Venerable John O’Connor and his collaborators are congratulated on the centenary of the Pontifical North American College in Rome; John XXIII praises the generosity of the American hierarchy, the distinguished clergy formed there, the new Janiculum building blessed by Pius XII, and extols Rome as the privileged place to form a mature, intellectually equipped American clergy for the service of Church and nation, concluding with a solemn benediction. From the first to the last line this text is a polished hymn to institutional self-satisfaction, revealing a conception of priestly formation and ecclesial mission already detached from the integral Catholic understanding of the Church as a supernatural bastion against liberalism, naturalism, and Masonic subversion, and thus it stands as a quiet but unmistakable prologue to the conciliar catastrophe.
Celebrating the Machine: How John XXIII’s Panegyric Announces the Coming Ruin
Institutional Triumph Without Supernatural Combat
On the factual level, the letter appears harmless: an anniversary greeting. Yet precisely in such apparently innocuous texts, the deepest shifts are encoded.
Key emphases:
– Praise of the American hierarchy for founding and maintaining the College.
– Exaltation of the number and distinction of clergy, “Cardinals” and “Bishops,” produced.
– Commendation of the new, “amplia et splendida” building on the Janiculum, blessed by Pius XII.
– Declaration that flourishing America requires a broadly educated clergy capable of embracing the “universal.”
– Idealization of Rome as urbs caput rerum and civitas sacerdotalis, where proximity to the See of Peter ensures pure doctrine.
None of this is objectively evil, but its omissions and underlying presuppositions are damning.
Measured against the constant magisterium prior to 1958 (Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII), a genuine pontifical exhortation to a Roman national college in 1959 should:
– Denounce the advance of liberalism, socialism, communism, and secularism in America (cf. Syllabus of Errors, especially 39–41, 55, 77–80).
– Warn against Americanist tendencies and the subordination of the Church to democratic myths.
– Form priests first as defenders of the supernatural order, guardians of dogma, enemies of Modernism (cf. Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi).
– Insist on their duty to uphold the Social Kingship of Christ (cf. Pius XI, Quas Primas), not to flatter the civil ethos of the United States.
– Explicitly stress the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the state of grace, the danger of heresy, the last things.
Instead, we receive a polite civic-theological compliment, where the “flourishing” of Catholicism in America and the impressive numbers and honors of clergy function as self-authentication. The supernatural battle line disappears behind a curtain of institutional optimism. The letter is an ode to the machine of post-war clerical formation, not a trumpet of the Church Militant.
Here already we see the conciliar sect in embryo: wealth, prestige, and academic polish presented as sufficient proofs of fidelity, while silence reigns on the doctrinal war condemned with prophetic clarity by St. Pius X.
The Modernist Tone: Euphemism, Optimism, and Ideological Evasion
On the linguistic level, the rhetoric betrays a mentality incompatible with the pre-1958 anti-liberal, anti-modernist stance.
1. Sentimental institutionalism
We read that the centenary provides a cause for rejoicing and solemn thanks because from this college have come many priests, “Purpurati Patres et Episcopi… pastoralibus virtutibus fulgentes.” All is congratulatory, untroubled, irenic.
There is no hint that among these same circles, especially in American ecclesiastical elites, Modernism, liturgical revolutionism, biblical criticism, and democratic naturalism had been germinating for decades. No warning that numbers and honors mean nothing if doctrine is betrayed. This is a direct contrast with St. Pius X’s unmasking of those “within the Church” who corrupt the faith while wearing Catholic garments (Pascendi).
2. Naturalistic praise of the nation
John XXIII speaks of the “florentissima et inclita patria vestra,” where the Church is said to flourish and command common respect. The supernatural criterion is absent; instead, we find a subtle Americanist echo: the greatness of the country calls for a clergy of broader culture, capable of embracing “universa.”
The letter does not recall the condemnations of:
– Religious indifferentism (Syllabus, 15–18).
– The secularized state and separation of Church and State (55).
– Liberal freedoms of cult and press as moral plagues (79).
Silence here is consent. By praising the American model while omitting magisterial doctrinal critique, he implicitly normalizes the liberal order as a friendly environment, not as a system formally rejected by the Church.
3. Rome as brand, not bastion
John XXIII cites Rome as urbs caput rerum and civitas sacerdotalis; from there one drinks at the “illimi fonte Apostolico” the sincere faith and perfect Christian letters.
Yet this very Roman establishment will, within a few years, manufacture the conciliar revolution, the new rites, the doctrinal dilution, the ecumenical betrayal. Already in this 1959 text, “Rome” is invoked as an absolute guarantee, without any reference to the conditions of orthodoxy, without militant denunciation of error. The invocation becomes a brand seal—an empty sacramental of institutionalism.
