In this allocution of 26 January 1960, the usurper John XXIII addresses the Roman Synod, offering a meditation on the virtues required of priests, structured around three images: the priest as head (doctrine and intellect), heart (affections and charity), and tongue (speech and discretion). He invokes the Council of Trent on clerical decorum, exhorts to serious study (Scripture, Fathers, St Thomas, liturgy, canon law), praises celibacy, calls for interior holiness behind exterior comportment, and warns against sins of the tongue. The text is outwardly edifying, but precisely in this apparently pious, moralizing tone it functions as a subtle manifesto of the conciliar revolution: it empties priestly sanctity of dogmatic militancy, evacuates the primacy of sacrificial worship, and prepares the clergy for the anthropocentric, irenic, modernist deformation that will soon be imposed on the entire structure occupying the Vatican.
John XXIII’s Moralizing Rhetoric as a Prelude to Ecclesial Subversion
External Correctness without Dogmatic Militant Faith
At the outset, John XXIII cites the Council of Trent on the exemplary life, bearing, and modesty of clerics, stressing how they must inspire veneration through gravity and decorum. He repeats the Tridentine warning that even light faults are grave in clerics, presenting this as the ideal image of Christ’s priest.
The problem is not the quotation of Trent, but what is systematically absent and how the citation is instrumentalized.
1. Factual-theological contrast:
– Trent grounds clerical holiness within a precise doctrinal and sacramental order:
– The priest is essentially defined by his relation to the Sacrifice of the Mass and the power to forgive sins.
– The reform decrees are inseparable from the dogmatic canons on the Sacrifice, the Real Presence, justification, and the necessity of the Church.
– In this allocution, the emphasis shifts:
– From the altar to aesthetics.
– From the objective character and propitiatory Sacrifice to psychological virtues and respectability.
– From the priest as sacrificer and guardian of dogma to the priest as a morally decent public figure whose demeanor “elicits veneration.”
This is a quintessentially modernist displacement: retain Catholic vocabulary and some quotations, but dislocate the center of gravity. The priest is not primarily held up as:
– the minister of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*,
– the guardian of the deposit of faith against heresy,
– the public, uncompromising witness of the Kingship of Christ over societies (Pius XI, *Quas primas*).
Instead, he is reduced to a decorous functionary. This naturalistic moralism contradicts the pre-1958 Magisterium, which insists that priestly sanctity is inseparable from:
– firm, integral confession of every revealed truth,
– rejection of all condemned errors (cf. Pius IX, *Syllabus Errorum*; St Pius X, *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*),
– liturgical and sacramental fidelity as acts of worship owed to God, not merely edifying “example.”
By ignoring this doctrinal horizon, John XXIII subtly replaces supernatural priestly identity with a bourgeois ethic suitable to the coming neo-church.
The Manipulation of “Doctrine”: Learning without Condemnation
John XXIII exhorts seminarians and priests to lifelong study: Scripture, Fathers, St Thomas, liturgy, canon law. On the surface, this mirrors traditional Catholic exhortations. But the linguistic and contextual signals point in another direction.
1. Ambiguous appeals:
He insists that:
– priests must cultivate doctrine,
– care is needed in choosing books since “not everything printed” is sound,
– one must trust the Church’s teaching authority in interpretation.
But:
– He cites, in a positive way, the encyclical *Humani generis* (Pius XII) while preparing the very regime that would trample its content.
– He does not remind the clergy of the concrete, binding condemnations of Modernism:
– No mention of *Lamentabili sane exitu* (St Pius X),
– No mention of *Pascendi*, explicitly defining Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,”
– No insistence that those propositions remain in force and must shape seminary curricula and pastoral practice.
From an integral Catholic perspective, this silence is not accidental. When a teaching authority truly desires to protect clergy:
– it names the errors,
– it commands separation from contaminated sources,
– it anathematizes false philosophies and exegesis (cf. *Lamentabili*, prop. 57–65; *Syllabus* 3–5, 57–60).
John XXIII avoids explicit polemics against contemporary heresies, although by 1960 they were rampant in biblical studies, theology, and moral teaching. Instead of warning, he uses vague admonitions about prudence and “not seeking originality.” This creates a pseudo-orthodox atmosphere: words of tradition without the traditional will to condemn and expel the wolves.
2. Linguistic anesthesia as method:
The tone is:
– paternal, sentimental, non-combative,
– allergic to concrete dogmatic boundaries.
This rhetoric is typical of the conciliar project: a language of “encouragement” that never wields the sword defined in Roman tradition. It conditions priests to a faith without anathemas; a “doctrine” that coexists peacefully with all currents, provided external courtesy is kept.
Such ambiguity directly contradicts:
– St Pius X’s demand that pastors root out Modernism and submit in practice to the anti-modernist condemnations;
– Pius IX’s demonstration that indifferentism, rationalism, liberalism must be rejected as intrinsically evil, not dialogued with.
In brief: John XXIII speaks of doctrine while neutralizing the doctrinal battle. This is not Catholic; it is pre-conciliar camouflage for the revolution.
