The Programmatic Glorification of the Conciliar Revolution
At this plenary session address of November 7, 1961, John XXIII extols the work of the Central Commission preparing the so-called Second Vatican Council, praises the zeal of bishops and experts drafting schemas, invokes worldwide expectations (including those “separated from the Church” and even non-baptized), calls for confidence, human cooperation, respect for the “human person,” and presents the coming Council as a response to contemporary aspirations for peace, progress, and unity; in doing so, he proposes a council oriented not to the condemnation of errors and the restoration of the social Kingship of Christ, but to dialogue with the world and reassurance of mankind.
This allocution is nothing less than the manifesto of an ecclesiastical mutation: the shift from the supernatural, militantly doctrinal Church of Christ to a conciliatory, naturalistic, anthropocentric project that laid the foundations of the conciliar sect.
Elevation of a Human Project Above the Divine Deposit
John XXIII’s allocution is built on a continuous self-congratulation of the preparatory structures and a serene optimism about their work:
“We are certain… that rich fruits most useful for the life of the Church will be drawn from this work… You are the ministers of the Church, ecclesiastical men, most learned in the matters which our times require.”
The entire tone betrays a fundamental displacement:
– There is virtually no mention of original sin, the danger of heresy, the vigilance against modern errors, or the Church’s divine mission to teach, judge, and condemn falsehood.
– Instead of *custodia depositi* (the guarding of the deposit), we find bureaucratic admiration for commissions, “Secretariats,” and technical preparations, as if the Church were organizing a diplomatic congress or a technocratic symposium.
– He expresses “confidence” because those involved are “very learned in the matters which our times require” — as if the criterion of truth were contemporary expertise, not the infallible dogmatic and anti-modernist magisterium already given.
Before 1958, the Magisterium consistently warned against precisely this mentality:
– Pius IX, in the *Syllabus Errorum*, condemns the notion that the Church should submit to the spirit of the age, accept liberal-modern civilization, and renounce her sovereign doctrinal authority (propositions 19–21, 55, 77–80).
– St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* denounces those who demand a historicist, progressive “adaptation” of doctrine, branding Modernism the “synthesis of all heresies.”
John XXIII, however, silently reverses this: instead of reaffirming the already definitive condemnations, he encourages the same milieu of “experts” that Modernism had always sought to enthrone over dogma. The entire allocution is an apologia for a humanly constructed event which pretends to be ecclesial while carefully avoiding the Church’s traditional weaponry: anathema, doctrinal precision, and the assertion of the exclusive rights of Christ the King.
From the Reign of Christ the King to the Cult of the Human Person
One of the most revealing passages is John XXIII’s articulation of the Council’s supposed aims. He recalls his radio message and declares:
“We strive… to contribute everywhere to restoring confidence among men, to arouse zeal for mutual and concordant action, to recommend reverence for the human person, whom Christ has redeemed, to establish peace for the benefit of all.”
Key elements:
– “Confidence among men,” “mutual and concordant action,” “reverence for the human person,” “peace for all” — all expressed without subordination to the obligation of all nations and individuals to submit to the reign of Christ.
– The redemptive mention (“whom Christ has redeemed”) is instrumentalized to justify a horizontal program: the human person is placed at the center, not as subject of obligations to God and His Church, but as an object of dignitarian rhetoric.
This stands in direct tension with integral Catholic doctrine:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that true peace, order, and the rights of persons can only exist *within the public and private submission of individuals and states to Christ the King*. Any project of “peace” and “dignity” separated from His social kingship is condemned as laicist illusion.
– The *Syllabus* explicitly rejects the cult of abstract “rights” detached from the authority of Christ and His Church (e.g., the claim that civil liberty of all forms of worship and absolute freedom of expression are necessary conditions of progress).
John XXIII’s language belongs unmistakably to the post-liberal vocabulary that the pre-1958 Magisterium had identified as the Trojan horse of apostasy: “human person,” “peace,” “mutual cooperation,” without any parallel insistence on:
– the duty of states to be Catholic,
– the necessity of rejecting indifferentism,
– the condemnation of secret societies and masonic influence,
– the grave obligation of conversion to the one true Church.
