This Latin letter, dated 8 December 1959 and signed by John XXIII, is addressed to the bishops of Lithuania on the 350th anniversary of the death of Bishop Melchior Giedraitis. It recalls Giedraitis as a zealous Catholic pastor, praises the Lithuanian clergy and faithful for their perseverance under persecution, laments the anti-religious measures of the communist regime, and exhorts bishops, priests, parents, and youth to fidelity to the faith, to the sacraments, and to devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Šiluva.
Behind this apparently pious exhortation stands the programmatic substitution of integral Catholic faith with a sentimental, opportunistic, and ultimately modernist ideology, deployed by the very architect of the upcoming conciliar revolution.
Commending a Catholic Bishop While Undermining His Faith
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this letter is intrinsically self-contradictory.
On the surface, John XXIII extols Melchior Giedraitis as a model bishop, an “apostle” of Lithuania, faithful to Trent, zealous for catechesis and discipline, defender of Catholic unity, restorer of obedience to the Roman See, promoter of parish life and the Most Holy Sacrifice. These traits conform, materially, to the ideal of a Tridentine bishop.
Yet the signer of this letter, already in 1959, is the same John XXIII who:
– convened the pseudo-council that would enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and collegial dissolution of authority;
– inaugurated the demolition of the Tridentine liturgical order;
– rehabilitated and protected the very modernist tendencies solemnly anathematized by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*;
– prepared the doctrinal-pastoral framework which openly contradicts the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX and the social kingship of Christ as articulated in Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*.
Thus the letter functions as a classic modernist maneuver: praising a saintly Catholic figure in order to neutralize him, to appropriate his authority for a program that in substance negates what he lived and taught. It is the tactic described and condemned by St. Pius X: employing Catholic language emptied of its original content, *verba retinent, sensum mutant* (they retain the words, they change the meaning).
Selective History: Trent on the Lips, Vatican II in the Mind
On the factual level, the letter presents Melchior Giedraitis as:
“[one who] sedulo servatis [Concilii Tridentini] praescriptis… novas condidit paroecias… sacrormn rituum nitorem enixe provexit, christianam doctrinam omnibus populi ordinibus tradere enixus est.”
English: “[one who], by diligently observing the prescriptions of the Council of Trent… established new parishes… earnestly promoted the splendour of the sacred rites and strove to hand on Christian doctrine to all classes of the people.”
This is historically coherent: Trent required exactly such episcopal action—residence, catechesis, liturgical integrity, discipline, suppression of error. The letter’s description is not in itself objectionable.
The contradiction emerges because:
– the same John XXIII initiated a process leading to the practical abandonment of Tridentine discipline, catechesis, and liturgy;
– the post-1958 structures occupying Rome systematically dismantled what the letter praises: the Tridentine Mass, strong doctrinal catechisms, uncompromising separation from heresy, hierarchical authority over secular powers.
To perform panegyrics of a Tridentine bishop while architecting the conciliar subversion of Trent is not piety; it is instrumentalization. It is an early attempt to canonize a narrative: that the conciliar aggiornamento is in continuity with bishops like Giedraitis—precisely those whose spirit it was designed to erase.
From the integral Catholic standpoint, the implicit message is poisonous: “Your heroic Catholic past culminates in us,” spoken by one preparing to betray that very past. This is why such texts must be read not naively, but as diplomatic manifestos of a paramasonic project already in motion.
Sentimental Consolation Without Supernatural Combat
The letter acknowledges the communist persecution in Lithuania:
English: “For a long time now many difficulties are laid against the Catholic Church in your renowned fatherland… Bishops exiled or kept far from their dioceses… priests and laity imprisoned or sent into exile… religious communities dispersed; Catholic Action suppressed; your schools proscribed, and in their place others introduced in which not only Christian doctrine is impeded but atheism is propagated.”
At first glance, this appears courageous. In reality, the rhetorical pattern reveals the modernist deviation:
1. The persecution is described primarily as a violation of ecclesiastical liberties, structures, and social rights—real but secondary aspects.
