On October 18, 1962, John XXIII issued a brief Latin letter to Cardinal André Jullien on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. In a few lines, he praises Jullien’s legal expertise, prudence, diligence in the Roman Rota, and personal virtues such as piety, modesty, and affability, and then imparts an Apostolic Blessing, invoking God as the giver of every good and perfect gift. The text is short, apparently harmless, and purely congratulatory — yet precisely in this saccharine banality, issued on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, one sees the **cold substitution of supernatural Catholic mission with a self-referential cult of bureaucratic merit within the conciliar apparatus**.
The Silent Manifesto of the Conciliar Revolution in a Birthday Compliment
Factual Level: A Harmless Compliment Masking an Ecclesial Mutation
Let us first restate the core elements of the letter in simple factual terms:
– John XXIII addresses André Jullien on his approaching eightieth birthday.
– He expresses wishes for joy and happiness, and uses the occasion to manifest “singular affection of charity” and “distinguished esteem.”
– He enumerates Jullien’s services:
– Auditor and later Dean of the Roman Rota.
– Member of the “College of Cardinals.”
– Distinguished for legal expertise, prudence of counsel, and diligent service.
– He notes his “piety, modesty, courtesy, and diligence,” saying these make him pleasing to all and “very dear” to himself.
– He concludes by invoking God, citing James 1:17, and bestowing his “Apostolic Blessing.”
Taken materially, there is nothing explicitly heretical stated. However, Catholic judgment does not end with the surface of words; it considers the context, omissions, emphases, and the doctrinal environment encoded in such gestures.
This text is dated October 18, 1962 — three months after the opening of the Second Vatican Council. At this precise historical juncture, the same John XXIII inaugurates the conciliar upheaval that will enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality against papal monarchy, and the cult of man, all condemned in substance by the prior Magisterium (cf. Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors; Pius X, Lamentabili sane exitu; Pascendi; Pius XI, Quas primas). The letter thus must be read as part of the self-presentation of a new regime operating inside Vatican walls.
The issue is not the act of congratulating an elderly cleric. The issue is: which Church is speaking, in whose name, with what understanding of authority, holiness, and mission?
Linguistic Level: Bureaucratic Panegyric as Aesthetic of the Neo-Church
The rhetoric of this letter, although clothed in traditional Latin, betrays a mentality foreign to the robust supernatural gravity of the pre-1958 papal style:
– The praise centers on:
– *iuris peritia* (legal expertise),
– *sagacitas consilii* (shrewdness of counsel),
– *navitas* / diligence in curial function,
– personal amiability.
These are natural qualities. They may be good in themselves, but notice the deformation: they become the principal currency of honor. The text offers no doctrinal confession, no reference to defense of the faith, no mention of combating error, no celebration of zeal for souls, no highlighting of preaching Christ the King or resisting impiety.
Compare this with Pius XI in Quas primas, who relentlessly subordinates all human and political reality to the reign of Christ, insisting that public and private life must recognize His Kingship, and who introduces a liturgical feast precisely to condemn secular apostasy and laicism. Or with Pius X, who, in Lamentabili and Pascendi, names and anathematizes Modernism, defending the deposit of faith integrum (entire). Their language is militant, Christocentric, dogmatic, and soteriological.
By contrast, here we see the polished, inward-looking style of a court congratulation:
– “egregiam existimationem” (outstanding esteem),
– “honore ac laude dignus” (worthy of honor and praise),
– emphasis on acceptance by “everyone” and on being “very dear to us.”
This is the language of an administrative club that gratifies itself. What is being magnified is the internal efficiency and mutual admiration of the apparatus, not the Cross, not the Most Holy Sacrifice, not the conversion of sinners, not the defense against heresy.
Such rhetoric is not neutral. It signals an anthropocentric shift: the center of gravity is the man of the Curia, not the Majesty of God and the inviolable deposit of faith.
Theological Level: Silence About the Supernatural as Indictment
The gravest accusation against this letter is not what it says, but what it ostentatiously refuses to say. Measured by the unchanging doctrine of the Church prior to 1958, the omissions are thunderous:
1. No mention of the salvation of souls.
– Catholic theology is unambiguous: *salus animarum suprema lex* (the salvation of souls is the supreme law). Every honor, office, and ecclesiastical dignity is ordered to this end.
