The letter issued in 1961 by the usurper John XXIII to Cardinal John D’Alton on the 15th centenary of the death of St Patrick offers praise for Ireland’s Catholic heritage, exalts St Patrick as apostle of the nation, recalls the fidelity and missionary fecundity of the Irish, highlights saints such as Columba, Columbanus, Malachy, Laurence O’Toole and the martyrs, and urges continued unity with Rome and support for the Irish College. Beneath its devout vocabulary, however, this text functions as a pious anesthetic: a calculated misuse of Ireland’s supernatural patrimony to legitimize an already advancing conciliar revolution that will dissolve precisely the faith and kingship of Christ which St Patrick preached.
John XXIII’s Hibernian Rhetoric as Preludium to Apostasy
Instrumentalizing St Patrick to Sanction a New Religion
From the outset, the letter presents itself as a tribute to St Patrick and Irish fidelity. Yet every supernatural element is subtly co-opted to serve a project already in motion: the inauguration of a new, naturalistic, ecumenical religion under the guise of continuity.
Key moves in the text:
– John XXIII enthusiastically blesses the planned celebrations of St Patrick, praising Irish bishops for their “provident care.”
– He lauds St Patrick as one of those rare apostles who, by special grace, win entire nations for Christ.
– He evokes Hosea: “I will espouse thee to me in faith… and I will say to the one who was not my people: Thou art my people; and he shall say: Thou art my God”, applying this to Ireland.
– He extols Irish missionary monks who evangelized Europe.
– He commemorates Irish fidelity under persecution, culminating in Blessed Oliver Plunkett.
– He rejoices in Ireland’s abundant vocations and missionary clergy.
– He especially underlines the “hereditary” bond with the Roman See, rooted in St Patrick and Pope Celestine I, and urges support for the Irish College in Rome.
On the surface this could be a pre-1958 papal exhortation. It is precisely here that its perfidy lies. The rhetoric of tradition is weaponized to ease the faithful into obedience toward a pseudo-magisterium preparing to contradict that very tradition. The text is not neutral; it is a bridge from integral Catholic Ireland to the conciliar sect’s aggiornamento.
Selective History: The Facts Bent to Serve a New Ecclesiology
On the factual level, many individual statements are historically accurate:
– St Patrick’s mission, his Roman origin via Celestine I, and his foundational role in Irish Christianity.
– The extraordinary Irish missionary contribution (Columba, Columbanus, Kilian, Gall, etc.).
– The persecutions endured in penal times.
– The martyrdom of Oliver Plunkett.
– The existence and importance of the Irish College in Rome.
Yet these facts are deployed under false premises:
1. Silencing the exclusivity of the true faith.
– The letter never once restates that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation (*extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*), although this doctrine was solemnly and repeatedly taught by the authentic Magisterium, including the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and Pope Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam.
– Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns the errors that all religions are equally paths to salvation and that Protestantism is just another form of the same true religion (Syllabus, props. 16–18). This letter, written by the man who would convoke Vatican II, is ominously silent where pre-1958 pontiffs were explicit.
2. No mention of the reign of Christ the King in public law.
– Ireland’s history of Catholic nationhood, its constitutionally favored position for the Church, and its public acknowledgment of Christ, are not set forth as a binding model deriving from divine right.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that true peace and order require the public, juridical reign of Christ over states; he condemns laicism as a plague. This element is absent. The letter speaks of Patrick, missionaries, and fidelity, but ignores the necessary political implications of the Kingship of Christ, preparing the way for the later conciliar surrender to religious liberty.
3. Mutilated memory of persecution.
– The text recalls Irish heroism—poverty, exile, chains, martyrdom—but without drawing the doctrinal and political conclusion that the Protestant and liberal systems which waged war on the Church are intrinsically iniquitous.
