A brief Latin letter of John XXIII (Roncalli) congratulates Antonio Caggiano, “cardinal” and archbishop of Buenos Aires, on fifty years of priesthood, praising his diocesan administration, his role in organizing Eucharistic and Marian events in Argentina, his work with “Catholic Action” and “social action,” his mediation in a railway dispute, and granting him the faculty to impart a blessing with plenary indulgence on a chosen day; the entire text is one smooth, courtly panegyric which, by its silences and euphemisms, reveals a program of ecclesial naturalization and the consolidation of the conciliar revolution within Argentina’s hierarchy.
Panegyric for a Collaborator: John XXIII’s Praise of Caggiano as Manifesto of the Neo-Church
Celebrating a System: From Catholic Priesthood to Manager of Social Processes
This letter is short, but the rot it exposes is profound.
John XXIII addresses Antonio Caggiano with ornate affection, exalting him as a “tested pastor” for:
– organizing diocesan structures, parishes, schools, seminaries;
– promoting “Catholic Action” and “social action”;
– presiding over national episcopal structures;
– mediating socio-economic conflicts (the railway dispute);
– hosting mass events: the 1934–35 International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires, a continental Marian gathering, the so‑called “great holy mission.”
The text is a pure encomium. There is not a single word of doctrinal combat against the great errors condemned by the pre‑1958 Magisterium: Modernism, liberalism, socialism, religious indifferentism, laicism, freemasonry, false “rights of man” opposed to the rights of Christ the King. There is no warning about the supernatural conditions for salvation, the reality of mortal sin, the necessity of the true Faith, the danger of false religions, the gravity of social apostasy.
Instead, John XXIII crowns Caggiano as a model hierarch precisely in those areas where the conciliar sect needed compliant managers: liturgical mass-events, “Action” structures aligned with democratic and social agendas, corporatist mediation, episcopal collegial machineries.
This is not an innocent congratulation; it is a quiet manifesto of a new religion.
The Factual Level: What Is Praised, What Is Omitted, and Why It Condemns Them
1. Promotion of “Catholic Action” and “social action”
John XXIII lauds Caggiano because:
“Actio Catholica per Argentinae fines constitueretur, et Actio socialis incrementa susciperet.”
Translation: “Catholic Action might be established throughout Argentina, and social action might be increased.”
– In itself, *Actio Catholica* was historically a legitimate lay apostolate under ecclesiastical control.
– But by the mid‑20th century, especially in Latin America, these structures were progressively infused with democratic, humanistic, and often semi‑socialist categories, preparing precisely the milieu from which post‑conciliar liberationism, “base communities,” and the cult of man emerged.
Measured by integral Catholic doctrine:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* (1925) teaches that society’s true good is found in the public submission of all nations to Christ the King, not in horizontal “social action” founded on naturalist principles. He warns that the calamities of the age flow from having “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from private and public life.” Here, John XXIII offers praise for “social action” without one syllable subordinating it explicitly to the social kingship of Christ and the objective rights of the true Church.
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors* condemns the exaltation of purely natural morality, the autonomy of civil society from the Church, and the principle that civil progress or liberal arrangements suffice for justice (propositions 3, 39, 55, 56–60). The letter never recalls these doctrinal boundaries; instead, it crowns the very language and praxis that historically facilitated their eclipse.
The omission is damning. When episcopal “social action” is celebrated without strong doctrinal precision, in a time already saturated with socialist and Masonic infiltration, it signals complicity with the modernist shift: *societas perfectissima Ecclesia* is displaced by “engaged” activism.
2. Caggiano as architect of structures and events
Roncalli enumerates how Caggiano:
– built parishes, schools, seminaries, a “praeseminarium,” a house for retreats;
– played a major role in the International Eucharistic Congress;
– organized a continental Marian Congress and a “great holy mission.”
At first glance, this looks Catholic. But notice:
– There is no mention of defending doctrine against heresy, of combating secularism with the anathemas of Trent, Vatican I, *Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*.
– No mention of denouncing freemasonry, openly described by Pius IX and Leo XIII as the *synagoga Satanae* (“synagogue of Satan”) waging war upon the Church.
– No mention of preaching against indifferentism, or insisting that outside the Church there is no salvation, as expounded constantly by the pre‑conciliar Magisterium.
