This Latin letter of John XXIII (24 May 1959) congratulates Benedict Aloisi Masella, bishop of Palestrina and archpriest of the Lateran Basilica, on his 80th birthday and 40th episcopal anniversary, approves the local plan to honor him and to renew the public consecration of the city to the Immaculate Heart of Mary with a Marian monument, and grants him the faculty to bestow a plenary indulgence on the faithful present at a pontifical liturgy on the appointed day.
Already in these few lines, the entire program of the nascent conciliar revolution emerges: the cult of persons, sentimental Marian aesthetics, and juridical concessions detached from the demands of integral faith, all woven together under the signature of the first usurper of the Roman See.
Sentimental Clericalism as Prelude to Revolution
The text appears superficially modest: no dogmatic definitions, no lengthy exhortations, only a congratulatory letter. Yet precisely here the *modus operandi* of the conciliar sect lays itself bare. The letter situates Benedict Aloisi Masella as a model prelate: diocesan bishop, archpriest of the Lateran, head of the Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments. In him, John XXIII praises a personification of the pre-conciliar institutional edifice at the very moment it is being internally hollowed out to prepare for the aggiornamento.
Key elements:
– Exaltation of the jubilarian with warm, courtly rhetoric.
– Liturgical and Marian solemnity centered on him.
– The grant of a plenary indulgence tied to a local celebration honoring a human person and a devotional act configured to a vague, emotive Marian symbol.
The synthesis is clear: pious language is used as a veil for an anthropocentric shift. The letter is a micro-signature of a macro-apostasy: the emerging *religio novi ordinis* that instrumentalizes sacramental discipline and popular devotions in order to secure docility toward a hierarchy that is preparing to betray the deposit of faith.
From Supernatural Gravity to Bourgeois Politeness
On the factual level, nothing in the letter states open heresy. But the poison lies in what is systematically absent.
John XXIII:
– does not remind bishop, clergy, or faithful of the Four Last Things;
– does not mention the necessity of *state of grace* as an objective condition of salvation;
– does not recall that a bishop’s office is first and foremost to guard the flock from heresy and modern errors condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII;
– does not bind the indulgence to vivid preaching against sin, modernist errors, or the anti-Christian conspiracy condemned repeatedly as masonic in the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Instead, he speaks in a smooth, diplomatic tone. No trace here of the forceful voice of St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, who condemns the corruption of dogma, the relativization of Scripture, and the democratization of doctrine. No echo of Pius XI in Quas primas, who solemnly demands the public reign of Christ the King against laicism, religious indifferentism, and secular apostasy. The supernatural struggle is silently replaced by ecclesiastical courtesies.
The letter’s vocabulary is revealing:
– The bishop’s merits are wrapped in conventional phrases: wishes of happiness, praises, and paternal benevolence.
– The act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart is presented as a beautiful popular gesture, without doctrinal sharpening against liberalism, socialism, religious indifferentism, or modernism.
– The indulgence is granted as a benevolent privilege, almost as a ceremonial ornament to the jubilee festivities.
This is the grammar of a new religion: a pious, aestheticized benevolence that neither wounds nor divides, that consoles without converting, that blesses without judging. The post of Prefect of the Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments is mentioned, yet there is absolute silence about the raging doctrinal errors that that dicastery should have vigorously condemned. The office is honored; the mission is ignored.
Instrumentalizing Indulgences: Grace Reduced to Protocol
The passage granting the plenary indulgence is crucial. John XXIII authorizes the bishop of Palestrina to impart, on the designated day, a plenary indulgence in his name and by his authority, to the faithful present at the pontifical Mass, under ordinary conditions.
Two fundamental issues emerge.
1. The reduction of indulgences to a harmless devotional bonus:
– There is no serious call to contrition, abandonment of mortal sin, confession of the true faith, or rejection of the errors that threaten souls.
– No reminder that indulgences presuppose *status gratiae* (state of grace), detachment from all sin, and submission to the integral Catholic faith.
– The indulgence becomes a liturgical courtesy attached to a civic-religious festival and to the cult of a venerable office-holder.
This is in stark contrast with the traditional doctrine, where indulgences are strictly connected to the authority of the true Church, to her custody of the treasury of merits, and to the aim of leading souls away from sin toward sanctification. Pius XI in Quas primas insists that public acts of religion must profess Christ’s social Kingship against the apostasy of the nations. Here, indulgence is severed from militant confession of the Kingship of Christ and turned into a decorative seal of institutional harmony.
