John XXIII’s 28 January 1960 allocution to seminarians in Rome, delivered in the Ignatian church during the diocesan synod, presents an apparently pious exhortation: a call to select and form a chosen clergy, to “walk worthily,” to live detached from the world, nourished on Scripture, and faithful to prayer and the Psalms. Yet beneath this edifying surface, the speech quietly installs the foundational motifs of the conciliar revolution: praise of a numerically expansive global clergy oriented to “a new and better ordering” of humanity, a rhetorical separation of “Church” and concrete dogmatic combat, a sentimentalist language masking the coming demolition of integral doctrine, and a proto-ideology of an “adaptable” Church inaugurating a “new order of the ages” consistent with condemned liberalism and Modernism.
Soft Words for a Hard Revolt: Roncalli’s Seminarians and the Coming Usurpation
I. Historical and Doctrinal Context: The Allocution as Manifesto of a New Religion
This is an official speech of antipope John XXIII, delivered 28 January 1960, in the heart of Rome, in the Ignatian church, addressed to seminarians of the Roman diocese and those studying there. It appears in the corpus of the neo-church on the Vatican site and must therefore be read as an instrumentum of the conciliar subversion.
Key elements of the allocution (translated and cited accurately, emphasis added):
– He interprets the numerous and cheerful seminarians as a sign that Providence is promising to the Church “what is today desired” concerning future clergy and apostolic ardor, and that from them the Roman Synod “takes beautiful and fruitful auspices” for all dioceses.
– He recalls his youthful visits to the tombs of Aloysius Gonzaga and John Berchmans to ask for chastity, and his admiration for Leo XIII and Pius X.
– He sets Gedeon’s selection (Judges 7) as paradigm: not number, but chosen virtuous few.
– He formulates three programmatic maxims:
– “Digne ambulate” (“Walk worthily”).
– “Accipite librum et devorate illum” (“Take the book and devour it”) – Sacred Scripture.
– “Psallite sapienter et frequenter” (“Sing psalms wisely and frequently”) – prayer, especially the Psalter.
– He ends with a vision: seminarians as “springtime of the future age,” the Church “always youthful,” and links Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis to the statement that in them “the ancient prophecies are fulfilled” and “a new order of the ages is born: namely the times of the eternal Gospel, of liberty, of unity and of peace,” and says:
“This Gospel the Holy Church, which is courageous and always adapted to new ages (semper accommodata novis aetatibus), hands over to your hands.”
On the surface, nothing appears overtly heretical to a superficial reader. But read according to integral Catholic doctrine (before 1958), and in the light of what immediately followed—Vatican II, the new “Mass,” religious liberty, ecumenism, the cult of man—the allocution stands revealed as a crafted step in the substitution of the Catholic religion with a humanitarian, evolutionary, conciliatory pseudo-gospel.
II. Factual Level: Selective Piety as Screen for Revolution
1. Appeal to Numbers and Atmosphere
Roncalli rejoices at the “almost innumerable” youth in Rome, calling this a pledge of future clergy for the whole world. He presents their joyful presence as a quasi-prophetic guarantee of ecclesial renewal.
– There is no mention of the already grave crisis of belief and morals among clergy in the 20th century, documented and combated by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili, nor of the infiltration of Modernism and Masonic forces denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– Instead, the mere fact of numbers and enthusiasm is read as a sign of God’s consoling promise. This is a naturalistic optimism, not supernatural discernment.
Catholic doctrine: authentic renewal is judged not by numbers, mood, or “youth,” but by *fidelity to defined dogma* and *rejection of condemned errors*. Pius X condemns precisely the modernist cult of “vital forces” and “religious experience” as a criterion of truth. Here, John XXIII tacitly replaces doctrinal clarity with psychological consolation.
2. The Gedeon Motif Reinterpreted
He invokes Judges 7: God purifies Gedeon’s army, retaining only the chosen three hundred. Roncalli uses this to exhort seminarians to be among the select: detached, generous, apostolic.
