The document issued by the usurper John XXIII under the title Religio bonaeque is a brief Latin act by which he designates the Archbishop of Milan pro tempore as perpetual Patron of the Ambrosian Library. It praises Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s foundation of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, celebrates the Church’s support for letters and the arts, recalls that the Holy See has always favoured this institution, cites Paul V’s dispositions about episcopal oversight, and then confers in sweeping juridical language the formal patronage on whoever holds the Ambrosian See, with the usual clauses of perpetuity, validity, and nullity of contrary acts.
Instrumentalizing Ambrosian Heritage for the Conciliar Revolution
The text is externally modest and apparently innocuous: a pious nod to Catholic learning, to the noble figure of Federico Borromeo, to the role of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in fostering sacred and profane sciences. Yet precisely in its apparent harmlessness it is emblematic of the method and spirit by which John XXIII and the conciliar sect prepared the subversion of the Church: exploiting authentically Catholic institutions, symbols, and memories as a façade while installing a new, man-centred, pseudo-ecclesial regime.
The act must therefore be read, ex integra catholica fide ante 1958 (from the standpoint of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958), as:
– A juridically hollow gesture issued by one who, by embracing and inaugurating modernist principles, could not validly wield Apostolic authority.
– A symptom of the shift from the Christocentric and dogmatic purpose of Catholic scholarship to a cult of culture, erudition, and “heritage” severed from the rights of Christ the King and the fight against error.
– A calculated use of venerable tradition—Ambrosian, Borromean, Tridentine—to clothe in borrowed splendour the nascent project of Vatican II and the dismantling of immutable doctrine.
Misappropriation of Catholic Tradition for a Neo-Church Agenda
On the factual level, the document:
– Accurately recalls that Cardinal Federico Borromeo founded and endowed the Ambrosian Library so that clergy and scholars might deepen sacred studies.
– Notes that the Holy See historically supported this centre of Catholic learning.
– Cites Paul V’s will that the Ambrosian Archbishop exercise vigilance over the Library.
– Decrees that the Archbishop of Milan pro tempore is Patron of that Library, with the usual canonical style: “firmas, validas atque efficaces” etc.
These facts are not in themselves problematic; they reflect a genuine Catholic past. The fraud lies in the subject and in the context:
– The text is signed in 1960 by John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar revolution, who announced the council that would enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man—precisely the errors anathematized by the pre-1958 Magisterium:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum condemns the proposition that the Roman Pontiff should reconcile himself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (prop. 80).
– Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi condemns the modernist idea of evolving dogma and the subjection of revelation to historical criticism.
– By 1960, the conciliar project was explicitly underway; the figure who issues this letter is the same one who convoked the council that would oppose the integral doctrine of Quas Primas on the social Kingship of Christ by exalting religious indifferentism and the secularist state.
Thus we face a typical conciliar-sect maneuver: a document apparently defending tradition while procedurally and symbolically subordinating that very tradition to a new pseudo-magisterium. The Ambrosian Library—born to defend and diffuse Catholic truth—is symbolically linked to the “pro tempore” occupant of Milan in the very years when that see becomes a laboratory of aggiornamento and ecumenism. The usurper clothes his future collaborators in the prestige of Borromeo and Paul V to prepare the plundering of their inheritance.
Linguistic Cloaking: Pious Latin Covering a Humanist Agenda
The language is carefully chosen and revealing:
– The letter extols:
– “Religio bonaeque artes” – religion and the fine arts;
– the Biblioteca as “amplissima quaedam palaestra” – a great arena for cultivated minds;
– benefits to “Christian society and the republic of letters.”
– There is an insistent emphasis on:
– “noble intellects,” “polite arts,” “doctrinarum officina” (workshop of learning).
– What is strikingly absent:
– Any explicit mention of the *Most Holy Sacrifice*, of the sacraments as sources of grace.
– Any insistence that Catholic learning exists primarily to defend revealed dogma against heresy.
– Any call to use the Library’s treasures as weapons against modernist poison, atheistic rationalism, or the sects condemned by the Popes.
