The letter celebrates the 350th anniversary of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, extolling it as a luminous center of “Christian wisdom” in the Far East, praising its Dominican foundations, royal and papal privileges, alleged doctrinal integrity, contributions to civil and ecclesial life, and its role in forming leaders of an independent Philippines; it invokes Innocent X, Leo XIII, and Pius X to cloak this praise in historical continuity, commends the university as alma mater of the Filipino nation, and concludes with benedictions under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Thomas Aquinas. In reality, this text is a paradigmatic exercise in using traditional language to anesthetize vigilance, preparing Catholic institutions for absorption into the conciliar revolution and the cult of man under a usurper who would inaugurate the systematic betrayal of the very Magisterium he selectively cites.
John XXIII’s Manila Panegyric as a Manifesto of Controlled Subversion
Historical Praise as a Screen for Impending Revolution
The document, issued by John XXIII to the rector of Santo Tomas on the University’s 350th anniversary, appears at first glance as a conventional congratulatory letter. It recalls:
“In the farthest shores of the East there shines a most brilliant light of Christian wisdom, the great house of studies of Manila, which took its distinguished name from St Thomas Aquinas…”
He lauds:
– The Dominican foundation and its roots in Archbishop Miguel de Benavides.
– The favors of the Apostolic See and the Spanish Crown.
– The alleged preservation and propagation of orthodox faith.
– Its influence on theology, civil questions, arts, morals, and its assistance at synods and episcopal ministries.
– Missionaries and martyrs going forth from it.
– Its service to an independent Philippines as alma mater of the nation and “strong bulwark of Christian culture.”
On the surface, nothing seems more Catholic: Marian patronage, appeal to St Thomas, references to Innocent X, Leo XIII, Pius X; Roman benediction. Yet precisely here lies the perfidy: a calculated deployment of venerable names and vocabulary to legitimize the authority of the very person inaugurating the conciliar deviation.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, several points require ruthless unmasking:
– The document nowhere reaffirms explicitly the obligation of the State to profess the only true religion and submit to the social Kingship of Christ, despite citing a university historically rooted in confessional Christendom.
– It glorifies the role of the university in a post-colonial, religiously pluralist state without a syllable of warning against liberal legislation, indifferentism, or Masonic influence, directly contradicting the pre-1958 Magisterium that it hypocritically invokes.
– It instrumentalizes St Thomas Aquinas and the memory of anti-modernist pontiffs to create an illusion of continuity while silently preparing the decapitation of their doctrinal legacy.
This is not an innocent academic compliment; it is a specimen of *ars dissimulandi* (the art of dissimulation) in the service of the nascent conciliar sect.
Selective Continuity: Invoking Anti-Modernist Popes While Emptying Their Teaching
John XXIII carefully cites:
– Innocent X wishing that from letters and studies “the Catholic faith be increased, the worship of the Divine Majesty extended, truth recognized and justice cultivated.”
– Leo XIII receiving the university into his protection for its integrity of doctrine.
– Pius X praising its fruitful influence on religion and letters.
At first glance, this looks like filial continuity. In substance, it is an abuse.
Before 1958, the Magisterium, culminating in Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, and Pius XI, taught with crystalline rigor:
– The Catholic Church is the only true Church; all other religions are false. (*Syllabus*, prop. 15–18 condemned.)
– The State must recognize and favor the true religion and submit to Christ the King. (Pius IX, *Syllabus* 77–80; Pius XI, *Quas primas*.)
– Liberalism, religious indifferentism, naturalism, and Freemasonry are irreconcilable with the Faith.
– Modernism is “the synthesis of all heresies” (*Pascendi*, confirmed by *Lamentabili sane exitu*), to be extirpated, not dialogued with.
This letter stands in radical tension with that doctrinal line, not by what it states (largely harmless in isolation), but by what it programmatically omits precisely at a decisive historical juncture:
– No explicit condemnation of laicism, despite praising the university’s role in an independent, liberal-democratic order.