– Pre-1958 popes (Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X) consistently identified liberalism, indifferentism, and secret societies—particularly Freemasonry—as principal persecutors. Here, there is a sanitized narrative: suffering is remembered, its anti-Catholic causes are hushed.
4. Uncritical praise of post-war Irish missionary expansion as if quantity guaranteed orthodoxy.
– John XXIII exalts Ireland as inexhaustible supplier of clergy to English-speaking lands. But he offers no warning that these clergy must defend immutable doctrine against Modernism.
– Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi exposed Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” demanding vigilance. The letter, instead of echoing this, uses vocational fecundity as a sentimental proof of health, precisely on the eve of doctrinal collapse and liturgical devastation.
By taking real glories and detaching them from their doctrinal framework, John XXIII manufactures a false continuity: the Irish are encouraged to see communion with him—the initiator of Vatican II—as simply the continuation of communion with Celestine I, Leo XIII or Pius XI. This is historical sleight of hand.
The Poisoned Sweetness of the Language: Piety as Camouflage
The linguistic fabric of the letter betrays its function.
– The tone is honeyed, emotional, filled with picturesque praise: “lectissima pars,” “fecundissima parens et altrix,” “magnificentissima beneficia.”
– Scriptural allusions are orthodox but selectively non-combative: Hosea, Hebrews 11, Maccabees, Pauline blessings.
– The style is deliberately “patristic” and “Roman,” mimicking genuine papal exhortations.
Yet within this style, several symptomatic features appear:
1. Absence of doctrinal precision.
– No clear affirmation of defined dogmas under attack in the 20th century: the absolute uniqueness of the Catholic Church, the inerrancy of Scripture, the immutability of dogma, the condemnation of “freedom of cults” and “rights of error.”
– No explicit recall of the very anti-Modernist teaching solemnly promulgated shortly before: Leo XIII’s anti-liberal encyclicals, Pius X’s *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, Benedict XV’s continuity, Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, Pius XII’s condemnations of nouvelle théologie. Silence where a true successor of Pius XII would have fortified Ireland against the approaching storm.
2. Psychological flattery as manipulation.
– Ireland is praised as uniquely faithful, missionary, Roman. This is accurate historically, but here serves as a sedative: “Since you are so faithful, you can trust us as we lead you into aggiornamento.”
– The technique: *captatio benevolentiae* masking radical intent. This is not the straightforward admonitory charity of Pius X, who warned, corrected, and condemned; it is the managerial “kindness” of one preparing a revolution while pacifying those most attached to tradition.
3. Reduction of union with Rome to affective loyalty to the person of the current ruler.
– The letter urges strengthening the “bond” with the Apostolic See, invoked via Patrick and Celestine I, to secure support for the Irish College.
– Yet the content of that “bond” is not defined as adherence to the perennial Magisterium, but as docility to the imminent council and its new orientations. The term “Roman” is aestheticized; *Romanitas* is detached from dogma and sacramental integrity and attached to institutional sentimentality.
This saccharine rhetoric is not harmless. It is the envelope of a doctrinal inversion. *Dulce verbum, amarum venenum* (sweet word, bitter poison).
Doctrinal Subversion by Omission: What a True Pontiff Would Have Said
Measured against immutable Catholic doctrine before 1958, the letter’s omissions are damning.
1. Ecclesia una, sancta, catholica, apostolica—exclusive and necessary.
– A Catholic document praising St Patrick and Irish history should:
– Affirm that Patrick brought the one true faith, outside of which there is no salvation.
– Condemn Protestantism and liberalism that ravaged Ireland as objective evils.
– Instead, there is a bland “evangelical light” narrative open to later reinterpretation as “Patrick as proto-ecumenist,” which the conciliar sect indeed pursued.
2. Christus Rex—public kingship over Ireland.
– After *Quas Primas*, any serious reflection on a historically Catholic nation must insist on:
– The duty of the state to recognize and honor the true religion.
– The sinfulness of laicism and religious indifferentism.
