This Latin letter, issued in 1959 by antipope John XXIII to Louis Severin Haller (titular “bishop” of Bethlehem and Abbot Primate of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine), commemorates the ninth centenary of the 1059 Lateran Synod and encourages the Canons Regular to celebrate their history, strengthen their confederation, promote liturgy, pastoral work, learning, common life, Augustinian charity, and strict observance of religious discipline within their communities.
Beneath its apparently edifying tone, however, this text functions as a programmatic co‑option of a venerable canonical institute into the conciliar revolution, instrumentalizing authentic monastic and canonical ideals as a façade for the coming doctrinal subversion that would mutilate the priesthood, liturgy, and religious life.
Augustinian Vocabulary as a Mask for Conciliar Subversion
Historical Continuity Claimed, Doctrinal Continuity Denied
On the surface, the letter traces a line:
“from St. Augustine” → the cleric who professes both sanctity and clerical state in common life → the reform of canons at the 1059 Lateran Synod → the flourishing of the Canons Regular → the modern confederation encouraged by “John XXIII”.
Key elements:
– It recalls Augustine’s community: common life, holiness, clerical state.
– It cites the 1059 Lateran decree urging canons to live vita communis and hold goods in common.
– It praises the historical fruits of the Order in doctrine and piety.
– It approves and blesses the public inauguration of the confederation of the four congregations.
– It exhorts:
– fidelity to common life and discipline,
– moral integrity separated from worldly mentality,
– obedience to superiors “as to Christ”,
– fraternal charity and unity.
All of this, taken in itself and read through pre-1958 doctrine, could seem laudable. But this appearance is precisely what must be dissected.
The letter’s entire rhetorical force rests on the presupposition that the writer is a true Roman Pontiff organically continuing the work of Nicholas II and Gregory VII in purifying clerical life.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine (using only pre-1958 teaching as criterion), that presupposition is untenable:
– A public and manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church or vicar of Christ; he is outside the Body and therefore cannot be its head (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, as summarized in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file).
– The line of “popes” beginning with John XXIII represents the seizure of the visible structures of the Church by men who prepared and imposed doctrines explicitly condemned by the prior Magisterium: religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, the cult of man, and liturgical sacrilege. These doctrines were anathematized in substance by:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (esp. 15–18, 55, 77–80),
– Leo XIII in multiple encyclicals,
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi,
– Pius XI in Quas Primas, which demands the public social reign of Christ the King.
Thus every appeal John XXIII makes to Augustine, Nicholas II, Gregory VII, and to canonical reform must be read as an act of ideological falsification: he clothes the approaching conciliar apostasy in the garments of patristic and Gregorian renewal.
Factual Level: The Selective Use of History to Legitimize an Illegitimate Project
The letter:
– Correctly recalls:
– Augustine’s community ideal.
– That the 1059 Lateran Synod (under Nicholas II, with Hildebrand/Gregory VII active) re-affirmed common life and communal property for canons.
– Accurately notes the historical flourishing of Canons Regular in liturgy, doctrine, and care of souls.
However, the decisive manipulation lies in what is done with this history:
1. The Lateran reform of 1059:
– Sought to restore clerical purity and free the Church from simony and lay investiture.
– Strengthened hierarchical obedience to the true Papacy.
– Aimed at an intensification of supernatural life and discipline in continuity with Tradition.
2. John XXIII invokes this same reforming memory precisely while:
– Preparing the aggiornamento and the future “Vatican II,” which:
– Diluted monastic and canonical discipline.
– Undermined the sacrificial theology of the Mass.
– Introduced doctrinally condemned principles (religious liberty, ecumenism with heretics and infidels, democratic collegiality, and the practical dethronement of Christ the King).
The letter’s praise of common life and strict observance thus functions as a historical camouflage. A genuine Pope would arm the Canons Regular to resist the modernist onslaught condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi; instead, this antipope confirms them in obedience to a structure that would soon force upon them a new “liturgy” and a new “theology”.
This is not harmless exhortation; it is strategic preparation: submit your venerable Order, your liturgy, your studies, your common life, to the authority that is about to betray all of these.
