Venerable brethren and beloved sons are called by John XXIII to unite in intensified recitation of the Divine Office as a “sacrifice of praise” for the “happy outcome” of Vatican II, presented as a “new Pentecost” and even a “new Epiphany,” with particular emphasis on clergy as mediators whose common prayer should prepare and sustain this conciliar event in hope of ecclesial “renewal” and adaptation of discipline to “the needs of this age.” The entire text, clothed in pious language and allusions to Bethlehem, the Magi, and the heavenly liturgy, functions, however, as a devotional-anesthetic to sanctify in advance the conciliar revolution and to conscript the sacred liturgy itself into serving an already predetermined programme of aggiornamento subversive of the unchanging Catholic faith.
Consecrating Revolution: How “Sacrae Laudis” Weaponizes the Divine Office for Vatican II
Sanctifying the Conciliar Project Before It Speaks
Already in the opening paragraphs, John XXIII makes the agenda transparent beneath the incense.
He links the global expressions of thanks to God for the convocation of Vatican II with the duty to sustain them by “fervent Christian piety,” and then states that these acclamations and pilgrimages urge him to prepare souls more efficaciously for the Council. The key passage:
“Hic namque eventus exspectatissimus tanto cumulatius communi omnium exspectationi satisfaciet, salubrioresque edet fructus, quanto magis ad id conducet, ut et catholica fides etiam atque etiam roboretur, et Ecclesiae leges cum huius aetatis necessitatibus aptius componantur…”
English: “This long-awaited event will answer the common expectation all the more and produce more wholesome fruits, the more it helps that the Catholic faith be again and again strengthened, and that the laws of the Church be more suitably adapted to the needs of this age…”
At the factual level:
– He presents as self-evident that Vatican II will:
– “Strengthen” the faith.
– “Adapt” Church laws to “the needs of this age.”
– There is no doctrinal content yet; instead there is a pre-emptive halo placed on an unknown corpus: the Council is canonized in advance.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958, this is already gravely suspect:
– The Church had consistently condemned the core notions that would become the slogans of the Council:
– The idea that “the needs of this age” become a formal criterion for adapting ecclesiastical laws and (in practice) teaching is the precise mentality condemned by St. Pius X, who denounced the Modernists for subjecting dogma and discipline to the evolving “needs” of contemporary consciousness (*Lamentabili sane exitu*; *Pascendi*).
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the thesis that the Church must reconcile herself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” as an error (Syllabus, prop. 80).
John XXIII’s exhortation embeds the condemned thesis through a liturgical back door: he does not argue for liberal adaptation; he sacralizes a Council advertised as such, and demands the Divine Office be recited precisely for the “happy outcome” of this project. The liturgy is thus co-opted as an instrument to lubricate acceptance of the coming deformation.
This is not piety; it is strategy.
Linguistic Cloaking: Sweet Rhetoric as a Vehicle of Subversion
The language of “Sacrae Laudis” is intentionally soft, affective, and non-dogmatic. This style is itself symptomatic.
Key features:
– Constant diminutives of sentiment:
– “dulcissima,” “suavissime,” “iucundissimum spectaculum,” “delicias,” “suavis pax.”
– Uncritical enthusiasm:
– Vatican II as “nova et praeclara Pentecostes,” “vera etiam novaque Epiphania.”
– Appeals to emotion and imagery:
– Bethlehem, Epiphany, Magi, the star, Joseph, the angelic liturgy of the Apocalypse.
– The Council is framed as:
– “magnum celebrandum Concilium, non modo catholicorum, sed aliorum etiam hominum ex universo terrarum orbe exspectationem impleret” – a Council expected not only by Catholics but “also others from the whole world.”
Theological implications of this rhetoric:
1. Emotional substitution for doctrinal clarity:
– Instead of specifying what must be defended—*the integrity of dogma, the condemnation of heresy, the social reign of Christ the King*—the text dissolves into imagery. Silence about the precise enemies of the Church, Modernism, liberalism, socialism, freemasonry, is absolute.
2. New emphasis on the expectations of “others”:
– The Council’s success is implicitly tied to meeting the expectations of the world outside the Church.
