Dated 8 December 1961, this Latin letter of antipope John XXIII addresses Hyginus Anglés on the fiftieth anniversary of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, offering praise for its service to “sacred music,” commending Gregorian chant, Latin liturgy, polyphony, and the training of church musicians, while aligning these with the liturgical directives of Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII and the 1958 Instruction on sacred music and liturgy; beneath its apparently edifying celebration of chant and Latin, it functions as a cosmetic appropriation of pre‑conciliar language in order to legitimize the coming liturgical demolition and the wider conciliar apostasy that the author himself was orchestrating.
John XXIII’s Sacred Music Panegyric as a Veil for the Conciliar Subversion
Appropriation of Authentic Magisterial Language by a Revolutionary Usurper
From the outset, this letter must be read as the act of a usurper already engaged in the systematic dismantling of the visible structures of the Church, while strategically cloaking his program in the vocabulary of tradition.
John Roncalli (John XXIII) is historically and theologically inseparable from the launching of the so‑called Second Vatican Council and the aggiornamento ideology that directly contradicts the constant magisterium summarized, for instance, in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) and in the anti‑modernist condemnations of St. Pius X (Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi). To find him here singing hymns to Gregorian chant, Latin, and the norms of Pius X is not continuity but calculated camouflage.
The letter opens by citing the Psalm and linking “Our” pastoral concern with the splendour of divine worship, immediately binding sacred music to divine worship as an object of pontifical solicitude. On the factual surface:
– He hails the Pontifical Institute as fruit of St. Pius X’s motu proprio on sacred music (Tra le sollecitudini, 1903).
– He praises its fifty years of fidelity to Gregorian chant, polyphony, and Latin.
– He recalls and commends:
– Pius XI’s Constitution Divini cultus sanctitatem (1928),
– Pius XII’s encyclical on sacred music (Musicae sacrae disciplina, 1955),
– the 1958 Instruction on sacred music and liturgy.
– He extols Latin as the solemn liturgical language, closely bound to Gregorian chant, “a sign of unity.”
– He encourages:
– the preservation of chant scholae in cathedrals, monasteries, seminaries, parishes,
– the cultivation of religious vernacular hymns in non‑solemn liturgy,
– missionary adaptation of indigenous musical treasures in a Catholic key.
– He concludes with pious exhortations: “Let us pray by singing and sing by praying,” invoking St. Augustine, and imparts an “Apostolic Blessing.”
Superficially this reads as an orthodox restatement of Pius X’s classic principles. In reality, read in context, it is a paradigmatic example of the conciliar method condemned by St. Pius X: *verba orthodoxa, mens haeretica* (orthodox words, heretical mind). It weaponizes respected pre‑1958 teaching to disarm resistance to the very revolution that would raze that teaching in practice.
Factual Dissonance: Laudation of Chant as Preludium to Its Suppression
At the factual level, several contradictions emerge when this text is situated within the known historical sequence.
1. John XXIII praises a restoration inaugurated by St. Pius X, presenting himself as grateful successor continuing that line:
“Sanctus Decessor Noster Pius X… provide decrevit, ut Romae istud constitueretur musicae sacrae celsi ordinis Magisterium.”
Translation: “Our holy predecessor Pius X… prudently decreed that in Rome there be established this high institute of sacred music.”
Yet:
– The same Roncalli had already convoked the Council that would unleash:
– the systematic deformation of the liturgy,
– the practical marginalization and then near‑eradication of Gregorian chant in parish life,
– the replacement of the *Unbloody Sacrifice* by a meal‑assembly rite in the neo‑church.
– Within a decade of this letter, under his successor in the same usurping line, the Conciliar sect would promulgate the new rite, with the Pontifical Institute partially co‑opted to give technical legitimacy to mutations that violated the principles of Pius X and Pius XII.
This is not a neutral historical juxtaposition; it reveals intent: decorous celebration of the Institute as rhetorical cover for altering its mission.
2. The letter explicitly commands attention to the 1958 Instruction on sacred music and liturgy. That document, while on paper still largely framed within pre‑conciliar principles, already manifests a softening — pastoral concessions and liturgical experiments that create breaches for later abuses. John XXIII’s insistence on it is a step in the loosening slope: he elevates the very norms that the architects of reform will use as initial leverage.
