This brief Latin letter from John XXIII congratulates Joseph Pizzardo on the completion of twenty-five years as a member of the College of “cardinals,” praising his bureaucratic service in the Roman Curia, his role in so-called Catholic Action, and his governance of seminaries and universities, concluding with the bestowal of an “Apostolic Blessing.” It is a perfectly distilled emblem of the self-referential, naturalistic, human-centered apparatus that was already displacing the Catholic Church from within before the council’s catastrophe erupted in full view.
Celebrating the Machinery of Usurpation as a Counter-Church Virtue
The text is short; its significance is immense.
John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar revolution and thus the first in the public line of usurpers, here offers not doctrine, not exhortation to penance, not a defense of the faith in the age of apostasy, but a panegyric of an apparatchik.
He extols Pizzardo’s:
– service “a secretis Sacri Consilii extraordinariis Ecclesiae negotiis praepositi”;
– activity “in Actionis Catholicae campo”;
– curial labors;
– role as head of the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities;
– administration of the suburban see of Albano.
No word of supernatural battle, no mention of safeguarding the deposit of faith from the hydra of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X, no reminder of the primacy of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, no call to defend the rights of Christ the King against apostate states, no condemnation of the Masonic forces already denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
Instead: institutional self-applause. A letter about careers, jubilees, and bureaucratic accomplishments, sealed with the counterfeit blessing of a counterfeit “pontiff.”
This is not harmless courtesy; it is a symptom.
Factual Level: Bureaucratic Praise in an Age of Doctrinal War
The letter’s concrete content is minimal but revealing.
Key elements, paraphrased and cited precisely:
– Pizzardo is congratulated on twenty-five years since being “decorated” with the Roman purple.
– John XXIII recalls his past as secretary for extraordinary affairs, his engagement in Catholic Action, and his “fruitful” work.
– He highlights his functions in the Curia, especially as Prefect of the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities and as bishop of Albano, stating that he has earned “distinguished merits.”
– He prays that God protect and enrich him with heavenly gifts and imparts an “Apostolic Blessing.”
Original formulations (from the text) expose the mindset:
– English: “Celebrating five lustrums since you were adorned with the sacred Roman purple, we make more pleasing and joyful, with wishes and omens which we express with sincere affection of soul, the memory of so happy an event.”
Quinque celebranti lustra, ex quo sacra Romana purpura decoratus es, tam felicis eventus memoriam votis ominibusque, quae sincero animi affectu promimus, tibi gratiorem et laetiorem facimus.
– English: “Having been enrolled in the College of the Fathers of the Purple, in the Roman Curia you have fulfilled most weighty offices with manifold industry and patient diligence in labor; above all, as Prefect of the Sacred Council set over Seminaries and Universities of Studies, caring for a large province of affairs, and as diligent Bishop of the Albanense diocese, you have obtained outstanding merits.”
Posthac Purpuratorum Patrum Collegio ascitus, in Romana Curia multiplici industria et laboris patienti diligentia praegravibus perfunctus es muneribus; cumprimis vero Sacro Consilio Seminariis Studiorumque Universitatibus praeposito Praefectus, magnae rerum provinciae consulens et Albanensis dioecesis sedulus Episcopus, praeclara tibi comparasti merita.
– English: “Wishing all good and all happiness, we humbly beg God to protect you, keep you safe, enrich you with heavenly gifts, and as a pledge of these we impart the Apostolic Blessing ‘with a great heart and willing spirit’.”
Omnia fausta, omnia felicia cupientes, Deum supplici prece poscimus, ut te protegat, sospitet, donis caelestibus ditet, atque horum auspicem, Apostolicam Benedictionem « magno corde et animo volenti » impertimus, quae caritatis in te Nostrae novum tibi sit testimonium et pignus.
On a purely factual level:
– The letter celebrates a man who presided over the academic and seminary structures at the precise historical moment when these institutions were being hollowed out doctrinally and morally.
– It is dated December 12, 1962: at the close of the first session of the so-called Second Vatican Council, when the schemata prepared in continuity with pre-1958 doctrine had just been overthrown by the newly empowered progressivist bloc.
Fact and context thus coincide: this is a self-congratulation of the emerging conciliar regime’s inner circle at the very hour when the fortifications constructed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI were being systematically dismantled.
