John XXIII’s motu proprio “Divini pastoris,” dated 12 November 1958, is a brief decree in which the newly elected claimant, styling himself “Ioannes PP. XXIII,” grants to the ecclesiastics who served in the recent conclave (officials and conclavists accompanying the cardinals) two main favors: first, the privilege of a portable altar (altar portatile) under canon 822 §3 of the 1917 Code, with some restrictions (not on major feasts or other days excluded by the local Ordinary); second, a one-time free reception of apostolic letters and provisions for any benefices granted to them. The text is framed as an act of paternal benevolence of the “Divine Pastor” newly raised to the “throne of the Supreme Pontificate,” rewarding conclave clerics with spiritual and juridical privileges in recognition of their service.
The apparently pious and modest favor reveals already the deformation of authority: a self-styled pontiff, emerging from a conclave already gravely tainted in doctrine and orientation, using the Church’s juridical instruments to consolidate personal prestige and to cultivate a closed clerical caste, while saying nothing of Christ’s social Kingship, nothing of the defense of the faith, and nothing of the war of Freemasonry and Modernism condemned by true popes before 1958.
Liturgical Favors as a Veil for a New Regime of Usurped Authority
At first glance, “Divini pastoris” is administratively minor. Yet in the divine economy and in ecclesiastical history, such acts, issued at the threshold of a usurped reign, are not neutral. This document is the first motu proprio of John XXIII, dated within weeks of his election. From the perspective of *integral Catholic doctrine* prior to 1958, it is a signature-stroke: a small, “kind” gesture that manifests an ecclesiology already slipping toward a self-referential, clericalist, anthropocentric regime—the seed of the conciliar sect.
Let us expose this on four levels.
Selective Use of True Canon Law in Service of a False Pastor
On the factual plane, the motu proprio:
– Affirms that, as newly elevated, he “turns his mind” to prelates and clerics who served in conclave.
– States that he wishes to give them a “spiritual benefit” fitting to priestly dignity.
– Grants:
– The privilege of a portable altar, per can. 822 §3 (CIC 1917).
– A prohibition of use on more solemn feasts or days excepted by the Ordinary.
– A one-time free reception of apostolic letters and provisions for any benefices conferred.
– Ends with the usual form: “Contrariis quibusvis non obstantibus… Datum Romae… Pontificatus Nostri primo.”
Precisely here stands the decisive contradiction: the text parasitically employs the authentic canonical order of the pre-1958 Church (1917 Code, Roman Curial forms) in order to cloak an auctoritas that, measured by that same pre-1958 Magisterium, is morally and doctrinally disqualified.
Key points:
– The use of can. 822 §3 is in itself legitimate as a juridical reference. Portable altar privileges, when granted by a true pope, serve priests hindered by health or circumstances, enabling the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* to be offered reverently.
– But juridical continuity in form does not guarantee doctrinal continuity in substance. A usurper may quote authentic law while undermining the faith that law protects.
– The paternal tone—“testimony of Our paternal charity and benevolence”—is directed not towards suffering Catholics, not towards the persecuted Church (e.g. under communism, laicism, Masonic regimes condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX and in the allocutions cited there), but toward those who were inside the conclave machinery that produced him.
Thus, the first public legislative gesture is an intra-court favor:
– No mention of the Social Reign of Christ the King as taught by Pius XI in *Quas primas* (“Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ” – Pius XI).
– No reaffirmation of the condemnations of liberalism, Modernism, or Freemasonry, solemnly enumerated in the Syllabus of Errors and in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* of St. Pius X.
– No call to penance, to defense of doctrine, to safeguard the flock from wolves within—though St. Pius X had explicitly unmasked the “enemies within” as the most dangerous.
– Instead: privileges for conclavists.
This is not a question of legal trivialities; it is a symptom. *Officium sequitur esse* (office follows being): whoever is not in the integral Catholic faith cannot validly wield papal authority. Conversely, the first normative acts of a regime reveal its soul. Here we find not the thunder of a Gregory VII or a Pius X, but the soft bureaucratic co-opting of the clergy who serve the apparatus.
