The document titled “Boni Pastoris,” issued motu proprio by John XXIII on 22 February 1959, reorganizes and strengthens the Roman structure responsible for cinema, radio, and television, transforming the existing body into a “Pontifical Commission for Cinematography, Radio and Television” with stable curial status and wide coordinating, consultative, and promotional competences. It presents these modern media as providential instruments, to be used for “moral uplift,” evangelization, youth education, and the diffusion of “truth,” and establishes juridical norms to centralize oversight of Catholic initiatives in these fields under the See of Rome.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this text is an inaugural programmatic charter of the conciliar revolution: it subordinates the supernatural mission of the Church to mass media technocracy, naturalizes grace, and inaugurates the transformation of the Bride of Christ into an efficiently managed communications corporation serving the cult of modern man.
Media Technocracy as the New Magisterium of the Neo-Church
From Apostolic Shepherding to Administrative Management of Spectacle
John XXIII’s self-presentation in this motu proprio as the zealous “Good Shepherd” who must address “every need” of the Church by focusing with “special concern” on cinema, radio, and television is not innocent rhetoric; it marks a paradigmatic shift.
He affirms that modern audiovisual media, as products of “civil culture,” have “no small importance” for spiritual life, and that the Roman structure must be permanently ordered to guide and promote their correct use. The entire document is constructed around managerial vocabulary: “examining questions,” “directing,” “coordinating,” “increasing initiatives,” “forming the faithful,” “collaborating with national offices,” “maintaining unity” in policies.
This bureaucratic tone is not merely stylistic; it reveals a mentality in which:
– The supernatural order is silently subordinated to organizational efficacy.
– Pastoral governance is reduced to technocratic regulation of flows of images and sounds.
– The center of gravity shifts from the altar and the confessional to the committee and commission.
Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine presents a completely different hierarchy of realities:
– The Church is a *societas perfecta* with a divine constitution oriented directly to the salvation of souls, through the preaching of revealed truth, the *Unbloody Sacrifice* of the altar, and the administration of the sacraments.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that true peace, order, and renewal come only from the social reign of Christ the King, not from accommodation to secular cultural mechanisms, and he explicitly condemns laicism and the illusion that society can be healed through purely human progress.
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* condemns the subjection of the Church to the categories of modern liberal culture and the idea that the Church must conform herself to “modern civilization” (prop. 80).
By contrast, “Boni Pastoris” breathes the atmosphere of accommodation. It never once reminds rulers and nations of the obligation publicly to recognize Christ as King. It never demands that media subject themselves to the objective moral law of the Church under pain of sin. It never affirms the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church or warns that images and sounds that promote false religions, heresy, impurity, or rebellion against God are intrinsically evil.
Instead, it speaks about “human dignity,” “youth formation,” “artistic quality,” “nobility,” and “civil culture” in a way that subtly naturalizes the Church’s mission, thereby preparing the very principles later weaponized by the conciliar sect: religious liberty, indifferentism, and the cult of dialogue.
Linguistic Symptoms of a Secularized Ecclesial Consciousness
The language of the motu proprio—precise, curial, administrative—carefully avoids those supernatural terms which the integral Magisterium used as non-negotiable axes:
– There is no mention of the *state of grace*, *mortal sin*, *the last things* (death, judgment, hell, heaven), or the objective danger of damnation bound up with immoral visual and audio content.
– The media are called “mirabili technicae artis inventa,” “wonderful inventions of technique,” “gifts” entrusted by divine Providence, with an almost unqualified optimism.
– The dangers are mentioned in passing: lament over “pericula morum detrimenta” (dangers and harm to morals), yet without precise doctrinal naming—no explicit condemnation of impurity, pornography, blasphemy, heresy, or of the promotion of errors condemned in the *Syllabus* and *Lamentabili*.
– The response to danger is expressed in neutral ethical terms: appeals to “right conscience,” “education,” “responsibility,” and advisory “offices” to “direct and coordinate.”