Sentimental “Heart”: Charity without Supernatural Combat
The central section on the priest’s “heart” exalts:
– kindness, sweetness,
– love for Jesus,
– love for the Church and souls,
– special care for sinners and the poor.
Again, this vocabulary is in itself legitimate; pre-1958 Popes tirelessly praised pastoral charity. The error lies in the systematic omission of its supernatural content and its necessary hardness against sin and heresy.
1. Evacuation of supernatural stakes:
In this allocution:
– “Love” is presented primarily as human gentleness.
– There is no reminder that the priest’s first charity is to God and truth:
– to guard the flock from heresy,
– to refuse profanation of the sacraments,
– to denounce public error and immorality “in season and out of season.”
– There is no mention of:
– the state of grace as condition for fruitful ministry,
– the danger of hell for unrepentant sinners,
– the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church for salvation (cf. *Syllabus* 15–18, 21; perennial doctrine on *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*).
Silence about eternal damnation, divine judgment, and the objective gravity of error is the gravest accusation: it signals a shift from supernatural soteriology to therapeutic humanism. This “heart-talk” chords perfectly with the conciliar sect’s later propaganda of “accompaniment,” mercy emptied of conversion, and universalist illusions.
2. Celibacy defended for the wrong war:
John XXIII laments scandals against celibacy and defends priestly celibacy as “splendid ornament” and sign of a free, chaste, universal Church. But even here:
– he does not root celibacy explicitly in the sacrificial identity of the priest, victim with Christ in the Holy Sacrifice;
– he does not explicitly connect celibacy with doctrinal fidelity and separation from the world’s spirit;
– he does not mention that lax doctrine and worldly formation breed moral collapse.
This truncated defense is telling: the coming conciliar apparatus will erode celibacy’s spirit while preserving a formal rule, producing precisely the moral rot we now witness in the neo-church’s paramasonic structure. When the faith is diluted, discipline cannot stand. He treats the symptom (misconduct) sentimentally but not the doctrinal cause (Modernism, naturalism, human respect).
The Tongue: Against Gossip, but Not Against Heresy
The last part, on the “tongue,” draws copiously from St James. He warns against detraction, harsh speech, and the misuse of words. Again, apparently irreproachable. But observe the asymmetry:
– Fierce admonitions against criticizing others,
– Zero admonition against preaching error, liturgical innovation, or undermining dogma.
From the integral Catholic standpoint:
– The gravest sin of the priestly tongue is not “gossip,” but:
– teaching doctrines contrary to faith,
– sowing religious indifferentism,
– undermining Christ’s Kingship and the Church’s rights,
– profaning Holy Scripture and the sacraments.
St Pius X explicitly condemned those who:
– reinterpret dogma historically,
– neutralize miracles and inspiration,
– subordinate the Magisterium to “experience.”
John XXIII:
– does not recall this,
– does not tell priests that publicly dissenting from dogma is intolerable,
– directs moral rigor above all against speaking ill of others.
This inversion is not accidental. It:
– prepares clergy to remain silent in the face of doctrinal subversion,
– makes fraternal or doctrinal correction seem a failure of charity,
– transforms supernatural zeal into suspect “lack of kindness.”
Thus the clergy are disarmed linguistically so that, when the conciliar revolution promulgates its novelties, they will believe obedience and “good speech” forbid resistance. This is the psychology of the conciliar sect: “Be nice, not Catholic.”
Systematic Omissions: The Silence that Betrays
Measured against pre-1958 doctrine, the omissions of this allocution reveal its true nature.
1. No mention of Modernism as present, concrete enemy:
By 1960:
– modernist exegesis, dogmatic relativism, liturgical subversion, and ecumenical indifferentism were already entrenched.
– The Holy Office had documented and condemned these tendencies.
Yet:
– no reference to *Pascendi* or its binding norms;
– no reiteration that Modernism remains condemned, that its proponents cannot exercise sacred ministry.
This silence aids the infiltration Pius X foresaw. What was clearly defined as *haeresis* becomes an unmentioned “option.” An allocution before the Roman Synod – centerpiece for reform – refusing to name the reigning doctrinal cancer is itself a symptom of complicity.
2. No affirmation of the absolute Kingship of Christ over society:
Following Pius XI’s *Quas primas*, any authentic Catholic exhortation to priests:
– must connect their mission to restoring *Regnum Christi* in public life.
– Priests are called to oppose secularism, laïcité, Masonic domination, the errors condemned in the *Syllabus* (e.g., 39–41, 55, 77–80).
John XXIII says nothing:
– about the duty to resist the secular state when it violates God’s law;
– about Christ’s rights over legislation, education, public morals.
Thus, the priest is profiled as a private moral educator, not a soldier of the King. This prepares the acceptance of “religious liberty,” “dialogue,” and the separation of Church and State that the conciliar sect will celebrate, in direct contradiction to Pius IX and Leo XIII.
3. No defense of the Church’s exclusive truth:
The allocution:
– mentions the Church generically,
– does not clearly assert she is the one ark of salvation to the exclusion of sects,
– does not warn against false religions, secret societies, or the anti-Christian conspiracy that Pius IX described as the “synagogue of Satan” harnessing Masonic sects against the Church.