– No reminder that civil laws, constitutions, and universities sin mortally if they enshrine religious indifferentism or deny the rights of the Church.
– No warning against the Masonic penetration and secularisation of higher education, explicitly unmasked pre-1958 by the true Magisterium and in the Syllabus’ denunciation of the subjection of the Church to the State and secular control of education (props. 39–48, 55).
Instead, the letter canonizes the political and academic trajectory by which a formerly confessional institution is integrated into a pluralist state as a supposedly “Christian humanistic” success. This is the conciliar operation in nuce: the substitution of supernatural clarity with irenic, horizontal humanism cloaked in pious phrases.
Naturalistic Humanism under the Cloak of “Christian Wisdom”
One of the most revealing sentences exalts the university as:
“alma mater of the whole Filipino nation, generous nourishers, a strong bastion of Christian humanism.”
The shift is decisive:
– The authentic pre-1958 doctrine, synthesised by Pius XI in *Quas primas*, declares that peace, justice, and authentic culture are impossible unless individuals and states recognize the reign of Christ, submit to His law, and publicly honor Him.
– The Syllabus condemns the separation of Church and State (prop. 55), the pretension of the State as source of all rights (39), and the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority (47–48).
By contrast, this letter celebrates the contribution of a Pontifical and Royal university to a polity structurally premised on those condemned principles, without one word recalling the binding Catholic doctrine that the State must officially profess the Catholic religion. The repeated emphasis on “culture,” “letters,” “public offices,” “laws and institutions” is entirely horizontal; the letter does not once confront the modern liberal framework as an evil to be corrected. It speaks as if “Christian humanism” in a pluralist democracy were an unproblematic triumph of grace.
This is the essence of the emerging conciliar mentality: *gratia non perficit, sed obruitur vel tacite tolerat naturam deformem* (grace no longer perfects but effectively tolerates deformed nature). By silent acquiescence, it legitimizes the dethronement of Christ the King and the banishment of the Church from the juridical order.
Pius XI explicitly warned that refusing Christ’s public reign leads to the collapse of law, authority, and peace. Yet John XXIII, on the threshold of his council, praises a key institution without requiring the Catholic social order. The omission is not accidental; it is programmatic.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Triumph and Harmony without Militant Supernaturalism
The rhetoric is smooth, solemn, affective:
– “most brilliant light,” “illustrious decorations,” “abundant harvest of merits,” “strong bulwark,” “joy,” “sweet consolation,” “paternal wishes.”
But the aggressive supernatural note characteristic of pre-1958 papal language in similar contexts is absent:
– No evocation of *error perennially plotting* against the faith.
– No mention of hell, judgment, the danger of apostasy in universities.
– No warning about rationalism, indifferentism, or modernist exegesis, despite the era’s obvious decadence.
– No call to wage doctrinal war, only to continue “nobly” cultivating arts and virtues in an anodyne sense.
Compare this with St Pius X’s *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane exitu*, or with Leo XIII’s explicit denunciations of Masonic control of public life. Their language is combative, precise, unmasking. Here, instead, we see the language of bureaucratic benevolence and flattery—designed to reassure, not to guard.
This “pastoral” tone is itself a sign. The absence of polemical precision where grave dangers exist is not humility but betrayal. *Tacere veritatem est eam negare* (to be silent about the truth is to deny it). Silence on Modernism in 1961 in a letter to a major Catholic university in a strategically contested region is culpable.
Instrumentalizing St Thomas Aquinas while Preparing His Defeat
The letter repeatedly invokes St Thomas Aquinas as:
“leader and master of perfect and undefiled doctrine.”
But this invocation is deeply ironic and becomes accusatory against its author:
– Genuine Thomistic doctrine, canonically elevated as the normative theology of the Church, utterly excludes relativistic “development” of dogma, doctrinal evolutionism, and the anthropocentric turn that the coming conciliar sect would impose.
– Pius X and his successors before 1958 mandated Thomistic formation precisely as a bulwark against Modernism and liberal Catholicism. *Lamentabili* condemns the idea that dogmas are merely interpretations of religious experience (props. 22, 54, 58–60).