Yet he simultaneously:
– Accepts the massive initial numbers as positive sign,
– Avoids specifying doctrinal criteria of selection,
– Reduces “unworthiness” primarily to softness, comfort-seeking, and worldly curiosity.
The factual distortion: the greatest disqualifier in the 20th century is not merely “comfort” but *doctrinal deviation*—Modernism, indifferentism, rationalism. Pius X declares Modernism “the synthesis of all heresies”; Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemns religious liberty, indifferentism, and the denial of the Church’s rights. Roncalli is silent where clarity is most needed.
This silence is not accidental. It is strategic omission.
III. Linguistic Level: Sentimental Humanism and Programmed Ambiguity
The allocution’s tone is telling:
– Constant use of “dilecti filii” and paternal warmth.
– Emphasis on joy, serenity, youthfulness, springtime, hope, encouragement.
– Absence of sharp dogmatic language; no explicit denunciation of modernist theses already solemnly condemned.
– The Church is described in affective and sociological terms: “caput ac veluti centrum,” “mater missionariorum,” but without reaffirmation of her exclusive status as the one true Ark outside of which there is no salvation (as taught by the perennial Magisterium).
Certain expressions mark the rupture:
– At the end: “Haec profecto carmina… testantur antiqua vaticinia iam expleta esse, ac novum nasci saeculorum ordinem: tempora scilicet Evangelii aeterni, libertatis, unitatis pacisque certissimi nuntii. Hoc Evangelium Ecclesia Sancta, quae animosa est et novis aetatibus semper accommoda, vestris manibus tradit.”
Here the rhetoric of “new order,” “eternal Gospel,” “liberty, unity, peace” fused with “Church always adapted to new ages” encodes:
– An openness to a re-interpretation of the Gospel to fit “new ages” – exactly the modernist evolution of dogma condemned by Pius X.
– A transfer of emphasis from supernatural salvation (redemption from sin, escape from hell, submission to Christ the King) to temporal ideals: liberty, unity, peace in a humanistic key.
– The hint of a theology that reads history as a progressive “new epoch,” echoing those condemned propositions that pretend doctrine must be reshaped to modern consciousness.
Language betrays the mind. The consistent, caressing vocabulary avoids the words and themes that defined the pre-1958 papal war against error: heresy, Modernism, Freemasonry, liberalism, false religions, the social reign of Christ the King, anathema. Instead: progress, hope, adaptation, “new order.”
IV. Theological Level: Substitution of Integral Faith with Adaptable Ideology
We now confront his core theses with pre-1958 Catholic doctrine.
1. “Digne Ambulate”: Virtue Without Militant Doctrine
Roncalli’s injunction “Digne ambulate” is drawn from Scripture (Gen 17:1, Phil 4:8). He exhorts to:
– Intellectual formation.
– Moral purity.
– Pastoral prudence.
– Kindness, affability, capacity to win benevolence.
All these are goods, but their isolation and framing are revealing.
What is missing?
– No call to defend the faith against Modernism, despite Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– No affirmation that seminarians must hold, defend, and preach that the Catholic Church is the only true Church and that all other religions are false—explicitly asserted by Pius IX in the Syllabus (errors 15–18, 21 condemned).
– No mention of the duty of states to recognize the Kingship of Christ and submit their laws to His law—solemnly taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas, where he denounces laicism and the removal of Christ from public life as the root of modern calamities.
– No insistence on anathema against liberalism, socialism, secret societies, ecumenism.
Instead, “dignity” is psychologized and pastoralized. The seminarians are formed not as *milites Christi* (soldiers of Christ) against heresy, but as amiable functionaries, flexible, prudent, ready to “help their bishops” in a changing world.
This is the embryo of the conciliar “pastoral” profile: clergy stripped of doctrinal militancy, trained to avoid “rigidity,” to charm rather than to condemn, to integrate rather than separate.
Integral Catholic doctrine, by contrast, binds clerics under grave obligation:
– To accept and defend all previously defined dogmas.
– To reject and combat condemned propositions (Syllabus, Pascendi, etc.).
– To guard the flock from wolves; silence about grave errors is betrayal, not prudence.
