This Latin letter of John XXIII appoints Cardinal Cento as his legate to preside at celebrations in Ávila for the 400th anniversary of St. Teresa of Jesus’ Carmelite reform, extols Teresa’s contemplative and ascetical renewal, praises Carmel’s hidden apostolate of prayer and sacrifice for souls, and links Teresian spirituality to the then-upcoming Second Vatican Council with the hope of a “new springtime” in the Church. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this apparently pious tribute functions as a carefully perfumed veil over the conciliar revolution, instrumentalizing St. Teresa to bless the emerging neo-church that John XXIII was constructing against the Faith of Trent and all pre-1958 Magisterium.
Teresian Incense for a Conciliar Idol: John XXIII’s Manipulation of Carmel
Apparent Orthodoxy as a Vehicle for Conciliar Subversion
At the factual level, the document seems, at first sight, unimpeachably Catholic:
– It recalls the foundation of St. Joseph’s in Ávila (1562) and the reform of Carmel by St. Teresa.
– It underlines enclosure, austerity, poverty, penance, contemplation, and intercession for the salvation of souls.
– It invokes the Council of Trent and praises the fecundity of cloistered life as apostolate.
– It cites St. Cyprian and St. Bernard, and even recalls personal visits to Teresian sites.
All of this, taken in isolation, reflects traditional doctrine. But Catholic discernment does not stop at isolated phrases; it examines context, omissions, and teleology. Here the decisive passage unmasks the project. John XXIII directs the Teresian family:
“…peculiaribus supplicationibus et voluntariis cruciatibus divinam largitatem eidem conciliet, qua e proximo Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano Secundo novum veluti ver… exoriatur.”
English: “…that with special prayers and voluntary sufferings they may obtain for her [the Church] the divine bounty by which from the forthcoming Second Vatican Ecumenical Council there may arise, as it were, a new springtime, a herald of accumulated spiritual beauty.”
This is the hinge. Teresian Carmel is summoned to become the spiritual fuel for an event which, in fact and in its self-interpretation, would enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, anthropocentrism, and doctrinal evolution, all explicitly condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Thus the letter’s true function appears:
– Not to call Carmel to defend the already-defined Tridentine, anti-liberal, anti-modernist Faith.
– But to conscript Teresa’s authority in support of a future council whose principles are irreconcilable with Trent, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI.
In other words, a holy Doctor of the Church is used as an ornament on the façade of a paramasonic revolution.
Verba pia, consilia perfida: The pious vocabulary masking a new religion
On the linguistic plane, we must expose the calculated rhetoric.
1. Constant emphasis on “joy,” “spiritual celebration,” “festive rites.”
– The vocabulary envelops the reader in a positive sentimentality, anesthetizing vigilance.
– The letter is devoid of any warning about error, heresy, liberalism, or the Masonic onslaught denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– St. Teresa, who wrote with brutal clarity about the danger of hell, lax confessors, and false visions, is reduced to a safe, edifying emblem, sanitized for conciliar consumption.
2. The manipulation of the “new springtime” trope.
– Calling the Teresian reform a “floriferous spring” within the post-Tridentine Church is correct.
– But then the same imagery is transferred to Vatican II as “novum veluti ver.”
– By level confusion, the letter subtly equates:
– the authentic work of Trent and the Carmelite reform
– with the prospective work of the council that in reality would undermine Trent’s ecclesiology, liturgy, and condemnation of liberalism.
– This is not mere style; it is ideological transference.
3. Bureaucratic flattery of public authorities.
– The presence of “publicae rei Moderatores” is noted approvingly, without a single doctrinal reminder that rulers are bound to acknowledge and publicly honor the Social Kingship of Christ.
– This omission is striking in 1962, when Catholic Spain itself was under intense pressure towards liberal “opening.” The rhetoric of the letter gently pushes toward coexistence with secular power structures instead of recalling Quas Primas’ demand that states submit to Christ.