Linguistic Piety as Instrument of Deception
The Gentle Tone That Conceals the Knife
The letter is cloaked in soft, paternal, edifying language:
– “Venerable Brother… Apostolic Blessing… rejoice in your history… cultivate charity… avoid dissensions… obey your superiors as Christ.”
– Carefully chosen phrases:
– “refulgeat in vobis vitae communis ratio” – let the common life shine in you.
– “eluceat ea integritas” – let integrity shine, excluding worldly mentality.
– “vigeat oboedientia” – let obedience flourish.
– Appeals to Augustine and St. Laurence Justinian for fidelity, charity, unity.
Superficially this is classical spiritual rhetoric. But language here is weaponized in three ways:
1. Absolutization of Obedience, Detachment from Truth:
– The letter demands obedience to superiors “as to Christ Himself” (qua moderatoribus ut Christo ipsi pareatis) without a single doctrinal reminder that obedience is conditioned by objective fidelity to the Faith.
– Pre-1958 Magisterium is clear: no authority can command against divine law or Tradition. Obedience is not blind servility but ordered submission to legitimate commands in harmony with dogma.
– By isolating “obedience” from doctrinal criteria, John XXIII implicitly prepares religious to accept every future abuse coming from the conciliar sect as if it were Christ’s will.
2. Humanistic Emphasis, Theological Emptiness:
– Much emphasis on mutual charity, avoiding dissensions, “gluing” wills together, harmonious community.
– Deafening silence about:
– defense of dogma against modern errors,
– vigilance against Modernism (explicitly named by St. Pius X as the synthesis of all heresies),
– the danger of doctrinal infiltration into religious houses,
– the duty to resist or denounce heresy, even in high places.
– Charity is reduced to psychological harmony rather than love of God in truth and in hatred of error. This contradicts the perennial Catholic understanding that veritas et caritas are inseparable.
3. Neutralization of the Militant Dimension:
– No language of spiritual combat against heresy.
– No appeal to the Canons Regular to preach against liberalism, naturalism, socialism, Freemasonry—though Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII had solemnly unmasked these forces.
– The tone is pacifying, managerial, “moderate” – the opposite of the prophetic voice of Gregory VII or Pius X.
The style thus betrays its purpose: to tranquilize consciences while the foundations are being dissolved. It is the rhetoric of a superintendent of a religious NGO, not of a Vicar of Christ commanding an Order to defend the flock against apostasy.
Theological Inversion: From Supernatural Mission to Conciliar Utility
The Order Reduced to a Functional Organ of a Future Neo-Church
A key passage reads, in essence:
“This age, in which the needs of the Church have greatly increased, calls for the cooperative help of her ministers; your Order is especially called to distribute liturgical treasures, care for souls, and pursue studies that promote the Church’s good.”
On its face, unobjectionable. But note the underlying inversion.
Before 1958, the mission of Canons Regular in Magisterial and canonical tradition is:
– To live the vita communis according to Augustine.
– To serve at the altar in the true Most Holy Sacrifice, praying the Divine Office, teaching the Faith in its integrity.
– To defend the flock against error; to be formed by, and transmit, the full Catholic doctrine as defined by the Councils and papal teaching.
Now compare this with what is implicitly demanded here:
1. Liturgical Role Unspecified:
– No explicit mention that their liturgical duty is to the immemorial Roman Rite, organically developed and sanctioned by the ages, which Trent and St. Pius V defended as an objective bulwark against heresy.
– By 1959, the same antipope who signs this letter is already opening the door to “reform” commissions that will produce the mutilated Holy Week and later the Novus Ordo. To call the Canons Regular to “liturgical service” under his authority is to summon them to be shock troops in the war against the true liturgy.
2. Studies and “Progress”:
– They are urged to pursue studies that promote the Church’s “decus et commodum” (splendour and advantage).
– No warning against Modernist biblical criticism and dogmatic relativism already condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– No insistence on Thomistic theology, which Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI required as the secure norm against Modernism.
– In the context of the late 1950s, such generic praise of “studies” is a blank cheque for Modernist infiltration of seminaries and houses of study.
