John XXIII’s Latin letter “Laeti laetum” (5 April 1962) is a congratulatory message to Cardinal Carlos María de la Torre, archbishop of Quito, on the fiftieth anniversary of his episcopal consecration. It extols his pastoral zeal, promotion of Catholic Action and social works, defense of ecclesiastical rights, care for youth, foundation of Catholic schools and a Catholic university, and concludes by granting him the faculty to impart a plenary indulgence on the jubilee occasion, sealed with warm paternal language and the motto “Obedientia et pax.” This apparently benign panegyric is, in reality, a concentrated manifesto of the conciliar sect’s naturalistic, ecclesiological, and liturgical subversion under the smiling mask of courtesies.
Laeti laetum (1962): Celebratory Facade of an Emerging Counter-Church
Personalist Panegyric as Instrument of a Counterfeit Magisterium
Already the very premise of this letter demands exposure. Giovanni Roncalli (John XXIII), first in the line of usurpers beginning in 1958, presumes to speak with apostolic authority and to confer spiritual favors. His entire “pontificate” is historically and doctrinally marked by the programmatic betrayal later named *aggiornamento*, i.e. elevation of the world over Christ the King and preparation of the conciliar revolution.
In this text he:
– Praises de la Torre’s fifty years of episcopate as if continuity with pre-1958 Catholicism were intact.
– Commends the promotion of “Catholic Action and social action.”
– Exalts the foundation of a Catholic University in Quito as a “bright star of hope.”
– Grants faculty to impart a plenary indulgence “in Our name and with Our authority.”
The entire narrative assumes his legitimacy and cloaks his program in traditional language, while the doctrinal foundations of the neo-church are being laid in parallel: religious liberty, ecumenism, democratization of the Church, and the mutilation of the Most Holy Sacrifice. In classic Modernist fashion (unmasked by St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane exitu*), orthodoxy is not directly denied but hollowed out and overgrown with sentimental humanism.
This letter must therefore be read as an artifact of a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, not as an act of the true Magisterium.
Factual Plane: What Is Praised, What Is Concealed
On the surface, Roncalli’s text seems harmless, even pious. Yet each factual element is weaponized; what is present and what is absent are equally damning.
1. He recalls that de la Torre was consecrated a bishop by St. Pius X:
“the fiftieth anniversary of that day always to be remembered by you, when you were consecrated Bishop, having received this honor of nomination from Our most holy Predecessor Pius X.”
English: “the fiftieth anniversary of that day… when you were consecrated bishop… by Our most holy Predecessor Pius X.”
This is a deliberate attempt to appropriate the prestige of the anti-Modernist Pope in order to legitimize a revolutionary pontificate. But *nemo dat quod non habet* (no one gives what he does not have): invoking Pius X does not transmute a Modernist usurper’s letter into an act of the Catholic Church.
2. He praises de la Torre for:
– Instruction of the faithful in Christian truths.
– Defense of the rights of the Church.
– Promotion of Catholic Action and social initiatives.
– Educational endeavors, especially the Catholic University in Quito.
Nowhere:
– A clear, dogmatic affirmation of the unique, exclusive truth of the Catholic Church against indifferentism and false ecumenism condemned irrevocably in the *Syllabus of Errors* (Pius IX, 1864).
– A call to combat Modernism, which Pius X branded as *“the synthesis of all heresies”*, and which was already ascendant in Latin America by the mid-20th century.
– A warning against secret societies and Masonic influence, which Pius IX and Leo XIII unambiguously exposed as the sworn enemies of the Church.
– A mention of the necessity of the *state of grace*, the danger of mortal sin, the Four Last Things, the triumph of the Social Reign of Christ as taught with crystalline clarity in *Quas Primas*.
The silence is deafening. Silence about salvation, judgment, hell, and the absolute kingship of Christ constitutes, in such an official letter, a formal displacement of supernatural priorities by a worldly, sociological Catholicism.
3. He grants indulgences and invokes “Apostolic Blessing.”
Given that a manifestly Modernist usurper cannot exercise the jurisdiction he claims, this is juridically void. The letter imitates Catholic forms to mislead souls into accepting a counterfeit authority, thereby corroding the very notion of the true papal office as defined by Vatican I: the guardian of immutable faith, not its evolutive manager.