*Silentium ipsius est argumentum contra ipsum.* The silence is louder than the words. By evacuating the full doctrinal content of the Kingship of Christ, and replacing it with a sentimental humanitarian project, this allocution signals the transitio from *Regnum Christi* to the cult of man that would be openly declared by the conciliar sect a few years later.
Flattery of “Separated Brethren” and Natural Religion
John XXIII emphasizes with evident satisfaction:
“We must say more and repeat it often: namely that brethren separated from the unity of the Church and even many of those on whose foreheads the sign of Christ is not impressed, yet on whom the light of natural revelation shines, turn their minds to this Council… Their attentive minds, full of respect and expectation, bring joy.”
Here the rupture is transparent:
– The Fathers, councils, and popes consistently taught that heretics and schismatics are outside the unity of the Church, and that their only salvific path is conversion and submission to the Roman Pontiff.
– Pius IX condemns the idea that “good hope” is to be entertained of the salvation of all outside the Church as a doctrinal principle (Syllabus, proposition 17).
– St. Pius X condemns the notion that revelation continues as evolving “religious consciousness” through separated communities or other religions.
John XXIII instead:
– Treats their benevolent curiosity as a criterion of consolation, almost as a quasi-ecclesial validation.
– Suggests that the Council should be tailored to the expectations of those in error or without the faith, rather than calling them unequivocally to repentance and conversion.
– Introduces a “theology of natural revelation” as parallel reassurance: those without baptism “have the light of natural revelation” and look to the Council. This elevates natural religion as if it were a legitimate partner and not, when separated from supernatural faith, a path easily dominated by error and idolatry.
This anticipates and prepares the later ecumenical delirium and religious relativism of the conciliar sect: “dialogue,” “mutual enrichment,” and official contradiction of the defined dogma *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* understood in its perennial, exclusive sense.
The allocution thus functions as a proto-manifesto of *false ecumenism*: instead of preaching with St. Augustine that outside the Church one may have everything but salvation, it delights in the attention of those outside and molds the Council into a spectacle for them.
Systematic Omission of Condemnation: Modernism Rehabilitated
From a doctrinal standpoint, the most damning feature of this text is what it systematically refuses to do.
Not once does John XXIII:
– Recall the binding force of:
– *Lamentabili sane exitu*,
– *Pascendi dominici gregis*,
– the Anti-Modernist Oath,
– the Syllabus of Pius IX;
– Warn against Modernism, liberalism, socialism, or masonic infiltration, despite these being, by 1961, the explicit, formally condemned enemies of the Church.
– Reaffirm the obligation to reject doctrinal novelties, evolution of dogma, or “new theology.”
Instead, he:
– Exalts the Commission’s work as if previous magisterial clarifications were insufficient and a great new synthesis were needed.
– Praises the “studies” and “preparations” without imposing the doctrinal boundaries that true Catholic pastors must constantly reiterate.
Given that the conciliar revolution which followed in fact enthroned:
– religious liberty as a civil right,
– ecumenism as a principle,
– collegiality as a structural alteration,
– and liturgical mutation that mutilated the expression of the propitiatory Sacrifice,
this silence is not neutral; it is programmatic. The allocution is a case study in Modernist praxis: no frontal denial of dogma, but a deliberate refusal to apply it, while shifting the center of gravity to experience, dialogue, and worldly expectations. *Omne verbum deest ubi maxime necessarium est* (every word is missing where it is most necessary).
Naturalistic Peace in Place of Supernatural Combat
John XXIII refers to fears about global dangers and recalls his prior radio message:
“We invited rulers to consider the most grave weight of their office… that truth and justice may flourish, whereby primary liberties and inviolable goods of greatest price of each people and of each person may be safely secured.”
This passage is revealing:
– The categories are: “primary liberties,” “inviolable goods,” “each people,” “each person.” This is the language of secular rights declarations, not of pontifical teaching in the line of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, who insisted that liberty and rights exist only under and within the divine order and the authority of the Church.
– No mention that states are bound in conscience to recognize the true religion.
