The cited document is the Latin text of the encyclical Paenitentiam agere of John XXIII (1 July 1962), issued on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. It exhorts the hierarchy and faithful to prayer, interior and exterior penance, sacramental confession, voluntary mortification, and novenas to the Holy Ghost, so that the upcoming Council may bear “salutary fruits,” strengthen faith and morals, promote unity, and contribute to the expansion and confirmation of the “Kingdom of God.” It amasses biblical references, recalls patristic and Tridentine doctrine on penance, and insists that the whole Church prepare spiritually for the Council. Yet precisely by placing authentic notions of penance at the service of the conciliar project, it instrumentalizes supernatural truths to legitimize an impending revolution, thereby perverting penitential language into a pious varnish for apostasy.

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Paenitentiam agere: Orthodox Vocabulary Harnessed to a Conciliar Subversion

Authentic Doctrine on Penance as a Strategic Cloak

At the factual and theological surface, much of Paenitentiam agere appears irreproachable:

– It grounds penance in the words of Our Lord: “Paenitentiam agite; appropinquavit enim regnum caelorum” (Mt 3:2; 4:17).
– It cites the prophets calling Israel to conversion (Joel), recalls Moses, invokes St Peter (Acts 2:38), St Paul on the Kingdom (Rom 14:17) and mortification (1 Cor 9:27; Gal 5:24), and quotes traditional formulas of the Roman liturgy.
– It references Trent’s doctrine that the sacrament of Penance is a kind of laborious baptism and that post-baptismal sins require contrition, confession, satisfaction.
– It urges both interior contrition and exterior mortification, including patient endurance of trials, voluntary penances, and prayers for the Council; it calls for novenas to the Holy Ghost, public supplications, indulgences, and works of mercy.

Taken in isolation, much of this is a paraphrase of perennial teaching. The text is carefully constructed so that almost every line, read abstractly, can be squared with the pre-1958 Magisterium: *lex orandi, lex credendi* is invoked; penance against secularism is praised; cooperation with Redemption via suffering is recalled; authority is exalted.

This is precisely the problem.

The encyclical’s orthodoxy in vocabulary is not ordered to the safeguarding of the deposit of faith, but to the spiritual and psychological conditioning of clergy and laity to embrace the Second Vatican Council—a council which, in its texts and reforms, enthroned the very errors condemned by the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, by Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi of St Pius X, and which openly weakened the public reign of Christ the King proclaimed in Quas Primas of Pius XI. Thus, an apparently sound doctrine of penance is co-opted as an instrument to obtain religious submission to a conciliar project structurally opposed to the integral Catholic faith.

Here lies the fundamental perversion: the good (true doctrine on penance) is harnessed to obtain consent to evil (the conciliar revolution).

Language of Submission: Penance Redirected from God to the Conciliar Assembly

Note the recurring structural move: penitential exhortations are continually tied to the Council as such.

– The text insists that, as the Council approaches, Christ is especially “present” through His “legates,” quoting “Qui vos audit, me audit” (Lk 10:16), and applies this directly to the conciliar assembly.
– It claims the Council, as gathering of successors of the Apostles, will “confirm before all eyes” the rights of God and the duties of men, and that the faithful must prepare by penance so that the Council may bear fruit.

On the linguistic level, a subtle but decisive transference occurs:

– Traditional doctrine: penance is due to God for sin, to obtain grace, to preserve or recover supernatural life, to avert divine chastisement, to persevere in the integral faith.
– Paenitentiam agere: penance is incessantly framed as a means to secure “abundant fruits” of Vatican II, to “prepare” souls for the Council, to “impetrate graces upon the imminent council,” to ensure its “prosperous and happy outcome.”

Thus, the encyclical functionally shifts the object of collective penitential effort from:
– the perennial ends of the Church
to
– the success of a historically contingent assembly whose doctrinal orientation was not yet revealed to the faithful and which, as history has verified, would unleash ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality, and the cult of man condemned by the true Magisterium.

