Without any doctrinal pretext, the letter of John XXIII (Octogesimum mox, 24 February 1963) to Cicognani is a short panegyric: it congratulates him on his forthcoming 80th birthday, praises his diligence in handling “public affairs of the Church,” recalls his diplomatic and curial services (notably as Apostolic Delegate in the USA and in roles tied to the Eastern Churches and Vatican II), and imparts a blessing. Beneath this apparently innocuous protocolary compliment, however, stands the entire programmatic inversion of the Catholic Church into the conciliar apparatus: the text is a self-revelation of a bureaucracy celebrating itself while the Faith is being dissolved.
Celebrating the Machinery of Apostasy: Panegyric as Manifesto
Elevation of the Conciliar Bureaucrat over the Supernatural Order
The letter’s content is outwardly simple:
“Adiútor sane es Noster sedúlissimus, quem non solum magni ducimus, sed apprime etiam diligimus.”
“You are indeed Our most diligent helper, whom We not only hold in great esteem, but also greatly love.”
On the purely factual level:
– John XXIII extols Cicognani for his role:
– in the Roman Curia’s “more serious offices,”
– as Apostolic Delegate to the United States,
– as secretary and official in matters relating to the Eastern Churches,
– and above all as a central organizer of the so-called Second Vatican Council (“ad Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani secundi celebrationem…”).
– The entire letter is framed as gratitude and admiration for precisely these services.
From the perspective of *unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958*, this short epistle is not neutral protocol; it is a concise confession that the new apparatus, with its agents, is consciously dedicated to restructuring the visible institution in rupture with the prior Magisterium.
Key point: Cicognani is praised not for defending *Quanta Cura*, the *Syllabus*, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili sane*, or *Quas Primas*, but for being an efficient instrument of the paramasonic “aggiornamento” culminating in Vatican II. The whole register of values is horizontal: career, diplomatic flexibility, institutional loyalty to the conciliar project. There is no mention of:
– the defense of the true Faith against error,
– the safeguarding of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– the condemnation of heresy, Modernism, Freemasonry,
– the Kingship of Christ over nations,
– the salvation of souls (*salus animarum suprema lex*).
This silence is not accidental. It is the essence.
Bureaucratic Flattery as Inversion of Catholic Hierarchy
The linguistic texture is revealing. The usurper writes in solemn Latin, but with content reduced to humanistic courtesy and institutional mutual admiration:
“Congruentia ob id tibi praemia attribuat Deus… cum… caelestium donorum tibi impertitam copiam, retro versis mentis oculis, tecum metieris.”
“May God grant you appropriate rewards… as you look back and measure with yourself the abundance of heavenly gifts conferred on you.”
Under traditional Catholic criteria, episcopal and cardinalitial dignity is ordered to:
– guarding the deposit of faith without novelty (cf. Vatican I, *Dei Filius*),
– condemning condemned errors, especially Modernism, which St. Pius X called the “synthesis of all heresies” (*Pascendi*, confirmed by *Lamentabili sane exitu*),
– resisting the world, not conforming to it.
Instead, the letter praises:
– “diligent” handling of “public affairs” of the Church conceived as diplomatic-administrative management,
– the “prudentia rerum agendarum” (prudence in managing affairs),
– the role in organizing Vatican II, whose fruits are precisely those condemned as errors by prior Magisterium (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, democratization, doctrinal evolution).
This is the inversion: the hierarchy once venerated for its faithful transmission of defined truth is now congratulated for orchestrating its own doctrinal, liturgical, and juridical subversion.
According to the integral Catholic understanding, *honour without reference to fidelity to the defined Faith is moral corruption*. When praise is poured without qualification upon an architect of the conciliar revolution, it signifies a new criterion of merit: service to the neo-church, not service to Christ the King.
Naturalistic Tone and the Eclipse of the Supernatural End
The style is polite, warm, “pastoral,” but spiritually hollow. One looks in vain for:
– any reference to *salvation of souls*,
– any call to persevere in combating heresy,
– any appeal to defend the Church against modern errors so clearly proscribed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII,
– any mention of final judgment, Hell, necessity of state of grace,
– any reminder that office is a burden *ad sacrificium*, not a pretext for mutual self-congratulation.
Instead we find:
“Praeteritos recolere labores dulce est… quod ad novos suscipiendos invicta virtute labores animum exstimulat.”
“It is sweet to recall past labors… which encourages the soul, with unconquered strength, to undertake new labors.”
Sweetness of past labours; stimulus to new labours. But which labours? The same “labours” that drafted and executed the conciliar documents dismantling the confessional state (*Quas Primas* contradicted), endorsing religious liberty condemned by the *Syllabus* (proposition 15ff.), relativizing the uniqueness of the Catholic Church (against *Mystici Corporis*), and enthroning the cult of man (Paul VI) in place of the Kingship of Christ.
The language is bureaucratically pious yet dogmatically empty—a stylistic hallmark of Modernism: preserve ecclesiastical form, evacuate Catholic content. This corresponds exactly to what St. Pius X unmasked: *Modernists “destroy from within” while retaining Catholic vocabulary*.
