In this radio message dated 19 February 1959, John XXIII addresses the Vietnamese hierarchy on the occasion of a Marian Congress in Saigon, commemorating both the Lourdes centenary and three centuries since the appointment of the first Apostolic Vicars in Vietnam. He praises the Marian devotion of the Vietnamese faithful, exalts historic missionary labors and martyrs, notes the growth of the indigenous clergy and Catholic population, expresses paternal sympathy for Catholics in the persecuted northern regions, and appoints Cardinal Gregorio Pietro Agagianian as papal legate to the celebrations, granting blessings and spiritual favors.
Beneath its pious surface, this text is a meticulous exercise in consolidating the conciliar revolution: replacing the Kingship of Christ with diplomatic sentimentalism, instrumentalizing genuine missionary history to legitimize an emerging neo-church, and anesthetizing a suffering people with naturalistic optimism instead of calling them to integral Catholic militancy.
John XXIII’s Marian Vietnam Message as Prelude to the Conciliar Betrayal
Historical Reality Appropriated to Serve a Neo-Church
At the level of facts, the message appears, at first glance, harmless: references to Lourdes, to three centuries of evangelization, to martyrs, to the sending of François Pallu and Pierre Lambert de la Motte, to the flourishing of native clergy and to the fidelity of Catholics enduring persecution in the North.
But the entire historical narrative is being subtly re-coded.
– The genuine Catholic missionary tradition in Vietnam — marked by doctrinal clarity, confessional exclusivity, and readiness for martyrdom — is presented as a safe decorative backdrop for the authority of the very figure who inaugurates the conciliar subversion.
– John XXIII uses the revered memory of Apostolic Vicars and martyrs (men formed and operating under the pre-1958 Church) as a retroactive seal of approval on his own authority and on the trajectory he is about to impose.
He insists that:
“The Vietnamese Catholics rightly esteem as a most precious gift the Christian faith, consecrated by the blood of many martyrs.”
Yes: but the martyrs shed their blood against paganism, syncretism, indifferentism, political cults, and state domination of the Church — precisely the realities that the conciliar and post-conciliar program will in practice accommodate, relativize, or sanctify through “dialogue” and “religious liberty.”
The appropriation is clear: authentic Catholic heroism is invoked to legitimize an incipient orientation diametrically opposed to the doctrine for which those martyrs died.
This stands in stark tension with the principles reaffirmed by Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum*, which condemns:
– the separation of Church and State (proposition 55),
– religious indifferentism and equalization of all cults (15–18, 77–80),
– subordination of the Church to civil powers (19–21, 39–44).
Missionary work in Vietnam, especially under the great martyrs and confessors, concretely applied these principles: Christ the King publicly acknowledged; paganism to be converted, not flattered; the Church claiming her supernatural and juridical rights, not bargaining them. John XXIII’s discourse carefully avoids reaffirming this integral stance.
Linguistic Anesthesia: Piety Without Militant Supernaturalism
The tone is revealing: smooth, irenic, sentimental, bureaucratically “paternal” without being truly apostolic. Several characteristics betray the modernist mentality:
1. Empty universal benevolence:
– He speaks in warm generalities, heaps praises, distributes “comfort,” but avoids sharp doctrinal delineation.
– The vocabulary of combat, condemnation of error, and the obligation to profess the Catholic faith exclusively is conspicuously absent.
2. Harmless Marian devotion:
– Lourdes is invoked, Mary as Queen of Missions is mentioned, but Marian doctrine is not armed against modern errors.
– There is no call to Marian intercession for the conversion of false religions, no denunciation of communist atheism as intrinsically diabolical in doctrinal terms, no recall of the dogmatic necessity of the one true Church for salvation.
3. Vague treatment of persecution:
– He notes with sorrow that northern Catholics cannot attend the celebrations, and confirms that they remain united to him.
– Yet he omits a forthright, doctrinal denunciation of communism as a system condemned repeatedly by pre-1958 Magisterium.
– He does not explicitly reassert that civil laws contrary to the divine constitution of the Church are null and void, as Pius IX did in his letters against state persecution, where he affirmed that no state can deprive bishops or overturn Christ’s constitution of the Church.
– Instead of rallying Catholics to confess Christ the King against a satanic regime, he reduces their heroism to patient waiting for God to “fulfil His promises,” toning down the Church’s right and duty to resist anti-Christian powers.
The language functions as theological sedation. It is precisely what St. Pius X unmasked in *Pascendi* and the decree *Lamentabili sane exitu*: a shift from binding dogmatic clarity to vague pastoral rhetoric which can be bent to every compromise.
The Systematic Silences: When Omission Becomes Accusation
The most damning aspect of this message is not what it says, but what it refuses to say. These omissions, examined against the integral Catholic faith, expose the true orientation.
