Ioannes Roncalli, styling himself “John XXIII,” issues an apostolic letter urging the bishops and clergy of the neo-church to promote the Marian month of May and, above all, the recitation of the Rosary “for the happy outcome” of the so‑called Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. He wraps this appeal in sentimental Marian devotion, scriptural allusions to the Ascension and Pentecost, and pious exhortations about grace, holiness, charity, and the “Kingdom of God,” presenting the upcoming council as a “new Pentecost” meant to adapt (“aptabitur”) the Church’s structure to “the conditions of our times.”

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Marian Cosmetics for a Revolutionary Council

The text is externally cloaked in traditional elements: May devotions, the Rosary, references to *Maria Rosa Mystica*, invocation of the Holy Ghost, the language of holiness and grace. But precisely here lies its deepest perversity: these venerable forms are instrumentalized to secure docile acceptance of an agenda already determined — the conciliar revolution that would enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and anthropocentric naturalism, in direct opposition to the constant Magisterium prior to 1958.

By calling down heavenly blessing on an enterprise ordered to “adapting the Church’s structure to our times,” Roncalli attempts to conscript Our Lady and the Holy Ghost as sponsors of the dismantling of the very order they had, for centuries, defended and confirmed. This is not Marian piety; it is devotional camouflage for the preparation of apostasy.

Substitution of Sentiment for Submission: The Factual Inversion

On the factual plane, the letter appears harmless: ask the faithful to pray the Rosary for a major ecclesial event. Yet several precise factual inversions emerge on close inspection:

1. Roncalli presents Vatican II as a legitimately convoked ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, presupposing that he possesses the authority of the Roman Pontiff and that those in “communion with the Apostolic See” are in communion with Peter.
– This stands in radical tension with the doctrine cited in *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* (Paul IV) and with the theological tradition (Bellarmine, Wernz-Vidal, others as summarized in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file), which holds that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope and that adhesion to condemned modernist principles severs one from the Catholic body. When such a claimant and his collaborators publicly promote religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and doctrinal evolution, they fulfill precisely the conditions identified as incompatible with the papal office.

2. He asks for prayers so that the Council may become a “new Pentecost”:
– “…ut scilicet grande huiusmodi eventum veluti nova Pentecostes evadat, ac rursus Spiritus Sanctus prodigiali modo in Ecclesiam caelestium donorum copiam effundat.”
– But an authentic Pentecost confirms and explicates the deposit of faith; it does not relativize it. The true Holy Ghost cannot contradict Himself, nor overturn what He has defined through prior, infallible magisterium.

3. He explicitly states that all the work of the Council, including adapting the structure of the Church and renewing laws, has one purpose: that men may know, love, and imitate Christ more.
– “…quo… Ecclesiae structura ad nostrorum temporum rationem aptabitur, itemque variae leges… eo unice spectabunt, ut scilicet homines Christum magis magisque noscant ac diligant…”
– Yet the concrete fruits of that project — religious liberty, ecumenism with heretics and infidels, liturgical devastation, doctrinal ambiguity — are directly condemned in the pre‑1958 Magisterium: for instance, Pius IX’s Syllabus (errors 15–18, 55, 77–80), Leo XIII’s social encyclicals, Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, and Pius X’s *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili* (see esp. Lamentabili 58, 59, 63–65). A tree is known by its fruits; to pray for their production in advance is to ask God to bless what He has already definitively cursed.

In short, the letter rewrites reality: it presupposes legitimacy, orthodoxy, and continuity where there is neither juridical certainty nor doctrinal identity with the perennial teaching. The faithful are invited to endorse, through Marian devotions, what will be the juridical and doctrinal suicide of the conciliar sect.

Soft Language as a Veil for Structural Treason

The linguistic texture of the document is a paradigm of modernist rhetoric: warm, mellifluous, affective, carefully avoiding any dogmatic precision that would constrain the conciliar project.

Key symptoms:

– Persistent use of gentle exhortation instead of binding command:
– “hortamur,” “optamus,” “placet proponere,” “suademus” — a rhetoric of suggestion, “invitation,” “new Pentecost” imagery. The note of *auctoritas* is diluted into pastoral cordiality. This is not the voice of a Gregory VII or a Pius X commanding in the name of Christ, but of a manager soliciting consensus.

– Vague formulas about “adapting” structures:
– “…labores omnes… quibus Ecclesiae structura ad nostrorum temporum rationem aptabitur…”
– No doctrinal content is specified; no clear reaffirmation of the immutable truths that Pius IX in the Syllabus and Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* defended against all innovation. The word *aptabitur* functions as a solvent, suggesting plasticity of constitution, precisely what Catholic ecclesiology rejects.