This language corresponds exactly to what St. Pius X denounced in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*:
– the reduction of dogma and morality to vague ethical and pastoral categories;
– the substitution of firm doctrinal condemnation with sociological or psychological description;
– the attempt to embrace “modern culture” as a neutral field rather than as a milieu deeply penetrated by naturalism, rationalism, and Masonic ideology.
By avoiding the sharp supernatural vocabulary of sin, grace, and dogmatic obligation, the text behaves as if the primary problem of cinema, radio, and television were mismanagement rather than the propagation of error and vice; as if the solution were better clerical administration rather than the unwavering proclamation of absolute Catholic truth and the fearless condemnation of evil content.
Theological Inversion: From the Reign of Christ to the Kingdom of the Screen
The deeper theological error of this motu proprio lies not merely in what it regulates, but in what it silently redefines.
1. Media as quasi-sacramental channels:
The entire document presupposes that the Church must insert herself into modern media as into a natural extension of her mission. The Commission is tasked to encourage productions, transmissions, programs that support “virtue,” “upbringing,” and religious instruction. But there is a critical omission: no insistence that the primary and irreplaceable means of salvation remain:
– the preaching of integral Catholic doctrine from the pulpits of Catholic churches;
– the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Altar;
– the sacrament of Penance;
– the catechism taught under ecclesiastical authority.
Instead, media structures begin to be treated as privileged “instruments” of pastoral action. This mentality naturally leads to the future: “papal” show-masses, televised pseudo-liturgies, media-driven cults of personalities and pseudo-“saints”, where the screen replaces the sanctuary as the real locus of religious experience.
Integral Catholic theology, however, does not know a “sacrament” of the camera. Outside valid sacraments and orthodox preaching, there is no promise of grace. Technologies are not neutral; they are embedded in a culture dominated—Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X repeatedly note—by Masonic, anti-Christian forces. To call them simple gifts of Providence without explicit exorcising critique is to edge into naturalism.
2. Suppression of the Kingship of Christ in the public order:
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, solemnly teaches that:
– States, laws, institutions, and public life must recognize the reign of Christ the King.
– The denial of this reign is the root of modern social disorders.
– Secularism and laicism are condemned as rebellion against Christ.
“Boni Pastoris” refers to “civil culture” and “human dignity,” but never once states the duty of media—precisely as public instruments shaping nations—to subject themselves to the law of Christ and His Church. There is no reminder that rulers must forbid public offenses against God, that heresy has no right to be propagated, that the obscene and blasphemous must be censored under pain of sin and social ruin.
This silence is not neutral. It is already a tacit relativization of Catholic social doctrine—a proto-conciliar stance. It prepares the way for the cult of “rights of communication,” “pluralism,” “dialogue”—terms that would become slogans of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
3. Demotion of the Church’s condemnatory authority:
The motu proprio places great emphasis on:
– consultation,
– coordination,
– requesting the opinion of the Commission,
– involving episcopal conferences and national offices,
– forming consciences.
Yet it does not reaffirm with corresponding force the absolute binding character of Roman condemnations of evil books, films, programs; nor does it recall the law of the Index or the obligation of internal assent to disciplinary and doctrinal decrees, which *Lamentabili* and Pius X defend against Modernists who claim freedom to ignore Roman censures.
Instead, a consultative technocratic structure takes center stage. The impression is given that what matters is satisfied procedural correctness rather than a clear, thunderous “non licet” spoken in the name of Christ the King.
In Catholic ecclesiology, however, the Roman Pontiff and the Holy Office are not mere communication agencies; they are guardians of dogma and morals, obliged to condemn with clarity. When condemnation is softened into managerial oversight, the faithful are disarmed and the enemies of the Faith are emboldened.
Prophetic Continuity: How “Boni Pastoris” Prepares the Conciliar Revolution
Seen in isolation, some might claim this motu proprio is a modest organizational step. But integral Catholic analysis considers fruits and trajectories: *ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos* (you shall know them by their fruits).