Instead, prestige mass-events become the supposed verification of fidelity. This is precisely the modernist inversion: liturgy and “missions” are not ordered to the assertion of dogma against error, but to spectacle, numbers, and sentiment—fertile terrain for later ecumenical and anthropocentric distortions.
3. Praise for socioeconomic mediation
Roncalli exalts Caggiano’s role in ending a long railway dispute:
“recens quoque viis ferratis praepositorum longam ac perniciosam contentionem… composuisti.”
This is presented as a crowning achievement. Yet:
– The 19th- and early 20th-century Magisterium never defined the episcopal office primarily as social negotiator. The bishop is *doctor fidei* and *pastor animarum*—teacher of the Faith, guardian of the Sacraments, judge in matters of salvation.
– Pius X in *Pascendi* condemns reducing the Church to a moralizing or social agency, subject to historical evolution and democracy.
By foregrounding Caggiano’s social mediation in a congratulatory letter, with total silence on doctrinal militancy, Roncalli canonizes the new image of the hierarch as technocrat of “dialogue” and public order—prelude to the conciliar cult of “human fraternity.”
4. Plenary indulgence without call to repentance
John XXIII grants Caggiano faculty to impart a blessing with plenary indulgence at his jubilee:
“plenaria Indulgentia proposita.”
But the surrounding text entirely omits:
– conditions for gaining indulgences (sacramental confession, detachment from sin, true contrition);
– warning against sacrilegious reception by unrepentant sinners;
– insistence on true doctrine as the condition for valid spiritual benefit.
Indulgences thus appear as ceremonial privileges of an ecclesiastical establishment, not as instruments of penance in the context of supernatural faith and contrition. It is an aestheticization of spiritual power detached from its dogmatic and moral prerequisites—characteristic of a structure sliding into ritualistic naturalism.
The Linguistic Level: Sweetness as Solvent of Dogma
The rhetoric is telling. The letter is saturated with:
– affective language: “Dilecte Fili Noster,” “caritas elicit,” “fausta et felicia,” “pius amansque recti”;
– uncritical laudatory formulas: “praeclara specimina,” “felices successus,” “prudentiae iudicio,” “flexanima eloquentia”;
– insinuation of continuous, uncontested success, with no hint of struggle against heresy or error.
What is structurally absent?
– Words like “error,” “heresy,” “Modernism,” “freemasonry,” “indifferentism,” “laicism,” “revolution,” “condemnation,” “anathema,” “Syllabus,” “Pascendi,” “Lamentabili,” “Trent,” “Vatican I,” “Social Reign of Christ the King,” “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.”
– Any language of *militia Christi*, combat, or cross-bearing integral to authentic Catholic ecclesiology.
Language is never neutral. This courtly, diplomatic, painless prose is the stylistic mask of a new ecclesiology:
– The bishop is a harmonious organizer, mediator, and celebrant of mass events, rather than doctrinal sentinel.
– The Church smiles, congratulates, and distributes privileges; she no longer warns, judges, condemns, or unmasks.
By contrast, pre-1958 popes wrote with crystalline severity. Pius IX’s *Syllabus* enumerates and condemns errors. Pius X brands Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” and imposes canonical sanctions. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* thunders against laicism and demands public subjection of states to Christ. Their style is doctrinal, juridical, militant.
Roncalli’s sweet, conflict‑free Latin signals rupture: *lex orandi et loquendi* (the law of prayer and speech) is already subordinated to human respect and liberal niceties. The shepherd’s staff is padded.
The Theological Level: Episcopal Ideal Recast in Modernist Categories
Measured strictly by pre-1958 magisterial doctrine, this letter is theologically symptomatic in several ways:
1. Replacement of doctrinal combat with structural activism
The ideal bishop, according to this letter:
– builds institutions,
– runs “Catholic Action,”
– presides over episcopal conferences,
– manages social peace.
But Trent, Vatican I, and the papal magisterium present another image:
– The bishop as successor of the Apostles has the duty to teach the whole Catholic Faith, condemn contrary errors, safeguard the Sacraments from abuse, and defend the Church’s liberty against secular usurpation.
– The same sources emphasize that tolerating poisonous doctrine, or failing to denounce public errors, is grave betrayal.
