Trinitarian Vocabulary as a Mask for the Conciliar Betrayal

The homily attributed to John XXIII on the occasion of the canonization of John of Ribera (12 June 1960) presents itself as a pious exhortation: it recalls the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, extols sanctity as a “work” of the Trinity, sketches the life of John of Ribera as a model bishop zealous for doctrine, discipline, catechesis, seminaries, synods, the Holy Eucharist, and steadfast faith amidst the perils of heresy and persecution. It concludes by turning to contemporary Catholics suffering under open enemies of the Church and by placing everything under the invocation of the dogma of the Trinity and the official liturgical prayer.

Yet precisely here lies the decisive problem: this carefully traditional façade functions as an ideological camouflage for the man who already stood as progenitor of the conciliar revolution; the homily’s selective emphases and strategic silences betray the program of the coming apostasy.

---

Homiletic Orthodoxy as Tactical Disguise of a Revolutionary Agenda

From the outset, the speech clothes itself in apparently impeccable Trinitarian doctrine and formally orthodox piety. It praises the *arcanum augustissimae Trinitatis dogma* as the “origin and foundation” of all graces and the “compendium” of the Christian faith, and links sanctity to conformity to the divine image. This vocabulary, in itself, is consonant with the perennial Magisterium.

However, one must measure words not in isolation but within their historical and personal context. In 1960 this homilist is the same antipope who only months earlier had convened the council that would demolish, in practice and doctrine, the very truths he here solemnly intones; the same figure who will inaugurate the *aggiornamento* that enthrones religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man, in direct collision with:

– Pius IX’s *Syllabus Errorum*, which condemns as errors religious indifferentism, liberalism, state-Church separation, and the reconciliation of the Church with “modern civilization” (propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80).
– Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, which asserts that peace and order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to the social Kingship of Christ and that laicism is a “plague” to be condemned, not embraced.

What we face, therefore, is not a harmless edifying discourse, but the textbook method of Modernism: outwardly orthodox formulas used as a smokescreen while the concrete ecclesial program subverts the very content of those formulas. *Modernismus est simulatio.* The encyclical *Pascendi* unmasks precisely this tactic: modernists “speak and write in a style which on the surface would seem to be in harmony with Catholic teaching, but they deliberately employ it in a sense not the same as that of the Church.” The homily must be read in this light.

To expose this dynamic, we must dissect the text on four levels.

Systematic Sanitization of Historical Combat against Error

On the factual and historical plane, the portrait of John of Ribera is selective to the point of falsification.

The homily presents:

– His formation in Salamanca;
– His personal piety and attachment to prayer and reflection;
– His horror at Lutheran heresy, described as thieves of a precious treasure;
– His pastoral zeal: preaching, catechesis of children, hearing confessions, bringing Viaticum, reforming clergy, founding a seminary, convoking diocesan synods, visiting the diocese;
– His virtues: humility, poverty, Eucharistic devotion, a holy death with ardent profession of faith.

All of this, taken materially, coincides with elements of genuine Catholic sanctity as taught and codified, for instance, by the Council of Trent (Session XXIII on bishops and seminaries, Session XIII on the Most Holy Eucharist, Session VI on justification and life of grace).

But what is conspicuously absent?

1. Any concrete and doctrinally precise denunciation of the specific heresies and false principles which, by 1960, are already infiltrating the Church: liturgical subversion, ecumenistic relativism, biblical criticism condemned in *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*, democratic “collegiality,” the cult of “human dignity” separated from the Kingship of Christ.
2. Any explicit affirmation of dogmatic intransigence against liberalism and naturalism, which Pius IX and Leo XIII relentlessly required. The homily generically mentions “Luther’s followers” and vaguely “opinions about religious matters full of poison,” but it deliberately does not name or anatomize modern errors already condemned in binding form: religious freedom, the denial of the Church’s exclusive truth, the secular state, “dialogue” as substitute for evangelization.
3. Any mention that the very “pericula fidei” most grave in 1960 arise not only from external enemies, but from treachery within structures, precisely what St. Pius X identified as the essence of Modernism: the enemy in the veins of the Church, not merely outside her walls.

Instead, the enemies are safely located “elsewhere”: in past Lutheranism, in contemporary openly atheistic regimes where faith is attacked “palam vi.” This is convenient: it allows the speaker to posture as defender of persecuted Catholics while masking the far deadlier revolution he himself leads within the visible structures.