2. There is no direct, doctrinally precise denunciation of communism as intrinsically atheistic, materialist, and condemned by prior papal teaching (e.g., Pius XI’s *Divini Redemptoris*).
3. There is no explicit assertion that the communist regime, by its principles, wages war against Christ the King and must be morally rejected as such.
4. There is no robust invocation of the solemn condemnations of secret societies and masonic networks by Pius IX, Leo XIII, and others (cf. the Syllabus, *Humanum Genus*), although the situation in Lithuania is a textbook application of those warnings.
In other words, the language is compassionately clerical, diplomatically vague, and politically careful. It consoles, but does not arm. It names suffering, but not sufficiently the metaphysical enemy: organized apostasy against the rights of God and His Church.
Contrast this with pre-1958 Magisterial clarity:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the separation of Church and State, the subjection of the Church to lay power, and the enthronement of secular liberal or socialist ideologies as sovereign.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* states without ambiguity that peace and order are impossible where Christ does not reign publicly, and that states must recognize and submit to His law.
– St. Pius X in *Pascendi* unmasks the modernists’ method of adapting the Church to the world, instead of subjugating the world to Christ.
This letter, instead of drawing the persecuted Lithuanians into that great doctrinal battle, offers them a softened narrative: endurance, personal fidelity, inner consolation—without a clarion reaffirmation of the absolute, objective right of the Church to rule over public life and to condemn the anti-Christian regime as such. It is already the conciliar style: moral encouragement detached from doctrinal militancy.
Silence here is not neutral. Silence about the universal and social kingship of Christ, in a context where that kingship is publicly denied by the State, is complicity at the level of principle.
Modernist Rhetoric: Pious Vocabulary as Smoke Screen
On the linguistic level, the text employs classical Catholic vocabulary: *sacrorum Antistites*, *Apostolica Benedictio*, *bonus miles Christi*, *verbum Dei*, appeals to bishops, priests, laity, families.
However, attentive reading reveals typical modernist traits:
– Generalities instead of precise doctrinal formulations.
– Absence of any condemnation of doctrinal errors within the ecclesiastical sphere itself.
– A consoling tone that avoids naming the deeper crisis soon to be unleashed from Rome.
Examples:
– The letter praises Lithuanian fidelity to the “Roman Pontiff and legitimate Hierarchy,” without any doctrinal reinforcement of what constitutes legitimacy in faith and office. Given that the very signer would shortly begin to subvert defined teaching, the expression becomes a rhetorical net: attach loyalty to the person and evolving institution, not to the immutable deposit of faith.
– It exhorts:
“Sacramentis refici, atque Eucharistico sacrificio diebus festis… adesse pergant”
(“May they be refreshed by the sacraments and, on feast days, be present at the Eucharistic Sacrifice, if it is possible.”)
Here “Eucharistic Sacrifice” is still classical language. Yet from the vantage point of what followed:
– the same current began the process culminating in the Novus Ordo, where the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* is obscured and reinterpreted as an assembly meal;
– sacramental theology was gradually rephrased in ecumenical and anthropocentric categories.
Thus the language of this letter must be recognized as transitional: Catholic in form, but already carried by an agent whose subsequent deeds contradict the content. It is the *modus operandi* condemned by St. Pius X: the modernist “speaks sometimes with the voice of a Catholic, sometimes with the voice of a rationalist,” and must be judged by his total program, not isolated phrases.
Theological Inversion: Commending True Resistance While Preparing Surrender
The theological level exposes an even more radical incoherence.
The letter commends:
– priests and laity imprisoned “for firmness in the faith and in defending the sacred rights of the Church”;
– bishops who suffer exile;
– the perseverance of the faithful attached to the sacraments, even at great cost.
Yet, the same John XXIII:
– rehabilitated theological currents that had been censured for undermining dogma, Scripture, and Tradition (precisely what *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* condemn);
– promoted a council that would:
– exalt religious liberty in principle, condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, propositions 15, 77-80);
– dilute the exclusive claim of the Catholic Church as the one true Church (against Syllabus 18, 21);
– open the doors to ecumenism with heresy and schism (against the dogmatic teaching of the Church and the consistent praxis of anathema sit);
– refract all future teaching through “dialogue” with the world and non-Catholic religions, sidelining the necessity of conversion.
