The Latin text under review is a congratulatory letter of John XXIII to Eugene Tisserant on the 25th anniversary of his episcopal consecration. It offers laudatory praise for Tisserant’s “pastoral” activity as bishop of Ostia, Porto, and Santa Rufina, extols his governance, invokes abundant heavenly helps, and grants him, for a chosen day, authorization in the name and “authority” of John XXIII to impart a blessing with a plenary indulgence to the faithful present.
A Vacant Benediction: Pseudo-Apostolic Flattery as Symptom of the Neo-Church
Usurped Authority and the Void Behind the “Apostolic” Seal
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the entire document is disfigured at its root, because it rests on the presupposition that John XXIII is a true Roman Pontiff and that the paramasonic Vatican apparatus of 1962 is the living organ of Christ’s Magisterium.
Key points:
– John XXIII, inaugurator of the conciliar revolution, publicly promoted doctrines and orientations condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium, especially:
– the program of aggiornamento,
– the opening to religious liberty and false ecumenism explicitly proscribed in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (errors 15–18, 55, 77–80),
– the convocation and direction of Vatican II, whose documents enshrine precisely what Quanta Cura and the Syllabus rejected.
– According to the constant doctrine summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine and the theologians cited in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file, a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church since *non potest caput esse qui non est membrum* (“he cannot be the head who is not a member”). A public promoter of condemned principles, even before any human declaration, forfeits jurisdiction and cannot validly legislate or dispense.
– Therefore, when John XXIII in this letter presumes to bestow:
– “Apostolic Benediction,”
– the faculty to give, “in Our Name and by Our authority,” a blessing with plenary indulgence,
he is attempting to exercise a power he does not possess. The grant is juridically and theologically null. The form is Catholic; the subject is not. It is an empty shell.
By contrast, Pius IX, in the very Syllabus which this conciliar line sought to neutralize, affirms the exclusive, divinely-instituted rights of the true Church against any secular or usurped interference: the Church, as a perfect society, receives her powers from Christ, not from human consensus, diplomacy, or “pastoral” theater. Any claim to bind consciences, to distribute indulgences, or to bless in the name of Peter, made by one who has departed from that faith, is a sacrilegious simulation, not an act of the Church.
From Apostolic Gravity to Courtly Panegyric: Linguistic Symptoms of Rupture
The text is brief, but its vocabulary and tone are telling. It is composed as a polished courtly compliment:
– Tisserant is praised as:
– “in exemplum” in the pastoral office,
– “in cogitando sagax, in perficiendo efficax, consilio prudens, navitate magnificus,”
– a model administrator whose works “religioni magno usui sunt.”
– The style is smooth, sentimental, and bureaucratically benevolent. It exalts natural qualities—effectiveness, cleverness in planning, organizational zeal—above explicitly supernatural criteria.
What is conspicuously absent?
– No doctrinal content.
– No mention of defending the faith against heresy, modernism, or secularism.
– No reference to the obligation to uphold the solemn condemnations of Pius IX’s Syllabus or St. Pius X’s Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– No allusion to guarding the flock against the very errors that, in 1962, were already infiltrating episcopal conferences, seminaries, and biblical institutes.
– Silence about:
– the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory,
– the state of grace and salvation of souls,
– final judgment,
– the kingship of Christ over nations, so forcefully taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas.
This silence is not neutral; it is accusatory. At the moment when the “structures occupying the Vatican” were preparing a council destined to enthrone religious liberty, collegiality, and dialogue with false religions, the “pope” writes to a central curial figure and does not exhort him:
– to defend the defined dogma that the Catholic religion is the only true religion,
– to combat socialism, Freemasonry, and liberalism,
– to preserve the integrity of the Roman liturgy and sacramental theology.
Instead, he crowns him with elegant compliments and hands him a plenary indulgence as a ceremonial bauble.
This is the rhetoric of a court-chaplain to an evolving institution, not of a successor of Pius X conscious of *munus confirmandi fratres in fide* (the duty to confirm the brethren in the faith). The excessive softness and horizontal admiration reveal a mentality in which the office is aestheticised, detached from its primary end: the supernatural salvation of souls through integral doctrine and discipline.
Natural Virtues Without Supernatural Militant Faith
The letter praises Tisserant’s activity as beneficial to “religio” and as fostering “fidei studium” (zeal for the faith), but nowhere indicates what “faith” concretely means. In 1962, this omission is theologically explosive.