– Sentimental Marian vocabulary:
– “Rosa Mystica,” “dulci pioque oculorum obtutu,” “suavisque florum fasciculus,” “placidum veluti pectoris suspirium.” These phrases are carefully chosen to disarm resistance: Marian piety is made the sugar coating for a doctrinal poison. The tone is devotional, but the strategic function is manipulative: “Pray with Our Lady so you will accept whatever ‘Spirit’ the Council ushers in.”

Contrast this with the pre-conciliar papal style when confronting grave dangers:

– Pius IX in the Syllabus does not decorate condemned errors with flowers; he enumerates them with juridical precision and anathematizes liberalism, indifferentism, the separation of Church and state, and the exaltation of human reason as judge of revelation.
– Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* identifies the very principles later enthroned at Vatican II—dogmatic evolution, subjective experience, historicism—and declares modernism “the synthesis of all heresies,” attaching excommunication to their defense.

Roncalli’s diffuse, affective, non-precise diction is itself a symptom of doctrinal corruption. *Lex orandi, lex credendi* applies also to the style of the Magisterium: when the language refuses clarity, it usually conceals contradiction.

Invocation of Christ the King While Preparing His Detronement

The text repeatedly mentions Christ, His presence, and His kingdom:

– Christ is said to remain with His Church until the end of time (Mt 28:20).
– The letter cites *oportet illum regnare* (1 Cor 15:25) and speaks of the “regnum Dei” as the focus of the Lord’s teaching.
– It briefly alludes to justice, charity, the common good, and respect for the rights of persons.

At first glance, this seems to echo Pius XI’s *Quas Primas* on the social Kingship of Christ. In reality, it subtly shifts the axis:

1. The regnum is spiritualized and interiorized while its concrete political and juridical demands are muted.
– Pius XI (Quas Primas) teaches that Christ’s Kingship demands:
– confession of the true religion by states,
– subordination of civil law to divine and ecclesiastical law,
– public cult rendered to Christ and His Church,
– condemnation of secularism and religious indifferentism.
– Roncalli mentions personal virtue and a generic “order” and “justice,” but he does not reaffirm:
– the obligation of states to recognize Catholicism as the only true religion (Syllabus 21, 77),
– the condemnation of separation of Church and State (Syllabus 55),
– the rejection of the liberal thesis that religious liberty and freedom of cult assist the moral order (Syllabus 79–80).
– This silence is decisive. He speaks of “human rights” implicitly (native, inalienable rights of persons), of fraternity, of social peace, but not of the non-negotiable right of Christ and His Church to juridical primacy in society.

2. The phrase “ad nostrorum temporum rationem aptabitur” prepares the ideological ground for denying precisely what Pius XI had dogmatically underlined: that the Kingship of Christ and the rights of the Church are immutable and not subject to modern “progress” or “civilization.”

3. Thus, while his lips pronounce “regnum Christi,” the practical orientation of his project is toward:
– interreligious “dialogue” instead of conversion,
– the acceptance of pluralistic states,
– the relativization of Catholic confessional claims: in a word, toward what Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI had solemnly branded as errors.

To invoke Christ the King in order to usher in a Council that will dethrone Him in public life is to abuse the holy Name for political ends. It is *blasphemous instrumentalization*.

Perverting Pentecost: A “New” Spirit Against the Old Faith

Central in the text is the call that Vatican II be a “new Pentecost”:

– “…ut scilicet grande huiusmodi eventum veluti nova Pentecostes evadat, ac rursus Spiritus Sanctus prodigiali modo in Ecclesiam caelestium donorum copiam effundat.”

Catholic doctrine recognizes one unique Pentecost, foundational, definitive, in which the Apostles received the fullness of the Spirit to guard, preach, and hand on the deposit of faith (*depositum fidei*) without alteration. Any authentic renewal of the Church is a deeper appropriation of that once-given gift, not an introduction of a “different spirit” (cf. 2 Cor 11:4).

The rhetoric of “new Pentecost” functions here to:

1. Legitimize doctrinal and liturgical innovation under the guise of charism.
– But *Lamentabili* condemns the notion that revelation and dogma evolve in such a way as to change their substance (cf. props. 5, 58–64).
– Pius X in *Pascendi* unmasks modernists who, under appeal to a “vital immanence” and “religious experience,” reshape dogma to suit the times.

2. Suggest that prior magisterial clarity is incomplete or inadequate for “our times,” awaiting enhancement by the Council.
– This directly contradicts the Catholic principle that dogmatic definitions are irreformable and that the meaning of dogmas is perpetually the same (*eodem sensu eademque sententia*), as taught by Vatican I and reaffirmed by Pius X against modernist reinterpretation.