Linguistic Level: The Cult of Purple and the Eclipse of the Cross
The rhetoric is revealing.
1. Self-referential glorification of office
The phrases:
– “sacra Romana purpura decoratus”
– “Purpuratorum Patrum Collegium”
– “multiplici industria… praegravibus muneribus”
– “magna rerum provincia”
show an inflated emphasis on rank, administration, and institutional prestige. Missing is *any* explicit reference to:
– defense of dogma,
– resistance to error,
– sanctification of souls,
– vigilance against heresy.
Yet the pre-conciliar Magisterium had insisted that the hierarchy’s very raison d’être is to guard the deposit of faith and lead souls to heaven, not to accrue “merits” in bureaucratic achievement.
St. Pius X in *Pascendi* exposes precisely this clerical betrayal: men of the Church using structures of authority to foster Modernist infection instead of crushing it. Here, such a man is solemnly caressed with compliments.
2. Absence of supernatural combat vocabulary
Unlike the language of Pius IX’s *Syllabus*, Leo XIII’s anti-Masonic encyclicals, or Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, the letter is devoid of:
– references to *fides*, *veritas*, *heresies*, *Modernismus*, *regnum Christi*;
– admonitions concerning judgment, hell, sin, or the enemies of the Church;
– the concern that seminarians and universities be impregnable citadels of orthodoxy.
Instead, the “Sacred” Congregation for Seminaries and Universities is presented as a “magna provincia rerum” — a large administrative competence — as if its essence were management rather than custody of revealed truth.
This bureaucratic idiom is not neutral: it signals an anthropocentric, institutional mentality. The supernatural hierarchy is psychologized into a corporation, and its officers are applauded as functionaries, not confessors of the faith.
3. Sentimental tone masking rupture
The closing blessing with the addition “magno corde et animo volenti” (with a great heart and willing spirit) bathes the whole in soft sentimentalism. That warmth might seem benign, but in context it serves as pious varnish over the most cold-blooded structural transformation of the Church in centuries.
When the barque is being scuttled from within, emotional courtesies to the officers scuttling it are not charity; they are complicity.
Theological Level: Omission as Condemnation
The gravest accusations here arise from what is *not* said.
At the very moment when seminaries and universities were infiltrated by condemned errors, the man responsible is praised without a hint of doctrinal scrutiny. Against the background of binding pre-1958 teaching, this silence is thunderous.
1. Lex credendi, lex orandi, lex docendi
By Catholic principle, especially reaffirmed by St. Pius X:
– Those who teach, supervise, and form clergy must adhere to and enforce the anti-Modernist provisions: *Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*, the Oath against Modernism, the Index, the doctrinal decrees of the Holy Office.
Yet this letter:
– does not invoke Pizzardo’s fidelity to these doctrinal arms;
– does not exhort him to intensify their application amid the growing rebellion;
– does not warn of wolves in the seminaries and universities.
Instead, it simply canonizes his “industry” and “diligence” while he presides over structures soon to be the engines of the conciliar sect.
This inversion stands in flat tension with the spirit and letter of St. Pius X’s reiterated command that shepherds wage war on Modernism. To praise an administrator at the edge of this collapse without doctrinal reference is to normalize dereliction of duty.
2. Betrayal of Christ’s Kingship over intellect and State
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches with clarity:
– Peace and order are impossible where Christ does not reign publicly.
– States and institutions — including universities — must acknowledge the social Kingship of Christ.
– Secularism and laicism are a “plague” which must be resisted.
In this letter:
– No demand is made that the universities and seminaries under Pizzardo’s care form defenders of the public reign of Christ.
– No condemnation of laicist infiltration in academic life is issued.
– No insistence upon subordinating all “studia” to the revealed truth of the Church is expressed.
The man entrusted with this mission is flattered for administrative success while the doctrinal foundations are being quietly relativized. There is here a tacit acquiescence in precisely the liberalism condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors* (esp. propositions 55, 77–80).
3. Ignoring the Masonic onslaught denounced by Pius IX
Pius IX, in texts collected with the *Syllabus* and in subsequent allocutions, unmasked the Masonic war against the Church as a coordinated plan: to subject the Church to the state, destroy ecclesiastical influence on education, and dissolve doctrine into naturalism.
