The document is a Latin congratulatory letter in which John XXIII, acting as “pope,” flatters Pietro Ciriaci on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, praising his Roman academic career, curial service, diplomatic missions in Czechoslovakia and Portugal, and his role as prefect in charge of interpreting the Tridentine decrees. It is an exercise in courtly mutual admiration that presents human merit, bureaucratic success, and concordat diplomacy as the measure of ecclesial fruitfulness and concludes with an “apostolic blessing” as a seal over this purely horizontal eulogy. In one page it condenses the self-referential, naturalistic, and personality‑cult ethos of the conciliar revolution that would soon devastate the visible structures of the Church.
Celebrating a System: The Cult of Careerism under John XXIII
Elevation of Human Prestige over the Supernatural Mission
Already the structure of this letter reveals its core disease. John XXIII speaks to Ciriaci almost exclusively in terms of:
– academic titles,
– diplomatic postings,
– curial offices,
– technocratic management of Tridentine legislation.
He recalls their youth in the Roman seminary, then lists Ciriaci’s climb: professor at the Propaganda Fide athenaeum, curial official, Apostolic Nuncio to Czechoslovakia and Portugal, then cardinal and head of the body responsible for interpreting the decrees of Trent. The entire logic of praise is horizontal: curriculum vitae as sanctity.
Nowhere do we find:
– any mention of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as the heart of priestly life,
– any reference to zeal for the salvation of souls,
– any indication of defense of Catholic doctrine against the modernist and masonic onslaught condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII,
– any reminder of judgment, hell, or the supernatural end of the priesthood.
Instead, John XXIII hails that Ciriaci, through mental acuity, energy, and diplomatic dexterity, achieved “many things” beneficial to the “Catholic name.” The “Catholic name” becomes a brand advanced by functionaries, not the Mystical Body of Christ nourished by sacrifice and penance. This is precisely the naturalistic focus condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, where Pius IX exposes the liberal fiction that the Church’s greatness lies in political respectability, dialogue with states, and adaptation to “modern civilization,” severed from her divine constitution and exclusivity.
Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches with crystalline clarity that peace and order depend solely on recognizing and submitting to the social Kingship of Christ, not to diplomatic agility:
– Christ must reign over individuals, families, and states.
– Public authority must honor and obey Christ and His Church.
– Laws must conform to His law.
Here, however, we see another project: the internal celebration of men who navigated secular powers, precisely those powers already engaged—by modernism, communism, and freemasonry—in crushing the Reign of Christ and enslaving the Church. The letter exudes the mentality that Pius XI rebukes: substituting the *Rex Christus* with the clerical bureaucrat.
The Bitter Irony: “Guardian of Trent” in Service of Its Demolition
John XXIII lauds Ciriaci for presiding over the council responsible for interpreting the Tridentine decrees, highlighting that he resolves cases “which by their nature are often arduous and increase in number day by day” with prudence and diligence. This is presented as a badge of fidelity to the Counter‑Reformation heritage.
Yet from the vantage of integral Catholic teaching:
– The Council of Trent solemnly defined the sacrificial character of the Mass, the sacramental priesthood, the necessity of the Church as unique ark of salvation, and anathematized Protestant and liberal errors.
– The Syllabus of Errors and the anti-modernist magisterium of Pius X and his successors stand as the doctrinal ramparts guarding Trent.
John XXIII would soon convoke a “pastoral” council that:
– deliberately refused to use the solemn, condemnatory, and dogmatic mode,
– opened the doors to religious freedom, collegial democratization, ecumenism with heretics and infidels, and the practical abolition of the public Reign of Christ in states—positions expressly proscribed by Pius IX and the pre‑1958 magisterium,
– served as launching pad for a rite that undermined the Tridentine theology of the Mass and the priesthood.
Thus this letter, drenched in praise for the “interpreter of Trent,” acquires a sinister, programmatic meaning:
– The same personnel solemnized here will manage the controlled demolition of Trent’s application.
– The invocation of Trent becomes a mask, a pseudo-legitimizing varnish over an approaching revolution.
This is a classic modernist tactic condemned in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*: outward affirmation of Catholic formulas while in practice reinterpreting or neutralizing them. The letter’s silence about the dogmatic content of Trent, combined with effusive praise for the man who administratively “handles” it, foreshadows hermeneutic manipulation: *verba manent, sensus mutatur* (the words remain, the meaning is changed).