3. Condition the faithful to expect “surprises of the Spirit,” a code for ruptures with the past:
– Collegiality, religious liberty, ecumenism, liturgical revolution — all later justified as “fruits of the Spirit” of the Council.
– Yet those same “fruits” are explicitly irreconcilable with the pre‑1958 Magisterium:
– Religious liberty vs. Syllabus 15–18, 77–80;
– Ecumenism of parity vs. the dogma of the one Church of Christ being the Catholic Church and the condemnation of indifferentism (Syllabus 16–18; Pius XI, *Mortalium Animos*);
– Democratization of authority vs. the divine constitution of the Church (Syllabus 19–21; *Lamentabili* 52–56).

What Roncalli calls the outpouring of the Spirit is in fact the summons to open the doors to precisely those errors solemnly anathematized. It is an invocation, not of the Paraclete, but of the “spirit of the age.”

Marian Devotion as Psychological Preparation for Obedience to Error

The document’s most insidious move is its Marian strategy.

It piles up images:

– Mary as “Rosa Mystica,”
– May devotions in humble churches and missionary chapels,
– the cenacle with Mary and the Apostles “persevering in prayer” before Pentecost,
– the Rosary as “fragrant bouquet of flowers,” “gentle sigh of the heart.”

From a Catholic viewpoint, the Rosary is a powerful, traditional, heaven-given prayer, a school of contemplation and orthodoxy. But here:

1. The Rosary is ordered explicitly to the “happy outcome” of Vatican II.
– The faithful are being asked to tie their Marian devotion to the success of a project that will alter disciplines, reorder structures, and open the way to doctrinal novelties.
– This is a form of spiritual conditioning: whoever loves Our Lady and trusts the Rosary is subtly induced to accept whatever emerges from the Council under the assumption that “we prayed, therefore it must be the will of God.”

2. The text invokes the cenacle to propose a false parallel:
– As the Apostles with Mary awaited the Holy Ghost, so now bishops and faithful with Mary are to await the Spirit at the Council.
– But the historical cenacle culminated in the public proclamation of the same faith Christ had taught, without dilution or negotiation. The coming “Pentecost” of Vatican II, by contrast, will inaugurate ambiguous language, double-speak, and capitulation to liberalism — precisely what St. Pius X condemned as modernism.

3. Marian piety is detached from her most essential role in modern times: the enemy of heresies and protector of the integrity of the faith.
– The letter never exhorts the faithful to ask Our Lady for:
– the defeat of heresies,
– the preservation of dogma in its exact sense,
– the courage to condemn liberalism, socialism, and Masonry (which Pius IX explicitly linked to the “synagogue of Satan” in the Syllabus context).
– Instead, she is made patroness of a “pastoral aggiornamento.” The Mother of God is thus politically repurposed: not as the Woman crushing the serpent’s head, but as the sentimental icon of a “Church of the New Advent” open to the world.

To harness the Rosary and May devotions to support a council that would rehabilitate precisely those tendencies anathematized by Pius IX and Pius X is to weaponize Marian devotion against Catholic Tradition. It is a grotesque inversion.

Silences that Accuse: Modernism by Omission

From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the most damning elements in this letter are not what is said, but what is left unsaid. The omissions are systematic, coherent, and revealing:

1. No warning against modernism.
– Only five years earlier, St. Pius X had, by perpetual decree, condemned modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and attached excommunication to its defense (see *Lamentabili* passage provided).
– Roncalli never mentions:
– the Oath against Modernism,
– the duty to reject condemned propositions,
– the infiltration of seminaries and universities by modernist errors.
– Instead, the council is prepared as though modernism had vanished, not as though it were resurging.

2. No mention of the Syllabus of Errors or of the condemned principles of liberalism and religious freedom.
– For an “ecumenical” council in a world dominated by secularism, socialism, Masonry, communism, and two totalitarian ideologies, the authentic papal path is to recall the Syllabus (Pius IX), the condemnations of secret sects (also in the Syllabus text), Leo XIII’s encyclicals, *Quas Primas*, etc.
– Roncalli is silent. This silence is not neutral; it is preparatory: by not reaffirming prior condemnations, room is made to contradict them later.

3. No insistence on the exclusivity and indefectibility of Catholic dogma.
– He speaks vaguely of “light of eternal truth” and “teaching of Jesus Christ,” but never once underlines:
– the impossibility of changing defined dogma,
– the obligation to interpret all things “in eodem sensu eademque sententia,”
– the anathema on those who propose doctrinal evolution (directly contrary to *Lamentabili* 58–65).
– This rhetorical void is essential: it allows the Council to present ambiguous formulations, later exploited in the name of “development.”