What seeds are sown?
1. Centralization of media as a defining pastoral axis:
By giving this Commission a permanent curial status and linking all episcopal and national initiatives in media directly to it, John XXIII inaugurates what will become the communications-centric pseudo-magisterium of the Church of the New Advent:
– The “Church” becomes less the Mystical Body sanctifying souls through sacrifice and sacraments, more a global broadcaster of “messages,” “events,” “world days,” and “papal” performances.
– The faithful are trained to receive Catholic identity not from their parish altar and catechism, but from the glowing screen that transmits the narratives of the usurpers.
This is an inversion of order: in true Catholicism, media—if used at all—serve silently and marginally; the altar rules. Here, media are institutionally enthroned.
2. The language of cooperation with secular “art” without doctrinal militancy:
The text acknowledges dangers, but in a muted register. There is no explicit call for Catholic withdrawal from corrupt media circuits, no encouragement of Catholic rulers to legislate censorship, no call for the faithful to refuse to support productions that insult Christ, propagate heresy, or glorify vice.
This is precisely the ethos that will allow:
– the conciliar sect to bless films and programs that glorify adultery, impurity, and religious indifferentism;
– the gradual replacement of doctrinal preaching with sentimental, cinematic emotionalism;
– the instrumentalization of media to promote ecumenism, false religions, and the cult of man.
Pius IX’s *Syllabus* condemns the liberal thesis that all forms of worship may be freely propagated and that such liberty is beneficial to society (prop. 79). “Boni Pastoris” does not echo that condemnation; it merely seeks to insert a “Catholic voice” into the same pluralistic media arena, thereby tacitly accepting the framework condemned by the Magisterium.
3. Subtle democratization and bureaucratization of authority:
The Commission as described includes representatives from multiple Roman dicasteries, consultors, national offices, episcopal structures. This pattern is the embryo of the later collegial, committee-driven machinery by which the conciliar sect will relativize papal and episcopal authority, replacing it with endless commissions whose function is not to defend dogma, but to engineer consensus.
St. Pius X denounced in *Pascendi* the Modernist effort to democratize and historicize authority, transforming immutable doctrine into the outcome of institutional processes and “the consciousness of the community.” A Commission that functions as the interface between the “Holy See,” episcopal conferences, national offices, and media industries embodies precisely that shift from vertical doctrinal command to horizontal technocratic management.
4. Vatican Cinematheque: curating images instead of guarding dogma:
The institution of a Vatican film archive appears minor, but symbolically it is eloquent. Instead of reinforcing the Index and publicly condemning poisonous productions, the emerging neo-church begins to celebrate cinema as “art,” archiving it, dialoguing with it, venerating its creators.
Where once Rome issued anti-Modernist oaths and anathemas, now Rome collects reels.
This is not the spirit of the Fathers, Councils, and pre-1958 popes. It is the spirit that will culminate in the conciliar sect’s idolatrous exhibitions, media spectacles, and syncretic festivals, where Christ the King is placed on the same stage with idols, false religions, and the cult of human dignity divorced from grace.
Silence as Condemnation: What the Motu Proprio Does Not Dare to Say
The gravest indictment of “Boni Pastoris” is not what it states, but what it refuses to proclaim.
– No assertion that the Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation, outside of which men are lost if they knowingly remain separated.
– No affirmation that media must, under pain of grave sin, refrain from transmitting false doctrine, blasphemy, and obscenity.
– No warning that the mass penetration of images, sounds, and narratives opposed to Christ is a principal weapon of Masonic and modernist forces against the Faith—precisely what Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X recognized in their analyses of secret societies and the press.
– No insistence that rulers have the duty, as taught constantly by the pre-conciliar Magisterium, to forbid and punish public offenses against God in media.
– No reference whatsoever to the excommunication and condemnation reserved to those who publicly promote errors in theology and morals through these instruments.