Thus, the figure of Ribera — a Tridentine, anti-Protestant, disciplinarian bishop — is co-opted while his significance as a symbol of intransigent Counter-Reformation Catholicism is neutralized. His true doctrinal militancy, which stands in contradiction to the coming conciliar concessions, is re-packaged as a harmless moral exemplar, “usable” by the nascent Church of the New Advent.

Linguistic Softening and the Modernist Strategy of Vague Devotion

On the linguistic level, the homily adopts a traditional Latin style yet reveals, in what it does not dare say, the mutation already underway.

Key traits:

– Abundant use of affective language: “suavissimo alimento,” “incensissima pietas,” “singulare paupertatis studium,” “mater amantissima Ecclesia,” “benevolentissimus Deus.”
– General, unspecific references to “insidiae” against faith; to deceptive literature; to corrupt morals; to external persecution.
– Absence of sharply defined doctrinal contours against contemporary doctrinal errors raging in the theological milieu: no precise indication of condemned propositions from *Lamentabili*; no strong reaffirmation of the absolute falsity of non-Catholic religions; no reiteration of the Church’s exclusive salvific necessity as defined by the dogma *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* in its traditional sense.

This rhetoric functions as a tranquilizing agent. It evokes emotional piety and calls to personal virtue, but it avoids the *militia fidei* in the precise doctrinal frontlines where Satan is attacking at that very hour.

Integral Catholic preaching, as exemplified by pre-1958 pontiffs, does not refrain from naming and anathematizing the real contemporary errors by name. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII speak with juridical clarity. Here, by contrast, we see:

– No condemnation of liberal democracy as sovereign over the Church (contra *Syllabus* 39–44).
– No condemnation of religious liberty as an assault on the Kingship of Christ (contra *Quas Primas* and *Syllabus* 77–79).
– No condemnation of masonic and paramasonic infiltration directly in ecclesiastical structures, though Pius IX and Leo XIII publicly unmasked Freemasonry as the declared enemy of the Church.

Instead, we hear consoling phrases to persecuted faithful and a sentimental unity: “Nos adsumus fratresque vestri omnes ad preces supplicationesque conversi.” But this “we” is precisely the emergent conciliar oligarchy that will soon deliver souls to the wolves through doctrinal dilution, new rites, and open ecumenism.

The softness is not accidental; it is programmatic. It prefigures the conciliar style: no anathemas, only “dialogue”; no precision, only “pastoral” language; no clash with the world, but a false reconciliation. The homily’s vocabulary is the chrysalis from which the conciliar sect will emerge.

Trinitarian Orthodoxy Emptied of the Social Kingship of Christ

The theological core professes the Trinity and, superficially, a high doctrine of grace and sanctity. However, when confronted with the unchanging pre-1958 Magisterium, crucial omissions show that the dogma is being isolated from its consequences.

Integral Catholic theology teaches:

– The mystery of the Trinity entails the absolute dominion of God over individuals, families, and societies.
– The Incarnate Word is King not only of hearts but of nations and legislation (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*: public, juridical recognition of Christ’s Kingship is a duty of states; laicism is condemned as a “plague”).
– The Church, as visible and perfect society, has rights superior to the state in matters touching salvation; civil laws must be conformed to divine and natural law (Pius IX, *Syllabus* 55–57; Leo XIII, various encyclicals).

In the homily:

– The Trinity is praised as the source of faith and grace;
– Sanctity is proposed as imitation of God’s likeness;
– Persecutions are lamented in territories where “war is declared on God.”

But:

– There is no assertion that rulers and states are bound, under sin, to recognize and submit to Christ the King and His Church in their public constitutions.
– There is no condemnation of the liberal-secular state system, which by 1960 dominates almost everywhere, including lands considered “Catholic.”
– There is no rebuke of the notion that the Church should adapt to “modern civilization,” precisely condemned by *Syllabus* 80.

This silence is theological. By restricting itself to individual piety and persecuted minorities, the discourse evacuates the dogma of its social, political, juridical implications. It is thus compatible with, and preparatory to, the conciliar exaltation of religious liberty and the renunciation of the confessional state.

In other words: the Trinity is confessed verbally, but the rights of the Triune God and of Christ the King over concrete historical societies are practically denied by omission. This is not an oversight; it is the new ideology in germ.

Appropriation of a Tridentine Saint for the Conciliar Project

The choice and depiction of John of Ribera are not neutral.