4. No robust affirmation of the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Church.
– Pius IX, Pius XII, and the entire prior Magisterium insist that outside the Church there is no salvation in the proper sense, save by exceptional modes that presuppose desire for the true Church.
– Roncalli addresses vaguely “all men of good will and right judgment.”
– He does not call non-Catholics to conversion to the one Church; he treats them as sympathetic partners. Already the virus of “ecumenism” (condemned by Pius XI in *Mortalium Animos*) is at work.

5. No denunciation of Freemasonry and its program.
– The Syllabus text provided recalls the Popes’ repeated condemnation of Masonic sects as the root of the global war against the Church.
– Roncalli, in 1962, at the threshold of a Council that would implement key Masonic desiderata (religious liberty, human rights ideology, democratic church structures), says nothing.
– This silence, in the light of preceding condemnations, is eloquent.

These omissions are not accidental; they betray a program: to unhook Vatican II from the anti-liberal, anti-modernist magisterial line, while using Marian and biblical language as a distraction.

Symptom of the Conciliar Sect: Preparing the “Abomination of Desolation”

This letter, read attentively, is a concentrated symptom of the conciliar sect that would soon manifest fully:

– It appeals to:
– *aggiornamento* (adaptation to the times),
– a “new Pentecost”,
– dignified language about grace and holiness,
– Marian devotion and the Rosary.
– It omits:
– explicit adherence to the anti-modernist magisterium,
– forthright condemnations of contemporary doctrinal and social errors,
– claims of doctrinal immutability.

The result is a saccharine, denatured religiosity: emotionally devout, theologically anesthetized.

From this anesthetic emerges:

– The new ecclesiology: the Church as “People of God,” open, dialogical, democratized.
– The new liturgy: the suppression of the Most Holy Sacrifice into a communal meal, where the “Eucharist” is profaned and, in countless cases, reduced to idolatry.
– The new ecumenism: treating heretical and schismatic communities as “sister churches,” contrary to all prior anathemas.
– The new religious liberty: the State forbidden to recognize the only true religion, repudiating the Kingship of Christ in the temporal order.

Roncalli’s letter is the spiritual grooming for this inversion: it trains bishops and faithful to see in these coming betrayals the action of Mary and the Holy Ghost. It seeks to bind consciences, through the Rosary, to an enterprise destined to enthrone the “abomination of desolation” in the holy place.

The True Catholic Response: Rosary Against the Council

The Rosary, authentically understood, is not a charm for legitimizing any historical event labeled “ecumenical council.” It is:

– a contemplation of the mysteries of Christ that deepens adherence to defined dogma,
– a school of fidelity to the Cross, not of accommodation to “the modern world”,
– a weapon given by Our Lady to defeat heresies and destroy the works of Satan.

Consequently:

– To pray the Rosary “for the happy outcome” of a council whose agenda includes the adaptation of the Church to condemned principles is to misuse the Rosary.
– The proper intention, from the perspective of the unchanging pre-1958 faith, would be:
– that any gathering of bishops be protected from modernism,
– that it solemnly condemn liberalism, communism, false ecumenism, and naturalism,
– that it reaffirm the Syllabus, *Quas Primas*, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili*, *Mortalium Animos*,
– that it defend the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments in their traditional, grace-bearing rites.

Roncalli’s letter demands the opposite: silence on modernism, enthusiasm for adaptation, acquiescence to a “new Pentecost.” It is thus an invitation, under pious forms, to collaborate—however unwittingly—in the eclipse of the Church.

Conclusion: Pious Words in the Service of Revolt

Measured against the standard of the immutable doctrine prior to 1958:

– This text is not a harmless Marian exhortation.
– It is an ideological document that:
– presupposes the legitimacy of a modernist usurper,
– enlists Marian piety and the Holy Ghost in support of a council that will contradict prior papal teaching,
– veils its rupture in vague and affective language,
– strategically omits every safeguard erected by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII against the very principles Vatican II would enshrine.

The integral Catholic conscience must, therefore:

– refuse to interpret such a letter within a fictitious “hermeneutic of continuity,”
– expose its omissions and euphemisms as signs of apostasy,
– reclaim the Rosary and Marian devotion as arms against the conciliar revolution,
– and hold fast to the perennial Magisterium that proclaims without ambiguity: peace, order, and salvation are possible only under the public and universal reign of Christ the King and the doctrine of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church — without dilution, evolution, or conciliar betrayal.

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Source:
Oecumenicum Concilium, de Mariali Rosario pro felici exitu Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II recitando, XXVIII Aprilis MDCCCCLXII, Ioannes XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025