This Latin letter by John XXIII, issued on 20 March 1961 and titled “Sacrarum expeditionum,” congratulates the Indonesian hierarchy on the erection of a full episcopal structure (six ecclesiastical provinces) in place of former vicariates and prefectures, praises past missionaries and religious, highlights demographic and institutional growth (approximately 1.2 million “Catholics,” catechumens, native clergy, schools, hospitals, charitable initiatives), and presents this reorganization as a sign of divine favour, missionary maturity, and harmonious collaboration between foreign missionaries and local clergy, expected to benefit both the “Church” and the Indonesian nation. At the root of this apparently pious enthusiasm lies a programmatic substitution of the supernatural, conquering Kingship of Christ with a diplomatic, naturalistic cult of institutional expansion, national prestige, and conciliar humanism.
Conciliar Exaltation of Structures without Supernatural Substance
From the very first lines, this text is marked by the self-referential optimism characteristic of John XXIII’s program and of the conciliar revolution which he inaugurated.
He recalls how, from the beginning of his “pontificate,” the question of missions “omni qua pollet amplitudine” weighed upon his mind, and links Sacrarum expeditionum directly to his inaugural encyclical “Ad Petri Cathedram.” This anchoring is crucial: it signals that what follows is not a neutral disciplinary measure, but an integral piece of the conciliar project of reconfiguring “missions” and “hierarchy” according to a new ecclesiology.
At the factual level:
– The letter:
– enumerates rapidly the erection of hierarchies in Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, Congo, Ruanda-Urundi, Vietnam, and now Indonesia;
– admires statistics: “circiter 1.200.000 catholici,” a multitude of catechumens, “mille ferme sacerdotes,” many indigenous seminarians;
– lays out a cartographic reorganization into six provinces (Java, Sumatra, Indonesian Borneo, Celebes/Moluccas, Flores and Lesser Sundas, etc.);
– exalts “probatissimi istic nati Antistites” promoted to metropolitan sees;
– lauds missionaries, religious, catechists, schools, hospitals, orphanages, dispensaries;
– and concludes with a smooth fusion of ecclesial and national advancement.
On the surface, nothing here explicitly denies Catholic dogma. The perfidy lies elsewhere: in what is elevated, what is omitted, and what presuppositions silently guide the whole construction. The letter reads as a manifesto for a geographically expanded but dogmatically hollow structure: a “hierarchy” that is already being moulded to serve the future aggiornamento and false ecumenism of the “Church of the New Advent,” not the militant, exclusive Kingdom of Christ.
Geopolitical Missionism: Territory over Truth, Numbers over Grace
Factual and theological deconstruction reveals a consistent pattern: the focus falls on territorial coverage, bureaucratic maturity, and national significance, while the decisive supernatural notes of the Church are relegated to background piety.
Key moves:
– John XXIII stresses that no work is more pleasing to God than propagating Christ’s kingdom, citing “Euntes in mundum universum” (Mk 16:15). Yet the entire development that follows reduces this mandate to:
– the erection of sees wherever “pro adiunctis rerum” politics allow;
– the preference “quantum fieri posset” for local-born bishops as a sign of ecclesial maturity;
– the integration of the Indonesian hierarchy into the emerging post-colonial, nationally profiled “episcopal conferences” mentality.
This is not the traditional Catholic understanding of missions as *plantatio Ecclesiae* grounded in immutable dogma, the true Sacrifice, and the exclusive necessity of membership in the one true Church for salvation. Pre-1958 magisterium consistently:
– condemns *indifferentism* and the notion that all religions lead to salvation (Pius IX, *Syllabus*, 15–18);
– insists the Church is a *perfect society*, divinely instituted, independent of the State (Syllabus, 19, 55);
– affirms the obligation that nations recognize and publicly honour the Kingship of Christ (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*).
Here instead:
– The missionary success is measured predominantly in sociological terms: population, institutions, local leadership, contribution to civil progress.
– There is no articulation of the exclusive claim: that Indonesia, as a nation, is obliged to abandon false religions and publicly profess the Catholic faith, subjecting its laws to Christ the King.
– The tone is perfectly compatible with the condemned liberal thesis that the Church should adapt harmoniously to pluralistic political orders while abandoning claims of juridical supremacy of the true religion.