Clerical Castes and the Eclipse of the True Pastoral Office
The language of “Divini pastoris” is revealingly narrow and self-enclosed.
It speaks of:
“those Prelates and clerics, who in the recent Conclave were present, whether as officials faithfully fulfilling their role, or as conclavists accompanying the Cardinals”
and of wishing to give them:
“some spiritual benefit, suitable and consonant with priestly condition and dignity.”
Note the underlying assumptions:
– “Priestly dignity” is here treated as something to be adorned by extra privileges rather than guarded by heroic fidelity in doctrine and morals.
– Merit is attached to proximity to power (service in conclave), not to confession of the faith under persecution, nor defense of orthodoxy against Modernist infiltration.
– The decree is utterly silent on the grave crisis already denounced by true Popes:
– Pius IX had unveiled the “synagogue of Satan” operating through secret societies and liberal governments, seeking to enslave and destroy the Church (Syllabus introduction and appended texts).
– Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI repeatedly condemned Masonic, liberal, and Modernist currents corroding the Church from within.
– St. Pius X stigmatized Modernism as *“the synthesis of all heresies”* and imposed anti-Modernist measures to protect seminaries, pulpits, and the sacraments.
In this light, the selective benevolence of John XXIII appears as the inversion of true pastoral charity:
– Instead of strengthening the ramparts against error, he rewards the inner circle of an already doctrinally compromised hierarchy.
– Instead of recalling that *clerics exist to offer the Sacrifice for the people*, he grants them a privilege that, while not evil in itself, functions psychologically and symbolically as an internal decoration, a token of favor.
This fosters a corporative mentality: a court of well-treated functionaries surrounding a “pope” who will soon convoke a council that jettisons the anti-liberal, anti-Modernist bulwark erected by his predecessors. The motu proprio is a microcosm of that shift: inward, horizontal, self-referential.
Language of Pious Formalism Masking Doctrinal Evasion
On the linguistic level, “Divini pastoris” is a study in pious formalism divorced from doctrinal combat.
Key rhetorical traits:
– Repeated evocation of “paternal charity,” “benevolence,” “spiritual benefit.”
– A cautious clause that priests should not “habitually” celebrate on the portable altar, as it is “most fitting” that the priest “for men is constituted” to celebrate “in churches for the benefit of the faithful.”
– A deferential mention of the Ordinary’s prudence in restricting the use of the privilege.
This is superficially orthodox. Yet viewed against the gravity of the age and the clarity of prior papal doctrine, the omissions become an indictment.
What is absent?
– No reiteration that the priest’s primary function is to immolate the divine Victim in the *Most Holy Sacrifice*, offered propitiatorily for sins, as Trent and all tradition teach.
– No reference to the need for priests themselves to be in the state of grace, rooted in sound doctrine, separated from the world, guarding against modern errors.
– No allusion to the Anti-Modernist Oath, no warning against the very currents already preparing the conciliar revolution.
– No sense that privileges are ordered to greater sacrifice, greater doctrinal witness, greater supernatural responsibility; instead, the tone is administrative benevolence.
Pius XI in *Quas primas* condemned exactly this laicist and naturalist mentality whereby men—and thus also rulers and elites—live as if Christ did not reign socially and juridically. John XXIII’s first motu proprio conspicuously brackets that battlefield and speaks instead the language of benign management.
This rhetorical softness is not accidental; it anticipates the style of the conciliar sect: avoidance of anathemas, preference for “encouragement,” bureaucratic smiles masking the refusal to condemn. St. Pius X in *Pascendi* described such tactics: Modernists hide their theories under traditional formulas, evacuating them from within. Here we see the form of a papal motu proprio—without the papal spirit.
Theological Incongruity: A Putative Pope Rewarding Those Who Elected a Modernist Agenda
At the theological level, the critical point is the legitimacy of the lawgiver. Pre-1958 doctrine, consistently expressed by theologians and witnesses such as St. Robert Bellarmine, Wernz-Vidal, John of St. Thomas, and codified in principles reflected in Canon 188.4 (CIC 1917), affirms:
– A manifest heretic cannot be pope: *“A non-Christian cannot in any way be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian”* (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice).