– This stands in stark contrast to Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, which grounds peace solely in submission to the Kingship of Christ and explicitly denounces secular “laicism” as apostasy. There, the world must convert to Christ; here, the Council is urged to “answer” the world.
3. The vocabulary of “aptior compositio” with “the needs of this age” introduces a latent principle:
– Ecclesial structures and disciplines—and in practice, soon, doctrine—are relativized to historical circumstances. This is the Modernist evolutionary thesis condemned in *Lamentabili* (e.g., propositions 58–65).
Thus, the very sweetness of the language is the mask of its venom. It avoids open confrontation with Catholic dogma while quietly relocating the axis of ecclesial reflection: from defending received truth against the world to harmonizing the Church with the world.
Instrumentalizing the Divine Office: Piety Pressed into Service of Aggiornamento
The central formal aim of the document is to exhort clergy to recite the Divine Office more devoutly, offering it as sacrificium laudis for the success of Vatican II.
On the surface, promoting reverent recitation of the Divine Office is wholly Catholic. But here the intention is corrupt:
– The Divine Office is presented as:
– A privileged means to obtain “felicem exitum Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II.”
– An expression of unity around John XXIII and his conciliar initiative.
He explicitly proposes a formula to be added before the Hours:
“Acceptum tibi sit, Domine Deus, sacrificium laudis, quod divinae maiestati tuae offero pro felici exitu Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani secundi…”
English: “May the sacrifice of praise be acceptable to You, Lord God, which I offer to Your divine majesty for the happy outcome of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council…”
This is the linchpin:
– The clergy are urged to bind their daily obligation of the Divine Office to the intention that Vatican II achieve its “happy outcome”—understood, as he has suggested, as:
– adaptation to the age,
– meeting the expectations of the world,
– a “new Epiphany” of the Church.
In effect:
– The Office is weaponized to beseech God for the triumph of a future programme of aggiornamento.
– The implication is that resistance to this Council, once so prayed for, would be resistance to the fruits of prayer, to the Holy Ghost Himself.
From the standpoint of pre-1958 doctrine:
– This is a classic tactic of religious manipulation: sacralize the agenda before content is known; declare it the object of official piety; thus any criticism appears impious or “against the prayers of the Church.”
– True Popes used public prayer to implore God’s help that Councils defend dogma and condemn heresy (e.g., Trent, Vatican I). Here, John XXIII uses it to underwrite in advance a Council explicitly convoked not to condemn errors, but for a “pastoral” aggiornamento.
Notice the contrast:
– Pius IX convoked Vatican I to define papal primacy and infallibility, to protect the flock against liberal and rationalist errors; his teaching is fortified by the Syllabus.
– John XXIII convokes Vatican II promising “updating,” refuses to condemn contemporary errors, and now commands the Divine Office be offered for the success of this undefined novelty.
The very content of *Lamentabili* stands as a judicial indictment against this operation, particularly:
– Prop. 57–59, 63–65: denying immutable doctrine, conforming teaching to modern progress, transforming Catholicism into a broad, liberal Protestantism.
“Sacrae Laudis” aligns precisely with this condemned trajectory by turning the liturgy of the hours into the spiritual motor of a council whose practical outcomes (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical revolution) would enshrine those Modernist theses.
Recasting the Priest: From Guardian of Dogma to Functionary of Conciliar Unity
The document insists at length on the priest as mediator, echoing Thomistic and traditional expressions:
“Quilibet enim sacerdos non solummodo habeatur oportet dispensator mysteriorum Dei… verum etiam mediator inter Deum et homines.”
English: “For every priest ought to be considered not only a dispenser of the mysteries of God, but also a mediator between God and men.”
He cites Chrysostom to depict the priest as standing “between God and human nature,” bearing benefits downwards and prayers upwards.
On its face, this is classical. Yet within this exhortation it is twisted subtly:
– The priestly mediation is being marshalled for one specific intention: to sustain and guarantee the happy outcome of Vatican II.
– The spiritual authority of all priests is drawn into a circle around John XXIII and the Council as the central salvific event of the age.
What is missing?
– Any reference to the priest’s duty to:
– Guard the deposit of faith against novelty.
– Reject heresy, condemn error, resist compromise with the world.
