The Latin letter attributed to John XXIII on 29 November 1962 is addressed to Michael of Jesus, superior general of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, on the 750th anniversary of the death of St. John of Matha. It praises St. John of Matha and Felix of Valois, recalls the founding of the Trinitarian Order for redeeming captives from infidels, commends their historic works of charity, encourages present members to imitate this zeal in new circumstances, and concludes with an “Apostolic Blessing.”
Celebrating a Captive Redeemer While Enslaving the Church: The Internal Collapse Revealed
From Papal Guardian to Conciliar Usurper: The Subversion Behind the Pious Tone
Already the fact that this letter issues from John XXIII — the initiator of the conciliar revolution and thus the first in the line of usurpers occupying the See of Peter — determines its character. We are not dealing with authentic papal magisterium, but with a document of the conciliar sect draped in traditional language to legitimize its own apostasy.
The text uses orthodox vocabulary: St. John of Matha is “beloved of God and men”; the Order of the Most Holy Trinity is commended for redeeming captives from the enemies of Christ; religious are called to prayer, mortification, and ecclesiastical labors. On the surface, nothing shocks. That is precisely the problem. The poison here is not crude heresy, but calculated omission and instrumentalization: the supernatural mission of a pre-conciliar Order is subtly redirected to conform to the nascent neo-church, which John XXIII is then constructing through the Second Vatican Council.
The letter becomes a paradigm of how the post-1958 structure operates:
– It borrows the saints, vocabulary, and imagery of the true Church.
– It empties them of the integral doctrinal content defined before 1958.
– It reorients ancient charisms away from militant, confessional Catholicism towards an indistinct, horizontal activism that can coexist with religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man condemned, for example, in the Syllabus of Errors and in the anti-modernist teaching of St. Pius X.
This is not mere negligence; it is method. The paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican needs venerable Orders like the Trinitarians as cosmetic proof of “continuity,” while repurposing them to serve the conciliar agenda.
The Factual Level: Selective History in Service of a New Religion
The letter recalls, in apparently faithful terms, the origin and fruits of the Trinitarian Order:
“When John of Matha and Felix of Valois, joined by fraternal bond, after long prayer in solitude to obtain heavenly inspiration, obtained from Our Predecessor Innocent III that, as a new religious family in the Church, the Order of the Most Holy Trinity be established for the redemption of captives from infidels, heavenly grace was clearly present to this provident undertaking.”
This recognition accords, at least verbally, with Catholic tradition:
– The Order was founded under Innocent III explicitly and exclusively ad redimendos captivos — to redeem Christian captives from infidels.
– Their work presupposed:
– The objective opposition between the one true Church and false religions.
– The duty to save baptized souls from enslavement among enemies of the faith.
– The public, social reign of Christ the King and the superiority of divine law over all human arrangements.
Yet John XXIII’s letter stops precisely where integral Catholic theology begins to bite into the conciliar project.
What is conspicuously absent?
1. No reiteration that Islam and other false religions are errors leading souls to damnation.
– This silence stands against the unambiguous teaching of the Magisterium before 1958, which:
– Condemned religious indifferentism and the notion that man may embrace any religion he prefers (Syllabus, prop. 15–18).
– Affirmed the Catholic Church as the only ark of salvation.
2. No affirmation that the heroic charity of the Trinitarians was ordered above all to the supernatural end: preserving and rescuing souls in the true faith.
– Instead, their immense supernatural witness is reduced to a generic “aid and consolation to Christian society,” consistent with the conciliar sect’s dissolution of the Church into a humanitarian NGO.
3. No warning that the greatest captivity is heresy and apostasy within the structures falsely claiming to be Catholic.
– By 1962, John XXIII had convened the council that would enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the cult of man.
– Pius IX and St. Pius X had already exposed and condemned the very principles that Vatican II and its architects were preparing to enshrine.
Instead, the text carefully shifts the axis of the Trinitarian vocation. It claims that changing historical circumstances now open “other fields” for the Order:
“With circumstances of time changed, other fields and boundaries are now opened to your religious Institute, demanded by evangelical charity, namely that souls redeemed by Christ’s blood be freed from the slavery of the infernal power and of sin, which is harder and more cruel than the rest.”
At first glance, this appears sound: supernatural captivity — slavery to sin and the devil — is indeed the worst bondage. The pre-1958 Magisterium constantly affirmed this.
But read in context:
– The “infidels” disappear as a concrete, named adversary.
– The historical, doctrinally rooted mission (redeeming Catholics from non-Catholic captors) is replaced with an amorphous “pastoral” formula that can be integrated seamlessly into the ecumenical, religiously neutral humanitarianism of the Church of the New Advent.
– The text never calls for combat against error, never mentions conversion of non-Catholics, never demands the integral Catholic faith.
This is how the conciliar sect falsifies history: by telling partial truths, systematically amputated from the doctrinal framework that gave those truths their Catholic meaning.
The Linguistic Level: Pious Ornament Concealing Programmatic Omission
The rhetoric imitates classical ecclesiastical style:
– Biblical citations (Ecclesiasticus, Psalms).
– Praise for the founder as “beloved of God and men.”
