This Latin letter of John XXIII, addressed to Dominican Superior General Michael Browne on the fifth centenary of the canonization of St Catherine of Siena, praises her sanctity, her devotion to the papacy, her Eucharistic piety, and her influence in the Church, and encourages the Order of Preachers and the faithful—especially Italians and Sienese—to celebrate her memory and invoke her intercession in order to obtain a moral and religious renewal. Beneath its pious surface, however, this text instrumentalizes a great medieval saint in order to clothe the incipient conciliar revolution with counterfeit “continuity” and to divert souls from the integral reign of Christ the King and the doctrinal intransigence of the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
St Catherine of Siena Co-opted for the Conciliar Sect’s Narrative
Selective History: Elevating Sentiment, Erasing Doctrine
At the factual level, the letter appears harmless: it recalls St Catherine’s canonization by Pius II, her role in urging the Pope’s return from Avignon to Rome, her interventions for peace among warring factions, and her intense Eucharistic and Christocentric mysticism. It cites 1 Corinthians 1:27, Psalm 86(87):6, canonical texts on Catherine, and lists later papal acts proclaiming her patroness of Rome, Italy, women of Catholic Action, nurses, etc.
Yet the dangerous operation is precisely in what is highlighted, what is softened, and—most gravely—what is omitted.
1. The letter carefully underlines Catherine as:
– Defender of “Apostolic See authority.”
– Mediator of peace.
– Mystic devoted to the Eucharist, the Passion, the Precious Blood, and the Sacred Heart.
2. It omits or dilutes:
– Her fierce denunciations of corrupt prelates and unfaithful pastors.
– Her insistence on penance, austerity, fear of hell, Divine judgment, and the urgency of conversion.
– Her uncompromising affirmation of the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith and the necessity of obedience to sound doctrine.
– Her radical opposition to moral laxity and doctrinal compromise—precisely the vices institutionalized by the conciliar revolution.
By insulating Catherine’s holiness from her doctrinal militancy, John XXIII constructs a sanitized icon, usable as a patroness of “peace,” “unity,” and a papal authority emptied of dogmatic severity. It is a proto-modernist canonical appropriation: the saint’s authentic voice is domesticated to corroborate the new orientation that would be unleashed at Vatican II.
In integral Catholic terms, this is a falsification by omission. When the Church venerates saints, she proposes them as exemplars of the whole faith. To suppress their hard sayings in order to reinforce a project of accommodation is a lie against both sanctity and truth.
Linguistic Piety as a Veil for Ecclesial Subversion
The rhetoric is ornate, seemingly traditional, yet revealing in its strategic selections.
Key stylistic symptoms:
– Abundant, flowery laudation of Catherine’s virtues and mystical writings: her “heavenly garden,” “opobalsam,” her “virile fortitude,” etc.
– Repeated calls that all—“young and virgins, elders, nobles, and commoners”—behold her as a “friendly star” over Italy, seeking the return of “happy times” of meekness and concord.
– Emphasis on her being entrusted with “patronage” of Rome, Italy, Catholic Action women, Italian nursing sisters, etc.
This language:
– Consciously avoids any clash with the rising ideological pillars of the coming council: “dialogue,” “human unity,” national patronages and social activism, all under a vague supernatural varnish.
– Exploits Catherine’s legitimate love for the papacy to underwrite a future obedience to structures that, within a few years, would be doctrinally mutating and liturgically devastating.
The most conspicuous linguistic omission is the absence of any precise doctrinal banners that defined pre-1958 papal teaching against liberalism, indifferentism, and Modernism:
– No reference to the condemnation of “freedom of cults” or the separation of Church and State solemnly rejected in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864).
– No echo of the vigorous anathemas of Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi Dominici gregis against the evolution of dogma, historicism, and sentimental pseudo-mysticism.
– No call to restore the public Kingship of Christ as formulated by Pius XI in Quas Primas; instead of the integral *Regnum Christi*, we find a vague aspiration to “felicia tempora” without defining them as the submission of nations and laws to Our Lord.