When the letter speaks of God rewarding Cicognani, it is utterly generic. There is no doctrinal metric: no insistence that the only authentic service is adherence to defined dogma. Thus the supernatural reference is reduced to benign decoration crowning a purely immanent success story.
This is not accidental rhetoric; it is programmatic. The new regime must maintain a thin supernatural varnish while enthroning human diplomacy and aggiornamento as the true goods.
Glorification of Vatican II as Symptom of Systemic Apostasy
The doctrinal core of this epistle is the glorification of Cicognani’s contribution
“itemque, ad Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani secundi celebrationem quod attinet, tibi commissas praegraves sustinens partes…”
“and likewise, with respect to the celebration of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, bearing the very weighty parts committed to you…”
Here the conciliar enterprise is the summit of merit. Measured by pre-1958 doctrine, this is catastrophic.
Contrast with the pre-existing Magisterium:
– Pius IX in *Quanta Cura* and the attached *Syllabus* ruthlessly condemns indifferentism, religious liberty, separation of Church and state, and the notion that the Roman Pontiff should reconcile with liberalism and modern civilization (cf. Syllabus 77–80).
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that peace and order are only possible in the public reign of Christ the King; states must publicly recognise and obey Christ and His Church. He explicitly condemns laicism and naturalism as the plague of our times.
– St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane exitu* condemns the idea of evolving dogma, the subjection of doctrine to historical relativism, and precisely the “pastoral” displacement of immutable truth by experience and pragmatic adaptation.
The Second Vatican Council—whose preparation and execution Cicognani served and which John XXIII celebrates—is the antithesis of these teachings:
– It introduces and canonises religious liberty in a sense directly irreconcilable with the *Syllabus* (religious liberty as a civil right independent from the truth of the Catholic Faith).
– It diffuses ecclesiological ambiguity (subsistit in) to relativize the exclusive identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church.
– It enthrones false ecumenism, recognizing sects and schisms not as objects of conversion but as “sister churches” and “means of salvation,” in defiance of the dogmatic teaching that outside the Church there is no salvation understood in its integral sense.
– It inaugurates liturgical revolution leading to the destruction of the theology of propitiatory sacrifice, opening the way to idolatry and profanation.
Thus, to exalt a central artisan of this enterprise as “most diligent helper” deserving of divine reward, without any distinction, is to canonize the conciliar betrayal as virtue.
In classical Catholic theology: *bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu* (a good act must be perfect in all respects; any defect makes it bad). Service to a project objectively opposed to the defined Magisterium is not meritorious. To commend such service unconditionally is itself a sign of doctrinal deviation and of the illegitimacy of the one commending.
Silence on Modernism and Freemasonry: The Loudest Confession
In an era already marked by the advance of Modernist theology, the infiltration of Freemasonry and anti-Christian secret societies into politics and culture (clearly denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII), and the growing apostasy of nations, the letter confines itself to mutual compliments. Not a syllable addresses:
– the onslaught of socialism, communism, and secularism that Pius IX and Leo XIII repeatedly condemned;
– the systematic war of the Masonic sects against the Church, which Pius IX described as the “synagogue of Satan” driving the persecution of the Church;
– the obligation of cardinals and bishops to resist error, protect the faithful from liberal infection, and uphold the rights of the Church against secular usurpations;
– vigilance against Modernism, which only a few decades earlier had been solemnly proscribed with excommunication attached.
Instead, the letter praises the man who, as high administrator and diplomat, ensured the smooth integration of the institution into that very liberal, Masonic, and modernist order.
Silence, in such context, is not a neutral omission; it is complicity. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent appears to consent) applies with full force to a supposed supreme pastor who, on the eve of the most destructive council, offers only eulogies to its technicians and no reaffirmation of the anti-modernist oath and prior condemnations.
The same Pius X who imposed the anti-modernist oath (1910) presents the direct doctrinal antithesis of this epistle’s spirit. Here, John XXIII writes as if the era of doctrinal militancy is obsolete, as if the Church’s “public affairs” now consist in collaboration with the world’s principles rather than their denunciation. This mentality is precisely what the pre-1958 Magisterium condemned as betrayal.
Human Respect and the Cult of the Institution Instead of the Kingship of Christ
Striking is the complete absence of the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, central to Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*. That encyclical teaches, in substance:
– Only when individuals and states recognize and submit to Christ the King can there be true peace.
– Secularism and the exclusion of Christ from public life are the root of modern disorders.
– The Church must unapologetically demand public recognition and obedience for Christ’s rights and the rights of the Church.
Yet here, in a letter to one of the principal diplomats of the conciliar apparatus, there is no trace of this doctrinal stance. Cicognani’s diplomatic career—especially in the United States, a state constitutionally founded on religious indifferentism condemned by the *Syllabus*—is praised without any mention of the obligation to call nations back to the one true Faith and to the reign of Christ.
This silence functions as tacit acceptance of the liberal order. The priority in the letter is harmony with modern states and interreligious coexistence, rather than the assertion of Christ’s absolute rights.