The omission is decisive: the text refuses to say what Catholic doctrine before 1958 never tired of repeating — that Islam, paganism, and every false cult in those islands are darkness and death; that the State has the duty to favour the true religion; that missions exist not to decorate the religious marketplace but to conquer it for Christ.
This silence is not neutral. It is betrayal.
Linguistic Camouflage: Pastoral Optimism as Mask for Doctrinal Erosion
The rhetoric of Sacrarum expeditionum is a masterclass in modernist insinuation under traditional vocabulary.
Notable features:
– Exaggerated optimism and self-congratulation:
– Constant insistence on “progressio,” “eximia prorsus progressio,” “faustus eventus,” “aureo inscriptus titulo,” “secunda futura.”
– This is precisely the psychological climate later weaponized to sell the aggiornamento: if everything is flourishing, then doctrinal severity, anti-modernist vigilance, and exclusivist claims can be relaxed.
– National flattery:
– Indonesia is praised for its “institutis et moribus, historiae fastis, humanitatis cultu, civium multitudine,” and strategic position.
– Missions are cast as a factor in Indonesia’s civilizational and social progress.
– The letter rejoices that ecclesiastical development strengthens the nation’s role “inter gentes munus et partes maioris usque momenti.”
– This language subordinates the supernatural end of the Church to a harmonious co-operation with a religiously plural, secularized state, precisely what the pre-conciliar magisterium condemned.
– Euphemistic fusion of Church and civic prosperity:
– The text affirms that ecclesial initiatives “conferunt … ad civilem sincerae notae progressionem.”
– Without clarifying that civil progress is truly such only when subordinated to the reign of Christ, this formula slides toward the condemned notion that the Church best serves society by renouncing her juridical and doctrinal claims and acting as a religious NGO.
The result is a soft, irenic, bureaucratically polished language that never breathes the militant spirit of the pre-1958 papal condemnations, nor the supernatural gravity of sin, heresy, or damnation. This is the *modus loquendi* of the conciliar sect.
Suppression of Anti-Modernist Doctrine: A Programmatic Silence
The gravest accusation against Sacrarum expeditionum is its systematic silence where pre-existing, binding doctrine should have spoken loudly.
Considering its subject — missions in a predominantly non-Catholic, heavily Islamic, syncretistic environment — one would expect, in continuity with Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII:
– Clear reaffirmation that:
– outside the Church there is no salvation, understood in the strict, traditional sense;
– false religions are errors, not partial paths to God;
– states must recognize the one true religion and reject indifferentist “freedom of cults” (cf. Syllabus, 77–80);
– Masonry and its political expressions in secular constitutions are the declared enemies of Christ and His Church, to be resisted, not appeased.
Instead, we find:
– No condemnation of Islam’s denial of the Trinity and Incarnation.
– No warning against syncretism, animism, or naturalistic nationalism.
– No reference to the solemn anti-modernist magisterium: *Quanta Cura*, *Syllabus*, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili sane*, the anti-liberal encyclicals, or the repeated papal condemnations of secret societies that, as Pius IX showed, especially targeted Catholic influence in newly “emancipated” nations.
This silence fulfills what St. Pius X already unmasked: that the modernists, unable to attack doctrine openly, seek to bypass it through practice and pastoral discourse. They cloak their revolution in anodyne phrases, while practically sidelining the very condemnations that define integral Catholic faith.
When this letter fails even once to remind that authentic missionary activity must,
– preach the necessity of supernatural faith in Christ and formal incorporation into His Church,
– denounce errors contrary to that faith,
it stands in direct practical opposition to the pre-1958 magisterium, no matter how many Scriptural citations it sprinkles.
Instrumentalization of St. Francis Xavier: Pious Name, Inverted Spirit
The letter cites St. Francis Xavier, praising his sojourn in those islands and calling them, with him, “insulae divinae spei.” But the invocation is duplicitous.
St. Francis Xavier:
– baptized multitudes;
– denounced pagan and Muslim errors;
– demanded conversion, penance, and adherence to the one Church;
– never envisioned a “peaceful coexistence” of religions under a neutral state.
Sacrarum expeditionum:
– uses his authority to legitimate a missionary approach that is diplomatically polite, nationally flattering, numerically obsessed, and doctrinally muted.