Those propositions are not dead pages; they define objective enemies. A Prefect of Seminaries and Universities in 1962 stands at the front line of this conflict.
Yet in John XXIII’s letter:
– Not one word about Masonry,
– Not one word about socialist, rationalist, or Modernist errors in education,
– Not one reminder that ecclesiastical authority must resist the secular state in academic governance (against Syllabus errors 45–48).
The silence is not neutral. When an authority, in such a context, praises the steward of education without invoking the dogmatic and disciplinary arsenal against these errors, it signals that the arsenal is being quietly set aside.
4. Mockery of anti-Modernist discipline
St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* binds the Church to reject, as heretical or proximate to heresy, propositions asserting:
– that the Magisterium cannot determine the sense of Scripture (prop. 4),
– that revelation evolves (20–22, 58–60),
– that dogmas are mutable expressions of religious experience,
– that the Church is subject to evolution in its constitution (53–55).
By 1962, precisely these principles were already being promoted by theologians tolerated and increasingly protected within the conciliar structure.
The Prefect of Seminaries and Universities was duty-bound by divine and ecclesiastical law to crush them. Instead, his record coincides with their spread. John XXIII’s unqualified commendation, without reaffirmation of the anti-Modernist condemnations, operates de facto as a repudiation of St. Pius X’s program.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent). In the face of active heresy, praising the custodian without reminding him of his anti-Modernist mandate is not innocent; it is functional collaboration.
Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Sect Congratulating Its Architects
This letter must be read as a symptom of a deeper spiritual pathology: the substitution of the true Church’s supernatural mission by a paramasonic, anthropocentric structure — the conciliar sect.
Several features stand out.
1. Closing ranks around the “conciliar” inner circle
Pizzardo’s portfolio — Catholic Action, Curial authority, seminaries, universities — places him at the junction points through which the conciliar revolution was prepared:
– Catholic Action became, in many countries, a vehicle for democratization, laicization, and political accommodation, often in tension with the intransigent teaching of the earlier Magisterium.
– Seminaries and universities under such leadership shifted from guarding the deposit of faith to “dialogue” with modern thought, precisely the shift condemned as Modernism.
– The Curia’s willingness to tolerate, then promote such tendencies enabled the suppression of orthodox schemata at the council.
John XXIII’s epistle is not merely a private note; it is a public benediction of one of the principal technicians of this mutation. It reveals a self-contained system: usurped authority praising the collaborators of its own subversion.
2. Replacement of the sacrificial priesthood with the ecclesial functionary
Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine sees the *sacerdos* as:
– man of sacrifice,
– guardian of doctrine,
– shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep,
– steward of the mysteries of God.
In this letter, the figure exalted is not a confessor of the faith but a professional of administration. The “merits” enumerated are managerial, not martyrial; procedural, not doctrinal.
This mentality prepared the later phenomenon where:
– “priests” of the conciliar sect became social workers, facilitators, and executives of programs;
– the Most Holy Sacrifice was horizontalized into a communal “meal”;
– dogma was relativized in favor of “pastoral” adaptation.
The letter is an embryonic icon of that decay: the shepherd turned into a functionary, saluted by a pseudo-pontiff.
3. Omission of the integral Kingship of Christ over culture
Given Pizzardo’s charge over universities, a truly Catholic pontiff would have echoed *Quas Primas*:
– demand that all academic institutions under ecclesiastical oversight openly confess Christ’s social and intellectual Kingship;
– warn against granting parity or preference to secular or Masonic standards in curricula and governance;
– insist that human knowledge be subordinated to Revelation.
Instead, John XXIII speaks of a “magna provincia rerum” with no mention of Christ’s rights. In light of the *Syllabus*, this practical abandonment amounts to de facto endorsement of the liberal thesis.
4. Continuity of personnel, rupture of faith
One might object: Pizzardo was formed in the pre-1958 era. But the point is precisely this: the conciliar sect did not arise from nowhere; it instrumentalized men whose outward cursus honorum was “traditional” but whose practical choices facilitated the revolution.
This letter confirms:
– that the usurping authority warmly embraced such men;
– that fidelity to the pre-1958 doctrinal rampart was not the criterion of praise;
– that bureaucratic loyalty to the new direction was the standard.
The deeper message: the system rewards those who serve the transition from the Catholic Church to the neo-church — the *abominatio desolationis* settling into the holy place.