The letter’s refined style thus serves *as a screen*: the traditional vocabulary is preserved, but its dogmatic sharpness is dissolved. The intent is not to preach Catherine’s burning Catholic absolutes, but to annex her prestige for a new, irenic, horizontal ecclesial course.
Theological Deformation: St Catherine Against Modernism Turned into St Catherine for Modernism
Measured against the unchanging pre-1958 Magisterium, several theological distortions emerge.
1. Reduction of Catherine’s Zeal for the Papacy to a Blank Cheque for Any “Pope”
John XXIII lauds Catherine as a champion of the “Apostolic See” and her influence over Gregory XI and Urban VI, presenting her as the model of filial support for the Roman Pontiff:
«Multa extinxit odia et mortales sedavit inimicitias … Duobus Pontificibus Gregorio XI et Urbano VI acceptissima fuit, adeo ut legationibus fungeretur, multisque spiritualibus gratiis ab eis donaretur»
But he systematically silences the essential corollary: Catherine’s obedience was never servile; she admonished, reproved, and threatened prelates and popes themselves in the name of immutable truth. She did exactly what the pre-conciliar doctrine demands:
– St Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II q.33 a.4) affirms that subjects may publicly correct prelates when the faith is in danger.
– The Fathers and theologians (cited authoritatively, e.g., by St Robert Bellarmine) teach that manifest heretics cannot hold office in the Church, for *non potest caput esse, qui non est membrum* (he cannot be the head who is not a member).
The letter suppresses this vital dimension. Catherine is turned into a symbol of unconditional adhesion to “the Pope” as such—precisely the mentality the conciliar sect requires in order to drag souls into acceptance of doctrinal novelties, false ecumenism, religious liberty, and the cult of man.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is a grave manipulation:
– Authentic devotion to the papacy is devotion to the papacy as divinely instituted guardian of the deposit of faith, not a mystical loyalty to any occupant of Roman buildings irrespective of doctrine.
– Catherine, if confronted with a hierarchy propagating errors condemned by Trent, Vatican I, and Pius IX–XII, would not have blessed it; she would have scourged it.
By hiding this, the letter constructs a pseudo-Catherine: an obedient banner-bearer for whatever “pontiff” stands at the head of the conciliar revolution.
2. Naturalistic Hope for “Happy Times” Without Explicit Submission to Christ the King
The closing exhortations call for Catherine’s intercession:
…ut, vitiis et erroribus repulsis, mitis aevi felicia tempora illucescant.
“…that, with vices and errors repelled, the happy times of a gentle age may dawn.”
This phrase is emblematic. It seeks:
– Moral renewal and the elimination of “vices and errors,”
– But not their precise doctrinal identification in light of the Syllabus, Pascendi, Mystici Corporis, Humani Generis, etc.
– A “gentle” age, a disarmed, pacified world—distinctly consonant with the false optimism that would permeate Vatican II and its aftermath.
Compare this with Pius XI in Quas Primas:
– He teaches unequivocally that true peace and order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to the social Kingship of Christ.
– He condemns laicism and the attempted neutrality of the state as a “plague” and roots war, revolution, and moral decay precisely in the dethronement of Christ.
Here, instead of a clarion call to restore the public reign of Christ—His law as the norm of civil legislation, His Church as the sole true religion—we find a vague moralism compatible with the emerging ideology of “human rights,” “dialogue,” and a religiously neutral public order. Silence on Christ’s public Kingship, in a document invoking a saint who fought for the visible, concrete authority of the Church in Christ’s name, is not an oversight; it is a programmatic omission.
3. Instrumentalization of Patronages for a National-Ecclesial Sentimentalism
The enumeration that:
– Pius IX declared Catherine Patroness of Rome,
– Pius X of women of Catholic Action in Italy,
– Pius XII of Italy and of Italian nursing sisters,
is in itself factual. However, the use made of these facts is subtle and pernicious.
The letter encourages:
– Italians “especially” to look at Catherine as their “friendly star.”