Linguistic Dressing: Soft Humanism Masking Doctrinal Surrender
The vocabulary of the letter is a case study in the Modernist technique unmasked by St. Pius X: retain the old formulas, saturate them with new content, and relativize everything to feelings and consensus.
Key symptoms:
– Overabundance of emotional, benign phrases:
– “laeti laetum nuntium accepimus” (“with joyful joy we have received the news”),
– “festive and congratulatory,”
– “bright star of hope,”
– “from the heart we express ardent wishes,”
– “Obedience and peace.”
There is pious verbiage, but without doctrinal steel. It is vague, affective, and carefully avoids hard supernatural imperatives.
– Praise of Catholic Action and “social action” without doctrinal precision:
This language, in the context of the 20th century, is the repertoire through which naturalistic activism infiltrated: horizontal projects without clear primacy of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, the salvation of souls, and the absolute subordination of the temporal order to Christ the King.
– The “Catholic University” is lauded as a hope for religious and civil prosperity:
“in which indeed, so that the advantage and honor of religious and civil matters may more and more advance, a most shining star of hope gleams.”
Again, no insistence that such an institution must first of all submit to the anti-Modernist magisterium, to the condemnation of rationalism, liberalism, and false “scientific” autonomy (see *Syllabus* 9, 11, 14; *Lamentabili* 57–65). The vocabulary smoothly aligns “religion” and “civil progress,” precisely the fusion which, without strict doctrinal boundaries, degenerates into laicism and dogmaless humanitarianism.
– The motto “Obedientia et pax”:
It appears as a spiritual perfume, but here obedience is implicitly redirected: not obedience to the deposit of faith held “eodem sensu eademque sententia” (in the same sense and the same judgment), but to the new, conciliatory orientation of Roncalli’s regime. Under the cloak of *obedience*, resistance to the coming conciliar revolution is preemptively delegitimized.
This rhetoric is not neutral. It is the sugar-coating of a poison pill: a vocabulary that habituates clergy and faithful to measuring ecclesial life by human warmth, social recognition, and institutional expansion, instead of dogmatic fidelity, sacramental integrity, and militant submission to Christ’s kingship.
Theological Plane: The Letter as Negation by Omission
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the gravest fault of this document is not what it explicitly states, but what it systematically refuses to confess.
1. No assertion of the exclusive truth and salvific necessity of the Catholic Church.
Pius IX condemned as error the proposition that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Syllabus 16) and that Protestantism is merely another form of true Christianity (Syllabus 18). Authentic papal teaching is bound to reaffirm, especially in an age of indifferentism, that outside the Church there is no salvation, and that the purpose of bishops and universities is to convert, not “dialogue.”
This letter, composed at the threshold of the Vatican II pseudo-council, radiates the opposite atmosphere: a self-satisfied institutionalism, already mentally prepared for ecumenism and religious liberty, precisely by refusing to speak in the language of exclusive claims.
2. No reminder of the Social Kingship of Christ.
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught unambiguously that public and private life, families, and states must explicitly submit to Christ the King, and that secularism is a mortal plague.
Here, when Roncalli mentions the “Republic of Ecuador” and its capital, he does not exhort rulers and citizens to recognize Christ’s royal rights, to conform legislation to divine law, or to reject the masonic separation of Church and State condemned in Syllabus 55 and the anti-liberal magisterium. Instead, he limits himself to praising a university as a factor in the “honor of religious and civil affairs.” This is precisely the liberal formula: the Church as a noble partner within pluralistic society, not as the divinely instituted authority above temporal powers in matters of faith and morals.
Thus, the letter implicitly normalizes the very notion Pius IX condemned: that civil society and academic life may be ordered on “modern” principles, with Catholicism reduced to one respected component.
3. No battle cry against Modernism and internal enemies.
St. Pius X warned in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili* that the gravest danger comes from those within, who, under Catholic appearances, adulterate doctrine, Scripture, sacraments, and ecclesial structure. The file given (Lamentabili) reiterates the duty to reject novelty, to obey Roman censures, and to defend the immutable deposit.
Yet Roncalli:
– Does not enjoin de la Torre to guard seminaries and the university against condemned errors.