– No mention that false worship and doctrinal error are objectively crimes against the divine majesty.
– No exhortation to rulers to banish sects, suppress masonic forces, or protect the Church as the one ark of salvation.
By turning from the supernatural to a rhetorical defense of generic liberties, John XXIII aligns his allocution with those very liberal principles repeatedly anathematized. This is not an oversight; it is the deliberate repositioning of the “Council” as the religious seal on the ideology of 1789.
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, writes in substance that the defection of states from Christ the King is the root of modern social calamities, and that peace will not come until individuals and nations recognize His reign. John XXIII, by contrast, proposes peace through mutual confidence and respect for human rights, a formula entirely compatible with naturalistic globalism and entirely incompatible with the anti-liberal doctrine of the pre-1958 Church.
Liturgical and Rhetorical Transfiguration of the Church into a World-Friendly Institution
John XXIII rejoices at how his encyclical *Mater et Magistra* and his radio message were received worldwide, including by those “alien” to the Church. He cites massive crowds and favorable reactions as confirmation that religious and moral interests are actually increasing.
This is a dangerous inversion:
– Favorable reception by a world immersed in apostasy is treated as a sign of spiritual vitality.
– The very criterion Christ gives — *“If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you”* — is implicitly reversed. A Church applauded by the world is presented as a triumph, not as a symptom of betrayal.
The earlier Magisterium, especially St. Pius X, was unambiguous:
– Modern civilization organized without God is intrinsically disordered.
– The Church must resist, condemn, and correct; not seek applause by softening her language and muting her anathemas.
John XXIII’s tone is that of cordial accommodation, not supernatural militancy. The rhetorical devices are clear:
– Sentimental optimism instead of eschatological seriousness;
– Grandiose references to “all peoples, every language and race” honoring the “Supreme Pontiff,” used not to reaffirm his duty to guard doctrine but to validate a new, more “universal” posture of the structures occupying the Vatican;
– Emphasis on “technical” and “organizational” effort, which secularizes ecclesial language and suggests that holiness and orthodoxy can be engineered by committees.
This language is the signature of the conciliar sect: bureaucratic self-importance, emotional pacifism, and deliberate omission of the supernatural battle for souls.
The Manipulation of Ezekiel: From Prophetic Warning to Pacified Optimism
Near the close, John XXIII refers to Ezekiel:
“This is truly the book which, with God kindly helping, is handed to us to be unfolded. In it lie lamentations and song and woe… Let us come to our own song proposed to us in these days: ‘All My words that I shall speak to thee receive in thy heart, and hear with thy ears.’”
He briefly acknowledges “lamentations and woe,” but immediately diverts to a consoling “carmen” — a song of enthusiastic cooperation and optimistic expectation. He passes over the element of *vae* (woe) with almost dismissive brevity.
The prophetic text in Ezekiel, however, is a warning of judgment upon a rebellious people. The authentic Magisterium historically applied such oracles to:
– heresies,
– moral corruption,
– divine wrath upon infidelity.
John XXIII uses it rhetorically to frame the Council as a positive “song,” not as a grave divine intervention calling for repentance and condemnation of error. He deliberately suppresses the central thrust of the text — divine judgment — in order to maintain the narrative of serene progress.
This hermeneutic gestus prefigures the conciliar method:
– Retain biblical language;
– Drain it of its sharp, condemnatory content;
– Reinterpret it in a sentimental, inclusive, evolutionary horizon.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is not harmless softening; it is *a practical falsification of Scripture’s prophetic function* in the life of the Church.
Structural Symptom: The Birth of the Conciliar Sect
Analyzed synthetically, this allocution exhibits all the symptomatic marks of the later conciliar revolution:
1. Anthropocentrism:
– Continuous focus on “men,” “peoples,” “human person,” “confidence,” “cooperation.”
– Near-total absence of sin, hell, judgment, necessity of grace, sacramental life as conditions of salvation.
2. Ecumenical Flattery:
– Open courting of heretics, schismatics, and adherents of natural religion as welcome observers and inspirers of the Council.
