This brief Latin letter of John XXIII congratulates Antonio María Barbieri on the 25th anniversary of his episcopal consecration, extols his loyalty to the Roman See, praises his pastoral merits and Franciscan vocation, grants him the faculty to impart a plenary indulgence on a chosen day for the faithful present, and concludes with an “Apostolic Blessing” as a confirmation of paternal goodwill. In reality, this apparently innocuous panegyric is a distilled manifesto of the new conciliar cult of personality, sentimentalism, and juridically void “pontifical” favors flowing from usurped authority, preparing the ground for the dissolution of the Catholic episcopate into the humanistic, horizontal fraternity of the conciliar sect.
Usurped Authority and the Mimicry of Apostolic Paternity
From the first line, we stand in AD mode: this text proceeds from John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar revolution and thus an antipope whose magisterial claims lack all juridical and theological foundation according to the perennial principles enunciated by the pre-1958 Church.
John XXIII addresses Barbieri as cardinal and archbishop and signs as Roman Pontiff. Yet the entire edifice presupposed here collapses when measured by the doctrine articulated by the classical theologians and codified in the 1917 Code of Canon Law:
– A manifest heretic cannot hold the papal office nor any jurisdiction in the Church (*Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice*; Canon 188.4 CIC 1917).
– Authority in the Church is a participation in the Kingship of Christ; it cannot be turned into a platform for doctrinal revolution without self-annulment. Pius XI teaches that the peace of nations and internal order depend upon public recognition of Christ’s kingship and docile submission to His law (Quas primas). To enthrone man, religious liberty, and ecumenism is to dethrone Christ.
By praising Barbieri primarily for being “closely bound” to this usurped “See of Peter,” John XXIII implicitly identifies communion with his own person and with the emergent conciliar ideology as the criterion of ecclesial legitimacy. The categories are inverted: fidelity to the Faith once delivered is replaced by fidelity to the revolutionary center. This is not paternal solicitude; this is the consolidation of a paramasonic structure under the mask of Roman continuity.
Empty Panegyric instead of Supernatural Exhortation
The letter abounds in smooth formulas of human appreciation:
“We congratulate you on the merits which, closely attached to this See of Peter, you have gathered in your pastoral office through daily solicitude and work.”
and further: encouragements to “aim higher,” to show ever more the “amiable ornament” of virtue, so that to preside is to profit, exercising power with purity of heart and constancy.
Measured against integral Catholic standards, this rhetoric is revealing not for what it says, but for what it omits.
1. There is no explicit call to defend the flock against doctrinal errors ravaging the 20th century: Modernism, indifferentism, naturalism, socialism, freemasonry, ecumenical relativism. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi vigorously unmasks these poisons; here, not even a hint.
2. There is no reference to the duty to uphold the social Kingship of Christ against the liberal state and its false “rights,” explicitly condemned in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (e.g., propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80).
3. There is no mention of guarding the integrity of the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments, no insistence on preserving the traditional liturgy, doctrine, discipline, or on combating the already growing liturgical subversion that would culminate in the 1960s.
4. There is no warning about the enemies within—precisely those modernists and masonic networks that Pius X and Pius IX identified as the principal threat to the Church and Christian society.
Silence here is not neutral. Such official blandness in 1961, on the eve of the great conciliar upheaval, functions as anesthetic. A bishop is affirmed, decorated, and caressed, but not commanded or armed. The supernatural mission is dissolved into ethical elegance and institutional loyalty. This sweet poison is more dangerous than open attack.
Linguistic Politeness as Symptom of Doctrinal Erosion
The language is polished, deferential, “pastoral” in the degraded modern sense: warm, encouraging, sentimental. But authentic Catholic pastoral language is virile, doctrinal, supernatural, and juridically precise.
Key observations on tone and vocabulary:
– The text magnifies human “merits,” “long journey,” “benefits,” “amabile decus” of virtue, but never once names the concrete demands of the episcopal office as defined by tradition: defense of dogma, condemnation of error, protection of the liturgy, resistance to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
– It speaks of “serving God and the Church with purity of heart” but without specifying the objective doctrinal content of that service. This is the conciliar method: evacuate specific dogmatic obligations and replace them with general moral sentiments compatible with any future reinterpretation.
– It stresses Barbieri as Franciscan religious and “good shepherd,” yet nowhere ties this to the duty of poverty of spirit manifesting itself in opposition to the cult of human progress and political liberalism which the Syllabus brands as pernicious.