– A national, emotional devotion, centered on civic pride and social apostolates.
What disappears?
– The universal, supranational, dogmatic mission of the Church.
– Catherine’s actual teaching, which would condemn any nationalism or activism not subordinated to the one true faith and the salvation of souls within the visible, unchanging hierarchy established by Christ.
This redirection prepares the mentality later seen in conciliar/post-conciliar documents: “patron saints” mobilized for causes—social, national, humanitarian—while the absolute necessity of the one true Church and of sacramental life ordered to eternal salvation is politically downplayed. It becomes a spirituality suitable for a paramasonic structure: saints as mascots for a new humanist project.
4. Pious Praise While Muting Anti-Modernist Weapons
The letter mentions Catherine’s:
– Eucharistic devotion,
– Meditation on the Passion,
– Veneration of the Precious Blood and Sacred Heart,
– Mystical theology (Dialogue on Divine Providence) as a “heavenly garden.”
But it omits:
– The anti-naturalistic, anti-liberal, and rigorously anti-relativist teaching embedded in her Dialogue, entirely consonant with the later anti-Modernist Magisterium.
– Any connection between her spirituality and the doctrinal condemnations of Pius IX and Pius X, which were then—and remain—directly applicable to the errors preparing Vatican II.
Given that Pius X himself (who renewed and confirmed Lamentabili and Pascendi and imposed the Anti-Modernist Oath) explicitly anathematized attempts to “develop” dogma into a new, mutable religion, to praise Catherine without rallying her to the defense of those condemnations in 1961 is theologically symptomatic.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (“He who is silent is seen to consent”): the silence about Modernism and liberalism in the act of invoking a saint eminently capable of combating them betrays the letter’s true direction. The conciliar usurper employs Catherine’s image not as a sword against heresy, but as perfume to suffocate resistance.
Intrinsic Link to the Conciliar Revolution: Not Accident but Preparation
From the symptomatic perspective, this 1961 epistle embodies the method by which the conciliar sect would later mask its apostasy:
– Maintain external devotions and saint cults.
– Retain a baroque Catholic idiom.
– Evoke obedience to “the Pope,” love for the Church, reverence for sacraments.
– Simultaneously:
– Evade explicit reaffirmation of condemned doctrines that contradict liberal democracy, religious indifferentism, and syncretic ecumenism.
– Avoid the anti-Modernist arsenal of Pius IX–Pius X.
– Reframe holiness as compatible with the new orientation.
This is precisely what the Syllabus of Pius IX, Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi, and subsequent condemnations were raised to prevent:
– Pius IX condemned the proposition that the Roman Pontiff should reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Syllabus, 80).
– Pius X condemned the idea that dogma evolves according to the needs of the age, and that the Church must adapt her doctrine to modern thought.
Yet the entire conciliar project, whose symbolic inaugurator is John XXIII, seeks to present just such reconciliation as Catholic. The letter to Browne is an instance of this: employing a great medieval saint as an unwitting accomplice in the very errors earlier popes had smashed.
It is not credible—on the basis of verifiable doctrine—that a true Roman Pontiff, solemnly bound by Quanta Cura, the Syllabus, Pascendi, Quas Primas, and the definitions of Vatican I, would remain silent at this historical juncture about:
– The universal obligation of civil society to recognize Christ the King.
– The errors of laicism, ecumenism, and indifferentism flooding the world.
– The permanent validity of the anti-Modernist condemnations.
When pious rhetoric replaces doctrinal clarity in exactly the moment when the hierarchy stands on the verge of institutionalizing condemned propositions, we witness not organic development but betrayal.
Usurped Authority: Catherine’s Fidelity to the True Papacy versus Conciliar Occupation
The letter’s central manipulation is ecclesiological.
It entwines:
– Catherine’s heroic service to true popes (Gregory XI, Urban VI),
– With demands—implicit but decisive—that Catholics today emulate her by rallying around the conciliar structure and its head.
But Catholic theology prior to 1958 is explicit:
– A manifest heretic cannot be a member of the Church, much less its head, because *non potest esse caput qui est extra corpus* (“he who is outside the body cannot be head of it”).