Thus the real cult on display is not *latria* for God nor *devotio* to Christ the King, but institutional self-celebration: the conciliar sect’s internal solidarity and mutual admiration. The theological bankruptcy lies precisely here: in the replacement of supernatural mission with corporate esprit de corps.
From Guardian of Tradition to Architect of Revolution: The Person as Symptom
To expose the depth of the disorder, one must look at whom and what the letter exalts:
– Cicognani is emblematic of the new type of ecclesiastical functionary: diplomat, technocrat, mediator between Catholic symbols and liberal systems, executor of policies that neutralize the prior condemnations.
– His “merits” are inseparable from the implementation of the council that dissolves doctrinal clarity into “pastoral” ambiguity.
In integral Catholic ecclesiology, a cardinal is called to be the firmest pillar of orthodoxy, a defender against secular powers when they attack the Church, ready for martyrdom rather than compromise. Instead he is here praised as an efficient organizer for a project of adaptation, not resistance.
This inversion corresponds exactly to the warnings of Pius IX in the *Syllabus*: that liberal doctrines would strive to reduce the Church to a tolerated religious association constrained by the civil power, renouncing its claim to exclusive truth and social authority.
The letter shows the metamorphosis: the “great merit” is harmonious integration with liberal modernity, not conflict with it. The antichristian world system, clearly unmasked by the pre-conciliar popes, now finds in such officials its preferred partners.
Conciliar Self-Legitimation: The “Blessing” of a Usurped Authority
The epistle culminates in the imparting of an “Apostolic Blessing”:
“Huius rei causa Apostolicam Benedictionem… tibi, Venerabilis Frater Noster, perquam libenter impertimus.”
In the logic of the conciliar sect, this blessing seals and sanctifies the services rendered to its program. However, judged by the doctrine synthesized in the pre-1958 Magisterium and the principles recalled in the provided sources:
– A manifestly modernist usurper, exalting and implementing errors already condemned, cannot exercise true papal authority in promoting what the Church has definitively rejected. St. Robert Bellarmine, Wernz-Vidal, and classical canonists argue that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, since he is no member of it.
– The authority claimed to bless these labours is internally self-contradictory: *non potest esse simul et idem* (the same subject cannot simultaneously defend and destroy the same dogma). When a would-be pontiff ratifies that which is doctrinally incompatible with his predecessors, he unmasks his authority as null in the order of the true Church.
Thus the “Apostolic Blessing” in this context functions not as a channel of grace but as a signature under a humanist, bureaucratic program; it is juridically and theologically void with respect to the Mystical Body of Christ. It is, however, highly eloquent as a mark of the antichurch’s internal coherence: it blesses those who build its system, not those who keep the faith of Pius IX, St. Pius X, Pius XI.
Theological and Spiritual Bankruptcy Unveiled
Summarizing the layers of corruption manifested in this brief text:
1. Reduction of ecclesial merit to bureaucratic efficiency.
– No mention of doctrinal fidelity, anti-modernist vigilance, or defence of the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Entirely horizontal criteria: service to “public affairs,” diplomacy, conciliar organization.
2. Glorification of Vatican II as apex of service.
– Directly opposed to the binding condemnations of the *Syllabus*, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili sane*, and *Quas Primas*.
– Presenting cooperation in a revolutionary council as unqualified virtue manifests adhesion to error.
3. Naturalistic and sentimental tone masking doctrinal rupture.
– Warmth and politeness displace the once-normal grave, supernatural exhortation.
– Silence about sin, judgment, Hell, supernatural mission: the gravest omission.
4. Tacit acceptance of liberal, Masonic, and modernist order.
– Diplomatic success in nations founded on condemned principles is praised without any call to conversion or restoration of Christ’s social reign.
– This is defiance of Pius XI’s insistence that societies must publicly submit to Christ the King.
5. Self-legitimation of usurped authority.
– A would-be pontiff at war with the prior Magisterium confers “blessing” on a man precisely for aiding this war.
– In light of traditional doctrine on manifest heresy and office, such acts reveal not papal authority, but its counterfeit.
6. Transformation of the hierarchy into an oligarchy of collaborators.
– Cardinals and officials become loyal managers of a post-conciliar political-religious project.
– The Church Militant is replaced by an ecclesial bureaucracy seeking concord with the world it should denounce.
The theological and spiritual bankruptcy emerges not through explicit heresy in the lines of this specific letter, but through the convergent weight of its omissions, priorities, and tones. It is a showcase of the new mentality: a human, diplomatic, “pastoral” corporation congratulating itself for guiding the visible structures away from the hard, luminous clarity of the integral Catholic Faith into the nebulous religion of man.
In this sense, Octogesimum mox stands as a perfect miniature of the conciliar sect’s ethos: polite words, empty of dogmatic content, serving as incense for the architects of a revolution systematically condemned by the true Magisterium that preceded them. The more “harmless” it appears, the more it reveals.
Source:
Octogesimum mox – Epistula ad Hamletum Ioannem tit. Ecclesiae suburbicariae Tuscu- lanae S. R. E. Cardinalem Cicognani, publicis Ecclesiae negotiis praepositum, octogesimum diem natalem celebraturum, … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025