Ad Dilectos: Latin America Subjugated to the Conciliar Revolution
The document “Ad Dilectos” (8 December 1961) is a circular letter in which antipope John XXIII addresses the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops of Latin America, praising their peoples’ Catholic heritage and Marian devotion, exhorting the hierarchy to catechesis, sacramental life, vocations, Catholic Action, and implementation of “Christian social doctrine” in response to civil, social, and economic challenges, while insisting that authentic renewal and social order must rest on divine law as taught by the “Church” and by his own recent magisterial interventions. Beneath the apparently pious exhortations, the text functions as a programmatic ideological preparation: it seeks to align Latin America to the aggiornamento of the coming council, to subordinate temporal order to the emergent neo-church, and to dilute the reign of Christ the King into a humanitarian-social project managed by the conciliar sect.
Programmatic Praise as a Prelude to Subversion
From the outset, the letter clothes itself in traditional vocabulary while already exhibiting the duplicity characteristic of the conciliar revolution.
John XXIII opens by extolling Latin America as historically illustrious, industrious, hopeful for progress, sealed with the sign of the Cross, Catholic in name, and consecrated to Our Lady. He recalls his consolations when addressing these peoples and admiring their “firm fidelity” to religion.
He then acknowledges anxieties about attacks on God and the Church and attempts to console: the hierarchy is urged to defend the faithful against dangers to faith and Christian life, especially where former Catholic vigor is waning. On the surface, this appears orthodox.
Yet three fundamental problems emerge immediately:
– First, the entire construction presupposes his own authority as Roman Pontiff, while he is in fact the inaugural usurper of the post-1958 line. The entire letter is therefore the directive of a non-Catholic authority towards the deformation of once-Catholic nations.
– Second, by excessive rhetorical praise of “Catholic” Latin America as a bloc, he anticipates precisely that collective-political notion of “Christian peoples” which will later be weaponized to justify ecumenism, religious liberty, and pragmatic pacts with anti-Catholic regimes, in direct conflict with the pre-conciliar doctrine that only full doctrinal and juridical submission to the Church constitutes true Catholic unity.
– Third, the tone of bland pastoral optimism coexists with deliberate silence regarding the systemic enemies condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium: Freemasonry, socialist and liberal sects, the modernist infiltration of seminaries and episcopates, the doctrinal rot already entrenched in Europe and seeping into Latin America. This silence is the first, decisive accusation.
Where Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI speak with supernatural clarity about the war of secret societies and liberal ideologies against the Church (cf. Syllabus of Errors; Pascendi; Quas Primas), John XXIII offers an anodyne narrative: external disturbances, social questions, “unauthorized” attacks—without naming the doctrinal cancer within the very structures he is addressing. This is already symptomatic of the emerging religio duplex: catholica in verba, modernistica in mente (Catholic in words, modernist in mind).
Manipulated Orthodoxy: Using Catholic Language to Legitimize the Neo-Church
On the factual plane, many sentences of the letter, isolated from their author and historical context, would appear unobjectionable to a Catholic formed before 1958:
– Exhortation to catechesis: teaching Christian doctrine to children and youth.
– Promotion of sacramental life: Confession, Eucharist, prayer.
– Encouragement of vocations: priests, religious, missionary assistance.
– Appeal to ground social and economic life on divine law.
– Warning against false doctrines that endanger prosperity and liberty.
But herein lies the principal fraud: these substantially Catholic elements are used as a rhetorical front to secure obedience to a structure that is preparing to subvert those very doctrines at Vatican II and afterward.
1. John XXIII calls the bishops to nourish faith because “fides ex auditu”—faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). In itself this is orthodox. But he is the same figure who convoked a council explicitly not to condemn errors, who rehabilitated modernist theologians, and who signaled a rupture with the anti-modernist magisterium of St. Pius X. The faithful are thus invited to receive faith “by hearing” from lips already contaminated with aggiornamento.
2. He speaks of strengthening Eucharistic life and sacramental practice. Yet no warning is given that the soon-to-be-imposed liturgical revolution would profane the Most Holy Sacrifice and replace it by an ecumenicalized rite. Silence about the impending destruction of the Catholic liturgy—planned already during his reign—transforms these exhortations into a preparation for sacrilege, not sanctity.