4. Tone of uncritical optimism.
– The entire letter breathes a complacent optimism in human plans, festivities, and conciliar expectations.
– Absent is the tragic sense of the Church Militant at war, so vivid in St. Teresa, Trent, Pius IX’s Syllabus, and St. Pius X’s Pascendi.
– This sugary optimism is precisely the psychological matrix of Modernism: naturalistic confidence in processes, dialogues, and “renewals,” instead of supernatural vigilance against heresy.
The style, therefore, is not neutral. It is the soft language of a new orientation: sentimentalitas sine militanti veritate (sentimentality without militant truth).
Teresian Reform versus Conciliar Revolution: An Irreconcilable Opposition
On the theological level, the central lie of the letter is the implicit identification of two utterly different realities:
– the Teresian-Tridentine reform
– and the conciliar aggiornamento that John XXIII is preparing and blessing.
We must set them side by side:
1. Nature of reform:
– St. Teresa: *reformatio* as return to stricter observance, deeper enclosure, more rigorous poverty, penance, and contemplative union with Christ Crucified; support of the dogmatic renewal of Trent; fierce loyalty to the hierarchy as then constituted in the integral Faith.
– John XXIII / Vatican II: “renewal” as opening to the world, liturgical deconstruction, theological pluralism, ecumenism with heretics and infidels, democratic and collegial models in governance, recognition of religious liberty of error, and dilution of the doctrine on the one true Church.
To present the latter as the organic continuation of the former is a deformation of Catholic history and a blasphemous exploitation of a Doctor of the Church.
2. Relationship to the world:
– St. Teresa: insists on separation from “the world,” condemns worldliness among clergy, fears novelty; enclosure is precisely to guard against the world’s “vain noise and empty pursuits.”
– The letter quotes her emphasis on seclusion but then harnesses her Carmelites to pray for a council whose self-professed aim (as realized in later documents of the conciliar sect) is to reconcile the Church with “modern man,” “modern freedoms,” and religious pluralism.
3. Doctrinal stability:
– Pre-1958 Magisterium: doctrine is immutable; depositum fidei (deposit of faith) must be transmitted in the same sense and the same judgment (Vatican I, *Dei Filius*; St. Pius X against Modernism; Pius IX’s Syllabus).
– John XXIII, in his opening discourse to the council (1962), explicitly dismissed the “prophets of doom,” indicated a shift from condemnations to pastoral accommodation, and opened the door to historical-relativist approaches that Lamentabili and Pascendi had anathematized.
– Here, in this letter, instead of repeating the anti-modernist line, he wraps Vatican II in Teresian lace to make the break appear as continuity.
4. Ecclesiology:
– St. Teresa’s reform presupposes one visible, uncompromised, doctrinally unified Church with a sacrificial liturgy and sacraments understood as propitiatory and salvific in the traditional sense.
– The “new springtime” council, as later implemented by the conciliar sect, fractures this:
– new ecclesiology of “subsistit in,”
– liturgical rites that obscure the propitiatory nature of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– ecumenical practices condemned by pre-1958 Popes as indifferentism.
By calling upon Carmel to obtain graces for such a council, John XXIII turns the cloister into a spiritual engine for an enterprise objectively ordered against the very Tridentine-Carmelite foundations he pretends to honor.
The Grave Omissions: Silence as Indictment
The most damning evidence lies not in what is said, but in what is systematically omitted. Quod tacet, consentit (what it keeps silent about, it consents to), when such silence concerns truths most under attack.
1. No mention of Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
– St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and the attached oath (1910) made anti-modernist vigilance a structural duty.
– This letter, in 1962, on the threshold of a council dominated by theologians imbued with condemned errors, does not warn once against Modernism, liberalism, historical criticism, or neo-protestant exegesis.
– A text truly faithful to Teresa and Trent would have summoned Carmelites to combat modernist infiltration, not to energize it.