Here, silence on doctrinal warfare is not a neutral gap; it is a practical denial of the bishop’s essential munus. To extol a prelate without reference to his fidelity in defending the Faith against the age’s errors—while those errors ravage his continent—is a tacit approbation of his collaboration, or at least his harmlessness, in the eyes of the revolution.
2. Submission to the liberal order under the guise of “social equity”
Roncalli commends Caggiano for settling the railway conflict with arguments of “social equity”:
“ingenii tui, socialis aequitatis cultoris.”
Social equity in itself can be just—if rooted in the divine and natural law, subordinated to Christ’s Kingship and the rights of His Church. Yet:
– Pius IX (Syllabus 56–60) condemns the notion that morality and law may be based purely on natural, secular principles.
– Pius XI insists that peace and justice are impossible without restoring all things in Christ’s Kingdom.
Roncalli’s praise operates wholly within the vocabulary of the secular order. There is no reminder that any settlement must conform to divine law, that class conflict is fundamentally healed in Christ, that both owners and workers must submit to the Church’s teaching. The bishop is flattered as a *cultor socialis aequitatis*—a servant of fashionable social ideology—rather than as custodian of supernatural justice.
3. Eclipse of Christ’s Kingship by bureaucratic ecclesialism
The only theological accent introduced is a decorative citation of St. Ambrose:
“ipse oculus noster… ipse vox nostra… ipse dextera nostra…”
Used in context, this is orthodox language about Christ. But here it functions as pious ornament over an essentially naturalistic portrait of the episcopate.
Where is *Quas Primas*’ thunder that rulers must publicly acknowledge Christ’s dominion and govern according to His law? Where is the insistence that the bishop’s primary task is to subject his flock, and civil society, to the rights of God and His Church?
Notably absent. Instead, the episcopal figure is integrated into the liberal national order—as mediator, event-manager, conference president—exactly as the conciliar sect needed him to be.
4. Abuse of indulgences as confirmation of a compromised hierarchy
Granting Caggiano the faculty to impart plenary indulgence at his jubilee, in itself, belongs to papal authority. However:
– According to the principles reaffirmed by pre-1958 theology, spiritual privileges presuppose orthodoxy of faith; notorious heresy or grave compromise with condemned systems morally disqualify.
– When an authority who will soon convoke the council that unleashes doctrinal demolition decorates a collaborator whose social-ecclesial profile matches the needs of that revolution, this is not a neutral devotional favor—it is a spiritual “imprimatur” on the emerging system.
The indulgence functions symbolically: the conciliar program cloaks itself in the last vestiges of traditional forms to sanctify its own operators.
The Symptomatic Level: A Micro-Document of the Conciliar Revolution
Viewed historically and doctrinally, this letter is a microcosm of the conciliar apostasy:
1. The choice of man, not of Christ the King
Everything centers on Caggiano: his works, his organization, his negotiations, his prestige. Christ appears only in a final edifying citation; His rights over society, His absolute demands, His Cross do not structure the praise.
This anthropocentrism, polite and devout on the surface, is exactly the spiritual mechanism by which the conciliar sect enthrones “human dignity,” “dialogue,” and “solidarity” in place of:
“Regnum Christi in terris” (the reign of Christ on earth).
2. The normalization of episcopal conferences and collegial technocracy
Roncalli speaks appreciatively of Caggiano presiding over the Argentine bishops’ council. Collegial structures are presented as an unproblematic good.
Yet pre-1958 doctrine:
– affirms the bishop’s authority derives from Christ through the Roman Pontiff, and warns against national churches, synodalism, or subjecting the divine constitution of the Church to civil or democratic models (Syllabus 37, 55; Vatican I, *Pastor Aeternus*).
– sees “episcopal conferences” as practical, not doctrinally decisive, bodies, always under Roman control.
This letter, by lauding Caggiano’s leadership of the national body as a major merit, participates in the shift toward collegial governance, which the conciliar sect then weaponized to dissolve clear papal and episcopal responsibility into bureaucratic anonymity and endless “dialogue.”