– Does not recall the anti-Modernist oath (then still in place).
– Does not demand vigilance against liberal Catholicism, rationalism, or the cult of “science” independent of revelation.
His silence is not innocuous; it is an explicit departure from the vigilance of prior Popes. At the very moment when hidden Modernists are preparing their triumph at the council he has convoked, the supposed “pope” chooses, in an official letter, to anesthetize a senior prelate with sentimental courtesies instead of arming him with dogmatic weapons.
4. Abuse and simulation of jurisdiction and indulgences.
Roncalli purports to grant:
“that… you may bless the faithful present in Our name and with Our authority, with a plenary indulgence duly proposed.”
From the pre-1958 Catholic perspective, this raises an essential canonical and theological issue: *Can a public, manifest architect of a doctrinal revolution exercise the authority of Peter?* The integral Catholic answer, articulated by theologians like St. Robert Bellarmine and echoed in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file, is clear: a manifest heretic or promoter of heresy cannot be head of the Church and loses all jurisdiction *ipso facto*. Consequently, the concessions and indulgences simulated by such a man are juridically void, though psychologically effective in binding souls to an antichurch.
Thus, this letter is not an act of Catholic governance; it is a counterfeit legal instrument of a parallel organization, exploiting supernatural language to consolidate obedience to its own inversion of doctrine.
Symptomatic Plane: A Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect’s Spirit
This short text encapsulates the DNA of the conciliar sect—the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure which comes fully into visibility with Vatican II and its aftermath.
1. Continuitist Camouflage
By invoking Pius X and employing classical Latin, Roncalli cultivates the illusion of organic continuity. In reality, his broader acts (convoking a “pastoral” council to recalibrate doctrine, rehabilitating condemned theologians, promoting religious liberty and ecumenism) stand in direct conflict with the anti-Modernist magisterium. *Quod abundat, non vitiat* (what is abundant does not vitiate)—the Latin and courtesies do not cleanse the Modernist intent.
2. Episcopal Flattery and the New Hierarchical Psychology
The letter operates as a psychological instrument:
– The “bishop” is congratulated for social works and for integrating Church presence into national and civic structures.
– He is assured of papal favor, granted indulgence faculties, enveloped with “Apostolic Blessing.”
Result:
– Conditioning of bishops to seek approbation not for doctrinal intransigence, but for docile alignment with the new orientation.
– Transformation of pastors from guardians of dogma into administrators of ecclesial NGOs applauded for “action,” “education,” and “dialogue.”
Thus emerges the generation of prelates who will compliantly implement the conciliar revolution, degrade the Most Holy Sacrifice into a communal “meal,” tolerate doctrinal pluralism, and reduce the Church to a worldly institution.
3. Horizontalism and Naturalism
The text praises:
– Catholic Action and “social action.”
– Education and university work as jointly religious and civil advancement.
But nowhere:
– The Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory.
– The sacraments as necessary means of grace.
– The absolute demand of conversion to the one true faith.
– The intrinsic opposition between the Church and Masonic, liberal, secularist systems exposed in the Syllabus and subsequent papal teaching.
This is *naturalismus baptizatus*: a baptized naturalism in which supernatural realities are presupposed but not preached, gradually displaced by sociological goods. Such an approach was anathematized in substance by Pius IX and Pius X, who insisted that moral, social, and scientific life must be subordinate to revealed truth, not neutrally coordinated with it.
4. Preparation for False Religious Liberty and Ecumenism
Although the word “ecumenism” does not appear, its atmosphere is already present:
– Catholic institutions are affirmed as contributors to civil prosperity, not as instruments to subject civil order to Christ.
– No condemnation of religious relativism or Protestant/modernist infiltrations which, by 1962, were rampant.
– Warm, irenic tone, allergic to polemical precision and anathema.
This mode of discourse leads directly into the ideology later codified in the texts of the neo-church: religious liberty as a civil right, “dialogue” with false religions, and a practical denial of the propositions solemnly condemned in the Syllabus (77–80). The letter is a gentle prelude to public apostasy.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterium: A Doctrinal Verdict
Measured against the standard explicitly required—unchanging Catholic teaching prior to 1958—this document stands condemned not by human preference, but by objective contradiction and omission.