2. The latent subversion of sacramental discipline:
The letter is signed by John XXIII, the same person who within a short time will convoke the Second Vatican Council, inaugurating the process that will:
– relativize the dogmatic condemnations of the Syllabus of Errors,
– rehabilitate condemned propositions concerning religious freedom and ecumenism,
– pave the way for the destruction of the traditional discipline of the sacraments and for the fabrication of a new rite of “Mass” and new “sacraments”.
Therefore, this indulgence—appearing canonically correct within the visible structures of 1959—functions in history as a sign of obedience to an authority that is already inwardly turned against the Church’s unchanging teaching. The more such pious gestures attach the faithful’s trust to the person of John XXIII, the more effectively they bind souls to the imminent revolution. *Gratia decapitata*: grace rhetorically invoked, while the doctrinal head is prepared for beheading.
Marian Devotion Emptied of Doctrinal Steel
Central to the letter is the inauguration of a Marian monument and the renewal of public consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On the surface, it evokes Catholic piety. But the context and manner expose a progressive deformation.
Authentic Marian devotion, as expressed in the pre-1958 Magisterium:
– is inseparable from the defense of dogma against heresy;
– leads to deeper submission to Christ the King and to the rights of His Church over states and nations;
– is radically opposed to liberalism, naturalism, and syncretism.
In the Syllabus, Pius IX condemns religious indifferentism, separation of Church and State, and the idea that the Church shall reconcile herself with liberal progress. St. Pius X, in Pascendi, unmasks the modernist abuse of pious language as a mask for doctrinal subversion. Marian devotion, in that constant tradition, is a sword: *“terrible as an army set in battle array”*.
But in this letter, the Marian act is:
– detached from any concrete doctrinal opposition to the errors of the age;
– coupled with a courteous homage to an aging prelate;
– framed as an emotionally satisfying communal ritual, not as a militant banner of Christ’s reign over public life.
The Immaculate Heart is invoked but not allowed to speak. No call to reparation for the sins of nations, no denunciation of masonic and modernist infiltration condemned repeatedly by true Popes, no demand that rulers submit their laws to the law of Christ. The Heart of Mary is reduced to a symbol of warm religiosity, safe for bourgeois consciences and for the political order that is already exalting secularism and religious freedom against the doctrine solemnly taught by the Church.
Such a domesticated Marianism facilitates transition from the Church militant to the Church sentimental—a preparatory anesthetic for the more radical surgeries of the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath.
Silence on Modernism: The Loudest Confession
By 1959, the principal modern errors had long since been identified and condemned:
– Pius IX: Syllabus of Errors against liberalism, indifferentism, secular sovereignty of the State, false concept of civil and religious liberty.
– Leo XIII: encyclicals against freemasonry, naturalism, false democracy severed from Christ’s law.
– St. Pius X: Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, branding Modernism as *“the synthesis of all heresies”*, condemning the evolution of dogma, the relativization of Revelation, the denial of supernatural inspiration.
– Pius XI: Quas primas, establishing the Feast of Christ the King as explicit condemnation of laicism and the rejection of Christ’s social reign.
– Pius XII: doctrinal teachings warning against liturgical and theological deviations.
Against this background, observe what this letter does not do:
– No reference to the need to resist and expel modernist ideas.
– No mention that sacramental discipline, especially in matters of indulgences, must be exercised to strengthen adherence to pre-existing dogma, not to lubricate adaptation to the world.
– No warning against the masonic sects and anti-Christian conspiracies that Pius IX and Leo XIII had identified as principal enemies of the Church.
– No insistence that public Marian acts must be acts of contrition and reparation for the public apostasy of states that have dethroned Christ the King.
This systematic silence, precisely in a letter issued by the supreme authority to a high-ranking prelate responsible for sacramental discipline, is not neutral. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent). The omission of the great condemnations of the 19th and early 20th centuries is already a practical abrogation of their spirit—preparing their formal dismantling at the Council convened by the same signatory.
The letter thus becomes a litmus test:
– Catholic in vocabulary,
– modernist in omissions,
– transitional in function: it habituates the faithful to a magisterial tone stripped of doctrinal combativeness, replacing militant clarity with vague benevolence.
The Cult of Office-Holders instead of the Defense of the Faith
The letter is structured around celebration of the bishop’s age and years in office. It praises the initiative of the faithful and clergy to solemnize his jubilee with public signs of veneration and love. Here we see an inversion of the Catholic order.
Traditionally:
– bishops are honored because they guard the deposit of faith and fight for souls;
– jubilees are occasions to exhort to deeper fidelity to immutable doctrine and to severe penance for abuses and infidelities.