– By notorious public heresy, jurisdiction is lost *ipso facto*, prior to any declaratory sentence, because one ceases to be a member of the Church.
– Canon 188.4 states that public defection from the faith causes offices to be vacated automatically, by tacit resignation, *ipso facto*.
Although “Divini pastoris” itself is not an explicit doctrinal manifesto, it is bound to the personal identity and program of John XXIII—who, by his subsequent acts:
– Convened Vatican II with aims and formulations incompatible with the Syllabus of Pius IX and with *Pascendi*.
– Promoted ecumenism and religious liberty in a sense rejected by consistent prior Magisterium.
– Began the process of dismantling the Church’s militantly anti-liberal stance, preparing the cult of man and “dialogue” that directly oppose the claims of *Quas primas* and of the traditional doctrine that the State must recognize the true religion.
Therefore:
– Even if one bracketed later manifest acts, the entire context of his rise, his entourage, and program already signalled alignment with condemned currents.
– This motu proprio manifests a theology of governance in which the first concern is to caress the internal collaborators rather than to assert Christ’s rights and condemn errors.
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, an authority that uses the papal office to prepare or implement a program contrary to prior definitive teaching unmasks itself. The seemingly harmless concession of portable altars thus becomes a juridical fig-leaf on a usurped throne.
Symptoms of the Conciliar Sect: Self-Referential Rewards and Silence on the Real War
On the symptomatic plane, “Divini pastoris” is emblematic of the genesis of the *Church of the New Advent*:
1. Privileging the inner circle
– Those who served in conclave are given special spiritual and material benefits.
– This fosters a discreet, closed loyalty network around the new regime.
2. Reduction of supernatural combat to ceremonial comforts
– At a time when Pius IX’s Syllabus and later warnings exposed the violent assault of Masonic and secularist powers—“the synagogue of Satan” operating via liberal states and secret societies—the new occupant of the See is silent.
– The “Divine Pastor” invoked in the incipit is used rhetorically to justify favors to conclavists, not to defend the flock against the very wolves denounced by his predecessors.
3. Absence of any assertion of Christ’s Social Kingship
– Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to oppose the plague of laicism and to recall that rulers and nations must publicly submit to Christ and His Church.
– Here, no echo whatsoever of that mission: no call to priests to be champions of the Kingship of Christ in societies that legislate against God’s law; no reminder that human law is null when it contradicts divine law (Pius IX, Syllabus; recurring papal doctrine).
4. Continuity of forms, rupture of spirit
– The conciliar sect’s signature trick is to keep the external forms—Latin, motu proprio, references to the 1917 Code—while inverting their orientation.
– As *Lamentabili sane exitu* condemned, Modernists corrupt dogma under the pretext of development, turning immutable truths into “historical phases.”
– “Divini pastoris” is an early exercise in that technique: an apparently traditional decree from a man chosen precisely to dismantle the anti-Modernist bastions.
5. Silence on judgment, sin, sacraments, and the four last things
– Even in a brief legislative text, a true pope’s first thought for “spiritual benefit” would be ordered to salvation: recall of duty to offer the Sacrifice worthily, to guard purity of doctrine, to foster sanctity among clergy.
– Instead, we see no mention of:
– the need for grace,
– the danger of sacrilege,
– the reality of Hell,
– the Last Judgment,
– the obligation to defend the faith.
– This systematic silence on supernatural gravities—the very pattern later perfected in the neo-church—is the gravest accusation. *Tacere de necessariis est loqui contra veritatem* (to be silent about what is necessary is to speak against the truth).
The Misuse of Sacral Privileges: From Means of Sacrifice to Tokens of Favor
The portable altar privilege is not evil per se. In traditional discipline:
– It permits the *Most Holy Sacrifice* to be offered in worthy circumstances where a fixed consecrated altar is absent.