– Any reminder of the final end of man—salvation, judgment, heaven, and hell—which must govern Catholic culture.
Instead, the vocabulary presents a polished, vaguely humanistic profile: the Library as a cultural institution, and the “Holy See” as “altrix ingeniorum” and “fautrix artium politiorum” (nurturer of noble minds and patron of fine arts). This language is classically Catholic only if subordinated to Christ the King and to the militant defense of truth; but here, used by the initiator of the conciliar agenda, it functions as a rhetorical bridge from Tridentine Catholicism to the sterile, horizontal “culture” of the neo-church.
Silence here is condemnation. In the mid-20th century, amidst:
– The ascendancy of secularism condemned in Quas Primas as “apostasia publica” (public apostasy),
– The spread of masonic and socialist conspiracies against the Church forcefully denounced by Pius IX,
– The modernist infiltration condemned with excommunication by Pius X,
this act finds not one word of warning against error. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, which should be an arsenal against heresy, is reduced to an ornament in the conciliar sect’s museum of cultural respectability.
From Christ the King to the Cult of the Academy
The theological measure of any ecclesiastical act, as Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, is whether it acknowledges and promotes the public, social Kingship of Christ and the rights of the true Church over souls and nations. Pius XI stated with divine clarity that:
– Peace and order will not return until individuals and states recognize and obey the reign of Christ.
– The Church is a perfect society, with innate rights not granted by the state.
– It is a mortal scourge to remove Christ and His law from public life, to relativize the Catholic faith among “other religions,” or to subject the Church to secular domination.
Measured by that doctrine, this letter:
– Presents the Biblioteca not as an explicitly militant organ of Christ’s kingship, but as a “republic of letters” resource, with benefits to “Christian society and the world of letters” in broad, non-combative terms.
– Assigns patronage to the Archbishop of Milan “for the time being” (pro tempore), without any confessional or doctrinal criteria, as if mere canonical occupancy of a see in a time of doctrinal corruption sufficed.
This reveals the emerging conciliar mentality:
– Substituting the supernatural mission of the Church with an academic-cultural mission.
– Treating Catholic patrimony as a neutral legacy, available for modernist reinterpretation, ecumenical display, and dialogue with the world.
– Ignoring the principle lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): if the library and its liturgical, patristic, scholastic treasures are entrusted to clerics who deny the exclusivity of truth and the Kingship of Christ, those treasures will be twisted into instruments of apostasy.
Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemned precisely the use of “history,” “criticism,” and “scholarship” as pretexts to relativize dogma and subjugate revelation to evolving scientific consensus. By 1960, the future conciliar theologians, many already infected with these errors, would be precisely those rehabilitated and promoted under John XXIII. Entrusting a major Catholic library to the line of such men under the seal of Apostolic authority is not a neutral act; it is a structural preparation for the misuse of Catholic sources to undermine Catholic faith.
The Canonical Formulas Emptied of Apostolic Content
The document piles up solemn canonical expressions:
– “Certa scientia ac matura deliberatione” – with certain knowledge and mature deliberation;
– “Nostra auctoritate… perpetuum in modum constituimus atque decernimus” – by Our authority We perpetually establish and decree;
– “Contrariis quibusvis non obstantibus” – notwithstanding all contrary dispositions;
– And the classic clauses declaring future contrary acts “irritum et inane” – null and void.
This is traditional legal style. But its very correctness, in this context, is damning:
– Forma sine veritate – form without truth. The juridical shell of papal authority is inhabited by one who prepares to contradict the infallibly taught doctrines of his predecessors.
– When such formulas are wielded in service of a project bent on reconciling the Church with liberalism and religious indifferentism (condemned as grave errors in the Syllabus), they become a parody of Apostolic authority.
The authentic Magisterium, as reaffirmed by Pius X, teaches that:
– The Church’s condemnations demand internal assent; one may not dismiss them as outdated.
– The Roman Pontiff may not teach contrary to the deposit of faith; should a man manifestly do so, he cannot be regarded as possessing the office.