Authentic Roman theology before 1958 never treated “being in Rome” as a talismanic proof; it always bound Roman primacy to the unchanging defense of revealed truth. Pius IX in the Syllabus and St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi brand modernist novelties as condemned; they do not cover them under Roman compliments.
This soft, bureaucratic optimism is the rhetoric of those who have ceased to believe in the ferocity of the doctrinal war.
Theological Emptiness: A Formation Without Dogmatic Militia
The gravest problem is theological: what kind of priestly formation does this letter promote?
Key elements praised or desired:
– “Ampliore eruditione instructum” – broader education.
– “Catholici vigoris sensu… universa amplectente” – sense of Catholic vigor embracing the universal.
– Wisdom born of study of Christian antiquity.
– Joyful, serene, virtuous house forming worthy men.
All of that is acceptable only if subordinated to the non-negotiable demands of:
– Dogmatic orthodoxy.
– Anti-modernist vigilance.
– Public defense of the Social Kingship of Christ.
– Militancy against liberal errors.
Instead, the letter reduces priestly excellence to culture, breadth, and harmonious integration with a “flourishing” nation. It never mentions:
– The obligation of priests to profess and defend every article of the faith (Roman Catechism, Trent).
– The condemnation of Modernism as “synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X).
– The Church’s right and duty to govern nations according to Christ’s law (Quas Primas; Syllabus, 19, 21).
– The horror of doctrinal compromise, of “reconciling with modern civilization” (Syllabus, 80).
The entire spiritual horizon is horizontalized: academic, civic, institutional, psychological. This is precisely the *praeparatio* for the “pastoral council” that will enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, and humanism.
A priestly college celebrated for numbers, buildings, and reputation, but instructed by a message devoid of any explicit dogmatic, anti-liberal, anti-modernist charge, is an instrument of the coming apostasy.
Silence as Condemnation: What John XXIII Does Not Dare to Say
Measured by the criterion of the integral pre-1958 Magisterium, silence concerning central truths is itself accusation.
1. No Social Kingship of Christ
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches unambiguously that peace and order require public recognition of Christ’s royal rights by rulers and laws; secularism and religious indifference are condemned as the heart of modern apostasy. In an address to American churchmen, a true pope faithful to that doctrine would recall:
– Duty of the American episcopate to oppose constitutional indifferentism.
– Duty to condemn the Masonic dogma of separation of Church and State.
– Duty to fight the cult of “rights of man” when opposed to the rights of Christ.
John XXIII instead speaks of America as flourishing and respected, says nothing of her liberal constitution, and suggests—by omission—that a “broader-educated” clergy harmoniously serves both Church and nation “as is.” This is not pastoral prudence; it is quiet betrayal of Quas Primas.
2. No warning against Modernism and Americanism
St. Pius X imposes the anti-modernist oath (1910); Lamentabili and Pascendi condemn precisely the tendencies (historicism, dogmatic evolution, reduction of sacraments and hierarchy) that were rife in theological faculties and national colleges.
This 1959 text:
– Never even names Modernism.
– Never recalls the binding condemnations of erroneous propositions (e.g. that dogmas derive from religious experience, that truth evolves; cf. Lamentabili 22, 58–60).
– Never enjoins vigilance against liberal or Americanist deviations.
For a structure whose whole purpose is to form doctrine-firm priests, this silence is indefensible. It signals a deliberate shift: the anti-modernist bulwark is being relaxed. The “conciliar sect” begins by ceasing to speak as Church Militant.
3. No eschatological or sacrificial horizon
A Catholic exhortation to seminarians and formators should prominently recall:
– The Most Holy Sacrifice as center of priestly life.
– The need to live and die in the state of grace.
– The Four Last Things.
– The reality of hell for infidelity.
Not a single word is said. Instead: serenity, joy, honorable reputation, “clara incepta profectum” (clear initiatives and progress). This lexicon betrays the infiltration of naturalism, as condemned by Pius IX: making human welfare and earthly progress the primary reference, relegating the supernatural to background piety.
Such silence, in a context of institutional praise, is the mask of apostasy.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution: From Anti-Liberal Rome to the Neo-Church
The symptomatic level reveals this letter as an early, clear manifestation of the mentality that will produce the neo-church.
1. Congratulating the seedbed of future traitors
The same North American College that John XXIII lauds for its bishops and “Cardinals” will, in the following decades, be a principal pipeline of:
– Promoters of the new rite that deforms the Unbloody Sacrifice into an anthropocentric assembly.