In this letter:
– the praise of the person is unconditioned by explicit reference to his doctrinal vigilance;
– the people’s public “veneration” of the bishop becomes a centerpiece;
– sacramental privileges are attached to this framework of human-centered festivities.
The effect:
– the faithful are trained not to measure a bishop by his defense of dogma and discipline, but by his ecclesiastical longevity and Roman titles;
– the supernatural authority instituted by Christ is overshadowed by the sociological aura of office-holders, precisely at the moment when those office-holders (under John XXIII’s direction) are preparing to reshape doctrine, liturgy, and ecclesial structures according to modernist principles.
This is not merely poor style; it is spiritually corrosive. It cultivates deference to structures rather than to truth. When those structures are seized by a conciliar mentality, such conditioned obedience will be redirected from the Catholic Faith to the neo-church of aggiornamento.
From Christ the King to Civic Devotionalism
Pius XI, in Quas primas, teaches with crystalline force that:
– Peace is possible only in the Kingdom of Christ.
– States and rulers must publicly recognize Christ’s sovereignty.
– The denial of Christ’s social kingship is the root of modern social and political catastrophe.
– Public acts of worship have the duty to reaffirm Christ’s rights over individuals and nations.
The letter of John XXIII stands in silent contradiction to this doctrine, not by opposing it explicitly, but by evacuating it. Public religious acts in Palestrina are praised:
– as expressions of affection for a bishop,
– as subsidies to communal religious feeling,
– as external solemnities crowned by indulgence.
Missing is any insistence that:
– the city and civil authorities must submit their laws and institutions to the law of Christ;
– the Marian consecration entails rejection of secularist legislation and of indifferentist ideology;
– the ceremony must be a public repudiation of the principles condemned in the Syllabus.
Instead of reaffirming *Christus Rex* against the world, the letter presents a Catholicism that can be fully integrated into secular society as harmless ornament. This is exactly the mentality against which Pius XI explicitly legislated. The conciliar sect will later codify this in its perverse doctrine of religious liberty and in its practical acceptance of the secular, pluralistic, “neutral” state.
Thus this seemingly modest letter is an early note of the same anti-doctrine: a Church that blesses civic devotions and sentimental Marianism without demanding Christ’s total and public dominion.
Symptom of Systemic Apostasy: The Conciliar Style in Nuce
This document is a paradigmatic specimen of the conciliar style in its embryonic form:
1. Pious language without doctrinal combat.
2. Devotional practices without supernatural gravity.
3. Honors to persons without reference to their obligation to defend the faith.
4. Use of sacramental faculties without situating them within the absolute claims of divine law over human society.
Measured against integral Catholic teaching before 1958:
– It fails to manifest the vigilant zeal demanded by St. Pius X against Modernism.
– It neglects the clear condemnations of liberalism and religious indifferentism by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– It ignores the binding doctrine of Christ’s social kingship reaffirmed by Pius XI.
– It remains silent about the masonic and naturalistic threats that pre-conciliar Popes declared to be mortal enemies of the Church.
This is not an innocent oversight in a casual letter; it is the programmatic marginalization of the Church’s anti-liberal, anti-modernist identity. The more this style becomes the norm, the more souls are habituated to a Church that no longer condemns error, no longer proclaims Christ’s public rights, and no longer guards the sacraments with holy fear. A Church that contents itself with congratulations, monuments, and indulgences without conversion is no longer the spouse of Christ, but an institution in the service of the world’s harmony.
Conclusion: A Courteous Seal on the Preparation for Betrayal
Seen through the lens of unchanging Catholic doctrine, this 1959 letter is:
– the courteous face of a revolution already decided;
– a deliberate lowering of supernatural tone, substituting bureaucratic benevolence for apostolic urgency;
– an abuse of Marian and indulgential language to consolidate trust in an authority poised to overturn the very principles previously defended at the cost of blood and anathemas.
The integral Catholic conscience cannot be deceived by ornate Latin courtesies. Where there is systematic silence about modernist error, about the rights of Christ the King, and about the duty of states and faithful to conform to divine law, there is already the shadow of apostasy. This letter, signed by John XXIII, is a small, polished stone in the foundation of the conciliar edifice—a building that stands not upon the rock of Peter, but upon the shifting sands of human respect and worldly adaptation.
Source:
Fideles Praenestini – Ad Benedictum S. R. E. Card. Aloisi Masella, Episcopum praenestinum, Patriarchalis Basilicae Lateranensis Archipresbiterum ac Sacrae Congregationis de Disciplina Sacramentorum Pr… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025