Francesco Roncalli, styling himself “Ioannes PP. XXIII,” issues in this brief Latin rescript the nomination of the sitting Archbishop of Milan “pro tempore” as Patron of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The document praises Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s founding of the Ambrosiana as a centre for sacred and humane letters, extols the Roman See as benefactress of higher culture, recalls Paul V’s provision that the Milan archbishop vigilantly visit the library, and then decrees in perpetuity that the Archbishop of Milan shall be its Patron, nullifying all contrary dispositions.
Cultural Ornament in Place of Faith: How Roncalli’s Letter Betrays the Ambrosian Legacy
From Apostolic Authority to Bureaucratic Cultural Management
At first glance, the text appears modest and “neutral”: it appoints the Archbishop of Milan as Patron of a historic ecclesiastical library. Yet precisely in such seemingly harmless gestures the conciliar revolution discloses its method: replacing the supernatural mission of the Church with a sanitized cult of “culture,” hollow norms, and administrative pomp.
Roncalli’s act must be read not in isolation, but in the light of his public record and the doctrinal standard of the pre-1958 Church:
– The Church prior to 1958 consistently asserted that her institutions—schools, universities, libraries, archives—exist to serve the *regnum Christi* (kingdom of Christ) and the salvation of souls.
– Pius XI taught that peace, order, and true human flourishing flow solely from the public reign of Christ the King and the subordination of all society, sciences, and arts to His law and His Church, not from an autonomous humanism. Paraphrasing his doctrine: *Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ* (Quas Primas, 1925).
– Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemned the liberal thesis that culture, civil society, and education can be shaped apart from the authority of the Church and the obedience due to revealed truth.
Against this backdrop, Roncalli’s letter is not a pious continuation of Catholic tradition but an early, programmatic symptom of the *Church of the New Advent*: aesthetic conservatism masking an internal shift from supernatural faith to religiously-tinged culturalism.
Factual Level: What the Text Says—and What It Carefully Refuses to Say
The core assertions:
1. Praise of Federico Cardinal Borromeo:
Roncalli recalls how Borromeo founded the Ambrosiana to promote religion and the fine arts and to benefit the Christian commonwealth and the “republic of letters.”
2. Celebration of the Holy See as patroness of noble learning:
He speaks of the Apostolic See as “nurse of noble talents, patron of the fine arts.”
3. Reference to Paul V:
He notes that Paul V linked the governance of the Ambrosiana to the Archbishop of Milan, requiring biennial visits and oversight.
4. Juridical decree:
He decrees that the “Archbishop of Milan for the time being” is Patron of the Ambrosiana, “in perpetuity,” with the usual solemn formula annulling contrary provisions.
At the level of raw fact, nothing here denies a dogma. Yet the omissions are thunderous:
– No mention that the primary end of such an ecclesiastical library is the safeguarding and teaching of Catholic truth for the salvation of souls.
– No mention of the obligation to exclude, refute, and condemn error, modernism, and anti-Catholic propaganda from that institution.
– No mention of the duty of the Archbishop-Patron to ensure doctrinal orthodoxy in collections, teaching, publications, and staff, as demanded by pre-1958 magisterial discipline.
– No reference to the ongoing and already rampant modernist infiltration in biblical criticism, patristics, and theology—precisely in the kinds of institutions that Ambrosiana represents. This silence stands in direct opposition to the vigilance commanded by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi.
Thus the document is a classic exercise in modernist understatement: it appears innocuous precisely because it evacuates the supernatural dimension. Where a true Pope would have reaffirmed *religio* as divinely revealed, intransigent, and normative over every cultural endeavour, Roncalli praises “religion and good letters” as if they were parallel components of a humanistic project, without sharpening the necessary doctrinal edge against contemporary errors.
Linguistic Level: The Pious Varnish of a Naturalistic Program
The rhetoric is carefully chosen. Consider the key motifs:
– “Religio bonaeque artes ut proveherentur…” – “In order that religion and the fine arts might be promoted…”
Religion is grammatically coordinated with “fine arts,” as one domain of culture among others. The ordering should run the other way: arts serve religion; here, religion is aesthetically co-listed, as if its function were to crown a humanistic synthesis.
– The Ambrosiana is praised as a “palaestra” where scholars, “especially sacred ministers, exercise minds.”
No indication that these ministers must defend dogma against contemporary heresies. The vocabulary suggests an academic gymnasium, not a citadel of supernatural truth.
– The surrounding formulae (“perpetuam rei memoriam,” “contrariis quibusvis non obstantibus”) are those of classical curial style, but emptied of doctrinal content and applied to a merely administrative-cultural arrangement.
This language is emblematic of the conciliar sect: the style of tradition; the substance of accommodation. The letter never once invokes:
– the inerrancy of Scripture,
– the obligation to reject condemned propositions (as in Lamentabili),
– the public rights of Christ the King (Quas Primas),
– the divine constitution of the Church as unique ark of salvation (Syllabus, errors 15–18, 21).