3. He praises:
“Valde id Nobis perplacet, quod istic Latinae linguae in sacra liturgia sollemni… honor exquisita diligentia colitur…”
Translation: “It is very pleasing to Us that there the Latin language is cultivated with exquisite care in solemn sacred liturgy.”
But he is the same figure whose Council and succession prepared and enacted the practical abolition of Latin from the neo‑church’s “liturgies” — in direct contradiction to:
– Pius XI’s Quas Primas vision of the visible social reign of Christ and unity,
– the perennial doctrine that liturgical language serves doctrinal stability and unity.
The praise of Latin here functions as a sedative; the subsequent reality shows its insincerity.
Thus, on the factual plane, the letter is not a harmless compliment; it is an example of strategic double discourse: celebrating what one is preparing to destroy.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Pious Rhetoric as Instrumentum Modernismi
The text’s language is deliberately sonorous, classicizing, replete with references to “splendour of worship,” “Roman liturgy,” “Gregorian chant,” “autocthonous religious music,” “scholae cantorum.” This stylistic choice must be dissected.
1. Use of venerable terms to anesthetize:
– Frequent mentions of *sacra musica*, *cantus choralis*, *lingua Latina*, *gregorianus*, *polyphonicus*, and citations of Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, Augustine, are all accurate in isolation. But within the wider project of the conciliar sect, such vocabulary functions as *verbal incense* while the sanctuary is being emptied.
St. Pius X described Modernists as those who “put their designs into effect not from without but from within; hence the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church” (Pascendi). This letter is emblematic: from within a conventionally sounding document, it inoculates the audiences against suspicion of the author’s revolutionary agenda.
2. Strategic ambiguity:
– The recommendation of vernacular religious songs in non‑solemn contexts is phrased moderately, in continuity with authentic practice (vernacular hymns outside the strictly liturgical texts). Yet this rhetorical opening aligns perfectly with the soon‑to‑come abuse where the exception devours the rule. By praising this trend without fortifying the doctrinal limits, John XXIII encourages the mentality that will displace Latin texts entirely.
3. Paternal tone masking authority subversion:
– The letter adopts a soft, benevolent tone: “dilecte fili,” “gratulamur,” “perplacet,” “delectat Nos.” This paternal style stands in stark contrast with the firm, juridical voice of pre‑1958 Popes when defending the liturgy and condemning abuses. The change in tone is itself doctrinally symptomatic: authority disguises itself as mere congratulatory counsel, while in the background it prepares to surrender its own duty to bind and to judge — precisely the modernist democratization and pastoralism condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
The rhetoric is not merely aesthetic; it is an ideological instrument that disarms while the foundations are shaken.
Theological Inversion: From Sacrificial Cult to Aesthetic Sentiment
Read from the integral Catholic perspective, the gravest problem is not what this letter affirms about chant and Latin, but what it systematically omits concerning the nature of sacred music and of worship itself.
According to constant doctrine:
– Sacred music is not neutral art but is strictly subordinate to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the propitiatory Sacrifice of Calvary made present, offered to God for His glory and for the salvation of souls.
– True liturgical beauty is theological: it must clearly express the truths of:
– the Real Presence,
– the sacrificial and propitiatory character of the Mass,
– the hierarchical mediation of the ordained priest,
– the absolute primacy of God’s rights over any human aesthetic or pastoral calculation.
Measured by this standard, the letter reveals:
1. Naturalistic reduction:
– While speaking of worship, chant, unity, and even catechesis, it does not once explicitly reaffirm:
– the sacrificial nature of the Mass,
– the necessity of the state of grace,
– the reality of propitiation for sins,
– the centrality of dogma as the form of worship.
– Sacred music is treated predominantly as an elevation, as “splendour” and “beauty” of worship, without explicit doctrinal anchoring. This silencing is not neutral. In the age when modernist liturgists were already pressing aesthetic and “pastoral” arguments to erode the sacrificial theology, such omissions become complicity.
2. Sentimental liturgical theology:
– The closing Augustinian paraphrase:
“Oremus cantando et orando cantemus.”