3. Confederation as Structural Integration:
– The public confederation of the congregations is encouraged as something the “Apostolic See greatly esteems, especially in this age”.
– In practice, this creates a unified channel through which the conciliar sect can standardize governance, formation, and liturgy, and thus more efficiently impose its novelties.
– What appears as strengthening against the world in fact facilitates centralized control by an authority that has already begun to betray the Faith.
Thus the letter redefines the Order’s supernatural mission in function of a “Church” whose self-understanding will soon be re-scripted by the council of aggiornamento. Theological continuity is implicitly broken; only the vocabulary is retained.
Silence on Christ the King and the Social Order
From Quas Primas (1925), Pius XI teaches unequivocally:
– Peace and order are only possible where Christ reigns socially and publicly.
– States and societies, no less than individuals, must submit to His law.
– Secularism and religious indifferentism are the root of modern catastrophe.
In this letter:
– There is no mention of the public reign of Christ the King.
– No exhortation that Canons Regular stand as witnesses against secularism, laicism, liberalism, condemned by the Syllabus.
– No reminder that their common life and liturgy must radiate the objective Kingship of Christ over nations and laws.
Instead, the focus is entirely intra-monastic: harmony, observance, charity, common life. The Order is turned inward just as it should have been mustered outward as a militant witness against the approaching conciliar capitulation to “religious liberty” and “ecumenism” — precisely the errors Pius IX and Pius XI denounced.
This silence is not accidental; it is symptomatic. A supposed “successor” of Pius XI who omits Christ’s social Kingship when addressing a major canonical Order reveals by that omission his rupture with the prior Magisterium.
Obedience as a Tool of Systemic Apostasy
From Holy Obedience to Conciliar Servility
The letter strongly insists:
“Let obedience flourish, by which you obey your superiors as Christ Himself.”
In Catholic doctrine:
– Obedience is a moral virtue subordinate to faith and charity.
– It is never absolute in the sense of legitimizing commands contrary to Tradition or divine law.
– Saints and theologians teach: if a superior commands what is sinful or contrary to the faith, he must not be obeyed.
Yet here:
– The call to obedience is detached from any doctrinal qualification.
– There is no call to fidelity to dogma as the condition of obedience.
– There is no warning that superiors themselves sin mortally if they alter the rule against its constitutive spirit or demand participation in error.
This absolutized, unqualified obedience in 1959 becomes the main lever by which:
– Religious Orders accept:
– the destruction of the Roman Rite,
– the adoption of invalid or doubtful rites of “ordination,”
– doctrinally ambiguous “pastoral” constitutions,
– practical ecumenism and religious relativism.
Thus this exhortation is not anodyne; it is algorithmic: program the Canons Regular for maximal docility to an authority that is about to weaponize their vows against the Faith they vowed to defend.
Integral Catholic Faith Versus Conciliar “Unity”
The letter exhorts:
“Let there be no dissensions; whatever hinders the union of wills of the members should be kept far from your monasteries.”
Read through pre-1958 doctrine:
– Unity is unity in the true faith; any “union of wills” against dogma is conspiracy, not charity.
– Pius IX and St. Pius X condemn doctrinal indifferentism and the suppression of controversy when truth is at stake.
– St. Pius X explicitly warns that Modernists seek to silence defenders of Tradition by appealing to “obedience” and “unity” while smuggling in heresy.
The letter’s language is exactly that Modernist tactic:
– Do not resist.
– Do not create “dissensions”.
– Fuse your wills under superiors obedient to the conciliar program.
– Detach unity from dogmatic confession—precisely what the Syllabus and Lamentabili identify as poisoned roots.
This is a radical inversion of the patristic rule: in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas rightly understood: unity in defined dogma; legitimate diversity only where truth has not bound; and charity that never contradicts truth. Here, unity is sentimental and functional, serving a heterodox governance.
Symptomatic Reading: A Template of the Conciliar Sect’s Strategy
The Program Visible in Miniature
Several systemic traits of the conciliar sect are crystallized in this brief letter:
1. Appropriation of Authentic Symbols:
– Augustine, Hildebrand/Gregory VII, Lateran Synod, common life, observance, charity.