Measured against pre-1958 Catholic doctrine:
– The authentic faith is:
– defined, dogmatic, exclusive,
– incompatible with the idea that Protestants, schismatics, or other religions are parallel paths to salvation,
– irreconcilable with doctrinal evolutionism, historicism, or indifferentism condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– The bishop’s primary responsibility is:
– to teach, rule, and sanctify in strict continuity with the perennial Magisterium,
– to expel error and heresy from his diocese,
– to safeguard the sacraments and liturgy from profanation.
The letter, however:
– Reduces praise to administrative and pastoral efficiency.
– Treats “fidei studium” as a vague, decorous quality, severed from the duty to anathematize error.
– Offers no reminder that every indulgence, every blessing, presupposes:
– true jurisdiction,
– communion with the Catholic Church as defined against liberalism, rationalism, and modernist poison.
Pius X in Lamentabili condemns precisely this modernist tendency to transmute dogma into “interpretation of religious facts” and faith into mere “religious experience.” Although the letter does not state such propositions explicitly, its tone and omissions align with that shift: the faith becomes a background color, not the cutting, exclusive, salvific truth that judges both the world and its shepherds.
Thus, even where the text speaks of “minister Christi et dispensator mysteriorum Dei,” the phrase is emptied by context. Coming from a structure that had already begun to relativize its own previous condemnations, such words are borrowed majesty cloaking a different project.
The Illegitimacy of the Claimed Power of the Keys
The climax of the document is the grant:
“id tibi facultatis facimus, ut, quo volueris die, adstantibus christifidelibus nomine Nostro Nostraque auctoritate benedicas, plenaria Indulgentia proposita.”
(“we grant you this faculty, that, on whatever day you will, in the presence of the Christian faithful, you may bless in Our Name and by Our authority, with a plenary indulgence attached.”)
From integral Catholic principles:
– A plenary indulgence is an act of jurisdiction and of application of the Church’s treasury of merits.
– Jurisdiction in foro interno and in dispensing indulgences flows from:
– valid election of a true Roman Pontiff,
– or delegation from him,
– and presupposes Catholic faith untainted by public heresy.
Given:
– the documented doctrinal rupture embodied in John XXIII’s conciliar agenda and public orientations,
– the dogmatic principle articulated by Bellarmine and the classical theologians (recalled in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism): a manifest heretic is outside the Church and cannot hold office;
it follows logically and theologically:
– John XXIII does not possess the power of the keys.
– He cannot validly attach indulgences.
– Any “faculty” granted here is a juridical fiction within a counterfeit legal order—an act of a parallel hierarchy not organically continuous with the pre-1958 Church.
Pius IX’s statements against the idea that civil or external forces could redefine the Church’s rights (Syllabus 19–21, 23) analogously expose the usurpation here: power over spiritual goods cannot be fabricated by a structure that has internally defected in doctrine, even if it retains the buildings, robes, and protocol.
In other words: this letter is a self-indictment. In pretending to exercise petrine authority, the conciliar usurper manifests his claim; in light of Catholic theology, that claim, coming from one promoting condemned principles, reveals itself as objectively void.
The Cult of Men and the Erosion of the Kingship of Christ
Another structural perversion lies in the anthropocentric gravity of the text.
– The axis of the letter:
– not Christ the King demanding public and private submission of nations and prelates (Quas Primas),
– but the celebration of Tisserant’s human career, dignity, and achievements.
– Pius XI warns explicitly that the calamities of the world arise because “very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their customs, from private, family, and public life” and that peace is impossible until His social Kingship is acknowledged and obeyed.
– Yet here, from the very man inaugurating the council that would enthrone religious liberty and interreligious “dialogue,” we find:
– no summons to reassert the reign of Christ over states,
– no exhortation to fight the secular apostasy catalogued by Pius IX and Pius XI,
– only polite optimism and self-congratulatory institutional serenity.
This is not accidental. It is symptomatic of the emerging “Church of the New Advent,” in which:
– divine rights are subordinated to human sensibilities,
– doctrinal condemnations are hushed for the sake of “benevolent” rhetoric,
– the cult of heroic sanctity as defenders of defined truth is replaced by the cult of efficient managers, diplomats, and “open-minded” prelates.