– Offer the Divine Office in union with the entire tradition, not in service of a revolutionary agenda.
Silences that accuse:
– No mention of hell, judgment, or the danger of doctrinal deviation.
– No warning against Modernism, although as of 1962 the condemnations of St. Pius X are fully in force and nowhere revoked.
– No word about the Social Kingship of Christ over nations, although Pius XI in *Quas Primas* had given the exact supernatural remedy against the secularism and apostasy of the age: restore all in Christ the King publicly and politically, not adapt the Church’s laws to secular expectations.
Thus, the priest is subtly transformed from *custos fidei* (guardian of the faith) into a pious lubricant of conciliar unanimity. His sacred obligation to oppose error is suffocated under a sugary appeal to pray for “unity” and “happy success.”
This anticipates the later conciliarist deformation: the clergy as sacramental functionaries of a humanistic “People of God” project, rather than defenders of the immemorial Faith.
The “New Epiphany” and “Catholicity” of Vatican II: A Counter-Church Manifesto
One of the most revealing phrases is the comparison of the Council to Epiphany:
“Re quidem ipsa nonne Concilium Oecumenicum, praeter id quod est nova et praeclara Pentecostes, vera etiam novaque Epiphania dicenda est?”
English: “In reality, is not the Ecumenical Council, beyond being a new and splendid Pentecost, also to be called a true and new Epiphany?”
This is theologically poisonous.
– Pentecost and Epiphany are unique, unrepeatable mysteries in the economy of salvation, rooted in:
– The historical descent of the Holy Ghost.
– The manifestation of the Incarnate Word to the nations.
To speak of a “new Pentecost” or “new Epiphany” is:
– To insinuate a new foundational manifestation of the Church.
– To relativize the prior, divinely constituted order as incomplete or insufficient for “this age.”
– To open the door to the very Modernist notion condemned in *Lamentabili* that revelation and dogma progress with historical consciousness (props. 5, 58–65).
Moreover, he claims that Vatican II is an epiphany not only to Catholics but to “others” of the whole world, who are portrayed as eagerly expecting it.
– This matches the ecumenical and interreligious orientation that would soon be codified:
– Instead of calling separated communities and false religions back to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the Council—and John XXIII’s preparatory rhetoric—presents the Church as manifesting herself anew in dialogue, esteem, and accommodation.
Compare with Pius IX and Pius XI:
– The Syllabus (15–18, 55, 77–80) absolutely rejects indifferentism, the equality of religions, State-Church separation, and liberal “progress.”
– *Quas Primas* insists that error and apostasy are to be opposed by reaffirming the absolute Kingship of Christ, not by reconfiguring the Church to the world’s demands.
“Sacrae Laudis” is a hymn to the opposite program: it canonizes the myth of a Council that will, by updating and adaptation, satisfy global expectations and manifest a “renewed” face of the Church.
This is not Catholic; it is blueprint for a paramasonic “Church of the New Advent,” in which the immutable Mystical Body is overlaid—or displaced—by a humanistic, ecumenical federation.
Abuse of Legitimate Devotions: St. Joseph, the Magi, Holy Angels Recruited for Conciliarism
Repeatedly, John XXIII invokes traditional devotions:
– St. Joseph as Patron of the Church and “Protector” of Vatican II.
– The Magi as figures of bishops and priests coming to adore Christ in this “new Epiphany” of the Council.
– Guardian Angels assisting priests in reciting the Office for the Council.
At first glance, this appears orthodox. Yet observe the underlying operation:
1. St. Joseph:
– Pius IX proclaimed him Patron of the Universal Church (during Vatican I).
– John XXIII re-appropriates this patronage, appointing him in 1961 as “Protector” of Vatican II, and in this exhortation uses that link to transfer the moral authority of Joseph’s patronage onto the conciliar event.
2. The Magi:
– He writes of them as representing “all peoples,” offering gifts of gold, incense, myrrh to Christ.
– He then reads this as a type of all priests and bishops coming to the Council, offering the Divine Office as the triple gift for its success.
3. Guardian Angels:
– He exhorts priests to ask their angels to help them recite the Office devoutly for the “happy outcome” of the Council.
This is a spiritual hijacking:
– Legitimate cults and devotions—founded in immutable revelation—are subordinated to the conciliar project.