– It is intended for missionaries, travelers, the sick, or those impeded, always with reverence and under episcopal vigilance.
But in “Divini pastoris,” its use as a “reward” for conclavists is theologically perverse:
– It shifts the emphasis from pastoral necessity to personal distinction.
– It suggests a sacerdotalism of privilege, not of cruciform service.
– It instrumentalizes what pertains to the central mystery of Redemption as part of a patronage system.
Here again, compare with Pius IX and Pius XI:
– They insisted that ecclesiastical privileges serve the liberty and mission of the Church against hostile powers, not the comfort of an inner bureaucracy.
– They protested state encroachments that sought to suppress religious orders and episcopal authority, declaring such laws “null and void” because contrary to the divine constitution of the Church.
– They saw jurisdiction, benefices, and rights as ordered to the defense of the faith and the salvation of souls, not as merceds for courtiers.
“Divini pastoris” reverses this emphasis subtly but decisively. It is emblematic of a new regime where sacral elements are manipulated as administrative favors—prelude to the later grotesque distribution of sacrileges and “indults” within post-conciliar structures.
From “Divini pastoris” to the Abomination of Desolation
When read in isolation, a naïve reader might see in “Divini pastoris” only a minor act of benevolence. But Catholic judgment is not sentimental; it is doctrinal and historical. Under the light of:
– the Syllabus of Pius IX’s condemnations of liberalism, religious indifferentism, and the exaltation of the State;
– *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*’s formal rejection of the Modernist method and evolutionist “hermeneutics”;
– *Quas primas*’s solemn insistence on the public and social reign of Christ the King over individuals and states;
– the canonically enshrined principle that public heresy severs membership in the Church and nullifies jurisdiction;
this first motu proprio of John XXIII appears as one of the earliest juridical gestures of the emerging *paramasonic structure* that would soon:
– convene a council to rehabilitate condemned errors (collegiality, false ecumenism, religious liberty);
– disarm the Church before the modern world, nullifying practically the prior anti-liberal stand;
– gradually replace the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* with a protestantized meal rite;
– manufacture a pantheon of “post-conciliar saints” and manipulate devotions and pseudo-apparitions as psychological instruments.
In that perspective, the spiritual bankruptcy of “Divini pastoris” is clear:
– It says nothing where it must speak (against Modernism, against Freemasonry, against liberal errors).
– It speaks flatteringly where it should be silent and severe (toward an already compromised court).
– It treats holy things as decorations of a conclave oligarchy.
– It inaugurates, under traditional forms, an authority that will be used against Tradition.
Conclusion: The True Divine Pastor vs. the Self-Styled Benefactor
The title “Divini pastoris” invokes Christ, the Good Shepherd. But the document bears none of the marks of the true Shepherd’s voice when measured by the uninterrupted pre-1958 Magisterium:
– The true Divine Pastor lays down His life for the sheep and warns against wolves; this text lays privileges at the feet of those positioned to implement a program of accommodation with the world.
– The true Church, as Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII teach, must combat liberalism, rationalism, indifferentism, and the secret societies. Here, total silence.
– The true papal office exists to defend dogma and the sacraments. Here, the sacral is co-opted as clientelistic ornament.
Therefore, from the perspective of the immutable Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, “Divini pastoris” is not a harmless curial courtesy, but the revealing first step of a pseudo-pontificate: a juridically styled act of one who was to open the sluice-gates to the conciliar revolution, flattering the inner circle and evacuating the supernatural militancy characteristic of true successors of Peter.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): when the law of favor and privilege replaces the law of sacrificial truth, belief soon follows into ruin. “Divini pastoris” whispers this program from the very first year. The faithful who cling to the integral Catholic faith must recognize in such acts not the voice of the Divine Pastor, but the first polite notes of the coming *abomination of desolation* standing where it ought not.
Source:
Divini Pastoris Ecclesiasticis, Motu Proprio De Privilegiis Conclavistis Ecclesiasticis Concessis, XII Novembris MDCCCCLVIII, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025