– Enthusiasts of religious liberty and false ecumenism.
– Administrators of sex-abuse coverups, doctrinal laxity, and sacrilegious “Communions.”
If the formation had been genuinely anchored in the pre-1958 doctrinal intransigence, this systemic collapse would be impossible on such a scale. To praise its fruits without discernment is to bless the tree that will poison the flock.
2. From “Roma docet” to paramasonic structures
John XXIII appeals to Roman proximity as guarantee of pure doctrine: “apud Petri Cathedram… sincera hauritur fides.” Yet after 1958, the very structures occupying Rome will:
– Promote collegiality, ecumenism, and interreligious syncretism.
– Enshrine religious liberty against the Syllabus.
– Fabricate a liturgy that obscures the sacrificial, propitiatory nature of the Mass.
– Canonize exponents of the cult of man and evolutionist theology.
This letter manifests the inversion: Rome is invoked as absolute authority at precisely the moment its human leaders are ceasing to adhere to the integral faith. The continuity of place is leveraged to smuggle in a revolution of doctrine; the loyal invocation of Roman primacy becomes the rhetorical weapon of the paramasonic structure that will occupy the Vatican.
3. The erasure of conflict
Pre-1958 papal teaching is steeped in the recognition of a war: Church versus liberalism, socialism, secret societies, Modernism. Pius IX identifies the “synagogue of Satan” energizing Masonic sects against the Church; St. Pius X unmasks modernists in cassocks; Pius XI and Pius XII denounce the same enemies.
John XXIII’s letter, drafted a few years after the bloodiest century of anti-Christian ideologies, in the midst of ongoing Masonic and communist offensives, addressing the intellectual and clerical elite of a superpower, lacks:
– Any mention of Freemasonry or its condemned principles.
– Any warning against socialism and secularism in American political life.
– Any call to resist the cult of “progress” and “civilization” condemned in the Syllabus (80).
Instead: a bland, harmonious integration of Church prestige, U.S. success, and Roman approval. This is the rhetoric of capitulation, not of Peter. It is the ideological ambience from which the conciliar sect and its “hermeneutic of continuity” narrative spring.
Behind the Compliments: The Betrayal of the Integral Magisterium
Confronting key doctrinal points:
– Pius IX (Syllabus, 77–79) rejects the thesis that the Catholic religion should cease to be the sole religion of the state and that civil liberty of all cults is beneficial. John XXIII tacitly blesses a nation built on these condemned principles without a single word of doctrinal correction.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that social order depends on public recognition of Christ’s Kingship and condemns laicism as a plague. John XXIII speaks of “florentissima patria,” but does not recall this obligation; he suggests a clergy shaped to serve such a system, not to convert it.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi shows that softening language, historicist evasions, and irenic tone are instruments of Modernism. John XXIII’s letter exemplifies those “gentle” strategies: no condemnations, no anathemas, only encouragement, as though the war had ended.
Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. By ceasing to speak as the Church always spoke, the new regime reveals that it no longer believes as the Church always believed. This document is a case study in that process.
Conclusion: A Smooth Preamble to the Abomination of Desolation
This 1959 letter, while externally pious and traditional in its Latin and citations, exhibits:
– A naturalistic admiration for national greatness.
– Trust in academic breadth and institutional scale as sufficient for priestly excellence.
– Silence on Modernism, liberalism, and condemned errors.
– Anodyne praise of a clergy-production machine that would soon flood the world with revolutionaries in cassocks.
– Invocation of Rome as an unquestioned badge of orthodoxy at the threshold of its visible doctrinal betrayal.
By the standard of unchanging Catholic teaching before 1958, it is not a minor courtesy text; it is an ideological symptom. The mentality that speaks here, congratulating without warning, harmonizing without condemning, venerating structures without guarding the deposit, is the mentality that would dissolve the visible bulwarks of the Church and enthrone the neo-church of religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
Where previous true Popes raised their voice to defend the flock against wolves, John XXIII here chooses a polished silence—the silence from which the conciliar noise would soon erupt. It is precisely in such measured, “harmless” texts that the spiritual bankruptcy of the coming revolution is first laid bare to those who have ears to hear and who judge all things by the immutable doctrine of the Church, not by the applause of nations or the splendor of seminaries.
Source:
Ad Ec.mum P.D. Martinum Ioannem O'connor, Pontificii Collegii Foederatarum Americae Civitatum in urbe rectorem: saeculo exeunte ab eodem Collegio condito, XXVIII Augusti MCMLIX, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025