This redirection is not accidental rhetoric; it is the core strategy. The faithful are urged to bind their supernatural obedience (Mt 18:20; Acts 4:32; Col 1:24) to a future event whose content they do not know, but which John XXIII here preemptively clothes with Christ’s own authority: Qui vos audit, me audit is strategically deployed to sanctify the conciliar enterprise in advance.

Such usage contradicts the prior Magisterium precisely where that Magisterium insists that authority is bound to the deposit, not vice versa. Pius IX in the Syllabus rejects the notion that the Church slavishly conforms to “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (prop. 80). St Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns the Modernist evolution of dogma and historical relativization. Pius XI in Quas Primas demands the public, juridical submission of states to Christ the King, not “opening” to pluralism and religious liberty.

Paenitentiam agere asks Catholics to offer prayer and mortification precisely so that the Council may effect what Vatican II in fact did: dilute dogmatic clarity, enthrone religious liberty, and launch false ecumenism. Supernatural energies are requisitioned to fuel historical apostasy.

Systematic Omissions: The Silent Betrayal

The gravest indictment against Paenitentiam agere is not what it states correctly, but what it stubbornly refuses to address.

1. No denunciation of Modernism by name:
– St Pius X called Modernism the “synthesis of all heresies” and imposed anti-modernist safeguards. This encyclical, issued in 1962, on the eve of a council teeming with Modernist periti, never once names, exposes, or warns against Modernism.
– Instead of guarding the flock from the most lethal doctrinal plague, John XXIII repeatedly appeals to sentiments of optimism and renewal, while directing penance toward “fruits” of a body heavily infiltrated by the very tendencies condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– This silence is not neutral; it is complicity.

2. No concrete reaffirmation of non-negotiable doctrines under attack:
– No explicit defense of the absolute uniqueness of the Catholic Church as the one ark of salvation against indifferentism explicitly condemned in the Syllabus (props. 15–18).
– No strong reiteration of Quas Primas: that peace and order depend on the public kingship of Christ, that states sin by refusing to recognize the true religion.
– No warning against “liberty of cults,” “rights of error,” and separation of Church and state rejected by Pius IX (props. 55, 77–79).
– No mention of the rights of the Church over education and public life, under systematic attack by secular regimes, and denied by liberal theses condemned in the Syllabus (45–48).

3. No discernment of the internal enemy:
– While Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, and Pius XI explicitly identify liberalism, Freemasonry, and the “synagogue of Satan” as organized enemies subverting states and infiltrating the Church, Paenitentiam agere is antiseptically silent about these concrete enemies.
– The encyclical speaks of “miserable humanity wandering without guide” but omits the organized, doctrinal subversion within the clergy, seminaries, and universities that pre-conciliar popes relentlessly exposed.
– By avoiding explicit naming of internal apostates, it leaves the faithful defenseless and, more insidiously, predisposed to submit to them once enthroned at the Council.

In sum, the text transforms penance from a weapon against error into fuel for an ecclesial project that refuses to condemn the dominant errors of the age and will soon canonize several of them.

Misuse of Patristic and Tridentine Authority: A Theological Trojan Horse

Paenitentiam agere frequently and accurately invokes:

– Trent’s doctrine on Penance as “laboriosus quidam Baptismus.”
– St Augustine on the necessity of satisfaction, tears, and almsgiving.
– Classical Roman orations during Lent.
– Examples of pre-conciliar popes (Innocent III, Gregory X, Pius IX) calling for fasting and prayer before councils.

But these references are weaponized rhetorically to suggest an identity between previous truly Catholic councils and the looming Vatican II. The analogy is false:

– Innocent III prepared Lateran IV to condemn Albigensian errors, reform clergy, and assert the rights of the Church.
– Pius IX convoked Vatican I to define papal primacy and infallibility and to combat rationalism and liberalism.