– Here, Jullien is congratulated for internal juridical function, but there is no indication that his juridical labour defends orthodoxy, protects the sacraments, or safeguards marriage, the faith, or discipline against the world’s corruption.
– The only eschatological note is a vague wish that he may be “some day always happy in eternal [light]” — a generic politeness, not a pastor’s urgent concern with judgment, purgatory, hell, and the need to persevere in true faith and state of grace.
2. No reference to the duty to combat error or Modernism.
– By 1962, the doctrinal front is already in flames: biblical criticism errors, liturgical subversion, moral liberalization, false ecumenism. Pius X had condemned these as *haereticus*, and the duty to oppose them remained.
– John XXIII in this letter does not recall Jullien’s responsibility as a judge to defend indissoluble marriage, sacramental validity, or true doctrine from innovators; he merely flatters his “sagacity.”
– This is particularly damning in light of Lamentabili sane exitu, which explicitly condemns the relativization of dogma, denial of Scriptural inspiration, and attempts to subject revelation to historical criticism. Silence in such circumstances is itself a betrayal.
3. No mention of Christ the King and the public rights of the Church.
– Pius XI insists: true peace and order are impossible unless Christ’s social Kingship is acknowledged; secularism and laicism are “plague” destroying society.
– In this letter, dated in the very period when states accelerate secularization and Masonic influence, there is not a trace of that doctrinal combativeness. The “Apostolic Blessing” is emptied of any doctrinal content that would recall the rights of God or the duties of nations.
– This corresponds to the trajectory that will soon culminate in the conciliar exaltation of religious liberty and the separation of Church and State condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus errors 55, 77–80).
4. Reduction of sanctity to natural politeness and administrative fidelity.
– The Church teaches that holiness is constituted by supernatural charity and fidelity to revealed truth, expressed by adherence to dogma and the Cross.
– Here, Jullien’s “piety” is noted in the same breath as his “comitas” (affability), as if the essence of an ecclesiastical prelate were to be pleasant and efficient — precisely the moral reduction of Catholic life to bourgeois niceness, which Modernism loves.
– There is no reminder of the necessity of holding the Catholic faith whole and entire as defined by ecumenical councils and Roman pontiffs, under pain of damnation.
In sum, the letter exhibits a theology of compliments without content: a hollow pseudo-supernaturalism where a passing reference to James 1:17 is used, not to recall the absolute primacy of God and the dependence of human office on grace, but as religious perfume over a human-centered panegyric.
Symptomatic Level: A Micro-Icon of the Conciliar Sect’s Self-Worship
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this minor document is not negligible. It is emblematic. Several systemic features of the conciliar sect are crystallized here:
1. The internalization of mission: from saving souls to celebrating careers.
The true Church exists to preach Christ, administer valid sacraments, condemn error, and lead souls to heaven. The letter reveals a structure that instead pauses, in a moment of unprecedented doctrinal crisis, to congratulate itself on the refinement of its own legal and diplomatic professionals — without reference to their service to the deposit of faith.
This is the ethos that will later cheerfully promote the destruction of the traditional liturgy, the introduction of a fabricated rite, and doctrinal ambiguities, while praising each other as “experts,” “pastoral,” “open,” and “merciful.”
2. The masking of revolution under traditional Latin and forms.
The text is Latin, the style superficially classical. But form is deployed against content. The use of venerable idiom to transmit a naturalistic compliment reveals the tactic of the conciliar revolution: retain externals while emptying them of their militant doctrinal substance.
Pius X had warned in Pascendi that Modernists hide within the Church, employing Catholic terminology with altered meanings. Here, the “Apostolic Blessing” is uttered by one inaugurating a council that will contradict, in effect, the syllabus of his predecessors. The external gesture becomes cover for a new orientation.
3. The glorification of juridical technicians detached from dogmatic intransigence.
To extol a career Rota judge in 1962 without any reference to his defense of marriage, sacramental discipline, or doctrinal orthodoxy is to present a model of ecclesiastical life where technique and proceduralism are ends in themselves. This is congruent with the post-1958 transformation of the Church into an NGO-like structure, governed by committees, conferences, “dialogue,” and legal-pastoral structures that no longer confess the absolute claims of Christ the King.