3. He urges promotion of “Catholic Action” so that the laity may be active members in apostolic work. Under Pius XI, Actio Catholica meant organized lay cooperation under strict hierarchical control to restore the social kingship of Christ. Under John XXIII and his successors, “Catholic Action” mutates into an ideological vehicle for democratization, lay pressure on doctrine, and the infiltration of politics by a naturalistic humanitarianism divorced from dogma. The letter pre-structures this shift by emphasizing organization and activism, while remaining vague about doctrinal non-negotiables.
4. He affirms that no solid social edifice stands except on divine law, and that the Church announces these norms also in civil, social, economic matters. This echoes Leo XIII. Yet he immediately makes acceptance of these norms coextensive with submission to his own recent teachings—including those oriented toward “opening” to the modern world. Thus, divine law is instrumentalized to consecrate the neo-church’s social program.
This pattern is systematic: each authentic Catholic element is subtly detached from its integral doctrinal context and reattached to a conciliar agenda. Verba orthodoxa, mens haeretica (words orthodox, mind heretical).
Linguistic Cloaking: Sentimentality, Vagueness, and Bureaucratic Abstractions
The language of the letter itself betrays the modernist mentality.
1. Sentimental inflation
The text overflows with generic benevolence and emotive rhetoric: “sweetest joy,” “consolation,” “paternal charity,” “benevolent wishes,” “singular benevolence,” “loving” blessings. This sentimental bath dulls vigilance and replaces the virile, militant clarity of previous papal documents with a soft, therapeutic register.
Pre-conciliar Popes, while paternal, spoke with a precision and severity befitting guardians of a besieged deposit of faith. Pius X, in Lamentabili and Pascendi, names and anathematizes propositions. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, condemns secular laicism by name and insists on the public, juridical reign of Christ. Here, by contrast, dangers are anonymized, errors are depersonalized, responsibilities blurred in warm fog.
2. Vague threats, unnamed enemies
Where Pius IX in the Syllabus explicitly denounces liberalism, indifferentism, nationalism against Rome, socialism, and the masonic sects as the synagoga Satanae, John XXIII writes only of “pericula” and “insidiae” and “fallacious doctrines” without doctrinal classification or canonical censure. The faithful are to be mobilized without being told who, concretely, is attacking them and on what precise propositions. This vagueness is itself a betrayal of the episcopal office.
3. Ambiguous social rhetoric
The letter integrates standard social teaching formulas—justice, charity, peace, public welfare—but subtly shifts accent from the supernatural end (salus animarum, the salvation of souls) to temporal well-being and “lasting peace” among nations. When he writes that the kingdom of Christ, though not of this world, also serves this world’s “tranquillity and progress,” the risk emerges: Christ’s Kingship is allowed only insofar as it is socially useful. This is diametrically opposed to the doctrine of Quas Primas, where Pius XI declares that the root of modern miseries is precisely the refusal to recognize Christ’s rights, and that peace will come only when nations bow juridically to His scepter, regardless of “worldly progress.”
The language of “progress,” “development,” and “modern circumstances” in the mouth of John XXIII signals not merely a pastoral adaptation, but the ideological pivot whereby the supernatural mission of the Church is harnessed to the myth of modern progress. The kingdom of God is semi-secretly aligned with “development goals.” This is theological naturalism.
Silence on Modernism and Freemasonry: The Gravest Indictment
Measured against the anti-modernist magisterium, the omissions of this letter are as devastating as any explicit error.
1. No mention of Modernism as condemned by St. Pius X
The decrees of Lamentabili sane exitu and the encyclical Pascendi, confirmed with excommunication for those who oppose them, defined Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies.” They commanded vigilance in seminaries, universities, publications, and episcopal governance. By 1961, modernist errors had openly resurfaced in Europe and were penetrating Latin America.
Yet John XXIII, addressing precisely those bishops responsible for doctrine in a continent considered the “Catholic reserve,” utters not a single word about Modernism, not a single recall to the oath against Modernism, not a single threat of canonical penalties against its purveyors. This silence is not accidental; it is programmatic. The watchdog lays down his teeth on the very eve of the council that will enthrone those errors in official texts.