Contrast with Authentic Pre-1958 Magisterium
To expose the theological bankruptcy encapsulated in this letter, it suffices to juxtapose its silences with the binding teaching it quietly abandons.
1. Regnum Christi vs. bland humanism
Pius XI in *Quas Primas*:
– teaches that true peace and order come only when individuals and states recognize Christ’s Kingship;
– condemns laicism as a “plague” destroying society;
– insists that laws, education, and public life be subject to Christ.
Yet in 1962, the head of seminars and universities is praised without any reminder that his duty is to form soldiers of this Kingship. This is a tacit violation of the principle *lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.* The academic sphere is treated as a neutral “province of affairs” rather than a domain to be conquered for Christ.
2. Anti-Modernism vs. Modernist tolerance
St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* (whose condemnations are explicitly renewed with excommunication against opponents):
– identifies Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies”;
– requires strict vigilance in seminaries and universities;
– mandates the exclusion of Modernists, the censorship of their works, the taking of the Anti-Modernist Oath.
This letter:
– makes no allusion to this solemn obligation;
– offers no warning about errors;
– simply canonizes the person at the wheel of the educational apparatus.
Given the timing and context, such omission cannot be excused as brevity. It signals a deliberate softening — the very “pastoral” relativism condemned in advance by Pius X.
3. The Syllabus vs. the creeping liberal consensus
Pius IX condemns as errors:
– that the Church should be separated from the State (55),
– that the State may monopolize education and free it from Church authority (45–48),
– that progress, liberalism, and modern civilization can be reconciled with the Church’s principles (80).
By 1962, the conciliar mentality is already preparing precisely that “reconciliation.” The Prefect overseeing higher studies is at the junction where this betrayal is implemented.
John XXIII’s affectionate praise, without any reiteration of the Syllabus’ demands, signals alignment with the liberal trajectory: from defense of Christendom to capitulation to pluralism and religious indifferentism.
From Courtesy Note to Programmatic Symbol
One might object: it is “only” a congratulatory letter. This objection itself reveals the disease.
In the Catholic understanding, even seemingly small acts of the Supreme Pastor:
– express priorities,
– confirm the faithful or mislead them,
– either strengthen the ramparts or erode them.
Here, the priorities are clear:
– celebrate the purple,
– celebrate Catholic Action as it shifts towards democratic activism,
– celebrate the man at the head of the educational apparatus during the run-up to the conciliar upheaval,
– envelope it in gentle rhetoric,
– omit any reference to the burning doctrinal crisis.
Thus the letter becomes:
– a micro-manifesto of the conciliar sect’s ethos: elogium of human bureaucracy, silence on supernatural combat;
– a snapshot of the internal complicity that allowed Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X, to become the official ideology of the structures occupying the Vatican.
Conclusion: The Emptiness Laid Bare
Seen in the light of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958:
– This letter is the opposite of pastoral vigilance; it is pastoral anesthesia.
– It honors a man whose responsibilities — seminaries and universities — should have made him the foremost executioner of Modernism; instead, under his tenure, the advance of doctrinal dissolution accelerated.
– It reveals in John XXIII a governance that prefers congratulating architects of adaptation over defending the deposit of faith with the intransigence of Pius IX or Pius X.
– It is structurally incapable of mentioning the war against naturalism, liberalism, and Masonry that the authentic Magisterium unmasked; the text moves within a closed, worldly circle of dignities.
In one page of polished Latin, the conciliar system discloses its core: a parasitic hierarchy, praising itself, while the true mission of the Church — to proclaim the Kingship of Christ, guard unchanging dogma, sanctify souls through the Most Holy Sacrifice, and anathematize error — is quietly set aside.
What is celebrated here is not sanctity, not doctrine, not martyrdom, but the smooth functioning of the engine that would soon deliver the visible structures into the hands of the neo-church. That is precisely why this slight text is theologically weighty: it is an inscription on the mask of a regime that blesses its own accomplices while preparing to suffocate the Faith it pretends to serve.
Source:
Quinque celebranti – Ad Iosephum S. R. E. Cardinalem Pizzardo, Episcopum Albanensem et Praefectum S. Congregationis Seminariis Studiorumque Universitatibus praepositae, quinque implentem lustra, ex qu… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025