so that the council may solemnly condemn modern errors, reaffirm the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith, and demand the public reign of Christ, he prays for an “increase” understood as expansion of influence through adaptation to the world and rapprochement with separated brethren.
– The teleology is horizontal: convergence, rapprochement, fraternity. The supernatural is invoked to bless a humanistic opening.
This is exactly the pattern identified in the “False Fatima Apparitions” file: messages and devotions (authentic or fabricated) instrumentalized to:
– divert attention from internal modernist apostasy,
– center discourse on external or generic threats,
– prepare psychological consent for ecumenical and liberal policies.
“Grata recordatio” is one of the early textual symptoms of this method: an apparently orthodox Marian envelope carrying within it the conciliar virus.
To pray the Rosary for an assembly destined to undermine the unchanging doctrine of Christ is to conscript Our Lady into a project of demolition; this is blasphemous in intention, even if veiled.
VI. Exposure of Key Ideological Fault Lines
Summarizing the multiple levels:
1. Factual level:
– The encyclical artificially binds John XXIII to Leo XIII and Pius XII, simulating continuity while omitting their integral anti-liberal and anti-modernist doctrine.
– It falsifies the notion of pontifical continuity by ignoring the criteria of Catholic theology concerning manifest heresy and loss of office.
2. Linguistic level:
– Sickly sentimental tone: “pleasant memory,” “heavenly Queen,” “mutual respect,” “better times.”
– Absence of strong condemnatory language characteristic of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI.
– Vocabulary optimized to be acceptable in a Masonic-liberal environment: peace, fraternity, social good, without doctrinal exclusivity.
3. Theological level:
– Use of supernatural language to promote:
– naturalistic, pacifist internationalism,
– openness to pluralistic world order,
– council-oriented “renewal” detached from the anti-liberal magisterial line.
– Lack of explicit affirmation that only the Catholic Church is the ark of salvation, outside of which there is no salvation; that error has no rights; that rulers sin gravely when they do not publicly profess the true religion.
4. Symptomatic level:
– Whole text functions as catechesis into the new ethos of the “Church of the New Advent”:
– docile before modern states,
– silent on Masonic subversion,
– timid against liberalism,
– fascinated by “better times” through dialogue.
– Marian devotion is weaponized as a psychological instrument to paralyse resistance and to give a sacred halo to the coming conciliar revolution.
This is precisely the profile of what can be called the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican: adopting pious forms as camouflage while effectuating doctrinal and liturgical inversion.
VII. Integral Catholic Response
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, bound exclusively to the pre-1958 magisterium and its unchanging sense, the appropriate response to “Grata recordatio” is uncompromising:
– One must distinguish clearly:
– the true Rosary, rooted in dogma, in the war against heresy, in the proclamation of Christ’s Kingship over nations;
– from the manipulated Rosary pressed into service of ecumenism, liberalism, and the conciliar sect.
– Any call to prayer tied to intentions contrary to prior magisterial teaching (e.g. for a council that will enshrine religious liberty and false ecumenism) cannot be accepted as Catholic.
– The faithful must:
– maintain the authentic Rosary of Our Lady as preached by St. Dominic, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI:
– for the defeat of heresies,
– for the annihilation of Freemasonry and modernism,
– for the conversion of nations to the one true Church,
– for reparation for blasphemies and sacrileges.
– reject the instrumentalization of Marian devotion by a conciliar leadership that negates in practice the Syllabus, Quas Primas, and Lamentabili.
Ubi fides, ibi Ecclesia (“where the faith is, there is the Church”): where the faith of Pius IX–X–XI is diluted into sentimental humanitarianism, there is not the Roman Catholic Church, but the neo-church of accommodation.
“Grata recordatio” must therefore be unmasked not as a harmless Marian exhortation, but as an early and calculated step in the reprogramming of Catholic consciousness: the inauguration of a piety without dogmatic teeth, docile before the world it should convert, and mobilized to applaud its own future subjugation under the conciliar revolution.
Source:
Grata Recordatio, Litterae Encyclicae De Mariali Rosario pie recitando, d. 26 septembris 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025