In contrast:
– John XXIII explicitly rejected a “synodal condemnation” of errors and formulated the program of aggiornamento—adaptation to the modern world—which stands in direct tension with the anti-liberal, anti-modernist line of Pius IX and St Pius X.
– By placing Vatican II in a seamless continuity with councils that defended doctrine against error, Paenitentiam agere performs a proto-“hermeneutic of continuity” operation: it anesthetizes suspicion by appealing to revered precedents while preparing a council neither doctrinally nor disciplinarily analogous.

The faithful are thus manipulated: genuine authorities (Trent, Fathers, pre-1958 popes) are cited to elicit trust and obedience, which are then transferred to a conciliar event designed by Modernist and liberal elements to dilute those very authorities.

This is not a neutral devotional exhortation; it is theological misdirection.

Reduction of Penance to an Engine of Conciliar Optimism

On the symptomatic level, one notes a consistent, irenic, optimistic tone devoid of true eschatological and punitive realism:

– Hell, divine wrath, and the gravity of heresy are barely echoed except through select citations; they are never concretized against the real, contemporary errors.
– The focus is on “fruits,” “renewal,” “amplifying the kingdom,” “a new and more beautiful age for the Catholic name,” conditioned upon docile participation in conciliar preparation.

The entire call to penance is:

– Strong when it speaks abstractly on personal sin and mortification.
– Weak unto nullity when it should confront doctrinal corruption, liturgical subversion, or political rebellion against Christ the King.

Thus penance is psychologized and conciliarized:
– not the militant instrument of *iustitia Dei* against apostasy,
– but a soft, communitarian spirituality serving ecclesio-political goals defined by those who in fact will dismantle the pre-1958 order.

This spirit is diametrically opposed to Quas Primas, where Pius XI teaches that only the social reign of Christ and subordination of states to His law can restore order, and explicitly denounces laicism and naturalism. Paenitentiam agere never dares to reassert that absolute claim in the political sphere on the eve of a council that will teach the contrary in practice through its documents on religious liberty and its ecumenical praxis.

Silence in such a context is not mere omission; *silentium est confessio* when the stakes are this high: the silence confesses adherence to liberal premises.

Abuse of “Qui vos audit, me audit”: Legitimizing a Revolutionary Assembly

A crucial doctrinal distortion lies in the way Christ’s promise “Qui vos audit, me audit” (Lk 10:16) is applied.

Traditional Catholic doctrine:
– This promise is attached to the Apostles and their successors when they transmit faithfully the deposit of faith, *eodem sensu eademque sententia* (in the same sense and the same judgment), as defined by Vincent of Lérins and reaffirmed by the Magisterium (e.g., Vatican I).

Paenitentiam agere:
– Applies this promise to the forthcoming Council simply as gathering of “successors of the Apostles,” before any act, content, or adherence to Tradition is evidenced.
– It morally binds the faithful to expect divine voice in whatever that assembly will promulgate.

This anticipatory sacralization of a future, undefined conciliar teaching is completely foreign to the discipline of the pre-1958 Church, which:
– Always recognized that councils must be judged by their conformity to Tradition, and that not every utterance of assembled bishops is per se infallible or irreformable.
– In practice, resisted robber councils and condemned heterodox assemblies despite their episcopal composition.

Here, penitential fervor is marshalled to suspend prudent doctrinal vigilance. The faithful are tacitly told: those who will speak at Vatican II, whoever they are and whatever they say, are Christ speaking—prepare by penance to receive it. This is spiritual blackmail, not Catholic prudence.

Subordination of Suffering and Mortification to a New Ecclesiology

The encyclical exhorts:

– To “offer sufferings” for the “building up of the body of Christ which is the Church” (Col 1:24).
– To embrace voluntary penances for the success of the Council and the “extension of the kingdom.”
– To imitate saints’ austerities as incentive to do “something” in reparation and for conciliar fruits.

But what ecclesiology and what “kingdom” are silently presupposed?

Before 1958:
– The “body of Christ which is the Church” meant exclusively the visible, hierarchical Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, no jurisdiction, no sacraments with salvific efficacy except in dependence on her.
– The “kingdom of Christ” demanded the submission of nations to His law.