Roncalli’s “dignity” without combat is mutilated virtue, “forma pietatis abnegantes autem virtutem eius” (having the form of piety, denying its power).
2. “Accipite Librum et Devorate Illum”: Scripture Separated from the Anti-Modernist Syllabus
The second maxim urges immersion in Sacred Scripture, using the image from Apocalypse 10: “Take the book and devour it.”
He cites St. Lawrence Giustiniani beautifully on Sacred Scripture as wisdom, as nourishment. This, taken alone, is orthodox. But context and omissions corrupt the message.
What is carefully not said?
– No reference that Scripture must be read “secundum unanimum Patrum consensum” (according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers) and under the infallible Magisterium, as defined by the Councils of Trent and Vatican I.
– No mention of the condemnations in Lamentabili and Pascendi against modernist exegesis, which denies inerrancy, miracles, prophecies, and turns Scripture into a merely human, evolving document.
– No warning that contemporary biblical criticism in the 20th century (already widely penetrated in seminaries) is saturated with rationalism, evolutionism, and Protestant methodology.
Thus Scripture is recommended, but the doctrinal armor established by pre-1958 popes is studiously withheld. This is typical modernist pedagogy: appeal to sources (Biblia, Fathers, early liturgy) while quietly dismantling the authoritative interpretive framework, leading souls to accept a re-reading of the faith.
Integral Catholic teaching—Trent’s decrees on Scripture, Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus, Benedict XV’s Spiritus Paraclitus—absolutely requires:
– Affirmation of full inspiration and inerrancy.
– Submission of exegesis to the defined faith.
– Rejection of the notion that dogma evolves beyond the deposit.
Roncalli’s silence in front of the plague condemned by St. Pius X makes his exhortation a dangerous half-truth.
3. “Psallite Sapienter et Frequenter”: Prayer without War against Apostasy
The third maxim, “Psallite sapienter et frequenter,” exhorts constant prayer, use of Psalms, interior formation. Again, in itself, a Catholic theme. But again, the decisive elements are missing:
– No call to use the Psalms as the Church always used them: as cries for justice, for the defeat of God’s enemies, for the protection of the flock against heretics and infidels.
– No identification of the concrete enemies of God and His Church in the 20th century: atheistic communism, naturalism, liberalism, Freemasonry, Modernism within the clergy.
– Prayer is reduced to a spiritual hygiene that coexists peacefully with structural apostasy. The seminarians are trained not to name the Beast.
But Pius IX and Pius X had already identified Freemasonry and Modernism as “the synagogue of Satan,” infiltrating and attacking the Church. To ignore this in 1960, before a generation of future clergy, is to abandon one’s post as guardian.
Prayer without dogmatic clarity becomes anesthesia. The Psalter is invoked, but its militant, royal, Christocentric, anti-idolatrous dimension is muted to fit a bland spirituality suitable for a future of “dialogue” and “opening to the world.”
V. Symptomatic Level: The Allocution as Seed of Conciliar Apostasy
This speech distills the deeper pathology of the conciliar sect. Key symptoms:
1. The Church “Always Adapted to New Ages” vs. the Immutable Deposit
The climactic phrase:
“Hoc Evangelium Ecclesia Sancta, quae animosa est et novis aetatibus semper accommoda, vestris manibus tradit.”
“The Holy Church, which is courageous and always adapted to new ages, entrusts this Gospel to your hands.”
This is not the language of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, who:
– Taught that Revelation is complete and immutable.
– Condemned the “evolution of dogmas” (Lamentabili 21–26, 57–65; Pascendi).
– Warned that seeking “reconciliation” with liberalism and modern civilization (in the sense of relativistic and secularist principles) is an error (Syllabus 80).
The phrase signals a shift from:
– The Church that judges ages,
to
– A “Church” that adapts itself to ages.
This is the essence of Modernism: *religio accomodata temporum sensui* (religion adapted to the sense of the times), precisely and repeatedly condemned.
2. “New Order of the Ages”: The Eschatological Language Co-opted for Naturalistic Utopia
Roncalli interprets Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis as proclaiming that a “novus ordo saeculorum” arises: “tempora Evangelii aeterni, libertatis, unitatis pacisque certissimi nuntii.”