– The style is bureaucratically benign: an administrative text of congratulations dressed in pious Latin, devoid of the note of battle that pervades pre-1958 papal teaching. The shepherd’s staff is replaced by a bouquet of compliments.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): here we perceive the emerging lex scribendi of the conciliar sect—tepid, ambiguous, allergic to condemnations. Where the true Church thunders against error for the salvation of souls, the neo-church murmurs encouragements for institutional careers.
Theological Vacuity: An “Episcopate” Without Dogma
If we extract the dogmatic core of this letter, we find… a void.
– No reference to the episcopal office as successor of the Apostles obligated to transmit intact what was received (*tradidi quod et accepi*).
– No appeal to defined dogmas, no mention of guarding the deposit of faith against “novelties falsely so-called science” (cf. Pius X).
– No insistence that a bishop’s first duty is to preach the faith in the face of heresy, to anathematize error, to enforce discipline, to ensure that the faithful die in the state of grace.
Instead we receive:
“Your presiding may be ever more a profiting; and to exercise power may be to serve with invincible constancy the designs and benefits of God and the Church.”
This consciously avoids specifying that such “service” is intrinsically juridically and dogmatically structured. It is precisely the omission of doctrinal content that permits later inversion: once “service” is detached from objective truth, it can be redefined as dialoguing with error, recognizing false religions, blessing freemasonic democracies, and dissolving Catholic exclusivity. This seed is visible already here: authority is reduced to benevolent guardianship of an undefined “religion” and “Church” that can later be re-coded as the conciliar sect.
By 1961, the danger of Modernism was not hypothetical; Pius X had already condemned the exact propositions that would resurface at Vatican II. A true pope writing within this context would remind a bishop that:
– The Church alone possesses the truth; religious pluralism is condemned.
– The State must recognize the true religion.
– Public errors must be resisted, not celebrated.
The total lack of such reminders in this official text, especially in a time of intensifying subversion, is theologically symptomatic. It is not ignorance; it is policy.
Instrumentalization of Indulgences: Grace as Currency of a Neo-Church
One of the few juridically concrete elements of the letter is the grant of faculty:
“We grant you the faculty that, on whatever day you will, with the faithful present, in Our Name and with Our authority, you may impart a blessing with a plenary Indulgence proposed.”
At first glance, this seems classically Catholic: the Roman Pontiff bestowing indulgences through a bishop to encourage piety. But under scrutiny, several grave problems emerge.
1. If John XXIII is not a true pope—because public adherence to modernist principles destroys the possession of the papal office—then any such grant is juridically null. No usurper can dispense the treasury of the Church.
2. Even on the purely internal logic of the text, indulgences are here reduced to a decorative “gift” for an anniversary, tied less to grave calls to conversion, penance, and defense of the faith, and more to an ecclesiastical celebration of a functionary. This aestheticization of indulgences trivializes their purpose, which is the remission of temporal punishment for sin under strict conditions of contrition, confession, Eucharistic communion, and detachment from sin.
3. The indulgence is implicitly used to strengthen adhesion to the person and regime of John XXIII. Because it is conferred “in Our Name and with Our authority,” it creates the psychological association that spiritual benefits flow from communion with the conciliar head, not from fidelity to the integral Catholic faith. This is the inversion of the true order: grace is enslaved to the new regime.
In pre-1958 teaching, indulgences are strictly regulated, doctrinally circumscribed, and never deployed as mere ornaments of ecclesiastical diplomacy. Here we see early signs of the post-conciliar inflation of indulgences, jubilees, and symbolic gestures—spiritual currency issued by a counterfeit central bank.
From Apostolic Succession to Humanistic Careerism
The letter congratulates Barbieri on “five lustra” of episcopal consecration and speaks of a “long journey sprinkled with heavenly favors.” But it entirely omits the notion that episcopal longevity is meaningful only if accompanied by doctrinal fidelity and courageous opposition to the world.
Pre-1958 magisterium is clear:
– Bishops are not merely administrators; they are judges in matters of faith and morals, guardians of orthodoxy, and defenders of Christian society against revolution.
– When civil power or secular ideologies wage war on the Church, bishops must resist even to blood; the pope must strengthen them.
Contrasting this with the actual wording here:
– Barbieri is praised for attachment to “this See of Peter,” i.e., to the person of John XXIII and his policy, rather than to the unchanging faith.