The emerging conciliar ecclesiology:
– Reinterprets the Church as a broader, layered “People of God,” opens to false religions as “means of salvation,” dilutes the dogma of no salvation outside the Church, and blesses religious liberty.

Paenitentiam agere, by refusing to restate the hard edges of the pre-1958 doctrine while channeling sacrifices toward the Council, objectively directs those sacrifices to nourish a nascent neo-church: a paramasonic structure gradually displacing the visible Catholic Church in the consciousness of the faithful.

The sufferings and penances offered in obedience to this encyclical are thus, in large part, exploited to strengthen the authority and aura of the very conciliar establishment that will:
– Maul the liturgy and eclipse the Most Holy Sacrifice beneath an assembly “meal,”
– Undermine the dogmatic intransigence of the Syllabus and Pascendi,
– Introduce ecumenism, religious liberty, and anthropocentrism.

This is the tragic irony: Catholics were exhorted to mortify themselves so that the revolution against the integral Catholic faith might proceed under the seal of “prayerfully prepared council.”

Conciliar Penance Without True Separation from the World

From the standpoint of an integral Catholic criterion, genuine penitential teaching must:
– Denounce the world’s revolt against God, liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, naturalism.
– Call to separation from the maxims of the age and to the full restoration of Christ’s social kingship.
– Condemn doctrinal deviations by name and urge vigilance against wolves within.

Paenitentiam agere:
– Speaks of humanity “often turned aside from the way of truth and virtue” in vague moralizing terms.
– Does not confront the concrete doctrinal, liturgical, moral corruption already spreading among theologians, clergy, and bishops.
– Does not name Freemasonry or the “sectarian” forces that previous popes had unmistakably unmasked as architects of secular apostasy and enemies of the Church.
– Omits any indication that the first victims of penance must be those ecclesiastics propagating novelty; instead, it garlands the episcopal assembly with Christ’s own guarantee in advance.

Thus, while sounding “ascetical,” the document remains horizontalized and diplomatic. It prepares not separation from the world, but collaboration with it through aggiornamento, under a thin veneer of traditional devotions.

This is the exact inversion of Pius XI’s Quas Primas, which teaches that all social ills stem from the rejection of Christ’s rule and that states and individuals must submit to His law; and the exact inversion of Pius IX’s Syllabus, which brands reconciliation with liberal modern civilization as an error.

Paenitentiam agere, in its silence and orientation, effectively nudges the faithful toward precisely that condemned reconciliation.

Conclusion: Pious Words in the Service of Ecclesial Self-Dissolution

When judged exclusively by the norm of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine—not by sentimental loyalty to the conciliar narrative—the encyclical Paenitentiam agere reveals itself as:

– Theologically duplicitous: using impeccably worded doctrine on penance to induce unconditional openness to a council that will institutionalize errors previously condemned.
– Linguistically manipulative: joining legitimate penitential exhortations to an undefined future “event” pre-blessed as the voice of Christ, thereby disarming critical fidelity to Tradition.
– Spiritually disoriented: relentless in urging sacramental and ascetical practices, but almost entirely mute on the decisive doctrinal battles of its time—Modernism, liberalism, religious indifferentism, the dethronement of Christ the King—already anatomized by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, and Pius XI.
– Symptomatically conciliar: a preparatory text that fits perfectly into the program of the conciliar revolution—optimism, refusal to condemn, sacralization of process, and exploitation of true Catholic devotions to legitimize new doctrines.

Authentic Catholic penance is ordered to:
– the glory of God,
– the expiation of sin,
– the defense and profession of the immutable faith,
– the restoration of Christ’s reign in souls and societies,
– the rejection and annihilation of heresy.

By subordinating this supernatural reality to the success of Vatican II, Paenitentiam agere twists a central element of Catholic spiritual life into a tool of the conciliar sect’s self-assertion. It is precisely this redirection—couched in traditional phrases yet bent toward an untraditional goal—that reveals the profound theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the mentality it propagates.

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Source:
Paenitentiam Agere   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025