The homilist praises him as:

– Zealous student of doctrine;
– Enemy of Luther’s followers;
– Pastor who reformed clergy, educated youth, catechized, founded a seminary, convoked synods;
– Man of Eucharistic devotion, poverty, humility, faithful to duty.

All these traits are truly characteristics of a Counter-Reformation bishop aligned with Trent. But in the mouth of John XXIII, they serve a subversive function:

1. Canonizing a strong Tridentine figure under the authority of a man who is already preparing to undermine the Tridentine order serves to create an appearance of “continuity”: if the same “Church” canonizes Ribera and later promulgates the conciliar novelties, then — so the propaganda will argue — there can be no rupture.
2. The portrait omits any polemical sharpness that would unmask contemporary errors. Ribera’s anti-heresy stance is domesticated to a generic aversion to Luther, with no application to present-day doctrinal dissolutions and ecumenical betrayals.
3. The emphasis on seminarians, catechesis, diocesan synods is ironic: under the conciliar sect, seminaries will be perverted, catechesis emptied of content, and synods transformed into democratic instruments to dissolve doctrine and discipline.

Thus the figure of Ribera is paradoxically used to inaugurate the destruction of the very Tridentine edifice he personified. The apparent homage is actually ideological absorption. This is entirely consonant with Modernist methodology: retaining traditional symbols while inverting their meaning. *Signa servantur, res effunduntur* (the signs are kept; the reality is poured out).

External Persecution Emphasized to Conceal Internal Apostasy

A conspicuous section of the homily turns with pathos to Catholics suffering under regimes where rulers “openly wage war on God as the most hostile enemy” and attempt to uproot faith by violence, threats, and coercion. The speaker:

– Expresses compassion and esteem for those “to whom it has been granted, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him” (Phil 1:29);
– Encourages perseverance, invoking examples of martyrs who in flames and among beasts triumphed by faith;
– Affirms that faith cannot be conquered by force.

On the surface, this is unobjectionable. But the very insistence on this type of persecution serves to distract from another, far more insidious persecution, denounced by pre-1958 popes:

– The persecution executed by liberal, masonic, modernist forces operating under the guise of legality and “progress,” slowly stripping the Church of privileges, schools, jurisdiction, influence — the very scenario condemned in *Syllabus* and in the strong anti-masonic pronouncements.
– Above all, the persecution from within: those who profess to be Catholic pastors but corrupt doctrine, liturgy, and discipline, leading souls to apostasy.

St. Pius X in *Pascendi* clearly teaches that the gravest enemies are inside, not outside. The homily, however, is entirely silent on internal treason. It speaks of “fides in pericula venit” through opinions, books, corrupt morals — but never hints that bishops and theologians under the same Roman roof are propagating the errors condemned in 1907.

This silence is damning. It shows a deliberate protective cover for the modernist network: external tyrants are denounced; internal corrupters are not merely spared but, soon after, will be elevated as periti and leaders of the council.

Thus, the consolation offered to persecuted Catholics is double-faced: while praising their fidelity, the homilist is architect of a pseudo-church that will, by its reforms, extinguish the very faith they die for.

Appeal to Moral Purity While Preparing Liturgical and Doctrinal Rupture

The homily insists on a true Catholic point: that impurity undermines faith. It cites (via Chrysostom) that it is impossible to lead an impure life without wavering in faith. This is, in itself, accurate and traditional.

But again, the application is fraudulently incomplete:

– No word is said about the objective impurity and sacrilege of adulterated worship, of rites that minimize the propitiatory Sacrifice, evacuate the Real Presence, and transform the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary into a man-centered meal.
– No warning is given that participation in “Communion” within a revolutionized liturgical framework — as will be imposed after the council — constitutes at least sacrilege, and given the doctrinal deformation, tends toward idolatry.
– No word is uttered about the impurity of doctrinal relativism, of ecumenical rites, of mixing with heretics in “common prayer” as if sharing one faith.

Instead, the moral appeal is confined to private chastity and generic integrity, compatible with a coming environment where objectively anti-Catholic practices are normalized by the conciliar sect.

Authentic Catholic teaching binds: *lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi* — the law of prayer, of belief, and of life are inseparable. Here, morality is severed from liturgy and doctrine; this is yet another symptom of incipient Modernism.