– Evocation of a tree planted by streams of water.
– Exhortations to prayer, mortification, union with God.
All this is externally orthodox, but its deployment here is profoundly symptomatic.
1. Generalities without doctrinal precision
The letter:
– Extols caritas while never grounding it explicitly in the obligation to lead all to the one true Church.
– Praises religious for “ecclesiastical labors” without articulating what “ecclesiastical” means in relation to immutable doctrine, sacraments, and the condemnation of error.
Such indeterminate vocabulary is characteristic of Modernism as anathematized in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, where condemned propositions rely on vague, elastic formulas to smuggle in doctrinal evolution.
2. Sanitized references to history
The Trinitarians’ original charism — redeeming captives from Muslim slavery and other enemies of the faith — is recalled in carefully neutral terms:
“innumerable outstanding works performed by your members of old, so that captives of every kind and age might be freed from the slavery of those who hated the Christian name.”
Note:
– The term “infidels” appears once in passing in the historical reference to the foundation.
– There is no insistence that these were enemies of the true religion as such, nor any exhortation to continue identifying, resisting, and overcoming such enemies.
In the age of the Syllabus and Quas Primas, such reticence would be unthinkable. Pius XI lays it down: peace and order can only exist where Christ the King reigns publicly and where the state recognizes His rights. This letter, however, is entirely compatible with the liberal thesis condemned in prop. 55 of the Syllabus (“the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”) and with the religious liberty that the conciliar sect would soon promulgate.
3. Absence of militant vocabulary
Nothing in the letter reflects the militant Catholic consciousness that animated Innocent III, the medieval Trinitarians, or the anti-modernist popes:
– No reference to militia Christi.
– No insistence on defending the flock against wolves.
– No denunciation of Freemasonry, naturalism, socialism, or indifferentism, all of which Pius IX explicitly connects with the “synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church.
The omission is eloquent: the paramasonic structure requires religious Orders to cease being spiritual militias and to become decorative auxiliaries of a reconciled, liberal world.
The Theological Level: Subtle Substitution of Ends and the Betrayal of Quas Primas
The center of the distortion lies in the redefinition — or, more venomously, the unspoken redirection — of the Order’s purpose.
The founding of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity is rooted in truths that pre-1958 Catholic doctrine articulates clearly:
– There is one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation in the proper sense.
– False religions are objectively opposed to God.
– The faithful must be defended from spiritual and bodily captivity imposed by enemies of Christ.
– Religious life, bound by vows, exists to pursue perfectionem sanctitatis (the perfection of holiness) in union with the sacrificial priesthood and the Most Holy Sacrifice.
John XXIII uses this same terminology:
“Not only have you vowed holiness, but the perfection of all holiness. Yours it is to adhere to God; yours it is that the name of the hidden and adorable Trinity shine forth in minds like the sun, and vigorously translate it into the reality and use of life.”
But observe the structural perversion:
– The exhortations are entirely compatible with the “new theology” condemned by Pius XII in Humani Generis, in which dogma is “translated” into experiential, existential categories that evolve with history.
– “Translating” devotion to the Trinity into “life” is left undefined — which, within the conciliar framework, means:
– Acceptance of religious liberty.
– Ecumenical coexistence with heresy and infidelity.
– Refusal to affirm the duty of states to recognize Christ’s kingship as defined in Quas Primas.
Pius XI teaches, in unambiguous terms, that peace and order require the public acknowledgment of Christ the King and conformity of laws to His law. The conciliar sect, under John XXIII and his successors, systematically repudiates this in practice and in teaching.
Thus the letter’s central theological crime is not an explicit doctrinal statement but a glaring omission that functions as denial: it never affirms that the Trinitarians must continue to see the world as divided between the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan; never commands them to combat heresy, infidelity, and liberalism; never recalls that error has no rights and that human laws are null when opposed to divine law (a principle firmly rooted in the pre-1958 Magisterium).
By this omission, the letter effectively subordinates a venerable Order to the conciliar program. This is spiritually more devastating than an open attack: it dissolves identity under the guise of fidelity.
Symptomatic Level: Conciliar Revolution in Miniature
This letter is a microcosm of the post-1958 neo-church’s strategy:
1. Appropriation of Saints and Founders
– St. John of Matha remains honored in words.
– His charism, however, is implicitly reinterpreted to fit an ecumenical, non-confessional agenda.
– The Order is encouraged to flourish — but within an ecclesial structure that denies, in practice and often in principle, the very doctrines that justified its foundation.
This is analogous to how the conciliar sect misuses other saints: retaining their names, suppressing their doctrinal clarity, and recasting them as vague icons of humanitarianism or “dialogue.”
2. Neutralizing Supernatural Combat
– The Trinitarians once redeemed captives from those who “hated the Christian name.”
– Under conciliarism, such language is abandoned in favor of gestures toward “dialogue” with precisely such enemies.
– Instead of liberating Catholics from infidel captivity, post-conciliar “clerics” hand souls over to liturgical sacrilege, doctrinal relativism, and ecumenical syncretism.
To speak of “freeing souls from sin” while refusing to denounce and reject the conciliar sect’s own apostasy is hypocrisy of the gravest order.