Linguistic Flattery as Symptom of a New Ecclesiology
The rhetorical texture is significant. John XXIII:
– addresses Ciriaci as Dilecte Fili Noster (“Our beloved son”), saturating the text with affectionate honorifics;
– piles up compliments on intelligence, vigor, dexterity, expertise, and “virile love” for the Roman See;
– frames his wish that Ciriaci “flower in rich old age” in active labor for the “utility and decorum” of “this See of Peter.”
At no point:
– a call to holiness by conformity to the crucified Christ,
– a warning against heresy,
– an exhortation to defend dogma “in season and out of season,”
– an insistence on asceticism, penance, Marian devotion, or Eucharistic reparation.
We are not before the spiritual fatherly severity of St. Pius X or Pius XI who, even in laudatory texts, incessantly bind honors to doctrinal fidelity and the supernatural end of souls. We are before bureaucratic euphoria. The language betrays the shift from:
– an ecclesiology centered on Christ the King, His Cross, His Sacrifice,
to
– an ecclesiology centered on the “Petrine administration” as a kind of sacralized international organization.
This is exactly the mentality denounced by Pius IX in the Syllabus propositions condemning:
– subjection of the Church to civil progress and liberalism,
– transformation of the Church into a partner in “modern civilization” instead of a perfect society above and judging it.
The letter’s sugary vocabulary is not incidental; it is a sign of a new religion of institutional self-admiration. It magnifies men and offices; it silences the battle for dogma, the reality of enemies, and the supernatural warfare that authentic popes constantly recalled.
Strategic Silences: No Christ the King, No Modernism, No Enemies
Most devastating is what this document does not say.
1. No mention of:
– Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Kingship over nations and law (*Quas primas*),
– the unique saving necessity of the Catholic Church,
– the essential duty of the priest to offer the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* for the remission of sins,
– the need to defend the flock from doctrinal wolves.
2. No acknowledgments of:
– the ferocious assault of communism on the Church and on the natural law,
– the machinations of freemasonry and secret societies, repeatedly exposed by preceding pontiffs,
– the modernist infiltration condemned by St. Pius X.
3. No appeal to:
– faithfulness to anti-modernist oaths,
– ruthless rejection of liberal errors and religious indifferentism,
– preservation of discipline and doctrine against the secular state.
By 1959, all this was not “unknown.” St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi dominici gregis* had unmasked modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Pius XI and Pius XII had denounced totalitarianism, laicism, and masonic sects. Pius IX’s Syllabus remained normative. Yet the letter floats above this battlefield in idyllic oblivion.
This silence is not neutral; *silentium de necessariis est signum defectionis* (silence about what is necessary is a sign of defection). A man truly seated on the Chair of Peter, congratulating a high prelate in 1959, could not honestly ignore:
– the doctrinal chaos seeded in seminaries,
– the infiltration of liberal theology and liturgical subversion,
– the immediate proximity of a council that, if not guarded with iron clarity, would be seized by the very forces previously condemned.
Instead, John XXIII’s text offers only:
– institutional self-congratulation,
– blessing on the person and his entourage,
– zero reference to the supernatural struggle.
Thus, by omission, it catechizes another religion: tranquil, worldly, managerial, allergic to conflict, allergic to clear condemnations—preparing precisely the climate in which the conciliar sect would claim that “the Church” must open herself to the world, dialog with errors, renounce condemnations, and enthrone man.
From Spiritual Paternity to a Closed Clerical Oligarchy
The letter exemplifies and sanctifies a closed clerical caste—what later appears as the “Church of the New Advent”:
– insiders praise insiders;
– careers in diplomacy and administration are glorified as quasi-mystical achievements;
– the faithful, the poor, the persecuted, the simple defenders of tradition are utterly absent.
This is particularly grave because:
– The priesthood is instituted for sacrifice and the salvation of souls, not for diplomatic choreography.
– Pre‑1958 doctrine insists that the hierarchy exists to transmit, guard, and apply the deposit of faith, not to redesign it.
By blessing this oligarchic self-celebration without a word on responsibility before God, John XXIII implicitly teaches:
– that ecclesiastical promotion is itself a mark of divine favor,
– that loyalty to the reigning establishment (soon: conciliar revolution) is the decisive virtue.