– Canon 188 §4 of the 1917 Code recognizes that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office ipso facto.
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII consistently teach the immutability of dogma and the duty to resist errors even if clothed in authority.
St Catherine’s loyalty was to the papacy as office of truth, not to an ideological project. If confronted with an authority that:
– Promoted religious liberty contrary to the Syllabus,
– Dismantled the integral Catholic State in violation of Quas Primas,
– Engaged in syncretic “dialogue” and ecumenism with heresies condemned by Trent and Vatican I,
– Deformed the liturgy away from the propitiatory Sacrifice into a communal “assembly,”
she would have recognized in it not the voice of the Bride of Christ, but the hiss of the serpent. To invoke her name to buttress the authority of a conciliar usurper is a sacrilegious inversion.
The letter is therefore doubly perverse:
– It appeals to a saint of uncompromising orthodoxy.
– To secure submission to a conciliar trajectory that objectively contradicts the very Magisterium she obeyed.
Silence on the Ultimate Supernatural Stakes: A Mark of Bankruptcy
Most damning is the letter’s theological silence where a true Catholic voice would roar.
Consider what is nearly absent or merely alluded to:
– No explicit warning about hell, eternal damnation, or the Four Last Things, central in Catherine’s writings.
– No clear assertion that only in the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, can souls be saved.
– No insistence that sacramental grace—especially the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and confession—is absolutely necessary for the renewal sought.
– No denunciation of the modern apostasy, of the anti-Christian powers (naturalism, secularism, masonic infiltration) unmasked by Pius IX in the Syllabus and by Leo XIII and Pius XII in their repeated condemnations.
Instead we have:
– Calls for commemorations, celebrations, recollection of “annals,” and the hope of gentler times.
– A tone that could seamlessly harmonize with the naturalistic optimism of the upcoming council and its post-conciliar cult of man.
Gravissimum silentium—a most grave silence. Where a true successor of Pius X would have mobilized St Catherine as a hammer of Modernism and a prophetess of repentance, John XXIII uses her as a gentle emblem for a Church about to lay down its arms and embrace precisely that “modern civilization” which previous popes declared irreconcilable with the Kingship of Christ.
This silence on supernatural ultimacy—sin, grace, judgment, the necessity of doctrinal exclusivity—is itself the clearest proof of the theological and spiritual bankruptcy permeating the text.
Conclusion: Pious Words as an Instrument of Apostasy
Exposed to the light of the pre-1958 Magisterium, this letter is not a simple act of devotion, but a calculated piece of conciliar propaganda:
– It appropriates St Catherine’s legitimate authority while concealing her most inconvenient, anti-liberal, anti-modernist dimensions.
– It promotes a sentimental, national, and social cult detached from the integral, militant Catholic faith.
– It instills a mystified obedience to “the Pope” detached from doctrinal criteria, thereby preparing souls to follow a paramasonic, neo-church into doctrinal deviation.
– It replaces the demand for the universal social reign of Christ the King with a vague aspiration for “happy,” “gentle” times.
Thus we see the paradigm of the conciliar operation: not open denial, but corrosion through selective citation, strategic silence, and misuse of holy figures to legitimize an enterprise condemned in advance by the constant teaching of the true Church.
In the face of such counterfeit homage, the only truly Catholic response is to recover St Catherine of Siena in her entirety:
– As a relentless lover of truth,
– As a scourge of corrupt prelates,
– As a defender of the papacy understood strictly within its divinely fixed limits,
– As a herald of penance, the Cross, and the exclusive necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.
Any attempt—such as this letter—to turn her into an icon of conciliar irenicism must be recognized, judged, and rejected as a subtle but real betrayal of both the saint and the faith she served unto death.
Source:
Hoc anno – Ad Michaëlem Browne, Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Moderatorem Generalem, quinto exeunte saeculo, ex quo Sanctorum Caelitum honores Pius Pp. II S. Catharinae Senensi decrevit (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025