But:
– The Magnificat and Benedictus announce the coming of Christ who casts down the mighty, exalts the humble, saves His people from sins, fulfills the promises to Abraham. They are supernatural, not manifestos of horizontal “liberty, unity, peace” in the modern Masonic sense.
– The “eternal Gospel” (Apoc 14:6) is not a new message post-dogma; it is the same Christic Gospel announced definitively. Modernism and liberal Catholicism pervert this into a justification for doctrinal and pastoral mutation.
By fusing biblical canticles with the language of a “new age” of liberty, unity, peace, he theologically lubricates the acceptance of:
– Religious liberty in the condemned sense (freedom for error).
– Ecumenism that places false religions near or alongside the true Church.
– Pacifist-humanitarian ideology replacing the Kingship of Christ.
All of these are condemned in detail by:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus (errors 15–18, 55, 77–80).
– Leo XIII’s encyclicals on the Christian constitution of states.
– Pius XI’s Quas Primas which insists: true peace only in the Reign of Christ the King publicly acknowledged; laicized, neutral states are unlawful; detaching law from God leads to social ruin.
Roncalli’s omission of Christ’s public Kingship and his exaltation of an “adapted” Church in a new order is theological betrayal.
3. Emotional Paternalism as Technique of Disarmament
Throughout, the pseudo-pontiff:
– Multiplies paternal phrases: “we love you,” “we pray for you,” “you are the springtime,” etc.
– Presents himself as benevolent, approachable, smiling, contrasting with caricatured “rigid” past.
– Frames future seminarians as protagonists of a luminous epoch, not as guardians against unprecedented deception.
This sugar-coated style is itself a weapon. It anesthetizes vigilance, discredits severity, prepares seminarians to welcome radical changes (council, liturgical revolution, doctrinal ambiguity) as natural developments of the same “good Pope’s” tender heart.
Integral Catholic spirituality, however, is not sentimental. It is virile, cruciform, lucid. The shepherd warns; he does not flatter. Our Lord Himself spoke of wolves, of fire, of judgment, of hating father and mother for His sake, of the narrow way. Pius X imitated that firmness; Roncalli replaces it with marketing.
4. Erasure of the Real Enemy: Modernism within, Not Merely Distant Errors
By 1960:
– Modernism had not disappeared; it had gone subterranean in seminaries, chanceries, universities.
– The Holy Office under Pius XII had acted against nouvelle théologie, existentialist and evolutionary tendencies.
– The warnings of Pius X remained perfectly applicable: the enemies are inside.
In this allocution:
– No word about the internal doctrinal crisis.
– No word about disciplines (Index, anti-modernist oath) born precisely to protect seminarians.
– No denunciation of those who, in biblical, liturgical, and dogmatic fields, were already forging the future conciliar revolution—many of whom Roncalli himself favored.
Silence here is complicity. The shepherd who knows the wolf and refuses to name him exposes his lambs.
5. The Role of Jesuit/Ignatian Setting: Symbolic Co-option
The speech takes place in the Ignatian church, praising Gregory XV, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, Gonzaga, Berchmans, the Roman College.
This is calculated:
– It cloaks his program in Jesuit and Roman orthodoxy.
– It visually associates the upcoming council and his program with missionary zeal and sanctity.
– It instrumentalizes authentic saints as décor for a contrary agenda.
Yet:
– True Ignatian spirituality is militantly dogmatic, obedient to the papacy understood as guardian of defined truths, not innovator of “new epochs” and “adaptations.”
– St. Francis Xavier died preaching that outside the Church there is no salvation and fighting paganism, not forming interreligious “dialogue platforms.”
By using their names while preparing a conciliar attack on the very principles they served, Roncalli enacts the technique of Modernism: preserve externals, subvert internals.
VI. Contrast with Pre-1958 Magisterium: The Condemned Path
To expose the bankruptcy of the allocution’s underlying mentality, we confront it with magisterial teaching (all verifiable; key documents publicly available).