– John XXIII never calls Ireland to defend or deepen the social reign of Christ; he safely avoids condemning the liberal principles which Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom would enshrine. The silence prepares acceptance of that treason.
3. Anti-Modernist obligation.
– St Patrick’s faith is identical, not merely analogous, to that defended by Pius X.
– A true pope in 1961, seeing the infiltration of Modernism in seminaries and universities, would have:
– Reaffirmed the Anti-Modernist Oath.
– Warned Irish clergy and missionaries against doctrinal novelties.
– This letter does neither. It offers anodyne encouragement while omitting the precise truths Modernism denies, in defiance of Pius X’s binding condemnations in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*, which anathematize the evolution of dogma, relativization of Scripture, and democratization of the Magisterium.
4. Condemnation of secret societies and liberal revolution.
– Pius IX’s Syllabus and later condemnations of Freemasonry explicitly identify the anti-Catholic forces dissolving Christian order.
– Ireland’s persecutions, dispossessions, and modern secularization are fruits of the same Masonic-liberal matrix.
– John XXIII mentions suffering but never names its ideological cause, thus disarming the faithful intellectually and morally. This is not oversight; it is alignment with the “reconciliation with modern civilization” anathematized in Syllabus proposition 80.
In Catholic theology, obstinate silence against grave, prevailing error—especially from one claiming universal teaching authority—is not neutral. It is complicity. Qui tacet, consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent) applies acutely when a supposed shepherd omits precisely what his predecessors commanded him to affirm.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution: From Irish Catholicism to Neo-Church Servility
Seen in the broader trajectory, this letter is a symptom of systemic apostasy.
1. Prepping the moral capital.
– The conciliar sect depends on parasitically consuming the moral and historical capital of the true Church.
– Ireland—Catholic, Marian in authentic sense, missionary, attached to Rome—is an ideal reservoir of credibility.
– John XXIII clothes himself in Patrick’s mantle in order to spend Patrick’s authority on Vatican II and its aftermath.
2. From missionary zeal to ecumenical betrayal.
– The Irish monks once converted pagans and heretics, preaching conversion, not dialogue.
– Post-conciliar “missionaries,” including many from Ireland, under the influence of the same structures this letter flatters, abandoned preaching the necessity of the Catholic Church, indulged in “inculturation,” interreligious services, and respect for “other paths.”
– That deformation flows logically from the doctrinal omissions evident already here.
3. The Irish College as laboratory of aggiornamento.
– The enthusiastic insistence on protecting and fostering the Irish College under the “tutelage” of the same Rome that would soon promulgate the new pseudo-rite of “Mass” and deform priestly formation is revealing.
– What is presented as a citadel of fidelity becomes, in fact, an instrument to reshape Irish clergy into docile agents of the conciliar ideology and the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
4. The counterfeit appeal to St Patrick’s Romanity.
– St Patrick’s obedience to Rome, to Celestine I, to the faith of the Fathers is real.
– But that obedience was obedience to the unchanging deposit: the same which Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII defended against Modernism, liberalism, naturalism.
– To invoke Patrick’s loyalty in order to demand submission to a regime that would promulgate religious liberty, false ecumenism, and sacrilegious liturgical “reform” is to abuse the saint. It is a seduction: “Because Patrick obeyed Celestine, you must obey us—even as we contradict Celestine and Patrick.”
This abuse perfectly matches what pre-1958 Magisterium condemned: the attempt to cloak doctrinal novelties with the language of tradition; to redefine “fidelity to Rome” as mere institutional allegiance, severed from the immutable teachings that constitute the very identity of the Roman Church.
Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterium: Doctrinal Weapons Against This Text
To unmask the bankruptcy of John XXIII’s letter, let us confront it directly with integral Catholic doctrine, using those very doctrinal arms which the conciliar sect betrays.
1. Quas Primas (Pius XI, 1925).
– Teaches that peace, order, and justice are possible only through the social and political reign of Christ the King.