2. No denunciation of Freemasonry and anti-Christian sects by name
Pius IX and Leo XIII explicitly identify masonic and similar sects as primary engines of the war against the Church, manipulating laws, schools, press, and politics to eradicate Christ’s reign. The Syllabus and subsequent allocutions speak plainly: the sects are “the synagogue of Satan,” global conspirators against the Church.
In Latin America, masonic lodges, liberal oligarchies, and Marxist cadres were visibly active. To speak generically of “false doctrines” while omitting the named enemies repeatedly condemned by predecessors is to aid those enemies. It substitutes a safe bureaucratic vagueness for the precise spiritual warfare mandated by the integral Magisterium.
3. No defense of the temporal rights of the Church
Where Pius IX asserts that laws violating the divine constitution of the Church are null and void, where he rejects separation of Church and State (Syllabus, prop. 55) and denies that the State is the source of all rights (prop. 39), John XXIII’s letter does not explicitly reaffirm the necessity of confessional states, nor does it condemn laicism or religious pluralism as such.
He merely “reminds” rulers that no edifice stands without God’s law, in a tone more advisory than juridically binding. The doctrinal content of earlier condemnations is blurred into moral counsel. Thus the path is prepared for the Vatican II betrayal of the social kingship of Christ through the doctrine of religious liberty and the acceptance of secular neutrality.
This triple silence—Modernism, Freemasonry, confessional State—is itself an objective sign of rupture with pre-1958 doctrine.
Subtle Reconfiguration of Authority and Apostolate
The letter also reconfigures the relations between hierarchy, laity, and social order, in ways typical of post-conciliar ideology.
1. Inflated lay protagonism without doctrinal formation
John XXIII calls the faithful to feel themselves “living members” of the Church and to contribute to the religious and civil good of their nations, especially via organized Catholic Action. In principle, lay apostolate under hierarchical guidance is legitimate.
However, in the absence of strict reinforcement of integral doctrine, this language functions as a charter for politicized activism and horizontal “participation,” the seed of democratized structures that later challenge hierarchical teaching under the pretext of “co-responsibility.” The document flatters the laity with importance while failing to arm them doctrinally against the very currents that will instrumentalize them.
2. Instrumentalization of religious life and clergy
The call to augment vocations and welcome “fraternal help” from bishops and religious institutes of other countries is natural in itself. But historically, much of this “help” after 1961 took the form of missionaries infected with progressivism, liberation theology, and liturgical experimentation. The text ignores the essential criterion: not merely “more clergy,” but sound clergy, sworn enemies of Modernism, faithful to the anti-modernist Magisterium.
By neglecting to specify doctrinal criteria, John XXIII effectively opens the continent’s doors to the worst ideological contagions under the banner of “missionary cooperation.”
3. Authority invoked to guarantee error
Most seriously, the letter repeatedly appeals to his own magisterium and that of his immediate predecessors (selectively interpreted) as the guide for social renewal. He praises the governments that have received “our pastoral magisterium” and urges implementation.
Thus, civil and ecclesiastical authorities are together bound, not to the perennial doctrine as such, but to his reinterpretation of it—the very reinterpretation that will soon be codified in the conciliar documents of the Church of the New Advent. This is a classic inversion: the see that should be judged by Tradition now uses Tradition’s vocabulary to demand obedience to its own innovations.
From the Kingship of Christ to a Social-Democratic Christianity
The heart of the distortion appears in the way the letter handles the doctrine of the kingdom of Christ.
John XXIII affirms:
– Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn 18:36);
– yet it contributes greatly to this world’s peace and progress;
– it is a kingdom of truth, holiness, grace, but also of justice, love, peace.
These statements echo traditional formulas, particularly Quas Primas, where Pius XI describes the fruits of recognizing Christ’s Kingship. However, Pius XI explicitly teaches that the crisis of modernity stems from the refusal of individuals and states to submit to Christ’s reign; he commands public, juridical acknowledgment of Catholicism as the only true religion and condemns religious indifferentism and separation of Church and State.