The prior Magisterium explicitly condemned the subordination of the Church to civil power, the neutralization of the Church in public life, and the relativization of Catholic truth (Syllabus 19–21, 55). Yet the new regime cultivates precisely the type of ecclesiastical official who can coexist with secular liberalism without friction — polished, adaptable, fluent in juridical language, and silent on dogma.
4. The counterfeit “charity” emptied of doctrinal content.
The letter speaks of “singular affection of charity.” True ecclesial charity is inseparable from truth: *caritas in veritate* (charity in truth). Popes and bishops express love by confirming in the faith, warning against error, calling to repentance.
Here, “charity” means nothing more than personal sympathy and institutional esteem. That sentimental misuse of charity is one of the most lethal modernist perversions: it anesthetizes consciences, legitimizes doctrinal neutrality, and disguises betrayal as kindness.
5. Eschatological trivialization.
The wish that he may be “long happy in the enjoyment of earthly light, and someday always happy in eternal [light]” is doctrinally correct in isolation, yet it is presented as a smooth continuum of contentment. There is no hint of the particular judgment, no call to perseverance, no insistence on the necessity to die in the true faith. This is the same soft rhetoric by which the conciliar sect normalizes universalism and practical denial of hell, in direct conflict with perennial Catholic teaching.
Contrasting with Pre-Conciliar Doctrine: The Measure of the Bankruptcy
To expose fully the spiritual bankruptcy encoded even in this small letter, it is necessary to measure it directly against the authoritative teaching of the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemns:
– the leveling of Catholicism with other religions (15–18),
– the separation of Church and State (55),
– the idea that the Roman Pontiff should reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (80).
These condemnations require a papal mindset opposed to the spirit of the world. The congratulatory naturalism of this letter harmonizes instead with liberal respectability and humanistic self-congratulation.
– Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi:
– condemns the reduction of dogma to history and feeling,
– insists on the authority of the authentic Magisterium to define the sense of Scripture and dogma,
– denounces those who adapt doctrine to “modern demands,”
– commands vigilance against Modernist infiltrators in seminaries, universities, and chanceries.
A pope thinking and judging with Pius X’s mind would not be distributing unqualified panegyrics in 1962 to high officials without also underlining their sacred duty to resist precisely those modernist deviations which Vatican II was about to enshrine.
– Pius XI in Quas primas:
– affirms that peace is possible only in the kingdom of Christ,
– calls laicism a “plague,”
– demands public recognition of Christ’s sovereignty by rulers and nations,
– institutes the feast of Christ the King as a weapon against secular apostasy.
In that spirit, every public act of the Pope is an opportunity to reaffirm the rights of Christ and duties of the Church. The letter of John XXIII does the opposite: it showcases a harmless, secular-friendly papacy content with internal compliments.
None of these authoritative pre-1958 teachings are merely “contextual.” They express the perennial Catholic spirit: dogmatic clarity, supernatural finality, militant opposition to error. When a purported “pope” speaks in a manner systematically exiled from that spirit, concerned instead with mutual admiration among curial elites, he manifests practical rupture, not continuity.
From Harmless Politeness to Systemic Betrayal
This letter, read in isolation, may appear trivial. But Catholic judgment is not naive. The Church has always known that revolutions often codify themselves, not first in manifestos, but in styles, silences, and symbolic acts.
Here we see:
– A leader of the conciliar revolution, on the threshold of Vatican II, using his authority not to warn, define, or defend, but to flatter.
– An exaltation of internal administrative careers as if they were in themselves meritorious of highest papal praise, without asking how such careers serve the Faith.
– A “charity” without truth, a “blessing” without doctrinal reminder, a “piety” reduced to personal niceness.
When measured by the unchanging doctrine before 1958, this is not the voice of Peter strengthening his brethren in the faith; it is the voice of a new, horizontal establishment, celebrating itself as it prepares to enthrone the cult of man and dismantle the visible marks of the true Church.
Thus, even this soft, courteous epistle stands as a symptom and a microcosm of the conciliar sect’s theological and spiritual bankruptcy: a regime that replaces the supernatural ends of the Church with worldly recognition, replaces dogmatic militancy with bureaucratic compliments, and replaces the Kingship of Christ with the quiet sovereignty of its own self-satisfaction.
Source:
Octogesimum natalem – Ad Andream S. R. E. Cardinalem Jullien, octogesimum diem natalem acturum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025