– These names and ideals are invoked to create continuity optics while the substantive doctrine is about to be reversed.
2. Instrumentalization of Religious Orders:
– Praise of confederation and obedience is aimed at integrating Orders into a centralized apparatus that will:
– impose liturgical deformation,
– punish resistance,
– transform venerable institutes into laboratories of aggiornamento.
3. Moral and Aesthetic Catholicism without Dogmatic Edge:
– The letter is “spiritual” and “monastic” in vocabulary, but entirely bloodless doctrinally.
– No re-affirmation of the Syllabus against liberalism.
– No echo of Pascendi and Lamentabili against Modernism.
– No reference to Christ the King’s social reign from Quas Primas.
– This omission, at this historical moment, is incriminating.
4. Replacement of Supernatural Combat by Horizontal Harmony:
– The emphasis moves from doctrinal guardianship and sacrificial worship to intra-community smoothness and liturgical “service”.
– The Canons Regular are thus neutralized as potential defenders of Tradition and re-purposed as compliant functionaries.
Everything condemned in the files you provided (Syllabus, Quas Primas, Lamentabili) as the agenda of liberalism, rationalism, and Modernism is here prepared indirectly: not by open denial, but by strategic silence and misdirection.
The Gravity of Silence: No Warning Against the Real Enemy
Most damning is what is entirely absent:
– No mention of the modernist crisis which St. Pius X called by name and anathematized.
– No mention of Freemasonry and its role in attacking the Church, exposed by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– No allusion to the social atheism, secularism, and laicism that Quas Primas identifies as the plague of the age.
– No command to the Canons Regular:
– to guard the integrity of the sacraments,
– to preserve the Roman Rite intact,
– to maintain Thomistic theology,
– to resist false ecumenism.
In an epoch already marked by theological subversion and liturgical experimentation, such silence is not a neutral oversight; it is complicity.
Those who possess authority and fail to warn when danger is manifest become, morally, accomplices of the ruin that follows. Here the writer postures as heir of Gregory VII while refusing to confront the principal doctrinal enemies Gregory would have condemned with merciless clarity.
Conclusion: A Pious Shell Housing the Germ of Desolation
This 1959 letter is often taken as an innocuous, edifying piece of spiritual correspondence. Under the light of immutable Catholic doctrine:
– It rests on the false premise that John XXIII is a legitimate successor of Peter, whereas:
– His own subsequent actions, and the council he convoked, unleashed principles solemnly condemned by all prior Popes named in this letter.
– According to the doctrine summarized from Bellarmine and canon 188.4 (1917 Code), a manifest heretic cannot hold papal office; his acts do not enjoy the authority they claim.
– It appropriates:
– the authority of Augustine,
– the memory of the 1059 Lateran reform,
– the glory of Gregory VII,
in order to secure docile integration of the Canons Regular into a structure about to:
– pervert the liturgy,
– erode religious discipline,
– spread doctrinal confusion.
– It weaponizes:
– “obedience,” “unity,” and “charity”
against:
– the duty to resist error, preserve Tradition, and maintain the social Kingship of Christ.
– It exemplifies the method by which the conciliar sect:
– emptied Catholic forms from within,
– retained venerable names, habits, and words,
– and filled them with a new content: humanistic, horizontal, naturalistic, ecumenical.
Thus, what appears as a gentle encouragement to the Canons Regular is, in reality, part of the preparatory liturgy of the coming abominatio desolationis (abomination of desolation) in the holy place: a carefully calibrated step in subduing one of the Church’s historic priestly institutes to a paramasonic, anti-Traditional regime.
True fidelity to Augustine, to the 1059 Lateran Synod, to Gregory VII, and to all pre-1958 Popes demands not sentimental reverence for such texts, but their lucid unmasking and rejection, together with every attempt to conscript venerable Orders into the service of a neo-church built on the denial in practice of Quas Primas, the Syllabus, and Lamentabili.
Source:
– Ad Ludovicum Severinum Haller, Episcopum tit. Bethleemitanum, Ordinis canonicorum regularium S. Augustini Abbatem Primatem, nono impleto saeculo a coacta Lateranensi Synodo et mox inita foederatione… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025