2. No mention of the Syllabus or Quanta Cura.
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned religious freedom, the equality of all religions, separation of Church and State, and the cult of “progress” divorced from Christ.
– As Europe and the Americas sink deeper into precisely those errors, John XXIII does not recall them; instead, he prepares a council that will, in practice, neutralize these condemnations.
3. No reference to the Social Kingship of Christ.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught clearly that peace and order depend on public recognition of the reign of Christ; condemned laicism and religious indifference of states.
– The letter mentions civil authorities attending, but omits the duty of nations to submit to Christ and His Church.
– This silence is not accidental; it resonates with the conciliar sect’s later abandonment of confessional states and endorsement of religious liberty.
4. No emphasis on judgment, hell, necessity of state of grace.
– St. Teresa speaks relentlessly of hell, of the fewness of the saved compared to the laxity of souls, of the terror of mortal sin.
– The letter reduces her fire to a generalized “care for souls” and “hidden apostolate,” avoiding concrete warnings.
– Such silence is consistent with the post-1958 “pastoral” program that replaces fear of God and eternal judgment with horizontal humanitarianism.
This silence reveals the spirit of the text: to anesthetize contemplatives precisely when the battle against apostasy required trumpet blasts.
Symptomatic Fruit: Conciliar Co-optation of Cloistered Life
This letter is a specimen of a broader pathology: using pre-conciliar saints as spiritual alibis to legitimate systematic deviation. Several symptomatic dynamics emerge:
1. Instrumentalization of contemplatives.
– Instead of guarding them as guardians of the Faith, John XXIII tasks Carmelites to be intercessors for a council that would in turn dismantle the environment in which authentic Carmel could flourish.
– The subsequent half-century proves the result:
– decimation of cloistered vocations,
– penetration of psychologism, feminist ideology, laxity, and liturgical abuses into many once-Teresian houses,
– collapse of enclosure, mitigated rules, and worldliness under banners of “renewal.”
This is not an accident; it is the fruit of consecrating contemplative prayer to the service of a conciliar agenda.
2. Canonical and liturgical reform against Teresian spirit.
– The conciliar sect’s new rites and “religious life renewal” documents systematically diluted:
– strict enclosure,
– habits,
– common life,
– penitential obligations.
– Yet John XXIII’s letter pretends harmony between Teresa’s strict reform and the council that would unleash these dissolving forces. This dissonance reveals premeditated duplicity.
3. The rhetoric of “new springtime.”
– History has judged: the promised “springtime” of Vatican II produced:
– doctrinal confusion,
– moral collapse,
– vocations’ desert,
– abandonment of confession,
– profanation of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– interreligious syncretism.
– To have asked Teresa’s daughters to underwrite this with their sacrifices is a spiritual abuse: co-opting the holiest to energize the demolition of what they vowed to preserve.
4. The conciliar sect’s cult of innocuous saints.
– Pre-conciliar saints are carefully edited:
– All their anti-heretical, anti-world, anti-liberal claims are silenced.
– Only affective piety and interiority are emphasized, now detached from doctrinal militancy.
– This letter is an early and eloquent example: St. Teresa as an icon of generic “prayer” in service of a Church “opening to the world,” not as a warrior of Trent.
Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterium: Incompatibility Laid Bare
To unveil the theological bankruptcy of the attitudes undergirding this letter, it suffices to juxtapose its orientation with binding pre-1958 teaching.
1. Against Modernist evolution:
– Lamentabili and Pascendi explicitly condemn:
– reduction of dogma to experiential symbols,
– adaptation of doctrine to modern thought,
– minimizing condemnations.
– John XXIII’s whole pontificate, crowned by his council, promotes “aggiornamento,” openness to modern philosophy and religious liberty. This letter, in harnessing Teresa for that project, participates in the same condemned tendency.
2. Against liberalism and false religious freedom:
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII repeatedly uphold the duty of nations to worship the true God in the true Church, and condemn pluralistic “neutrality.”