This silence is particularly striking given that:
– Pius XII himself (though already reflecting transitional ambiguities) at least repeatedly acknowledged the mortal dangers of cinema and radio for purity and faith, warning parents and youth in grave terms.
– St. Pius X in *Lamentabili* condemned those who claim that ecclesiastical censures are not binding or that Scripture and dogma are subject to the free criticism propagated, above all, through modern communication channels.
“Boni Pastoris” largely repeats the optimistic parts of Pius XII’s discourse on media while muting the warnings into generalities and enclosing everything in a serene administrative framework. The atmosphere is: trust in structures, guidelines, commissions—not in uncompromising doctrine and penance.
In Catholic terms, such a silence is itself a betrayal: *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is taken to consent). By not openly reaffirming the principles of the *Syllabus*, *Quas Primas*, and *Pascendi* against modern media culture, this document functionally consents to the liberal framework within which media operate.
Symptom of the Usurpation: Anticipating the Church of the New Advent
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic teaching prior to 1958, John XXIII’s “Boni Pastoris” is symptomatic in at least five essential ways:
1. It replaces the supernatural note of the papal voice with managerial corporatism, treating the Church as a communications enterprise.
2. It presents modern media as providentially neutral tools, failing to unmask their domination by anti-Catholic ideologies condemned explicitly by previous popes, thereby encouraging naive collaboration instead of militantly Catholic counter-formation.
3. It tacitly relativizes the Church’s exclusive dogmatic authority, replacing clear condemnations with processes, committees, and consultative synergy with structures that will soon be completely absorbed into the conciliar sect.
4. It refuses to confess and impose the social Kingship of Christ as binding on states, legislations, and the public sphere of media—an omission that directly contradicts the integral doctrine of Pius XI and his predecessors.
5. It foreshadows the entire subsequent development of the paramasonic “Church of the New Advent”: a media-saturated institution that suppresses the anti-Modernist Magisterium, exalts human dignity without grace, embraces false religions in “dialogue,” and uses global communications to enthrone the cult of man where Christ Crucified must reign.
In this sense, “Boni Pastoris” is not an innocuous curial adjustment; it is an early architectural stone in the edifice of the conciliar revolution. Where the true pre-1958 Magisterium ordered all things to the altar, the confessional, and the integral social reign of Christ the King, this motu proprio orders the nascent neo-church toward the cameras, microphones, and screens that will transmit, not the anathemas of the Fathers, but the smiles and ambiguities of the usurpers.
Call to Return to the Authentic Pastoral Office
The true *munus Boni Pastoris*—the office of the Good Shepherd—is not to manage media, but to:
– preach the whole counsel of God;
– guard the flock by condemning heresy and error without equivocation;
– safeguard purity, modesty, and reverence;
– insist on the public recognition of Christ’s rights over individuals and nations;
– protect the sacraments from profanation and simulation;
– resist, expose, and anathematize the Masonic and modernist infiltration that seeks to dissolve the Church into the world.
Measured by these immutable standards, the motu proprio “Boni Pastoris” stands revealed as an ideologically charged and spiritually corrosive text. It exchanges the clarity of the Good Shepherd’s rod for the neutral jargon of cultural management; it accepts the battlefield conditions designed by the enemies of Christ and proposes only to place a “Catholic” booth inside their fair.
Integral Catholic faith demands the opposite: a radical discernment, a withdrawal from structures of sin, an unflinching proclamation of the rights of God over every screen, wave, and word, and a categorical rejection of any “pastoral” program that treats the poisoned instruments of the world as privileged vehicles of ecclesial identity.
Only in returning to the doctrinal intransigence of the pre-1958 Magisterium, to the true *Quas Primas* vision of Christ the King, and to the anti-Modernist rigor of St. Pius X, can the faithful discern how such texts prepared the abomination of desolation in the holy place—not by crude denials, but by subtle, smiling, administrative apostasy.
Source:
Boni pastoris (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025