In this brief letter of 21 November 1960 to Guido Maria Mazzocchi, bishop of Adria, the usurper John XXIII reacts to the floods in Polesine with sentimental recollections of the landscape, praise of local clergy and charitable organisations, appeals for technical and social reconstruction, and a vague spiritualised parallel between natural catastrophe and ideological “seductions,” concluding with assurances of his “prayer” and apostolic blessing. Already here, under a veil of pious phrases, we see the programmatic reduction of the Church’s supernatural mission to humanitarian consolation, social pacification, and naturalistic “justice,” preparing the terrain for the conciliar revolution soon to be unleashed.
Humanitarian Sentimentalism as Preludium to the Conciliar Usurpation
Substitution of Supernatural Catholicism with Emotional Pastoralism
The text opens with an apparently harmless expression of closeness to a suffering region, but immediately reveals its axis: an aesthetic and sentimental contemplation of “bella campagna,” “maestose corone di alberi,” “campi fioriti,” in which the soul supposedly “feels closer to the peace of God,” instead of a forthright summons to penance, reparation, and conversion.
This is not a mere stylistic flourish. It is the symptom of an entire program:
– The flood is treated almost exclusively as a sociological and emotional drama.
– There is no mention of:
– the sovereignty of Almighty God over nature,
– divine permission of chastisements for sin,
– the Four Last Things,
– the necessity of confession, repentance, restitution,
– the danger of dying in mortal sin,
– the need for the Most Holy Sacrifice offered in reparation.
Pius XI, in *Quas primas* (1925), taught that true peace and order exist only under the public reign of Christ the King and that secularism is a plague provoking divine chastisements. Here, in 1960, the man who would inaugurate the council that enthroned secular “dialogue” and religious liberty speaks of floods, “solidarity,” “social justice,” and “occupazione stabile e serena,” but never recalls rulers and people to the duty of recognizing Christ’s Kingship in law, government, and public morals. This silence is not benign; it is an implicit repudiation of the pre-1958 Magisterium that he pretends to represent.
Factual Level: Natural Disaster Without Supernatural Horizon
On the factual plane, the letter:
– notes the destruction brought by the floods;
– praises local priests “sempre pronti a condividere la sorte della loro gente”;
– highlights the activity of “istituzioni caritative ed assistenziali”;
– expresses hopes that the competent organisms will definitively solve the Delta’s technical problems;
– glorifies the “gara di fraterna solidarietà.”
But what is entirely absent?
1. Any concrete call to:
– public acts of penance,
– days of fasting,
– processions of supplication with the Blessed Sacrament,
– invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, patron saints, or the intercession of the Church Triumphant.
2. Any reminder that:
– God is not a sentimental spectator of human suffering, but *Dominus* who “weighs nations” and punishes obstinacy;
– catastrophes are permitted by Providence to recall men from sin, as the pre-conciliar catechisms and the constant tradition teach.
Instead, we receive a purely horizontal framework: technical solutions, barrier-building, social collaboration. This is religiously sterilized humanitarianism. It stands in glaring contrast with the condemnations of *naturalismus* and *laicismus* in the Syllabus of Pius IX, which branded as errors:
– “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.” (prop. 39)
– “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” (prop. 55)
Here, the so‑called “Successor of Peter” behaves precisely as chaplain of a secular welfare paradigm, blessing the technical “organismi preposti” without demanding they submit their work to the Kingship of Christ and the rights of His true Church.
Linguistic Level: Soft Bureaucratic Rhetoric and Pious Euphemisms
The vocabulary is revealing. We encounter:
– “ansia e desolazione”,
– “piena del Nostro affetto”,
– “qualificati rappresentanti ed esecutori della carità”,
– “istituzioni caritative ed assistenziali”,
– “organismi preposti alla difficile soluzione dei problemi del Delta Padano”,
– “gara di fraterna solidarietà”,
– “giustizia sociale,”
– “ordinata convivenza sociale.”
This lexicon is:
– bureaucratic (“organismi preposti,” “istituzioni”),
– sociological (“solidarietà,” “convivenza sociale”),
– psychologizing (“ansia,” “preoccupazioni”).
Conspicuously marginal or absent are explicitly Catholic terms:
– Most Holy Eucharist as propitiatory Sacrifice,
– sacramental confession,
– grace, sin, mortal sin, Hell,
– Christ the King’s rights over nations,
– Our Lady’s patronage,
– the Cross accepted as penance.