Concealment of the Condemnations of Modernism and Liberalism

The homily’s references to dangerous opinions and corrupt morals must be contrasted with the precise doctrinal censures issued by the pre-1958 Magisterium, which the conciliar sect systematically sidelines:

– *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi* condemn the very principles that, by 1960, many theologians promote with impunity: evolution of dogma, subjectivist exegesis, denial of Scriptural inerrancy, reduction of Christ’s divinity, historicization of dogma, democratization of authority.
– The *Syllabus* denounces indifferentism, religious liberty, separation of Church and state, naturalism, and any attempt to reconcile the Church with liberal modern civilization.
– *Quas Primas* affirms the non-negotiable social Kingship of Christ and the intrinsic evil of laicism.

In a homily solemnly invoking the Trinity and addressed to the universal Church on the eve of a council, one would expect, if the speaker stood in continuity with the above, a clear reaffirmation of these condemnations. Instead:

– Not one explicit anti-modernist definition is recalled.
– Not one explicit liberal or ecumenical thesis is denounced.
– The most pressing doctrinal frontlines are simply ignored.

This silence is itself a rejection. By omitting what he is bound to repeat, the homilist testifies to a new orientation. This is the embryonic hermeneutic of “forgetting” the anathemas while retaining selective devout language. It prepares the way for the conciliar documents that will, in practice and sometimes in wording, contradict the prior condemnations, invoking precisely the man who gave this homily as their initiating authority.

Symptom of the Conciliar Sect: Pious Phrases, Programmed Rupture

Summarizing the symptomatic level:

– The homily’s outward orthodoxy is undeniable on certain points (Trinity, need for faith, sanctity, persecution, Marian tone via liturgical orations). However, Modernism seldom advances through explicit denials in such ceremonial contexts; it advances by strategic silence and re-contextualization.
– The consistent omission of the social Kingship of Christ over states, of anti-liberal doctrine, of the explicit condemnations of Modernism, reveals the intention to detach piety from doctrinal militancy.
– The idealized figure of a Tridentine bishop is exploited to cloak the fact that the speaker is inaugurating a council that will overthrow the Tridentine order in liturgy, catechesis, ecclesiology, and relations with false religions.
– External persecutors of the faith are denounced to conceal internal apostates. This inversion is characteristic of the *conciliar sect*, the *neo-church* that occupies Rome while betraying the deposit of faith.

In light of the integral pre-1958 Catholic doctrine:

– The authority of one who publicly sets in motion a program contradicting *Syllabus*, *Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*, *Quas Primas*, and the entire anti-liberal Magisterium cannot be received as papal. The Church herself, through her greatest theologians, affirms that a manifest heretic cannot hold the papacy, nor can one who overturns the foundations of faith be head of that faith’s visible guardians.
– The structures stemming from this revolution, with their adulterated rites and dogmatic ambiguity, do not constitute the authentic Catholic Church but a parasitic *paramasonic structure*, the *abomination of desolation* occupying the Holy Place.

Therefore, this 1960 homily is not a safe monument of Catholic teaching. It is an anesthetic: a calculated display of inherited vocabulary to lead the unsuspecting faithful calmly over the threshold into the post-conciliar abyss. Behind the Trinitarian phrases stands the will to reconcile with condemned principles of liberalism and religious pluralism; behind the praises of a Tridentine saint stands the project to dissolve the very Tridentine bulwark.

The integral Catholic response must be:

– To reclaim the authentic doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity as inseparable from the absolute, public, and social Kingship of Christ and the exclusive salvific truth of the Catholic Church;
– To measure all such texts, especially those issued under the name of known architects of the revolution, against the unbroken pre-1958 Magisterium, refusing any attempt to use “pious” rhetoric to legitimize apostasy;
– To honor saints like John of Ribera not as cosmetic ornaments of the neo-church, but as witnesses against the conciliar dissolution: bishops of firm doctrine, rigorous discipline, hatred of heresy, uncompromising affirmation that outside the one true Church, founded on immutable dogma and true sacraments, there is no salvation.

Where the homily offers a devout surface without dogmatic clarity, the Catholic conscience must supply that clarity from the perennial sources and reject the conciliatory muting of truth. Only thus does one truly serve the Trinity whom this text invokes but does not defend in the order established by God and defined infallibly by the Church prior to the conciliar usurpation.

---

Source:
In Sollemni Canonizatione Beati Ioannis De Ribera, Confessoris, Homilia Ioannis XXIII, XII Iunii MCMLX   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025