3. Conferral of a Counterfeit “Apostolic Blessing”
The letter concludes:
“To you, beloved son, and to all the religious members and sacred virgins of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, we most lovingly impart the Apostolic Blessing.”
But if:
– John XXIII publicly initiated and sustained a council that enshrined principles previously condemned as errors,
– Modernist doctrines rejected by St. Pius X are given new life,
– Religious liberty and ecumenism are imposed against the constant and universal teaching of previous popes,
then, according to the doctrine of theologians like St. Robert Bellarmine and others cited in the sedevacantist tradition, a manifest heretic or promoter of heresy cannot hold the papal office. A blessing issued from such an authority is not an apostolic benediction but a usurper’s signature under a program of deformation.
Thus the closing line, far from being reassuring, exposes the true nature of the operation: the conciliar sect seeks to bind venerable Orders to its counterfeit authority.
Silence on the True Captivity: Modernist Apostasy within the Structures
Most damning is what this letter never says.
At the very moment when:
– Modernism, condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi as “the synthesis of all heresies,” is re-emerging as the governing theology of the “council” summoned by this same John XXIII,
– The Syllabus’ teachings on the relation between Church and State are being prepared for systematic violation,
– The Most Holy Sacrifice is about to be attacked and replaced by a protestantised rite,
this letter to an Order founded for liberation of captives:
– Does not warn against the gravest captivity: participation in the conciliar sect’s pseudo-sacraments, indifferentist theology, and cult of man.
– Does not exhort to fidelity to the anti-modernist magisterium of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII as the immovable norm.
– Does not call for resistance to the new doctrines being prepared in the very aula where the signer presides.
The absence is not accidental. It reveals the inversion:
– The enemies are no longer the infidels, heretics, and secret societies condemned in the Syllabus.
– The enemy, in conciliar rhetoric, becomes “intolerance,” “triumphalism,” “integrism” — precisely the unwavering fidelity demanded by earlier popes.
Meanwhile, Freemasonry and naturalism — explicitly identified by Pius IX as the “synagogue of Satan” at war with the Church — receive, under the new regime, practical acquiescence and even fraternity-level recognition.
That a document ostensibly honoring St. John of Matha fails even to name these realities is itself a confession of betrayal.
Right Order Restored: What a Truly Catholic Letter Would Have Said
Measured by unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, an authentic papal exhortation to the Trinitarian Order in 1962 would have:
– Explicitly reaffirmed that:
– The Catholic Church is the only ark of salvation, and the Order’s primary duty is to assist souls into and within this ark.
– False religions and sects hold souls in spiritual captivity; true charity requires their conversion, not “dialogue.”
– States and societies must recognize the public reign of Christ the King, as Pius XI taught: peace is possible only in Christ’s Kingdom.
– Condemned:
– Indifferentism, ecumenism, naturalism, and Modernism.
– Secret societies and the political-religious systems warring against Christ and His Church.
– Warned:
– Against corruptions of the liturgy and sacraments.
– Against any idea that the Order’s mission could be reduced to natural humanitarianism.
– Exhorted:
– To heroic fidelity to the Most Holy Sacrifice, sound doctrine, Marian devotion in its traditional, doctrinally anchored form.
– To combat the internal and external enemies of the faith without compromise.
Instead, this letter offers:
– Generic praise.
– Naturalistic-sounding encouragement.
– Absolute silence regarding the imminent and then ongoing revolution shaking the visible structures.
This silence, under the circumstances, is complicity. It shows not pastoral care, but the smooth rhetoric of a usurping regime intent on neutralizing any potential supernatural resistance.
Conclusion: The Captivity of Charisms Under the Church of the New Advent
Under the guise of venerating St. John of Matha, this 1962 letter functions as a gentle chain fastening an ancient, noble Order to the chariot of the conciliar sect.
– The historical truth is half-told and half-buried.
– The supernatural end is verbalized but severed from dogmatic precision.
– The enemies of Christ are unnamed; the internal enemy — Modernism — is protected by total silence.
– The so-called “Apostolic Blessing” seals not the defense of the flock, but their exposure to wolves clothed in the garments of “renewal.”
Measured solely by the immutable magisterium before 1958, the verdict is clear: this is not a document strengthening the Order in its founding Catholic vocation, but an instrument of gradual assimilation into the abomination of desolation — the neo-church which exploits the language of tradition to enthrone a new, man-centered religion.
True sons of St. John of Matha, if they wish to honor their founder and his God-given charism, must instead:
– Reject the modernist usurpers and their counterfeit teachings.
– Adhere without compromise to the doctrine and liturgy of the Church as professed always, everywhere, and by all before the conciliar rupture.
– Recognize that today’s most cruel captivity is precisely the seductive bondage of a paramasonic, ecumenical structure that dares to call itself Catholic while trampling underfoot the rights of Christ the King and the salvation of souls.
Source:
Septingenti et quinquaginta – Ad Michaëlem a Iesu, Moderatorem Generalem Ordinis SS.mae Trinitatis redemptionis captivorum, septingentesimo et quinquagesimo exeunte anno a pio S. Ioannis de Matha, eiu… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025