– never urges the Indonesian hierarchy to imitate Xavier’s severe zeal against idolatry and error.
– never reminds that the sweetest charity is to tear souls away from false cults, not to collaborate with them in building a harmonious pluralist society.
This is *abusus sanctorum* — the misuse of saints to legitimize a new orientation they themselves would execrate.
Elevation of Autochthonous Hierarchs: Seeds of Collegialist and Nationalized Ecclesiology
The letter proudly underlines the promotion of three locally born prelates to metropolitan status and the systematic preference for indigenous clergy and bishops.
In itself, the Church has always desired native clergy, provided they share the same doctrine, rite, and spirit as the universal Church. But here, context and rhetoric signal something more insidious:
– The emphasis on local origin is woven together with praise of the Indonesian nation’s progress, culture, position, and historical role.
– This plays directly into the later conciliar ideology of:
– episcopal conferences;
– national churches de facto governed by local “bishops” in perpetual dialogue with secular authorities;
– the decentralization of authority away from the Roman See’s doctrinal firmness toward a diffuse, politicized, culturally adaptive leadership.
Pre-1958 doctrine (cf. Syllabus, 37) condemned the idea of “national churches” separated from, or relativizing, Roman authority. While Sacrarum expeditionum does not state such separation explicitly, it sows the logic that will lead to it: the Church as a respectable component of the nation, shaped by it and co-constitutive of its identity, rather than the supernatural, supra-national Kingdom that judges every nation and culture by immutable law.
This is not the Catholic *societas perfecta* in the Thomistic sense; it is an ecclesialized version of liberal nationalism.
Charitable Institutions as Ornament: Naturalism Under the Guise of Mercy
One of the central boasts of the letter concerns schools, hospitals, orphanages, dispensaries, “inceptiones christiano proximorum amore excitatae.” These works are good in themselves when subordinated to the higher end: the salvation of souls under the one true faith and the reign of Christ.
However, the way they are presented here:
– as a “fulgenti gloriae serto” surrounding the “Church,”
– as contributions to the “prosperitas” and “civile progressum” of the nation,
detaches them from their necessary doctrinal conditions.
Pre-1958 magisterium firmly teaches:
– that moral and social order must rest on divine revelation and the authority of the Church;
– that works of mercy divorced from truth easily become vehicles of naturalism and liberal humanitarianism (cf. Pius X’s war on the *Sillon*).
In Sacrarum expeditionum:
– there is no insistence that these institutions must be explicitly instruments of catechesis;
– no warning that education and medical care without rigorous Catholic doctrine may be exploited to spread indifferentism;
– no defense of the Church’s exclusive right to direct the teaching of theology and the moral formation of youth, so strongly asserted in the Syllabus (45, 47, 48).
The result is a portrayal of the “Church” as a benign collaborator in secular nation-building. This is precisely the naturalistic humanitarianism that integral Catholic theology rejects.
Pseudo-Harmony with the State: Betrayal of the Kingship of Christ
Particularly revealing is the passage where John XXIII rejoices that the unity of pastors and flock, of local and foreign clergy, will strengthen not only the “Regnum Dei” but also the “patriae communitati validas afferet vires,” contributing to “re sociali et civili … incrementum.”
This formula:
– tacitly accepts a pluralistic civil order in which the true religion is merely one factor among others;
– avoids asserting the obligation of the Indonesian state to recognize the exclusive rights of the Catholic Church;
– treats the “Church” as an ethical and social partner whose role is to improve civic life, not to reign doctrinally and juridically over it.
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, condemns precisely such laicist relegation:
– he teaches that peace and order are impossible until individuals and states submit to the reign of Christ;
– he rejects the myth of a religiously neutral public order.
Sacrarum expeditionum’s careful refusal to repeat this doctrine, while speaking at length about civil progress and national prosperity, reveals its underlying allegiance: the conciliar vision where “religious liberty,” “dialogue,” and mutual enrichment replace the clear demand: *Regnavit a ligno Deus* — God must reign publicly, or society is in revolt.
Here, *silentium dogmaticum* (dogmatic silence) is complicity.
Systemic Modernist Fruits: Sacrarum Expeditionum within the Conciliar Program
Symptomatically, this 1961 letter stands as a prelude and microcosm of the entire post-1958 usurpation:
1. Replacement of anti-modernist militancy with smiling optimism:
– No reference to *Lamentabili sane exitu* or *Pascendi*, although missions are precisely the field where modernist relativization of dogma must be fought.