– No call to abjure errors or return to the only ark of salvation.
3. Liberal Vocabulary:
– Adoption of rights-language condemned by the Syllabus without doctrinal safeguards.
– Peace divorced from the Kingship of Christ.
4. Magisterial Amnesia:
– Total silence on binding anti-modernist documents.
– Creation of an atmosphere in which past condemnations appear obsolete, paving the way for their factual abrogation in the minds of clergy and laity.
5. Technocratic-Committee Ecclesiology:
– Exaltation of commissions and experts, signaling the shift from divinely guaranteed magisterium to sociological, academic engineering.
6. Optimism as Dogma:
– The assumption that the current age’s aspirations are fundamentally good and that the Council’s role is to respond positively to them, rather than to judge and correct them.
These elements, taken together, reveal that this is not a harmless preparatory exhortation, but an intentional ideological orientation. It announces a “Council” that will refuse to act as every true ecumenical council had done: defining, anathematizing, restoring the rights of God and of the Church. Instead, it would inaugurate the *abominatio desolationis* in doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary life, whose fruits are visible: doctrinal confusion, moral collapse, pseudo-sacraments, profanation of worship, and the systematic disfigurement of the image of Christ the King into an icon of humanitarian tolerance.
The Radical Antithesis with Pre-1958 Catholicity
To measure the theological bankruptcy of the allocution, one must juxtapose it with the constant pre-1958 doctrine:
– *Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*: marginalized in favor of ecumenical “respect.”
– The duty of states to recognize the true religion: entirely suppressed, replaced by hints of human-rights ideology.
– The condemnation of indifferentism, rationalism, modernism: absent where they should be central.
– The affirmation of the Church as a perfect society with full rights independent of the state: not reaffirmed; instead, an irenic, almost apologetic posture before the world.
– The insistence on the unchanging nature of dogma: replaced by an implicit suggestion that new “fruits” and “forms” are expected from the Council to meet “the needs of our times.”
The result is clear: this allocution is incompatible with the integrally Catholic magisterium that preceded it. It is not a legitimate development; it is a coded rupture. The man who pronounces it presents himself as head of the Church, while objectively preparing the overthrow of the very principles that define the Church’s visible and doctrinal identity.
In this light, the allocution stands as an early, open self-disclosure of the conciliar sect: a paramasonic, naturalistic, dialogical organism, eager to please the world, silent about judgment, allergic to anathema, and determined to reinterpret revelation under the gaze of those it once knew it had to convert.
Call to Reject the Conciliar Program and Return to the Immutable Faith
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, the only coherent conclusion is:
– This allocution is a programmatic text of apostasy in germinal form.
– Its principles — humanitarianism, ecumenical courtship, liberal rhetoric, magisterial amnesia — are irreconcilable with the Church’s perennial magisterium, as witnessed in the *Syllabus*, *Quas Primas*, *Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*, and the entire pre-1958 doctrinal corpus.
– The “Council” it envisages was, and remains, structurally ordered not to defend the flock, but to dissolve Catholic identity into a global, syncretic, anthropocentric religiosity.
Therefore:
– Catholics bound to the integral faith must not be seduced by the polished Latin and pious phrases.
– They must measure every such text by the solemn pre-1958 Magisterium and see in this allocution the initial orchestration of that “conciliar revolution” which supplanted the Church with the neo-church.
– The duty is not to “receive” the decrees born of this program, but to cling to what the Church taught always, everywhere, and by all, rejecting the novelties that have already demonstrated their poisonous fruits in the devastation of souls, liturgy, doctrine, and morals.
*Ubi Christus Rex publice non regnat, ibi pax est mendacium.* Where Christ does not reign publicly according to His law and the teaching of His true Church, every promise of peace and dignity is a mask for rebellion. This allocution chose the mask. The faithful must choose the Cross, the Kingship, and the immutable doctrine that no commission, no “Council,” and no usurper can abolish.
Source:
Allocutio habita in secunda plenaria Sessione Commissionis Centralis Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II apparando: Beatissimi Patris spes et vota (die 7 m. Novembris, A.D. MCMLXI) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025