– Heaven’s intercession is rhetorically enlisted in favour of an event whose central features (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality against defined papal primacy, liturgical disfigurement) stand in open tension with prior Magisterium.
By doing so, the document attempts to “baptize” in advance whatever Vatican II may decide or inspire, implying that to question its fruits would be to spurn St. Joseph, the Magi, the angels, and the very prayers of the Church.
From the pre-1958 Catholic perspective, this is a fraudulent conflation:
– The Communion of Saints intercedes for the Church to remain faithful to what has been handed down (cf. Trent, Vatican I).
– It does not underwrite programmes that contradict prior condemnations.
The Symptom of Systemic Apostasy: Continuity Rhetoric Concealing a Break
One of the more cunning passages claims:
“…nos omnes iam aetatem ingressos esse novam, quae, sacra hereditate a maioribus tradita integra servata, miram portendit rerum, quae ad animum pertinent, progressionem…”
English: “we have all now entered a new age, which, with the sacred heritage handed down by our forefathers preserved intact, portends a marvelous progress in things pertaining to the spirit…”
This is the embryo of the later “hermeneutic of continuity” cliché:
– Assert verbally that the “sacred heritage” is preserved “intact.”
– Immediately yoke this claim to the announcement of a “new age” and “marvelous progress,” which in practice will mean reinterpreting or sidelining much of that heritage.
But:
– Pius IX and St. Pius X had decisively rejected the thesis that one can affirm continuity verbally while in fact transforming the substance of doctrine:
– *Lamentabili* prop. 4–5, 58–65 condemns the notion of doctrinal “evolution” disguised as development.
– Vatican I dogmatically fixed the meaning of papal primacy and the irreformability of defined teaching (Pastor Aeternus). Any “new age” in which those truths become negotiable or are practically eclipsed is not a “progress” but revolt.
“Sacrae Laudis” is symptomatic of systemic apostasy because:
– It rehearses, in devotional key, all the later tricks:
– Invocation of continuity while preparing rupture.
– Liturgical and spiritual language used to anesthetize resistance.
– The transfer of supernatural loyalty from the perennial Magisterium to a future, undefined “Council” whose authority is presumed absolute even before it speaks.
The conciliar sect that would emerge from Vatican II, the “structures occupying the Vatican,” would constantly appeal to such texts to claim that their novelties are answer to the prayers of the pre-conciliar Church. Yet their fruits—religious indifferentism, practical denial of Christ’s Kingship, demolition of the Most Holy Sacrifice, sacrilegious “Communion,” cult of man—are precisely what the pre-1958 Magisterium anathematized.
Silence on the True Enemies: Modernism and Freemasonry Vanish from View
Perhaps the most damning aspect is what the exhortation does not say.
In an age already ravaged by:
– militant atheism,
– naturalism and rationalism condemned in the Syllabus (1–7, 39–40),
– organized anti-Christian secret societies (explicitly unmasked as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan” by Pius IX and Leo XIII),
– Modernism, “the synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X),
John XXIII’s text:
– Never mentions Modernism.
– Never mentions Freemasonry.
– Never warns against doctrinal corruption in seminaries and faculties.
– Never calls for the Council to condemn present errors.
– Never recalls the binding authority of *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili*, which he silently shelves.
Instead:
– It assumes the problem is merely that ecclesiastical laws need adjustment to the age.
– It supposes the Council’s task is “pastoral” updating, not dogmatic defense.
– It places hopes not in unflinching condemnation of evil, but in sentimental “unity” and prayerful enthusiasm.
Such silence is a confession.
Where pre-1958 Popes raise their voice like prophets, naming and cursing the enemies of Christ and His Church, John XXIII envelops the clergy in a fog of sweetness, diverting their supernatural vigilance away from the internal and external infiltrators and toward a blind, devotional support of a Council that would serve those very infiltrators.
St. Pius X, in the introduction to *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, warned that modern errors spread precisely through authors “under the guise of more serious criticism and in the name of historical method,” seeking a development that is really corruption. John XXIII here adds: under the guise of more intense recitation of the Divine Office.