1. Against adaptationist rhetoric:
– Lamentabili 58–65 condemns the notion that truth changes with man, that doctrine must be reformed according to progress.
– Pascendi condemns the modernist who “adapts religion to the capacity of the ignorant” and “to the needs of the times,” turning it into a fluid experience.
Roncalli: speaks of a Church “always adapted to new ages” and heralds a “new order” centered on liberty, unity, peace. No caveats, no reaffirmation that dogma cannot evolve.
2. Against religious liberalism and humanitarianism:
– Syllabus errors 77–80: condemned the idea that the Catholic religion need not be the only religion of the state; that freedom of all cults is beneficial; that the Roman Pontiff must reconcile himself with liberalism and modern civilization.
– Quas Primas: teaches explicitly that only by recognizing the Kingship of Christ, privately and publicly, can true peace come. Secularism is a mortal plague.
Roncalli: meta-narrative of a “new epoch of liberty, unity, peace,” but never once affirms the non-negotiable duty of nations to submit to Christ the King and His Church, nor condemns the laicist states of his time. The result is soft complicity with condemned liberal principles.
3. Against Modernist exegesis:
– Lamentabili 9–11, 14–19 condemn the denial of full inspiration, the suggestion that the Gospels are theological constructions, that John is purely mystical, etc.
– Providentissimus Deus and Spiritus Paraclitus insist on inerrancy.
Roncalli’s call to Scripture lacks all references to this doctrinal arsenal; it leaves seminarians exposed to the very errors the pre-1958 papacy fought.
4. Against internal subversion:
– Pius X mandates the anti-modernist oath; disciplines seminary teaching.
– Pius IX and Leo XIII denounce Freemasonry as principal architect of the war against the Church, also in America and Europe.
Roncalli’s silence on these concrete enemies, in 1960, in Rome, to seminarians, is damning.
VII. The Spiritual Bankruptcy Revealed
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the speech is not merely “incomplete.” It is structurally corrupt:
– It replaces doctrinal militancy with affective, aesthetic exhortations.
– It divorces piety (Scripture, Psalms, chastity) from explicit anti-error combat.
– It introduces modernist slogans—adaptation to new ages, new order of liberty and peace—under biblical coloration.
– It betrays the Kingship of Christ by ignoring His public rights and endorsing an implicit reconciliation with modernity condemned by prior popes.
– It shapes a generation of clergy psychologically conditioned to accept Vatican II’s novelties, liturgical destruction, ecumenism, collegiality, religious liberty, and the cult of man as the “natural flowering” of the goodwill of the “good Pope John.”
This is not the voice of the same Magisterium as Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI. It is the soft voice that opens the gate to wolves.
VIII. Positive Duty of the Faithful: Reject the Conciliar Ideology, Cling to the Perennial Doctrine
Given this evidence, the duty is clear:
– Seminarians and faithful must not be seduced by sentimental, ambiguous texts of the conciliar sect.
– They must form their minds exclusively on:
– The defined dogmas.
– The papal teachings and disciplinary bulwarks up to Pius XII, read in continuity with all previous centuries.
– The anti-modernist, anti-liberal, anti-Masonic magisterium: Syllabus, Pascendi, Lamentabili, Quas Primas, and related documents.
– They must reject the notion of a “Church always adapted to new ages” when this phrase is used to justify dilution or reinterpretation of doctrine, worship, or morals.
– They must comprehend that true pastoral charity consists first in guarding the deposit, anathematizing error, and leading souls to the unique Ark of salvation, not in merging the Spouse of Christ into a paramasonic humanitarian federation.
The allocution of 28 January 1960 thus stands as a doctrinally symptomatic document: polite, “spiritual,” but pregnant with the principles that would soon devastate the visible structures occupying the Vatican. To unmask it is not optional; it is an act of fidelity to Christ the King, whose rights and truth no age, no sentimental rhetoric, and no usurper may ever lawfully relativize.
Source:
Allocutio ad sacrorum alumnos ex Romana Dioecesi vel Romae studiorum causa commorantes (die XXVIII m. Ianuarii, A. D. MCMLX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025