By refusing to proclaim—especially in official acts—the absolute and exclusive claims of Christ the King and His Church, the conciliar sect effectively sides with the very liberal principles condemned in the Syllabus. The letter’s sweetness masks complicity in the eclipse of the public reign of Christ.
Silence on Modernism and Freemasonry: The Most Damning Omission
Given the historical moment (July 1962):
– The preparatory schemes of Vatican II faithful to the anti-modernist Magisterium were already being undermined and discarded.
– Modernist theologians and periti, previously condemned or suspect, were being rehabilitated and placed at the center of conciliar influence.
– Global Freemasonry and liberal powers saw in John XXIII’s “opening” the long-desired capitulation of the visible structures to their principles.
By contrast:
– Pius X, in Lamentabili and Pascendi, demands relentless exposure and condemnation of Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
– Pius IX and Leo XIII openly unmask Masonic and liberal conspiracies against the Church; Quanta Cura and the Syllabus leave no room for “dialogue” with their principles.
This letter, however:
– does not recall the anti-modernist oath,
– does not urge Tisserant to defend Lamentabili or Pascendi,
– does not warn against Masonic influence or secular pressure,
– does not command the preservation of Thomistic theology and scholastic method solemnly defended by the pre-1958 popes.
Its silence is eloquent:
– A true shepherd in times of growing apostasy reminds his fellow bishops of their duty to guard the deposit.
– A usurping hierarchy, preparing an aggiornamento, speaks only in safe, humanistic pleasantries.
The omission of any reference to Modernism, rationalism, indifferentism, or the errors catalogued by Pius IX and Pius X, in a public act honoring a leading “cardinal,” is practical repudiation of those condemnations. It is a mute proclamation: “We have chosen another path.” And that other path is formally incompatible with integral Catholic doctrine.
The False Consolation of “Pastoral” Recognition
The entire document is a textbook instance of the conciliar sect’s technique:
1. Retain Catholic forms (Latin, mention of Christ, apostolic blessing, indulgences).
2. Fill them with:
– anthropocentric content,
– institutional self-satisfaction,
– studied omission of hard dogmatic notes and anathemas.
3. Use such documents to:
– strengthen the neo-church’s internal prestige,
– bind clergy and laity sentimentally to the usurping structure,
– accustom souls to accept “authority” divorced from doctrinal integrity.
Authentic pre-1958 doctrine does not permit this divorce.
– The right to bless and to bind flows from truth; *auctoritas* presupposes *veritas*.
– When those in positions of visibility betray truth, their “blessings” become either meaningless or occasions of deception, drawing souls into material cooperation with a counterfeit religious body.
Thus, what appears as a harmless congratulation in fact illustrates the full mechanism of spiritual corruption:
– Praise for a career within a system already shifting into apostasy.
– Invocation of “celestial aids” disconnected from the ruthless fight against error.
– Promise of indulgences anchored in an invalid claim to the papacy.
The text’s theological bankruptcy lies precisely in this: it exemplifies a pseudo-magisterial genre that soothes while it severs, holds out the gestures of the Church while effacing her essential marks.
Conclusion: A Thin Veil Over Systemic Apostasy
In light of unchanging Catholic teaching prior to 1958:
– The letter is not an organic continuation of the papal tradition of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– It is a delicate ornament on the façade of a new edifice:
– which rejects, in practice and soon in doctrine, the Syllabus’ condemnation of liberalism and religious freedom,
– which neutralizes the anti-modernist campaign of St. Pius X,
– which refuses to proclaim the full social Kingship of Christ as in Quas Primas,
– which dares to simulate the power of the keys while undermining the faith those keys must guard.
The document’s blandness is its own indictment. Where corruptio fidei advances, official texts become flatter, friendlier, more “pastoral,” precisely to conceal that the substance has shifted. The spiritual and theological void in this letter—its inability or refusal to speak as the voice of the Church militant against error—reveals it as an artifact of the conciliar sect, not an act of the indefectible Spouse of Christ.
Source:
Quamvis religiosam – Epistula ad Eugenium S. R. E. Cardinalem Tisserant, Episcopum Ostiensem, Portuensem et Sanctae Rufinae, quinque a suscepta episcopali dignitate lustra implentem, d. 10 m. Iulii a…. (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025