Integrally Catholic teaching recognizes:
– authority is from God and must be revered when authentically exercised according to Tradition;
– yet, as St. Robert Bellarmine explains, a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church nor retain jurisdiction, for he ceases to be a member of the Church.
While this letter itself is short and apparently pious, in context:
– the cult of internal advancement,
– the suppression of supernatural vocabulary,
– the oblivion toward modernist danger,
all function as preparatory elements in the practical apostasy that would soon be formalized by the conciliar sect.
Abuse of Apostolic Language to Legitimize a Neo-Magisterium
The closing gesture is revealing: John XXIII imparts an “Apostolic Blessing” upon Ciriaci and all collaborators and participants. In authentic ecclesial life, such a blessing:
– presupposes integral doctrine,
– is ordered to increased fidelity to Christ, confession of the true faith, and perseverance against error.
Here, it serves:
– as an ecclesiastical imprimatur on a man whose primary veneration stems from service to a system soon to promulgate innovations incompatible with prior magisterium,
– as a sacralization of the conciliar apparatus.
This is not a neutral signing-off formula. It is the attempted appropriation of apostolic symbols to cloak a different project:
– turning guardians of Trent into functionaries who will oversee its obsolescence in practice;
– transforming the language of fatherly love into the rhetoric of a self-satisfied elite disconnected from the Cross.
Pius X warns against precisely this modernist masquerade: retaining Catholic forms—titles, blessings, institutions—while emptying them of their immutable content and using them to insinuate evolution, democratization, and religious relativism into the veins of the faithful.
Symptom of the Coming Revolution: Naturalism, Optimism, and Denial
When read alongside the pre‑1958 magisterium:
– the absence of the note of combat against error,
– the allergy to explicit condemnations,
– the exclusive focus on temporal achievements and institutional glory,
are not random literary choices; they are symptoms of a fundamental shift.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus, rejects the propositions that:
– the Church should reconcile herself with “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” as understood by the world,
– religious liberty and indifferentism are compatible with Catholic doctrine,
– states may ignore the rights of the true religion.
Pius X and his successors defend:
– the fixity of dogma,
– the subordination of Nations to Christ the King,
– the necessity to unmask modernists as internal enemies.
By contrast, this 1959 text:
– ignores all conflict between the Church and the world,
– presents careerist advancement in church-state diplomacy as unproblematic and praiseworthy,
– radiates naïve optimism that the continuity of persons and offices suffices, without mentioning continuity of doctrine.
This mentality is the seed of the “hermeneutic of continuity” fraud:
– maintaining a line of names and ceremonies while reversing doctrine and worship,
– persuading souls that nothing essential has changed, because the same style of congratulatory letters and blessings continues.
Once the supernatural dimension is evacuated and replaced by naturalistic language of esteem and merits, any subsequent doctrinal betrayal will be sold as legitimate “development,” resting on uninterrupted institutional politeness. The letter thus prefigures the conciliar sect’s strategy: *persona manet, fides mutatur* (the person remains, the faith is changed).
Conclusion: A Small Text Revealing a Larger Apostasy
This letter is brief, but its spirit is emblematic:
– It glorifies a system of clerical careerism.
– It blesses a man for precisely those capacities—diplomatic pragmatism, bureaucratic skill, managerial handling of Trent—which would be used to neutralize the anti-modernist safeguards of the Church.
– It erases the language of supernatural warfare and substitutes the language of institutional self-satisfaction.
– It dresses natural virtues and administrative success with apostolic language, concealing the absence of the Cross, of the Kingship of Christ, of doctrinal militancy.
Measured by the immutable Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this document:
– does not nourish faith, hope, or charity;
– does not protect the flock;
– does not exalt Christ the King;
– but rather exalts men and prepares the faithful to accept the authority of a conciliar establishment that will systematically contradict the teaching of Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
In this sense, the text stands as a polished fragment of the great façade: a courteous epistle masking an impending devastation; a soft voice of human praise where the Vicar of Christ once thundered against error; a blessing pronounced over the very machinery that would usher in the neo-church, the paramasonic structure occupying the ruins of Catholic Rome.
Source:
Quinquagesimum Natalem – Ad Petrum Tit. S. Praxedis S. R. E. Presbpterum Cardinalem Ciriaci, Sacrae Congregationis Concilii Praefectum, quinquagesimum natalem sacerdotii celebraturum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025