The only theological remark is a purely abstract reassurance that the Church “non dimentica” temporal trials and “coopera instancabilmente alla instaurazione di una più solida tranquillità” in social relations, as an “immagine della pace superna.” But the order is inverted: instead of temporal order flowing from fidelity to revealed truth and to the one true Church, eternal realities are reduced to a vague “image” of the horizontal concord that the conciliar project seeks.
This soft rhetoric is the pastoral mask of Modernism: evacuate the dogmatic edge, dilute supernatural causality, and fill the vacuum with benevolent phrases supporting worldly structures. As St. Pius X condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, Modernists hide their doctrinal perversion under ambiguous, edifying language. The letter is a textbook example.
Theological Level: Naturalism, Social Gospel, and Implicit Rebellion Against the Kingship of Christ
The core theological deformation appears in three interconnected moves.
1. Horizontalization of Charity
The letter praises charitable activity and solidarity. In itself, corporal works of mercy are Catholic. But:
– There is no subordination of temporal aid to the ultimate end: the salvation of souls.
– There is no admonition that true charity must be rooted in supernatural faith and in the state of grace; without this, it degenerates into philanthropy.
Pius XI in *Quas primas* and Pius IX in the Syllabus insist that social order and true charity are impossible without explicit submission to Christ the King and His Church. Here, the usurper’s “charity” is compatible with any creed, an anticipation of the conciliar cult of “human fraternity,” condemned in substance by pre‑1958 doctrine.
2. The Church Reduced to Advocate of Social Stability
The letter claims that the Church:
“non cessa di stimolare le autorità, i datori di lavoro… affinché venga assicurata a tutti una occupazione stabile e serena, fonte di benessere per le famiglie e di ordinata convivenza sociale.”
It further asserts that the Church:
“segue ogni intrapresa, mirante al raggiungimento di una vera e stabile giustizia sociale… difende la dignità del lavoro manuale… In tal modo la Chiesa coopera instancabilmente alla instaurazione di una più solida tranquillità nei vicendevoli rapporti, immagine della pace superna.”
Observe:
– The Church’s mission is rhetorically re-centered on “occupazione stabile,” “benessere,” and “tranquillità” of social relations.
– The supernatural end is degraded to a decorative “immagine” of an already defined humanistic peace.
This is doctrinally perverse. The true Church exists *primum* to glorify God and save souls (*salus animarum suprema lex*), not to guarantee employment indexes. Pre-conciliar popes (Leo XIII, Pius XI) treated social issues rigorously subordinated to Catholic dogma, the rights of the Church, and the Kingship of Christ. They never allowed a social doctrine divorced from explicit condemnation of sects, socialism, liberalism, and Freemasonry. Pius IX explicitly linked modern persecutions and social dissolution to the machinations of Masonic sects which seek to overthrow the Church and create an apostate order.
John XXIII, by contrast, speaks as if:
– the Church’s primary public role is to support “justicia sociale” according to natural reason,
– without exposing the anti-Christian systems, ideologies, and secret societies condemned by his predecessors.
This is not continuity; it is rupture.
3. Denial in Practice of Divine Chastisement and the Need for Penance
The one moment where he approaches a “higher” application is where he likens the flood to “ventata irruente di illusioni e di seduzioni” that halt spiritual energies. Here was the ideal place to call Polesine, and all Italy immersed in unbelief, immodesty, contraception, socialism, and Freemasonry, to rigorous conversion.
Instead:
– He immediately defends the institution against those who think the Church “dimentichi le prove” in her spiritual focus; he shifts to a justification of the Church as benefactor of the workers.
– There is no call to:
– abandon gravely sinful customs,
– restore public Catholic morals,
– fight the enemies within the Church denounced by St. Pius X.
The omission is itself doctrinal. Silence about sin and chastisement in such a context contradicts the constant praxis of the Church before 1958, which interpreted catastrophes as calls to repentance, not as mere natural events to be managed by “organismi preposti.”
To elide this supernatural reading is a functional denial of Providence, falling under the naturalistic errors rejected by the Syllabus and by *Lamentabili*’s condemnation of those who subordinate Revelation to human science and sentiment.
Symptomatic Level: Early Manifestation of the Conciliar Apostasy
This letter, dated 1960, belongs to the period in which John XXIII was already preparing the council that would enthrone:
– religious liberty against the Syllabus,
– false ecumenism against the dogma *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*,
– collegial “democratization” against the divinely constituted monarchy of the Church,
– anthropocentric worship against the reign of Christ the King.
Seen in this light, the letter is not an isolated pastoral note, but a small crystal of the same spirit:
– The Church is portrayed as the handmaid of temporal welfare, labour rights, and “social justice,” with dogma and sacrament silently bracketed.