1. Against Pius IX’s Syllabus:
– By exalting Catholic institutions primarily in terms acceptable to liberal states and omitting the demand for confessional statehood, it implicitly accommodates the errors condemned in 55 (separation of Church and State), 77–79 (pluralism of worship, liberty of error).
2. Against St. Pius X’s *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili*:
– By remaining silent on the Modernist threat and rehabilitating the very rhetorical style of “pastoral benevolence” divorced from dogmatic militancy, it aligns with the tendencies St. Pius X declared intolerable.
– The soft, non-combative language toward a world in revolution is the opposite of the spirit mandated by those documents.
3. Against Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*:
– By not calling Ecuador and its public life to explicit submission to Christ the King, it undercuts the duty he affirmed: that rulers and nations owe public veneration and obedience to Christ, and that secularism is a “plague” to be condemned, not normalized.
– The letter’s optimism in social and educational endeavors, detached from a robust confession of Christ’s kingship, is a concession to the laicism *Quas Primas* anathematizes in substance.
4. Against Vatican I (Pastor Aeternus):
– The true Papacy exists to guard the deposit of faith unchanged. When a putative pope uses his role to inaugurate a doctrinal trajectory opposed to his predecessors, he thereby demonstrates that he does not act as the organ of the Holy Ghost promised to Peter’s successors.
– A letter such as this, in its context, participates in that subversion: it is not merely incomplete; it functions to habituate the Church to a different religion under the same external names.
Therefore, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this letter is not a harmless jubilee greeting; it is an act of counterfeit authority, cosmetically traditional yet structurally Modernist, contributing to the construction of the neo-church.
Obedience Redirected: From Christ’s Kingship to a Conciliar Idol
The motto highlighted in the letter—“Obedientia et pax”—deserves final scrutiny.
Authentic Catholic doctrine teaches:
– *Obedience* is a virtue when it submits the will to legitimate authority in all that is not contrary to God.
– There can be no obligation to obey commands which undermine the faith or promote error (*non est obediendum in malis*—“one must not obey in evil”).
In this document, the call to obedience is:
– Detached from any exhortation to preserve the anti-Modernist discipline.
– Linked to personal adherence to Roncalli and his “Apostolic Benediction.”
– Employed in a historical moment when resistance to the impending revolutionary council would have been the true obedience to the perennial Magisterium.
Thus “obedience” is subtly redefined as submission to the conciliar project; “peace” is the peace of accommodation with the world, not the peace of Christ who reigns through truth and the cross.
In effect, the letter catechizes a generation of clergy into accepting that fidelity to Christ passes through uncritical acceptance of the very policies that dethrone Him in public life and relativize His unique Church. That is not obedience; it is the misuse of a sacred word to secure complicity with apostasy.
Final Judgment on Laeti laetum (1962)
Under the light of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, this letter must be recognized as:
– A pseudo-pontifical act issuing from a usurper whose broader program contradicts the anti-Modernist magisterium.
– A rhetorical veil, using Latin and traditional forms to endorse a new orientation: naturalistic, irenic, institution-centered, and doctrinally evasive.
– A step in habituating bishops and faithful to a counterfeit obedience, which would soon be demanded for the acceptance of Vatican II’s destructive novelties, the profanation of the Most Holy Sacrifice, and the enthronement of religious liberty and ecumenism.
The true Catholic conscience, formed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, must not be seduced by this sentimental varnish. *“Jesus Christus heri et hodie, ipse et in saecula”* (Heb 13:8 – Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever): what contradicts or strategically silences His immutable teaching and His royal rights over men and nations cannot proceed from His Vicar nor bind the faithful.
To unmask Laeti laetum is to recognize in it one more polished stone in the edifice of the conciliar sect, built not upon the Rock of Peter, but upon the shifting sands of Modernist humanism. True obedience and true peace today consist in clinging to the integral Catholic faith and rejecting the counterfeit authority that this letter presupposes and serves.
Source:
Laeti laetum – Ad Carolum Mariam Tit. S. Mariae in Aquiro S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem de la Torre, Archiepiscopum Quitensem, quinquagesimo a suscepto episcopatu exeunte anno (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025