– No exhortation to reject evolutionist theories of dogma or historical-critical corrosions, which by then had already infiltrated “missiological” discourse.
2. Territorial expansion of a structure whose doctrinal foundations are already being sawn through:
– The letter organizes the external framework of “hierarchies” that, within a few years, will enthusiastically implement Vatican II’s religious liberty, ecumenism, and dialogue — all condemned in substance by the pre-1958 magisterium.
– Thus, what is presented as the maturation of the Church in Indonesia is, in fact, the multiplication of local engines for diffusing post-conciliar apostasy.
3. Integration of ecclesial development into secular nation-building:
– Missions are praised insofar as they assist the new Republic’s social progress.
– Christ the King disappears behind a polite civil religion of shared values.
4. Suppression of the note of exclusivity:
– The letter never calls Islam and paganism what they are in Catholic theology: objective blasphemies against God and obstacles to salvation.
– Instead, it offers a language fully compatible with the conciliar sect’s later endorsement of “interreligious dialogue” and religious freedom.
5. Instrumentalization of traditional names:
– St. Francis Xavier is enlisted as a decorative ancestor of a missionary style he would repudiate.
– Scripture is quoted selectively, stripped of its implications about judgment, condemnation of unbelief, and necessity of conversion.
In sum, Sacrarum expeditionum is not an innocent missionary circular; it is the codification, in one concrete region, of the new, modernist missiology that:
– exalts structures over substance,
– number over faith,
– accommodation over confrontation,
– earthly harmony over the absolute rights of Christ.
True Catholic Missions versus Conciliar Humanitarian Expansion
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, the contrast is irreconcilable.
True missions, as taught and exemplified before the revolution:
– are ordered:
– to the explicit preaching of the Catholic faith as the only true religion;
– to the destruction of idols, errors, and superstitions;
– to the reception of valid sacraments, centered on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass;
– to the formation of faithful and clergy entirely submissive to the perennial magisterium, anti-modernist in vigilance, and opposed to any compromise with liberalism, communism, Freemasonry, or syncretism.
– insist that:
– civil power should recognize the Church’s rights and subordinate its laws to divine law;
– “freedom of cults” and relativistic pluralism are moral and doctrinal evils;
– “dialogue” has meaning only as a charitable effort to bring all into the one fold, not as mutual enrichment between truth and error.
Sacrarum expeditionum, in contrast:
– never articulates any of these non-negotiable points;
– presents missionary success as harmonious integration into a pluralistic nation-state;
– glorifies external growth while tacitly cutting the ties with the anti-modernist bulwark that gave authentic missions their supernatural integrity.
Thus the letter, read in continuity with the conciliar and post-conciliar trajectory, must be recognized as an early document of the paramasonic neo-church: an ideological charter for transforming the missionary Church militant into a geographically global, theologically diluted, institution easily absorbed into the religious diplomacy of the modern world.
Conclusion: A Hierarchy Erected upon Sand
The erection of an “episcopal hierarchy” in Indonesia, as celebrated here by John XXIII, is not the triumphant planting of the immutable Catholic Church, but the calculated extension of the conciliar sect’s apparatus into a strategic region. By:
– adulterating missionary language with naturalistic flattery of the nation;
– systematically omitting the dogmatic exclusivity and royal rights of Christ over peoples and states;
– refusing to recall the binding pre-1958 condemnations of liberalism, indifferentism, and modernism;
– reducing supernatural conquest to institutional statistics and charitable services;
this letter exposes itself as theologically bankrupt and spiritually poisonous, an apparently serene façade concealing the program of apostasy that would soon be ratified by Vatican II and implemented by the structures occupying the Vatican.
Where the true Church demands: *Unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma* — one Lord, one faith, one baptism — Sacrarum expeditionum offers a smile, a map, and a hierarchy ready to serve the religion of man.
Source:
Sacrarum Expeditionum, Epistula Apostolica ad Exc. mos Archiepiscopos, Episcopos aliosque locorum Ordinarios Indonesianae Reipublicae, post Sacrum in ea regione constitutam Hierarchiam, XX Martii MCML… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025