– The rights of God and of the Church over the State are never mentioned; instead, the letter flatters the secular framework and asks that all collaborate to strengthen “naturali difese” and social structures.
– There is no denunciation of Freemasonry, socialism, or liberalism as enemies of God, despite the fact that Pius IX and Leo XIII had explicitly connected social calamities and persecutions to these sects and systems.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): such episcopal letters manifest the “faith” of their author. Here we see a creeping creed:
– man at the centre,
– temporal well-being as privileged concern,
– spiritual language reduced to vague consolations.
This corresponds precisely to what St. Pius X condemned as Modernism, *“the synthesis of all heresies,”* for which those persisting in its defense incur excommunication, as recalled in the text you provided from *Lamentabili sane exitu*.
Concealment of the Militant Church and the Reality of Judgment
The letter’s portrayal of “Chiesa” is maternal, consoling, socially engaged. True elements, but mutilated:
– No mention of the Church as *societas perfecta* with divine rights independent of the State, in direct opposition to the modern secular orders that dominate Italy.
– No warning that unjust civil laws contrary to divine and ecclesiastical law are *null and void*, as Pius IX declared against Prussian persecution.
– No reminder that rulers who refuse to recognize and serve Christ the King will be severely judged, as Pius XI taught: Christ will avenge the insult of His exclusion from public life.
Instead, John XXIII’s discourse is entirely compatible with the later conciliar slogan that the Church “does not seek privileges,” that it comes only to “dialogue,” to “serve the world,” shifting authority from *imperium Christi* to the pseudo-moral consensus of nations.
This is the very inversion condemned by previous popes:
– The Syllabus (prop. 80) rejects the idea that the Roman Pontiff must reconcile with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” understood in the anti-Christian sense.
– Yet the future council convoked by John XXIII was precisely presented as an “aggiornamento” and reconciliation.
The letter is, therefore, a prelude: it showcases a “pastor” who refuses to speak as judge and legislator in the name of Christ, preferring to speak as sympathetic president of a religious NGO strengthening public morale.
The False Consolation of a Pseudo-Pastor
In the conclusion, he instructs Mazzocchi to tell the faithful that “il Papa con la preghiera è vicino,” and bestows his “Benedizione Apostolica.”
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith grounded in pre-1958 doctrine:
– A heretic or manifest modernist, once he publicly subverts the faith, cannot hold papal authority (*manifestus haereticus… ipso facto desinit esse Papa*, as synthesized by St. Robert Bellarmine and the classical theologians).
– Publicly promoting a program leading directly to the doctrinal betrayals of the 1960s is incompatible with the office of guardian of Tradition.
Thus, his “blessing” has no binding force; his “sollecitudine” misleads souls by never calling them to the one remedy: return to the full doctrinal and moral order of the Church as taught consistently up to Pius XII, rejection of Modernist novelties, restoration of the public reign of Christ the King in law, society, and family, and recognition that catastrophes call to conversion, not merely to hydraulic engineering and state subsidies.
The Polesine faithful needed to hear:
– that sins—personal and public—cry out to Heaven;
– that leagues, parties, and sects warring against God’s law are to be condemned;
– that receiving sacraments outside the integral Catholic faith is perilous;
– that only under the sweet yet absolute yoke of Christ the King—Whom Pius XI solemnly enthroned in the liturgical year—can their land and souls know true peace.
They received instead a gentle message perfectly at home in the post-1958 neo-church: emotional, sociological, doctrinally emasculated.
Conclusion: A Small Document, a Clear Symptom of a Greater Usurpation
This letter’s theological and spiritual bankruptcy lies not in crude explicit heresy, but in the far graver, more insidious mutation of the Church’s self-understanding:
– from supernatural ark of salvation and divine judge of men and nations,
– to humanitarian facilitator of “solidarity,”
– content to animate secular projects without demanding the submission of those projects to the Kingship of Christ.
Measured by the unwavering standard of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine (Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI), this text is a symptom, not of a shepherd, but of an emerging conciliar mentality that would soon enthrone naturalism, false ecumenism, and religious liberty, and would devastate the faith of millions.
Against such texts and their spirit, the only Catholic response is a categorical rejection of the conciliar sect’s pseudo-magisterium, a return to the perennial teaching and worship of the Church, and an unflinching proclamation: peace and safety for lands and souls lie only in the unmitigated reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of all nations, as taught once for all and not subject to aggiornamento.
Source:
Nei giorni, a Mons. Guida Maria Mazzocco sulle gravi alluvioni che hanno colpito il Polesine, 21 novembre 1960, Giovanni XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025