Co-opting Unity: From Una Sancta to Ecumenical Spectacle
The exhortation briefly mentions the four marks of the Church—*una, sancta, catholica, apostolica*—and claims the Divine Office wonderfully recalls these.
Yet this is immediately tied to the desire:
“…maximopere cupit vitae suae divitias impertire iis christianorum communitatibus, quae, saeculis volventibus, ab ea seiunctae sunt ac nondum pristinam unitatem redintegrarunt.”
English: “and [the Church] greatly desires to impart the riches of her life to those Christian communities which, as the centuries went by, were separated from her and have not yet restored their former unity.”
This statement can be read in a Catholic sense if:
– It means: the one true Church desires to bring separated communities back to submission to Rome, to the same one faith, sacraments, and governance.
But in the conciliar and post-conciliar context that “Sacrae Laudis” is preparing:
– It is the seed of false ecumenism:
– Instead of calling for conversion of heretics and schismatics to the one Church, it suggests mutual exchange of “riches.”
– This is exactly the path that would lead to the scandalous ecumenical gestures and documents of Vatican II and its aftermath, in direct tension with the Syllabus (15–18, 21, 37).
The Divine Office, the daily voice of the Una Sancta, is thus instrumentalized to prepare psychological consensus for an ecumenical reorientation: unity no longer as return to the true Church, but as convergence in a broader, vaguer “people of God.”
Conclusion: “Sacrae Laudis” as Spiritual Engineering of the Conciliar Sect
Taken as a whole, “Sacrae Laudis” is not a harmless exhortation to clerical piety. It is a carefully constructed device of spiritual engineering:
– On the factual level:
– It links intensified recitation of the Divine Office to the success of Vatican II, identified with adaptation to “the needs of this age” and the satisfaction of worldwide expectations.
– On the linguistic level:
– It saturates the text with emotional and devotional imagery to disarm critical intelligence.
– On the theological level:
– It avoids all mention of the concrete enemies condemned by prior Popes (Modernism, liberalism, indifferentism, freemasonry), thus silently abandoning the Church’s existing defensive stance.
– It prefigures the Modernist evolution of doctrine by speaking of a “new age,” a “new Pentecost,” a “new Epiphany,” while verbally asserting continuity.
– On the symptomatic level:
– It perfectly anticipates the later conciliar strategy: using the rhetoric of tradition and prayer to sanctify a practical rupture with that very tradition.
The Divine Office, instead of remaining the objective, God-centered prayer of the Church anchored in immutable dogma, is conscripted here as an ideological engine to legitimize a Council destined to dissolve anathemas, relativize dogma under “pastoral” pretexts, and enthrone religious liberty and ecumenism condemned by the authentic Magisterium.
In this light, “Sacrae Laudis” is a key piece in the genesis of the conciliar pseudo-church:
– The priests who obeyed this exhortation were led, in good faith, to place their liturgical obligation at the service of a conciliar revolution.
– Their piety was turned against the faith they sought to defend.
True fidelity to the Church’s pre-1958 Magisterium now demands the reverse:
– To reclaim the Divine Office as:
– praise of the true God,
– confession of immutable Catholic dogma,
– supplication for the extirpation of Modernism and all its conciliar offspring,
– intercession for the restoration of the public Reign of Christ the King, as taught by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*,
– and a rejection of any attempt to use sacred prayer as camouflage for apostasy.
The words of the Apocalypse John XXIII quotes against himself are sobering:
“Et ascendit fumus incensorum de orationibus sanctorum de manu Angeli coram Deo… et misit in terram, et facta sunt tonitrua, et voces, et fulgura, et terraemotus magnus” (Apoc 8:3–5).
English: “And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended from the hand of the Angel before God… and he cast [the fire] upon the earth, and there were thunders and voices and lightnings and a great earthquake.”
These verses reveal not conciliar consensus-building, but divine judgment stirred by the prayers of the true Church. The authentic “sacrifice of praise” will never confirm a counterfeit aggiornamento; it will call down grace for the destruction of lies and the vindication of the perennial Catholic faith.
Source:
Sacrae Laudis, Adhortatio Apostolica de Divino Officio pro felici exitu Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II impensiore pietate recitando, VI Ianuarii MDCCCCLXII, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025