1. Silence on the Kingship of Christ in society:
– In a context of a nation torn by ideologies and contested sovereignties, a truly Catholic Roman Pontiff would reiterate what Pius XI proclaims in *Quas Primas*: that peace is possible only through the public reign of Christ; states and peoples must submit to His law.
– Here: no call for Vietnam, as a nation, to recognize Christ the King; no reminder that civil authority must be ordered to His law; no condemnation of secular or communist usurpation.
– Instead, only a request for “solid peace” as a desirable blessing, emptied of dogmatic conditions.
2. Silence on the necessity of the one true Church:
– Not a single clear assertion that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, nor that pagans and unbelievers in Vietnam are called to conversion, not mere coexistence.
– Yet the authentic Magisterium (before 1958) insists: the Church has both right and duty to teach that she is the only ark of salvation, and that all must enter; to deny this is condemned (Syllabus, 21; Pius XI, *Mortalium Animos*).
– His words about Catholics as “light” in the midst of those ignorant of the true God are left at the level of decorous imagery, without the sharp imperative of conversion and doctrinal exclusivity.
3. Absence of soteriological seriousness:
– No mention of:
– state of grace,
– mortal sin,
– the Last Judgment,
– Hell as real destiny for those rejecting Christ and His Church,
– the obligation of frequent confession and worthy Communion.
– Marian devotion is presented as a channel for obtaining “heavenly benefits” and especially “peace,” but de supernaturalized: piety is reduced to a consoling ornament, rather than the militant school of total submission to Christ and His law.
4. No defense of the Church’s sovereign rights:
– Pre-1958 popes, confronted with persecution and state interference, spoke in juridical-theological terms: the Church is a perfect society, independent of the State, not subject to its laws in sacred matters; unjust laws are invalid.
– John XXIII avoids reaffirming this robust doctrine, preferring to emphasize consolation rather than resistance. This is not accidental; it prefigures the conciliar betrayal on religious liberty.
These silences are not neutral: in the face of militant atheism, paganism, and the blood of martyrs, to refuse doctrinal clarity is to soften the faith into a humanistic “religion of comfort.” The silence on the public rights of Christ the King and on the exclusive salvific necessity of the Catholic Church is itself a sign of apostasy.
Theological Subversion: Marian Congress as Laboratory of Conciliar Sentimentalism
On the theological level, the message recasts authentic Catholic elements in a conciliar direction.
1. Marian devotion detached from dogma and militancy:
– The Blessed Virgin is invoked as “Queen of Missions,” but her role as Destroyer of heresies, Terror of demons, and victorious ally of those combating errors is not proclaimed.
– Lourdes is celebrated, but instrumentalized as a soft symbol of “heavenly consolations,” not as a call to penance, reparation, and doctrinal firmness.
– Characteristically modernist is the reduction of Marian cult to affective, apolitical pietism, compatible with the future syncretistic posture of the conciliar sect.
2. Martyrs without confession of the integral Kingship of Christ:
– He praises martyrs and missionary bishops, but drains their witness of its doctrinal edge.
– Martyrdom is not only generic “fidelity,” but the supreme juridical and theological act of confessing that:
– Christ is true God and true King;
– the Catholic Church is His only Bride;
– the State has no right to persecute or to legislate against the divine constitution of the Church.
– By not reiterating these truths, the message exploits martyrdom rhetorically while preparing the acceptance of religious pluralism and state secularism condemned by the *Syllabus*.
3. De facto horizontalism:
– Constant emphasis on “comfort,” “encouragement,” “joy,” “gratitude,” but almost no trace of holy fear, judgment, combat against error, necessity of grace and sacraments as absolute.
– This anticipates the anthropocentric religion of the “Church of the New Advent,” which will enthrone the “dignity of man” where the pre-1958 Magisterium enthroned the rights of God.
4. Use of Scripture without integral doctrine:
– References to James 1:17, Luke 8:8, Ephesians 2:20 are formally correct but function as decorative fragments detached from their full doctrinal implications.
– The text does not, for example, use Ephesians 2:20 to affirm the indefectible, juridically determined structure of the Church as founded on Apostles and prophets, with Peter’s primacy, as a basis to condemn state usurpation and doctrinal novelties.
– This is precisely the method condemned in *Lamentabili*: using Scripture as pretext while in fact evacuating its traditional sense.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution: Vietnam as Stage for a New Religion
This message is emblematic of a deeper process:
1. From militancy to coexistence:
– Under the pre-1958 doctrine, missions aimed at conversion and at the shaping of societies according to God’s law. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* insists that societies, laws, education, and public life must be subject to Christ.