– Condemns laicism and the relegation of religion to private life as a root plague.
– The 1961 letter, supposedly celebrating Ireland’s apostle, never demands that Ireland recognize publicly and juridically Christ’s Kingship, nor warns against the liberal-democratic poisons slowly corroding Irish law. The kingship of Christ is sentimentalized or suppressed.
2. Syllabus Errorum (Pius IX, 1864).
– Condemns religious indifferentism, doctrinal evolutionism, state supremacy over the Church, separation of Church and state, cult of progress, liberty of error.
– The 1961 text is crafted by one whose pontificate ushers in Vatican II, which in turn endorses religious liberty, ecumenism, and a practical separation of Church and state contrary to the Syllabus. The letter’s silence about these condemned errors is the silence of one already in revolt.
3. Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi (Pius X, 1907).
– Explicitly condemn:
– That dogmas evolve according to historical circumstances.
– That Church authority is merely the expression of the people’s consciousness.
– That Scripture contains errors or myths.
– That tradition can be reinterpreted in a purely historical or pastoral key.
– The letter uses historical narrative and devotional tone to prepare precisely such “pastoral” reconfiguration: Ireland’s past is invoked not as a binding model of unchanging dogma and cult, but as ornamental background for a “new springtime.”
4. Canon Law and the loss of office by heresy.
– According to the integral theological tradition summarized by St Robert Bellarmine and reflected in 1917 Code c.188.4, a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church and loses office by public defection.
– John XXIII’s role in convoking a council aimed at reconciling with liberalism and embracing condemned principles situates him within that line of manifest rupture. His sentimental letter does not heal but aggravates his usurpation by simulating papal continuity.
In light of these sources, the 1961 letter is not merely “insufficient.” It is structurally aligned with the coming overthrow of the Catholic order. Its sweetness is treacherous; its omissions are incriminating; its use of Patrick is sacrilegious.
St Patrick’s Authentic Legacy Against the Neo-Church
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the conclusion is unavoidable.
– St Patrick:
– Preached the one true faith, demanded conversion from idols and errors.
– Rooted Ireland not in vague spirituality, but in obedience to the See of Peter as guardian of unchanging doctrine.
– Would anathematize the religious liberty, syncretic “dialogue,” and ecumenical relativism promoted by the conciliar sect that claims John XXIII as its founder.
– The heroic Irish martyrs:
– Shed blood rather than attend heretical worship; what they rejected with their lives is what the neo-church now embraces in “ecumenical services” and shared liturgies.
– Bore witness that “union with Rome” means union with the true, exclusive Catholic faith, not submission to any occupant of Vatican palaces regardless of doctrine.
Therefore:
– The 1961 letter’s attempt to weld St Patrick’s legacy to John XXIII’s program is a theological imposture.
– Its refusal to proclaim the hard, exclusive claims of Christ the King and His Church is spiritually bankrupt.
– Its praise of Irish loyalty becomes perverse when used to lure that same loyalty into complicity with the conciliar revolution.
The only coherent response faithful to St Patrick, to the martyrs, and to the pre-1958 Magisterium is:
– To reject the conciliar sect’s exploitation of Irish sanctity.
– To uphold the unchanging doctrine: one Church, one faith, one baptism; no salvation outside the Catholic Church; Christ’s social kingship; condemnation of liberalism, indifferentism, Modernism.
– To remain attached not to a corrupt lineage of usurpers beginning with John XXIII, but to the perpetual Roman faith which they have sought to overturn.
Non nova, sed eadem (“Not new things, but the same”): this is the true Catholic measure, by which this letter stands condemned.
Source:
Hibernorum Apostoli – Ad Ioannem Tit. S. Agathae S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem D'Alton, Archiepiscopum Armachanum, quinto et decimo exeunte saeculo a S. Patricii pio decessu (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025