Translation: “Let us pray by singing and let us sing by praying.”
– Taken alone, this is edifying. But without the sharper doctrinal context typical of Pius X or Pius XII, it becomes a motto for a horizontal community experience: music as mutual edification rather than as humble service to the objective Sacrifice and worship of God according to precise rites established by authority.
3. Instrumentalization of missionary “inculturation”:
– The letter praises the new department for sacred music in mission territories, urging that indigenous melodies be collected, refined, and used for Catholic worship, as foundation of “autochthonous religious music.”
– Properly understood, tradition has always known prudent adaptation. However, coming from the very circle preparing the doctrinally corrupt concept of “inculturation” that would later legitimize syncretistic and paganized spectacles, this passage prefigures the weaponization of music as vehicle for relativism and for dissolving the Roman liturgical ethos.
– Pre‑1958 teaching (e.g., Pius XI, Pius XII) on missions insists on the clear primacy of the Roman liturgy, the avoidance of superstition, and the purification of customs. Here John XXIII offers no such robust doctrinal safeguards; he speaks of “spiritual benefit” in highly general terms, opening a path to abuses seen later under the conciliar sect’s “Amazonian” and other theatrics.
Thus the theological axis is gently shifted from *lex credendi* shaping *lex orandi* to an aestheticized “beauty” and community expression — fertile soil for the subsequent overthrow of the very Mass that sacred music is meant to clothe.
Symptomatic Revelation of the Conciliar Sect’s Method
This letter is a microcosm of the conciliar sect’s modus operandi:
1. Invocation of revered Popes to legitimize rupture:
– John XXIII repeatedly invokes St. Pius X as if he were the faithful executor of his legacy in sacred music.
– But St. Pius X, in Tra le sollecitudini, established Gregorian chant as the model because it expresses dogmatic truth: the awe of sacrifice, the primacy of God, the humility of man. To later preside over the introduction of a rite and pastoral culture where:
– Communion in the hand,
– desacralized language,
– profane musical idioms,
– horizontal celebration
become normal, is to betray that legacy while hiding behind its vocabulary.
2. Selective continuity as mask:
– Essential marks of Catholic worship prior to 1958:
– Latin as doctrinal safeguard,
– Gregorian chant as normative,
– priest oriented with the people to God,
– clearly sacrificial offertory and Canon,
– strict separation from profane forms.
– The letter affirms a subset (Latin, chant, scholae) on paper, while the conciliar process in practice dismantles the rest. This is the “hermeneutic of continuity” fraud in nuce: a pseudo‑continuity in accidental elements employed to conceal the destruction of substance.
3. Silence as accusation:
– In the integral Catholic view, the most damning feature is silence:
– No dissection of modern abuses of sacred music already pressing in European parishes.
– No explicit condemnation of theatricality, sentimentalism, or trivialization, all of which Pius X had so strongly denounced.
– No warning that deviation in music quickly leads to deviation in belief.
– At a moment of intensifying assault by Modernist liturgists, a true Pope, following the examples of Pius X and Pius XII, would issue forceful disciplinary and doctrinal correctives. Instead, John XXIII offers only accolades and vague exhortations — the omission signals complicity.
4. Preparation for democratized worship:
– His warm words about popular participation, manual booklets, and vernacular hymns are in themselves legitimate if ordered rightly. But he never reaffirms that the authority to regulate liturgy is hierarchical, not democratic; that the faithful’s “participation” is first interior and doctrinal, not theatrical or votive.
– This silence greases the path to the conciliar sect’s cult of the assembly, where “participation” becomes an idol, used to justify stripping away the sacrificial, mysterious, God‑centered liturgy and replacing it with a community self‑celebration.
What emerges is the outline of a paramasonic strategy fully in line with the warnings of Pius IX and Leo XIII concerning secret forces seeking to deform the Church from within: praise Christian externals while in practice hollowing them out and reorienting them to humanistic and naturalistic goals.