– The University of Santo Tomas is here encouraged to glory in its Thomistic heritage, right before the same John XXIII convokes the council through which St Thomas’ doctrinal centrality would be effectively replaced by personalism, historicism, and phenomenological subjectivism.
Thus the letter functions as a rhetorical tranquiliser: invoking Thomas to paralyse Thomism. It is a classic strategy: use sacred names to mask an inversion of their content. The true Aquinas would have condemned the conciliar novelties as destructive of the *fides quae semel tradita est sanctis* (the faith once delivered to the saints).
To accept this letter uncritically as “Catholic” is to accept the use of St Thomas as an icon while discarding his metaphysical and theological substance.
The Misuse of Martyrdom and Mission
John XXIII briefly commends:
“those sacred expeditions sent forth from there in no small number, heralds of the Gospel of equal virtue, among whom the noble palm of martyrdom shone red sometimes with their shed blood.”
Once again, true realities are manipulated for a subversive narrative:
– The missionaries and martyrs from Santo Tomas labored and died under an integral Catholic conception of Church and State, preaching that outside the Church there is no salvation, combating paganism, Islam, and heresy.
– By 1961, the conciliar line in preparation, which John XXIII would unleash, tends toward “dialogue,” respect for false religions, ecumenism, and the salvation of non-Catholics as a norm—all condemned in substance by the Syllabus and earlier papal teaching.
– The invocation of martyrdom thus becomes a decorative halo, while the very doctrinal convictions that animated those martyrs are being quietly neutralized.
A Catholic document faithful to the pre-1958 Magisterium would have bound the university to continue forming missionaries who preach exclusive Catholic truth, condemn error, and work for the conversion, not “dialogical coexistence,” of nations. This letter does not.
Exaltation of the New Political Order without Doctrinal Conditions
A key passage extols the role of the university after Philippine independence:
“When the Philippine Islands, having attained freedom, became their own masters, the ancient university of studies, by the wisdom which it taught, by the men whom it sent forth from its bosom to undertake public offices, by the laws and institutions in the framing of which it contributed assistance, has greatly deserved well of the fatherland, and will deserve even more and more in the future.”
Here the conciliar mentality manifests with disarming clarity:
– The independence and liberal constitution, instead of being evaluated in light of immutable Catholic teaching on the confessional State and the condemnation of indifferentism, are simply embraced as a field of “service.”
– There is no insistence that Catholic politicians formed by Santo Tomas are bound in conscience to reject religious freedom understood as a natural right of error, or to oppose secularist structures.
– The letter baptizes the new order by praising Catholic participation in its architecture while avoiding any clash of principles.
This directly contradicts the spirit and letter of the Syllabus and *Quas primas*, where:
– The State’s refusal to recognize and protect the true religion is a grave offense to God and a cause of social ruin.
– The Church cannot reconcile herself with liberalism and modern civilization understood as emancipation from Christ’s rule.
The letter thus exemplifies the transition from *Ecclesia docens* (the Church teaching and judging nations) to “Church of accompaniment” integrated into secular pluralism. Such integration, under the guise of patriotism and service, is apostasy at the level of principles.
Silence on Modernism and the Betrayal of Pius X
It is particularly striking that John XXIII, writing to a major theological institution only a few decades after the condemnations of Modernism, does not recall even once:
– *Pascendi dominici gregis*.
– *Lamentabili sane exitu*.
– The anti-modernist oath (then still in force).
– The duty to root philosophy and theology in St Thomas as commanded by prior popes to protect the integrity of faith.
Instead he aggregates Innocent X, Leo XIII, and Pius X into a harmless gallery of predecessors who “praised” the university, carefully avoiding their binding doctrinal content. This is not an oversight; it is a method.
St Pius X had solemnly warned that those who defend modernist errors or question the condemnations fall under excommunication and that Modernism seeks to destroy the foundations of faith under scientific pretexts. The University of Santo Tomas, as a major center of studies, should have been exhorted:
– To uphold the anti-modernist oath.