Instead, Ambrosiana is presented as a prestigious hub in the “republic of letters,” and the archiepiscopal patronage is framed as enlightened cultural stewardship. It is the vocabulary of a paramasonic structure that seeks respectability in the world of letters, while hiding the claims of the one true Religion.
Theological Level: Integral Doctrine versus Roncallian Culturalism
Under an integral Catholic standard, several theological distortions or dangerous tendencies emerge.
1. Subordination of Sacred to Secular Culture
The text exalts the library for its service not only to Christian society but to the “literary republic.” This notion of a neutral *res publica litterarum*, an autonomous sphere in which Catholic truth is merely one voice, stands in stark contrast with pre-1958 teaching:
– Pius IX condemned the idea that philosophy and the sciences must be “kept aloof from divine and ecclesiastical authority” (Syllabus, 57).
– He likewise condemned the thesis that all dogmas are merely objects of philosophical inquiry subject to free revision (Syllabus, 9–14).
– St. Pius X, in Pascendi and Lamentabili, explicitly denounced those who treat Scripture, theology, and Church institutions by the same methods as profane science, evacuating supernatural authority.
Yet Roncalli, in praising the Ambrosiana primarily as a training ground of cultivated intellect and a service to the “republic of letters,” utters not a word about its obligation to submit every acquisition, every editorial policy, every teaching activity to the doctrinal decisions of the Holy Office, to indexes, to anti-modernist vigilance. The supernatural is presumed, sentimentalized, but never juridically and doctrinally enforced.
This is not accidental. It is the program: transform the Church’s institutions into prestigious cultural centres, acceptable to secular academia, by muting the anathemas and absolutist claims of the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
2. Evaporation of the End: Salus Animarum
Authentic Catholic theology is governed by the axiom: *salus animarum suprema lex* (the salvation of souls is the supreme law). Libraries, universities, and archives exist to facilitate that end by:
– preserving orthodox doctrine,
– refuting error,
– equipping clergy to preach, govern, and sanctify in fidelity to Tradition.
Roncalli’s letter never names this end. Its juridical energy is expended solely on who shall be called “Patron” and how this office is to be legally protected. We receive the strictest formulas to ensure that no one tamper with the appointment; but no corresponding strictness regarding the protection of faith and morals in the library’s work.
This inversion is telling:
– Harsh canonical language to guard a human arrangement.
– Total silence about canonical and doctrinal demands to guard divine Revelation.
Such a pattern manifests the neo-church’s fundamental perversion: *lex Christi* and *lex fidei* are relativized; bureaucratic decrees are maintained.
3. Instrumentalization of Apostolic Authority
The rescript speaks with classic juridical assurance: “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione… perpetuum in modum constituimus…” (“with certain knowledge and mature deliberation, we establish in a perpetual manner…”). Such formulas, in the mouth of a manifestly modernist usurper, are doubly abusive:
– Firstly, because no one who favours Modernism, religious liberty, and collegial relativism fits the Catholic theological conditions for holding the Petrine office. As expounded by St. Robert Bellarmine and classical canonists, a public heretic cannot be head of the Church he does not belong to. Roncalli’s overall program, culminating in the conciliar revolution, situates him outside the visible bounds of the Catholic Faith.
– Secondly, because the solemn style lends sacrality to an act that in substance entrenches a purely cultural conception of ecclesial institutions, reinforcing the very milieu in which modernism thrives and dogmatic vigilance is ridiculed.
The use of the Petrine juridical voice to consecrate cultural symbolism while obscuring doctrinal militancy is precisely the *modus operandi* of post-1958 antipopes: maintain the shell; poison the kernel.
Symptomatic Level: A Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect’s Strategy
This brief letter, read spiritually, is not about a library; it is about a strategy. Several symptomatic elements stand out.
1. Continuity as Mask: Invoking Borromeo and Paul V
By anchoring the decree in the figure of Federico Borromeo and in the precedent of Paul V, Roncalli stages a pageant of continuity:
– He implicitly claims: “We only renew what our holy predecessors desired.”
– He decorates the text with the memory of a Cardinal who embodied genuine Catholic reform and cultural patronage.
Yet the historical Federico Borromeo saw culture as subordinate to dogma, and the Ambrosiana as an armory against heresy. To invoke his name while withholding any condemnation of the modern errors ravaging theology, exegesis, and morals—errors already brutally unmasked by St. Pius X—is an act of spiritual fraud.
This pattern will govern the entire conciliar process: quotations of Tradition stripped of their anti-liberal teeth, presented as ornaments validating a new, contradictory program.
2. Legal “Perpetuity” in a Revolutionary Context
The letter uses the formula “perpetuum in modum… contrarii quibusvis non obstantibus,” asserting that this patronage arrangement is to stand perpetually, regardless of contrary acts. But a revolution is underway:
– The same regime that pretends to fix in perpetuity the honorary role of the Milan archbishop over a library will within a few years oversee the doctrinal and liturgical devastation of Milan and the world.