– The conciliar revolution, prepared here, in effect canonizes religious liberty and the parity of sects.
– For a letter commemorating a saint formed in the militant, confessional Catholic Spain that incarnated this doctrine, not to recall it, but to bless a coming council that will oppose it in practice, is a direct betrayal.
3. Against ecumenical indifferentism:
– Pre-1958 Popes consistently condemn “pan-Christian” projects and praise the return of heretics, not dialogue on equal footing.
– The upcoming council would invert this, and the structures occupying the Vatican would institutionalize false ecumenism.
– Teresa, who fervently prayed for the conversion of heretics to Catholic truth, is here not cited in that exact spirit; instead, the language is defanged. This censored Teresianism is made to serve ecumenical trajectories.
4. The true nature of apostolate:
– It is orthodox when the letter notes that union with Christ, prayer and sacrifice are the soul of apostolate, because Christ redeemed chiefly by prayer and oblation.
– Yet, precisely this truth is perverted when it is ordered towards a council and a neo-church that subvert the sacrificial nature of the liturgy and the uniqueness of salvation in the Catholic Church.
– The higher the truth invoked, the worse the abuse when applied to an evil end; corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst).
Condemnation of the Conciliar Agenda Behind the Letter
Given the totality of Catholic doctrine before 1958, one must conclude:
– An authority that systematically prepares and carries out a revolution against:
– the immutability of dogma,
– the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church,
– the Social Kingship of Christ,
– the anti-modernist rulings of prior Popes,
cannot be exercising the same office as the guardians of Tradition.
Within this horizon, this letter is:
– An act of moral and theological fraud:
– invoking a canonized reformer to give moral capital to a coming council that, in its texts and implementation by the conciliar sect, stands in material contradiction to Trent and anti-modernist papal teaching.
– A deliberate misuse of Carmel:
– enlisting Teresian contemplatives not to defend the Faith, but to lubricate the acceptance of the very changes that would devastate religious life.
The language is devout; the intention, as embedded in the historical and doctrinal trajectory, is subversive. This duplicity is precisely the mark of the revolution that the structures occupying the Vatican would perpetuate: preserving Catholic words while reversing their content.
A Call to Authentic Teresian Fidelity Against the Neo-Church
For souls seeking to remain faithful to the unchanging Faith:
– St. Teresa of Jesus must be received not as a sentimental mask for aggiornamento, but as:
– a champion of austerity, enclosure, doctrinal orthodoxy,
– a daughter of the Council of Trent,
– an enemy of laxity, compromise, and novelty.
– Her insistence that her nuns intercede for:
– priests to be holy and orthodox,
– theologians to defend truth,
– preachers to convert infidels and heretics to the Catholic Church,
is incompatible with lending support to a council and a sect that promote indifferentism and doctrinal confusion.
Thus:
– Any invocation of Teresa to support the cult of dialogue, religious freedom of error, liturgical desacralization, or ecumenism is an abuse of her name.
– Authentic Teresian Carmel in our time can only:
– cling to pre-1958 doctrine and liturgy,
– reject the pseudo-reforms of the conciliar sect,
– and offer prayer and sacrifice for the restoration of the visible reign of Christ the King in individuals, families, and states, in accordance with Quas Primas and the Syllabus.
The letter Causa praeclara, read in this light, stands as an early, polished example of how the conciliar revolution cloaked itself in the language of saints in order to undermine the very Catholic order those saints built. What appears as honor to St. Teresa is in reality an attempt to chain her legacy to an altar that is not that of the true Church, but of a new humanistic cult where “renewal” means apostasy.
Source:
Causa praeclara – Epistula ad Ferdinandum tit. S. Eustachii S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem Cento, quem Legatimi eligit ut Abulae in Hispania religiosis caerimoniis praesideat, quarto saeculo exeunte ab in… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025