– The text suggests that whatever beneficial happens to him and his flock will be “most pleasing” to John XXIII. The axis is shifted from divine approval to papal (or pseudo-papal) satisfaction.
Thus, episcopal identity is re-coded in three steps:
1. From defender of the deposit of faith to pastoral manager.
2. From warrior against error to celebrant of anniversaries.
3. From successor of the Apostles to ornament of the conciliar regime.
This is not accidental; it is the social engineering of a new, obedient hierarchy which will implement the council and its aftermath without resistance.
Symptom of the Conciliar Revolution in Miniature
This short letter, read in light of subsequent events, functions as a compressed icon of conciliar apostasy. Its structural features prefigure the neo-church which would soon publicly manifest itself:
– Personalism instead of dogma: focus on the person, merits, and feelings over clear reaffirmation of objective truths.
– Sentimentalism instead of militancy: no war against heresy, no denunciation of the masonic and modernist sects that Pius IX and Pius X had already unmasked.
– Naturalism instead of supernatural primacy: joy, progress, “amiable” virtue, but without the soteriological sharpness of sin, grace, judgment, hell, and the narrow way.
– Ecclesialism instead of the Kingdom of Christ: devotion to the institutional “See” as such, preparing acceptance of whatever that “See” will promulgate, including doctrines and rites incompatible with Catholic Tradition.
Pius XI in Quas primas teaches that true peace and order come only from recognizing the public Kingship of Christ over individuals, families, and states. Yet the conciliar project, inaugurated by John XXIII, steadily replaces this with worship of the abstract “human person,” “human dignity,” and “religious freedom,” all condemned as understood by liberalism in the Syllabus of Errors. This letter participates in that shift by forming bishops in the mentality of benevolent administrators under a humanistic “pope,” not as lieutenants of Christ the King charged to subject nations to His law.
Omissions that Accuse: No Warning, No Sword, No Fire
The gravest indictment of this document lies in its omissions, especially in 1961:
– No mention of communism’s systematic persecution of Catholics and the duty of episcopal resistance.
– No mention of freemasonry, whose influence over political powers and cultural elites had been exposed repeatedly by pre-1958 popes as the organized “synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church.
– No mention of Modernism’s infiltration of seminaries, universities, and chanceries, despite its formal condemnation as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
– No exhortation to preserve the traditional liturgy inviolate, though the revolutionaries were already advancing preparatory reforms.
– No insistence on the absolute necessity of the state of grace, the frequent reception of the sacraments in the traditional rite, the avoidance of occasion of sin, meditation on death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
This deliberate silence on supernatural and doctrinal essentials, combined with the generous distribution of honors, praise, and “indulgences,” is the method of the conciliar sect: blanditia ut venenum (flattery as poison). It prepares bishops and faithful psychologically to welcome future “reforms” as organic fruits of the same “pastoral” benevolence, even when these reforms directly contradict the prior magisterium.
Conclusion: A Harmless Letter as Manifesto of a Counterfeit Church
Under the appearance of harmless congratulations, this 1961 letter of John XXIII reveals four fundamental characteristics of the emerging conciliar anti-church:
– It assumes an authority which, according to the perennial doctrine on manifest heresy and loss of office, it does not possess; thus its blessings and indulgences are juridically void.
– It forms bishops not as defenders of the integral Catholic faith, but as docile, self-satisfied officials, loyal to a humanistic, pacified “See” that no longer condemns the world.
– It replaces clear supernatural and dogmatic language with sentimental generalities, enabling subsequent doctrinal subversion without frontal contradiction.
– It exemplifies the gradual displacement of the Kingship of Christ by ecclesial personality-cult and natural virtue, preparing the faithful to accept the later avalanche of ecumenism, religious liberty, and liturgical deformation.
A text that never mentions Christ the King, never mentions Modernism, never mentions the Syllabus, never mentions the duty to resist liberal and masonic errors, and never commands doctrinal vigilance, but instead dispenses praise and a plenary indulgence for institutional loyalty, does not belong to the voice of the Immaculate Bride of Christ. It is the voice of the structures occupying the Vatican, inaugurating a new religion in the old buildings.
Source:
Semper exspectatus – Ad Antonium Mariam tit. S. Chrysogoni S. R. E. Presby- terum Cardinalem Barbieri, Archiepiscopum Montisvidei, quinque lustra implentem ex quo consecratus est Episcopus (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025