– The “perpetual” decree is thus a hollow monument: strong where it flatters human office, weak or silent where the eternal rights of Christ the King and the integrity of doctrine are at stake.
This is emblematic of the conciliar sect: juridical rigidity in trivia, relativism in fundamentals.
3. Cultural Neutralization of Ecclesiastical Institutions
By emphasizing the Ambrosiana as a place where all sorts of cultivated men exercise their talents for the benefit of Christian society and the “republic of letters,” the letter tacitly endorses the notion that:
– ecclesiastical institutions may function as elite cultural centres integrated into a pluralistic intellectual world;
– their specifically Catholic, exclusivist, anti-error function should be de-emphasized to gain scholarly respectability.
This is squarely contrary to the condemnations in the Syllabus (e.g., 15, 16, 18, 55, 77–80) and to the teaching of Pius X, who demanded unambiguous rejection of modernist exegesis, relativization of dogma, and democratization of doctrine.
Silences that Accuse: What a True Catholic Provision Would Have Said
To see how spiritually barren the text is, one must ask: what would a truly Catholic apostolic letter, issued under a Pius IX or Pius X, have included in such a context?
At minimum, it would have:
– Affirmed explicitly that the Ambrosiana, as an ecclesiastical library, must be entirely at the service of the Catholic Faith and the salvation of souls, under the authority of the Magisterium.
– Recalled that all books and studies promoted there must conform to the decrees of the Holy Office, to Lamentabili and Pascendi, and to the Index of Forbidden Books.
– Commanded the Archbishop-Patron to ensure that no works undermining the divinity of Christ, the inerrancy of Scripture, the immutability of dogma, or the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church be presented unchallenged or honoured.
– Denounced the growing trends of rationalism, indifferentism, historicism, and Modernism in biblical and theological studies, reaffirming prior condemnations.
– Explicitly subordinated any “republic of letters” or humanistic ideal to the sovereign rights of Christ the King over sciences and culture, echoing Quas Primas and refuting secular autonomy.
Roncalli’s failure to make any of these affirmations, in 1960, on the eve of the most destructive pseudo-council in history, is not a neutral omission. It is a culpable expression of the new religion: one that retains pious vocabulary while abandoning the militant guardianship of revealed truth.
Conciliar Sect Fruits: From Ambrosian Glory to Ambrosian Apostasy
The historical aftermath confirms the diagnosis:
– The very ecclesiastical and academic environments that letters like this ennoble as cultural treasures have become breeding grounds of heresy: denial of biblical inerrancy, promotion of relativistic ecumenism, historical-critical destruction of the Gospels, open contradiction of defined dogmas about Christ, the Church, and the sacraments.
– The titular “Patrons” and “Archbishops” inserted into these roles by the conciliar sect have consistently failed to use their supposed authority to cleanse these institutions of error; rather, they have facilitated their subversion.
Thus, the 1960 decree appears, in retrospect, as a ceremonial prelude to practical apostasy:
– The Ambrosiana remains honoured as a monument;
– Its mission is silently dissolved into pluralistic scholarship;
– The logic of Roncalli’s culturalist rhetoric harmonizes perfectly with the later onslaught: aggiornamento, dialogue, and the surrender of intellectual and spiritual territory to the world.
Within the integral Catholic perspective, a structure that preserves external continuity while internally fostering or tolerating doctrinal dissolution is no longer an organ of the Mystical Body but a parasitic *neo-church*, a paramasonic organism hijacking venerable names and buildings to propagate a different religion.
True Catholic Duty: Restore Ambrosiana to the Service of Christ the King
In light of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, the only legitimate evaluation of Roncalli’s letter is severely negative:
– It reduces a great ecclesiastical institution to a politely Catholicized cultural forum.
– It instrumentalizes the authority it claims (but does not truly possess) to sanction symbolism instead of truth.
– It exemplifies the silent revolution: no explicit heresy in a line, but a cumulative betrayal in what is not said, what is not commanded, what is not condemned.
The remedy cannot be found in modernist “reforms” or in {those pretending to be traditional Catholics} who remain entangled with the neo-church’s structures or accept its antipopes. It lies solely in:
– returning all ecclesiastical institutions, including historic libraries, to explicit, exclusive service of the integral Catholic Faith;
– reinstating the principles of the Syllabus, Quas Primas, and Lamentabili as non-negotiable norms for scholarship, teaching, and curation;
– subjecting all literature and research to the measure of *lex credendi* (law of belief) and *lex orandi* (law of worship) handed down before the conciliar usurpation;
– recognizing that any cultural or academic prestige severed from the public and dogmatic reign of Christ the King is, in truth, a splendid camouflage for apostasy.
Only when the Ambrosiana and all similar institutions are once again governed, not by humanistic flattery, but by the uncompromising demands of the Catholic Faith, can the legacy of Federico Borromeo be honoured rather than exploited, and the palace of books become once more an armory of truth rather than antechamber to the conciliar sect’s labyrinth.
Source:
Religio bonaeque (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025