– John XXIII’s message, by its omissions and tone, shifts toward a “Catholicism” that can coexist seamlessly with hostile regimes and pluralistic frameworks, content with private piety and moral encouragement.
2. From dogma to “pastoral” ambiguity:
– The core of the conciliar sect’s deception lies in the transition from clear doctrinal affirmations and condemnations to “pastoral” language that never bites.
– This message is a prototype: it sounds orthodox enough to the inattentive, yet systematically omits the very elements that would clash with modernist and political agendas.
3. Instrumentalization of suffering Catholics:
– Northern Vietnamese Catholics enduring persecution are invoked as edifying, but they are not given the full voice of the Church’s authority condemning their persecutors in clear terms.
– Instead, their fidelity is used to underline union with John XXIII personally, thus conflating obedience to the emerging conciliar project with perseverance in the true faith.
– This is spiritually cruel: tying genuine Catholic heroism to an authority that is about to dismantle the very doctrinal foundations for which they suffer.
4. Continuity myth preparation:
– By reverently citing missionary figures and praising traditional devotion while subtly shifting emphasis and silencing integral doctrines, the text rehearses the future “hermeneutic of continuity”: the lie that the neo-church is in unbroken continuity with the pre-1958 Church.
– Yet the pre-1958 Magisterium has explicitly anathematized the very principles that will be ratified at Vatican II: religious liberty as a civil right, ecumenism, the relativization of confessional states, and the dilution of dogmatic exclusivity.
– The contradiction is irreconcilable. Either Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII taught the truth, or the conciliar line does. This message stands clearly in the trajectory of the latter.
False Pastoral Charity Versus the Demands of Divine Law
The entire document moves within a naturalistic and diplomatic horizon, even when it uses supernatural vocabulary.
– Calls for peace are not explicitly subordinated to the social reign of Christ.
– Appeals to Marian intercession are not explicitly ordered to the conversion of enemies and the condemnation of errors.
– Recognition of martyrs is not transformed into a living norm for present resistance.
– The Church’s rights are not asserted against revolutionary tyrannies.
Integral Catholic theology, as reaffirmed decisively before 1958, insists that:
– lex divina (divine law) binds rulers and nations;
– the Church has the innate right and duty to teach, judge, and condemn errors;
– public order must be conformed to the law of Christ; “neutrality” is condemned;
– “dialogue” that suspends the assertion of dogma is treason.
Measured by these principles, John XXIII’s message is not a harmless Marian exhortation; it is a carefully calibrated step toward a religion compatible with:
– religious indifferentism,
– state secularism,
– the conciliar cult of humanity.
This is why the most serious error in this text is not an isolated heretical formula, but the systematic replacement of the supernatural, juridical, and dogmatic ethos of the Church with a sentimental, diplomatic, and naturalistic posture which, in practice, disarms the faithful and prepares them to accept the conciliar sect as if it were the true Church.
Vietnam’s Martyrs as Judges of the Neo-Church
If we confront this message with the faith and blood of the Vietnamese martyrs, a radical contrast appears.
– They confessed Christ as唯一 Lord and King, unto death, refusing compromise with pagan cults or state control.
– They upheld the exclusive rights of the Catholic Church to teach, govern, and sanctify; they did not die for “religious liberty” in the liberal sense, but for the liberty of the true Church against false religions and unjust powers.
– Their sacrifice confirms the doctrine reiterated by Pius IX and Pius XI: peace and justice cannot be established on the autonomy of man from God, but only on the submission of individuals and nations to Christ the King.
In this light, the message of John XXIII stands as a muted counter-witness:
– praising the martyrs while refusing to draw their doctrinal conclusions;
– consoling the persecuted without arming them with clear denunciation of the errors that persecute them;
– honoring missionary history while paving the way for a conciliar program that will relativize missions into “dialogue” and “mutual enrichment.”
The true Catholic conscience, formed by the unchanging Magisterium, must therefore judge this text accordingly:
– as a strategic stage in the transition from integral Catholicism to post-conciliarism;
– as an example of that “pastoral” language which, precisely by its omissions and euphemisms, prepares the faithful to tolerate, then embrace, principles solemnly condemned by pre-1958 popes;
– as a misuse of Marian and martyrial piety to sanctify an authority that no longer teaches and governs according to the perennial doctrine of the Church.
Where the authentic Magisterium thunders against liberalism, naturalism, Modernism, and the subjugation of the Church to secular ideologies, this message whispers, smooths, and sentimentalizes. In the face of militant evil and heroic fidelity, such softness is not virtue but betrayal.
Source:
Nuntius Radiophonicus dato Mariali Conventui Vietnamensi (die XIX m. Februarii, A.D. MCMLIX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025