Contrast with Pre‑1958 Magisterium on Worship and Social Kingship
To unmask the bankruptcy of this text’s underlying ideology, it must be placed beside the robust affirmations of true Popes:
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that peace and order are only possible when individuals and states submit publicly to the reign of Christ the King; worship, doctrine, and social order are inseparable. When chant and Latin are praised without linking them to the non‑negotiable doctrine of Christ’s social Kingship, the praise becomes decorative, not confessional.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemns:
– indifferentism (15–18),
– subjection of the Church to the state (19–21, 54–55),
– liberal religious freedom and pluralism (77–80),
– reconciliation with “modern civilization” understood as emancipation from God.
The conciliar process initiated by John XXIII directly contradicts these condemnations. This letter’s refusal to confront such errors, even as its author prepares documents that will effectively embrace them, is an indictment.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi exposes Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies, especially:
– the evolution of dogma,
– the reduction of faith to religious experience,
– the historicist relativization of doctrine and worship.
By 1961, these tendencies were entrenched among leading liturgists and theologians. Yet John XXIII’s letter offers no doctrinal combat; instead, he envelops sacred music talk in nebulous goodwill. That is precisely the attitude St. Pius X anathematizes.
In light of these authoritative pre‑1958 norms, this text’s content and omissions cannot be interpreted as innocent. It is an instrument aligned with a project that seeks to separate the external forms of tradition from their doctrinal soul, so that those forms can later be either discarded or repurposed without resistance.
On the Institute’s Mission and Its Subsequent Co-option
The Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music was entrusted, as the letter notes, with:
– preserving intact the documents and tradition of Roman liturgical music,
– teaching and transmitting Gregorian chant and classical polyphony,
– forming those who would guide sacred music in worship.
In itself, this mandate is consonant with Catholic doctrine. The tragedy lies in:
– the submission of such an institute to a counterfeit authority;
– its partial employment, after the Council, to:
– normalize experimental practices,
– provide technical justification for innovations that conflict with the principles of Pius X and Pius XII,
– train personnel who, in the structures of the neo‑church, serve a non‑Catholic liturgical theology.
When a paramasonic, modernist structure occupies the visible apparatus, every institutional strengthening under its aegis risks being turned against the faith. This letter’s praises, coming from John XXIII, thus function to bind the Institute’s prestige to the conciliar program, preparing its use as a tool of mutation rather than preservation.
Exposure of the Spiritual Bankruptcy Behind the Pious Facade
Summarizing the core indictment:
– The letter uses noble vocabulary but studiously avoids reaffirming the doctrinal pillars that give sacred music its raison d’être.
– It speaks as if in organic continuity with Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII while participating in an agenda that would, within a few years, trample their principles in practice.
– It praises Latin and chant while setting in motion the very Council and mentality that would exile Latin and chant from ordinary parish life.
– It encourages “participation” and vernacular elements without clearly safeguarding the vertical, sacrificial, hierarchical essence of the liturgy, thus aiding the shift toward anthropocentric worship.
– It introduces missionary “autochthonous music” in vague terms, prefiguring the abuse of inculturation as a vector for religious relativism and syncretism.
– It never confronts Modernism, never defends explicitly against its infiltration into liturgy, despite the grave warnings and condemnations binding all true successors of Peter.
Such a document, therefore, must not be read as a homage to sacred music, but as an eloquent testimony of the conciliar sect’s method: to appropriate Catholic language as an instrument to neutralize Catholic vigilance while the very substance of the faith and worship is prepared for demolition.
From the perspective of the unchanging doctrine taught before 1958, the attitudes and omissions manifest in this letter are not merely insufficient; they are culpable. They reveal a will to maintain an appearance of fidelity while tolerating and eventually institutionalizing the overthrow of the divine rights of God in public worship and the dissolution of the royal rights of Christ the King in society, so forcefully proclaimed by Pius XI in Quas Primas and so fiercely defended by Pius IX against liberal and masonic subversion.
In that light, the text stands as a polished but hollow shell: a “pleasant praise” that, instead of fortifying the ramparts against Modernism, quietly opens the gates.
Source:
Iucunda laudatio – Epistula ad Hyginum Anglés Pamies, Protonotarium Apostolicum ad instar participantium ac Pontifici Instituti Musicae Sacrae Docendae Praesidem, decem exactis lustris ab eiusdem Inst… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025