This diplomatic silence is precisely what the condemned liberal thesis 80 of the *Syllabus* (“the Roman Pontiff ought to reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization”) aimed to obtain. John XXIII inaugurates that reconciliation in practice by never confronting the world.
4. No insistence on sacrificial worship as center of priestly life:
Trent defined the Mass as propitiatory Sacrifice offered for the living and the dead. Pre-1958 Popes define priesthood from this Sacrifice. Yet here:
– no explicit affirmation of the Sacrifice as heart of the priest’s identity,
– liturgy is praised as “like a beautiful garden” – aestheticized, not doctrinally asserted.
Such poetic language, divorced from dogmatic clarity, is the hallmark of the conciliar revolution’s liturgical sabotage: prepare souls to accept a rite where the Sacrifice fades into “assembly.”
Symptomatic Fruit: From Pious Phrases to the Conciliar Sect
Viewed symptomatically, this allocution foreshadows the entire trajectory of the Church of the New Advent:
– Stress on:
– external respectability,
– humane pastoral tone,
– sentimental charity,
– non-confrontational language.
– Silence about:
– Modernism,
– the necessity of explicit anti-error struggle,
– Christ’s public Kingship,
– the uniqueness of the Catholic Church,
– the centrality of propitiatory Sacrifice,
– the horror of heresy.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is not a harmless exhortation, but:
– a carefully calibrated text of transition,
– a “spiritual” chloroform that lulls clergy into moralistic self-examination while the foundations of doctrine and worship are about to be struck.
The later conciliar sect:
– will canonize this style and bury the anathemas;
– will enthrone religious liberty and ecumenism against the *Syllabus* and *Quas primas*;
– will deform the rite, orders, and catechesis.
The allocution belongs to the same project, cloaked in Tridentine citations to gain trust while redirecting the priesthood away from militant orthodoxy toward liberal humanism.
Head, Heart, Tongue: Authentic Catholic Reversal of the Allocution
Against this modernist trajectory, using only pre-1958 Catholic doctrine as norm, the true configuration of priestly virtues must be reaffirmed.
1. Priest’s head (doctrine):
– Must be totally subject to the *authentic, pre-conciliar Magisterium*, including:
– the condemnations of Modernism (*Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*),
– the *Syllabus*,
– Trent, Vatican I.
– Must reject:
– the evolution of dogma,
– historicist exegesis,
– philosophical systems that deny supernatural revelation or subject it to criticism.
– Formation must explicitly:
– identify named heresies,
– exclude infected authors,
– submit to the clear, binding doctrinal judgments of the true Church.
Any exhortation to study that fails to command this discernment is objectively deficient and, in the current context, gravely misleading.
2. Priest’s heart (charity):
– Must first burn with zeal for God’s glory and truth:
– *odium erroris* (hatred of error) as a form of charity for souls.
– Must love:
– the Most Holy Sacrifice as the center of life,
– the Church as unique ark,
– souls enough to preach hard truths: sin, judgment, hell, necessity of conversion.
– Sentimentality, human respect, and “niceness” are vices when they obstruct confession of truth.
3. Priest’s tongue (speech):
– Has the duty:
– to confess Catholic doctrine integrally,
– to condemn public heresies,
– to warn the flock against wolves, even when clothed in ecclesiastical garments.
– Must avoid:
– calumny and rash judgment,
– but not the necessary identification and denunciation of systems and persons who publicly subvert faith.
A discourse that severely punishes “criticism” but tolerates doctrinal treason is inverted and anti-Catholic. The authentic rule is: silence against heresy is betrayal; silence against gossip is not comparable to silence against error that damns souls.
Conclusion: A Polite Mask for the Coming Apostasy
John XXIII’s 1960 allocution, examined rigorously:
– Dresses itself in citations from Trent, St Peter, St James, and ascetical writers.
– Speaks of study, piety, celibacy, charity, discretion.
– But systematically:
– refuses to engage the concrete doctrinal crisis,
– omits the binding anti-modernist framework,
– detaches virtues from the public confession of Christ’s Kingship and the exclusive claims of the Church,
– spiritualizes discipline while leaving untouched the intellectual disease that will destroy discipline.
Thus it functions as a paradigmatic text of the conciliar sect:
– a moralizing, irenic, deradicalized pseudo-Catholicism,
– which neutralizes the priest as guardian of dogma and sacrifice,
– and turns him into an amiable official of a humanistic, ecumenical religion.
From the perspective of the unchanging Catholic theology prior to 1958, such a program is not renewal, but decomposition. The true remedy remains:
– unwavering adherence to the pre-conciliar Magisterium,
– rejection of the modernist hermeneutic and its slogans,
– restoration of the priesthood as sacrificial, doctrinal, militant, and wholly ordered to the reign of Christ the King over persons, families, and states.
Source:
Allocutio die XXVI Ianuarii A. D. MCMLX habita in secunda Synodi sessione (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025