3. Silence about the enemies denounced by the pre-conciliar Magisterium
Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII relentlessly denounced:
– freemasonry and secret societies as mortal enemies of the Church;
– State encroachment on ecclesial rights;
– doctrinal liberalism and indifferentism;
– socialist and communist infiltration;
– Modernism’s evolutionary, historicist, immanentist deformation of dogma.
Argentina was not spared these forces. Yet Roncalli’s praise for Caggiano omits all reference to their confrontation. He presents a serene picture of institutional and social harmony; conflict appears only as a labour-management dispute solved by negotiation, not as a war between the City of God and the City of Man.
This silence is itself doctrinal. It enacts the very error stigmatized by Pius X: that the Church should adapt to modern civilization, refraining from open condemnation, accommodating its institutions and rhetoric. It is the “piae cum certatione” of appeasement.
4. Preparatory consolidation of a hierarchy fit for Vatican II
This letter is dated February 1962, on the eve of Vatican II:
– It confirms and honors one of the key Argentine hierarchs whose public profile matches the Council’s desired ethos: socially engaged, diplomatically skilled, structurally active, untroubling to liberal powers.
– It sends a message to the hierarchy: this is the model prelate, and this is how Rome (already occupied by the conciliar agenda) looks upon you.
The absence of any exhortation to defend orthodox doctrine against the gathering storm is no accident. It proves that the revolution was not a misinterpretation of John XXIII’s will; he is here seen rewarding precisely those traits that would enable and protect that revolution.
Contrasting with the Immutable Pre-1958 Teaching: A Canonical Indictment
If we hold this letter against the pre‑1958 magisterial corpus, the dissonance is stark and verifiable.
– Pius IX’s *Syllabus* condemns:
– the emancipation of civil society from the Church (55),
– the subordination of ecclesiastical things to civil power (41–44),
– the idea that the Church should reconcile herself to liberalism and modern civilization (80).
This letter breathes cordial coexistence with the liberal order, celebrates a bishop as its efficient negotiator, and never reasserts Christ’s sovereign claims over state and society.
– St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* condemn:
– treating the Church as an evolving, historically conditioned organism,
– silencing dogmatic condemnations under the pretext of “scientific” or “pastoral” adaptation,
– reducing religion to moral and social experience.
This letter models exactly that adaptation: it uses ecclesiastical forms to praise a functionary of social Catholicism, not a confessor against Modernist currents.
– Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*:
– insists that peace, justice, and order are impossible where Christ’s Kingship is denied in public life;
– calls for an explicit, militant assertion of His rights against secular states.
Roncalli, in exalting socio-political mediation and “social equity” without this doctrinal axis, tacitly accepts the laicized framework as sufficient.
Thus, by the objective standard of unchanging doctrine, this text is not a harmless formality; it registers a shift in principle:
ab Ecclesia iudicante mundum ad ecclesiam a mundo laudatam (from the Church judging the world to a church praised by the world).
Conclusion: A Small Letter as a Clear Symptom of the Antichurch
This epistle to Caggiano is an almost perfect specimen of how the post‑1958 conciliar structure operates:
– It retains Latin, indulgences, references to St. Ambrose—external ornaments of continuity.
– It empties the content of integral doctrinal militancy and substitutes:
– sociological “success,”
– bureaucratic ecclesial prestige,
– social mediation,
– national episcopal management,
– event‑based religiosity.
What is missing is precisely what the true Catholic Church, as defined by her pre‑1958 magisterium, cannot omit without self-betrayal:
– clear subordination of all social action to the universal and exclusive Kingship of Christ;
– denunciation of the doctrinal and political errors ravaging nations and infiltrating the clergy;
– insistence on the supernatural end of the priesthood and episcopate: salvation of souls through dogma, Sacrifice, and sanctifying grace.
By such texts, the conciliar sect reveals itself: not as an unfortunate misunderstanding of the Council, but as a deliberate reconfiguration of the episcopate into an instrument of naturalistic, liberal, and ultimately anti-Christian order. The praise lavished on Caggiano is thus, in substance, an indictment of both praiser and praised, measured by the perennial doctrine they ostentatiously ignore.
Source:
Piae cum certatione – Ad Antonium tit. S. Laurentii in Panisperna S. R. E. Cardinalem Caggiano, Archiepiscopum Bonaërensem, decem lustra implentem ex quo sacerdotio auctus est (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025