Thus, this letter’s praise of Lithuanian confessional steadfastness is, in effect, double-tongued:
– Lithuanians are praised for refusing to compromise with atheistic power.
– Soon, under the new regime that John XXIII inaugurates, Catholics everywhere will be asked to compromise with heresy, false religions, and secular ideologies in the name of aggiornamento, human dignity, and dialogue.
The underlying inversion:
– Heroic fidelity under Soviet persecution is exalted.
– Doctrinal and liturgical fidelity under Roman modernist aggression will be branded as “rigidity,” “integrism,” or rebellion.
From an integral Catholic viewpoint, this is spiritual fraud. *Lex orandi, lex credendi* (the law of prayer is the law of belief) is on the verge of being overthrown by the very hand that here sentimentalizes a Tridentine bishop.
Manipulating the Family and Laity: Piety Without Militant Faith
The letter exhorts parents to assume catechetical roles because priests are impeded, and calls on youth to imitate the courage of Giedraitis. At first sight, this honors the Catholic family.
But note what is missing:
– No insistence that catechesis must be strictly in accord with the traditional catechisms (e.g., Roman Catechism, approved local catechisms) and the immutable teaching of the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– No warning against infiltrated, liberal, or modernist literature or clergy, though such dangers were already real.
– No call to discern between true and false shepherds, even as the highest structures are preparing to propagate a new religion under Catholic labels.
Instead, the letter proposes a generic, affective Catholicism—devotion to sacraments, Marian piety, attachment to the “Pope”—without equipping families to recognize when those very words and sacraments are being emptied of their content.
This is lethal because:
– in times of persecution, clarity of doctrine is more necessary, not less;
– parents must know not only that they should teach, but what to teach and what to reject;
– youth called to courage must know precisely that the faith does not evolve with history, does not bend to communism, liberalism, ecumenism, or modern philosophy.
The omission of precise doctrinal criteria is not accidental; it prepares docile consciences for the conciliar revolution.
The Symptom of the Conciliar Sect: Historic Piety as Cover for Apostasy
This letter is emblematic of the pathology of the conciliar sect—the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure that would manifest fully after 1962:
1. Appropriation of Catholic Heroes:
Genuine Catholic bishops and martyrs (like Giedraitis) are praised in order to transfer their credibility to an institution that is in fact reneging on their principles.
2. Softening of Combat Doctrine:
Concrete condemnations (liberalism, socialism, communism, religious indifferentism, masonry) issued by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII are quietly replaced by generic laments, humanitarian concerns, and calls for coexistence.
3. Displacement of Supernatural Absolutes:
While not yet openly denying dogmas, such texts begin to shift emphasis from:
– Christ the King’s objective claims over nations,
– the exclusive necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation,
– the duty of states to profess the true religion,
towards:
– subjective endurance,
– “rights” of communities,
– sentimental communion with “the Pope” regardless of doctrinal content.
4. Prefiguring “Dialogue” with Persecutors:
The letter hints at an aspiration that “better times” and “peace” will come when suspicions are overcome and concord is restored. It does not say: peace will come only when the persecuting regime submits to Christ and His Church.
This anticipates the Ostpolitik of the conciliar structures: negotiation and accommodation with anti-Christian regimes, sacrificing confessors on the altar of diplomacy.
5. Mariology as Anesthetic:
Invoking devotion to the Immaculate Virgin of Šiluva is objectively good—yet here it is used therapeutically, not militantly.
The Marian appeal is detached from her role as Destroyer of all heresies and Queen of the social reign of Christ; instead, it functions as a soft seal over a text that avoids the real battle lines.