– To reject historical-critical relativism.
– To guard against Protestant and rationalist infiltration.
John XXIII’s total silence and merely aesthetic Thomism serve instead to anesthetize and open the doors. Where the true Magisterium cries “vigilate!” he whispers “gaudete!”—while the wolves enter.
The Conciliar Sect Prefigured: Harmonious Words, Doctrinal Evacuation
This letter is an early microcosm of the post-1958 *conciliar sect*’s method:
1. Preserve external forms: Latin, solemn style, Marian and Thomistic references, citations of pre-1958 popes.
2. Remove the sharp edges: no precise doctrinal condemnations, no direct clash with liberalism, rationalism, or false religions.
3. Normalize the new order: pluralist state, democratic legislation, religious liberty practices, all treated as unproblematic fields of Christian “service.”
4. Flatter institutions: praise universities and hierarchies to secure their docile collaboration.
5. Prepare the council: acclimate minds to a “pastoral” approach that will, in fact, overturn doctrine in practice while claiming continuity.
From the standpoint of authentic Catholic doctrine, the spiritual crime here is double:
– Against truth: by practical denial, through silence and ambiguous exaltation, of binding teachings such as those in the Syllabus and *Quas primas*.
– Against souls: by soothing Catholic institutions into complacency just as the Revolution is about to be enthroned in Rome.
*Lex orandi, lex credendi*: the language of this letter shows a faith already mutating. The supernatural hierarchy of ends is eclipsed by national progress, academic prestige, and cultural impact. Christ the King is mentioned only implicitly; “Christian humanism” stands where His sovereign rights should be proclaimed.
The Duty of Rejection and the Call to Immutable Tradition
Given the principles irreformably taught before 1958:
– *Dogma non mutatur* (dogma does not change), and its integral implications in faith, morals, ecclesiology, and social doctrine, cannot be relativized by “pastoral” accommodations.
– The Church has no power to reconcile herself with liberalism, indifferentism, or Modernism, which have been condemned as incompatible with the Faith.
– Catholic universities are bound under pain of grave infidelity to:
– Teach philosophy and theology according to St Thomas, not as a decorative label but as binding norm.
– Submit absolutely to the pre-1958 Magisterium in its unchanging sense.
– Reject every attempt to subordinate truth to pluralist consensus, national ideologies, or secular accreditation.
Therefore, an institution that would take this letter of John XXIII as a charter, rather than measure it against the prior Roman condemnations he betrays by omission, becomes complicit in the conciliar apostasy.
– The laudatory tone toward the post-independence order, devoid of doctrinal conditions, serves as catechism for the “Church of the New Advent,” not for the Catholic Church.
– The selective invocation of Pius X without *Pascendi* is itself a practical repudiation of Pius X.
– The cult of “Christian humanism” detached from the juridical and social reign of Christ is nothing but baptized naturalism.
In the face of such texts, fidelity requires:
– To expose their subtext and omissions relentlessly.
– To refuse any hermeneutic that pretends to reconcile them with the Syllabus, *Quas primas*, and *Pascendi* without mutilating those documents.
– To hold fast to the integral pre-1958 doctrine as the sole norm, rejecting the seductive rhetoric of post-1958 usurpers and their institutional flattery.
If Santo Tomas—or any Catholic university—wishes truly to honor its patrons and its saints, it must repudiate the conciliar trajectory inaugurated by John XXIII, reject all modernist infiltrations, restore Thomistic doctrine in its authentic rigor, and publicly profess the social Kingship of Christ over the Philippines and over every human order.
Anything less is not a development of its glorious heritage, but complicity in its destruction.
Source:
In extremis – Ad Ioannem Labrador O. P., Pontificiae et Regiae Manilanae Studiorum Universitatis a S. Thoma Aquinate Moderatorem, trecentesimo quinquagesimo anno exeunte, ex quo idem Athenaeum constit… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025