To use strong, solemn phrases to reinforce administrative dispositions, while remaining silent on the doctrinal crisis and opening the door to modernist misuse of Catholic institutions, exemplifies the conciliar sect’s method: legalistic pomp masking theological treason.
Ambrosian Library under Modernist Patronage: A Symptom of Systemic Apostasy
On the symptomatic plane, this short letter prefigures several features of the post-1958 neo-church:
1. Co-opting of venerable local traditions.
– The Ambrosian rite and Ambrosian institutions, long bastions of orthodoxy, are symbolically placed under the control of the very current that will later deform liturgy, dilute doctrine, and embrace false ecumenism.
– The association of Ambrosian heritage with modernist office-holders corrupts perception: it suggests continuity where there is rupture.
2. Neutralization of Catholic scholarship.
– The Biblioteca Ambrosiana’s manuscripts, patristic texts, scholastic works, and records of anti-heresy struggle become fodder for modernist “historical theology,” which, as condemned by Pius X, reinterprets dogma as mere evolving religious experience.
– Without explicit directives to defend the integral faith, the act effectively hands the armoury to those intent on melting down the swords.
3. Anthropocentric focus.
– The document’s praise revolves around culture, intellect, and letters; it does not remind the Archbishop that his primary responsibility is the salvation of souls through true doctrine and the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, not the curation of a cultural monument.
– This shift from salvation to culture is characteristic of the conciliar sect’s “cult of man” later displayed openly.
4. Preparatory normalization of the usurper’s “magisterium.”
– By using Catholic forms for apparently benign acts, John XXIII habituates the faithful and clergy to accept his decrees as legitimate.
– This habituation creates the psychological premise for later acceptance of far graver acts: the calling of a council that contradicts Quas Primas on the Kingship of Christ, the Syllabus on liberalism, and Pascendi on Modernism.
In this way, even a minor administrative letter becomes another brick in the edifice of the abominatio desolationis (abomination of desolation) occupying the structures of Rome.
Silence about the Social Kingship of Christ as Accusation
The deepest indictment of this text is its silence:
– No mention that civil authorities and cultural institutions must publicly recognize and serve Christ the King, as Pius XI taught: peace and order cannot be restored unless nation and culture subject themselves to His law.
– No exhortation that the Ambrosian Library serve to refute the very errors raging in the world and condemned by Pius IX and Pius X—naturalism, rationalism, socialism, secret societies, and especially Modernism, “the synthesis of all heresies.”
– No insistence that the Archbishop’s patronage is above all a duty to guard orthodoxy, to ensure that no modernist poison is disseminated from this centre of learning.
In the 20th century, such omissions are not neutral. They signal complicity:
– Where a true Pontiff would have used the occasion to recall that all scholarship must be subjected to revelation and that any system denying the Church’s rights is damnable error, the usurper contents himself with cultural courtesies and canonical formulas.
– In the wake of Lamentabili and Pascendi, to speak of Catholic institutions of learning without reasserting their role against Modernism is to tacitly disarm the faithful.
Pius X explicitly warned that those who undermine these anti-modernist documents incur excommunication and that Modernism penetrates precisely through academic, exegetical, historical channels. This letter, by its omissions, functions as a quiet reversal of that vigilance.
Conclusion: A Polished Facade Concealing the Preparation for Ruin
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the act called Religio bonaeque is:
– Juridically null in its claim to proceed from Apostolic authority, given its author’s role in initiating a program of doctrinal rupture condemned by prior infallible teaching.
– Theologically symptomatic of the shift from a Church militant, guarding the deposit of faith, to a conciliar sect enamoured of culture, dialogue, and the applause of the republic of letters.
– Strategically instrumental: it enlists Ambrosian prestige and Borromean memory in service of a structure that will soon betray the very truths they defended.
What appears as a harmless nomination of patronage is, in reality, another quiet step in the capture of Catholic institutions by the paramasonic system that exalts man, relativizes dogma, denies the public reign of Christ, and turns the luminous heritage of the Church into stage props for its neo-Religion.
Source:
Religio bonaeque (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025