All of this is fully in line with what St. Pius X warned about modernists: they never confront dogma frontally at first; they undermine it by reorientation, dilution, and recontextualization, until a new religion stands where the Catholic Church once stood, still cloaked in familiar signs.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterial Teaching
Measured against the binding pre-1958 doctrinal corpus, the spirit and trajectory of this letter reveal their incompatibility.
– Pius IX’s Syllabus (propositions 15, 18, 21, 55, 77-80) unequivocally rejects:
– religious indifferentism,
– the idea that all forms of worship enjoy equal civil right,
– the separation of Church and State as an ideal,
– reconciliation of the Papacy with liberal modern civilization.
This letter, by its tone and omissions, prepares precisely such reconciliation: it does not recall the condemned errors; it sets up a narrative of eventual normalization devoid of explicit demands of submission of the State to Christ the King.
– Pius XI’s *Quas Primas* insists:
– that the denial of Christ’s reign over states is the root of modern calamities;
– that rulers must publicly recognize and obey Christ;
– that Catholics must work to restore this public kingship.
Here, while persecution is lamented, the solution is reduced to internal fidelity and vague hopes for peace. The letter does not call for the reestablishment of explicitly Catholic public order; it does not even reiterate that communist sovereignty is illegitimate by divine law. This is not accidental forgetfulness; it is the nascent ideology of coexistence that will blossom into religious liberty and ecumenism.
– St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili*/*Pascendi* condemn:
– the evolution of dogma,
– subjectivism in faith,
– historicist reinterpretation of doctrine.
John XXIII’s broader pontificate contradicts those condemnations. This letter must therefore be read as part of that continuum: traditional in phrase, modernist in intent, paving the road for doctrinal mutation.
Thus, when it speaks of “legitimate hierarchy” and “Roman Pontiff,” it implicitly demands adhesion not to the perennial faith, but to the mutable policy of a regime that will soon contradict its predecessors. This is precisely what the Fathers and theologians (e.g., Bellarmine, Cajetan in their correct interpretation) understood as impossible for a true Pope: manifest heresy or its systematic preparation severs communion with the Church.
Why This Document Must Be Rejected Today
The integral Catholic conscience, informed by the unchanging Magisterium prior to 1958, must draw clear conclusions:
– The commendation of Bishop Melchior Giedraitis stands as a witness against John XXIII and the conciliar revolution. What this holy bishop represented—Tridentine rigor, clear doctrine, strict sacramental discipline, hierarchical authority over civil powers—is exactly what the conciliar sect has destroyed.
– The letter’s silences—on communism’s intrinsic satanic character, on masonry’s role, on the non-negotiable kingship of Christ, on the hermeneutic of rupture being prepared in Rome—are themselves indictments.
– Its language exemplifies the method by which the conciliar pseudo-magisterium co-opted Catholic symbols and heroes to escort souls into a new religion: one of dialogue, human rights, religious liberty, and ecumenical relativism.
Therefore:
– The persecuted Lithuanian faithful of that time are praiseworthy insofar as they held fast to the integral Catholic faith, the Most Holy Sacrifice, and the pre-conciliar doctrine.
– The letter itself, as an act of John XXIII, must be stripped of any authority in conscience, as emanating from one who initiated a process of systemic apostasy.
– The true imitation of Melchior Giedraitis today means resisting the conciliar sect, rejecting its pseudo-liturgies, its false “saints,” its ecumenism, its cult of man, and holding to the immutable doctrine of the Church as taught consistently until 1958.
Lex credendi non mutatur (the rule of belief does not change). Any “teaching” that functionally contradicts the Syllabus, *Quas Primas*, *Pascendi*, and the defined dogmas is not authentic Magisterium, but usurpation.
This letter, read in full historical context, is not a harmless commemorative note. It is an early, polished mask of the coming abomination of desolation in the holy place: pious words in service of a project that would trample underfoot the very Catholic Lithuania and the very Tridentine bishop it pretends to honor.
Source:
Ut Filiis – Ad Lithuaniae Episcopos, trecentesimo et quinquagesimo volvente anno a Pio Melchioris Giedraitis, Episcopi, obitu (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025