By contrast, John XXIII leaves intact the modern premise of religious pluralism and secular statehood by not challenging it. He reduces the kingship of Christ, in practice, to a moral-spiritual inspiration for social justice and peace. It is this soft-focus, sentimental image of Christ the “King of love and peace,” emptied of legal and political claims, that will be enthroned after 1965. The reign of Christ becomes a poetic backdrop for the cult of “human dignity” and “development,” while the concrete dogma of the one true Church possessing exclusive rights in society is eclipsed.
This shift is not accidental; it is doctrinal: a migration from Rex Legifer (Lawgiving King) to an ecumenical symbol of humanitarian consensus. It matches precisely the errors condemned in the Syllabus (especially propositions 77–80 on liberalism, progress, and reconciliation with modern civilization understood as emancipation from the Church).
Conciliar Symptom: Latin America as Laboratory of Apostasy
Seen in historical context, “Ad Dilectos” must be read as a symptomatic text of the conciliar revolution.
1. Timing: December 8, 1961
On the feast of the Immaculate Conception—in itself a Marian and dogmatic highpoint—John XXIII issues a letter whose practical effect is to mobilize Latin American hierarchy and laity under his banner on the eve of Vatican II. It is a preparatory alignment: assuring them of their Catholic identity, praising their Marian devotion, and then attaching their future apostolate to his upcoming “pastoral” reorientation.
2. Target: Latin America
Latin America was the largest concentrated bloc of nominal Catholics, a strategic fortress. To capture it for the neo-church meant securing demographic legitimacy. This letter flatters that continent while injecting the conciliar language of social concern, cooperative action, and “dialogue” with civil authorities—dispositions essential for the later emergence of liberation theology and political “Christian” movements welded to Marxist, socialist, or liberal frameworks.
3. Systemic apostasy masked as pastoral solicitude
By refusing to reaffirm the anti-modernist measures; by failing to denounce religious liberty, socialism, and laicism with the vigor of his predecessors; by maintaining ambiguity where clarity is due; and by channeling energies into humanistic social projects, John XXIII’s letter exemplifies how the conciliar sect functions: it corrodes doctrine through selective silence and emotive verbiage while appealing constantly to “love,” “peace,” and “pastoral concern.”
This is precisely the method rejected by St. Pius X, who condemned those who, under the pretext of adapting the Church to modern needs, undermine immutable dogma. “Ad Dilectos” is a textbook in that condemned method.
No Refuge in Pseudo-Traditional Counterfeits
One more point must be stressed to avoid a false solution.
The theological bankruptcy manifested here does not justify any retreat into hybrid positions within the conciliar framework:
– Those pretending to be traditional Catholics who seek safety in “Catholic Action” reinterpreted according to post-conciliar categories merely perpetuate the problem.
– Structures such as pseudo-traditional fraternities or indult communities that acknowledge the authority of John XXIII and his successors while simulating older forms, participate in the same contradiction: they attempt to graft the Unbloody Sacrifice onto an ecclesiological corpse dominated by anti-doctrinal principles.
– Lay attempts to reinvent the Church as a democratic association—under the pretext of combating clerical modernism—likewise deviate from the Catholic principle that jurisdiction and teaching authority come from Christ through the legitimate hierarchy of the true Church, not from plebiscites or self-constituted groups.
Justice and authority belong to the one Church founded by Christ, visible, juridically constituted, teaching with the same voice before and after every age. When a structure publicly departs from the prior magisterium, promotes condemned doctrines, or refuses to condemn them, it ceases to be that voice, regardless of sentimental appeals to continuity.
Conclusion: A Pious Mask for the Machinery of De-Catholicization
“Ad Dilectos” is not salvaged by its scattered orthodox expressions. On the contrary, those phrases aggravate its guilt: Catholic truths are enlisted to legitimize an emerging anti-Catholic program. The letter:
– Assumes the authority of a man inaugurating a line that systematically overturns prior condemnations.
– Praises Latin American Catholicism while preparing it for absorption into the conciliar sect.
– Uses traditional formulas about faith, sacraments, and social doctrine, yet silences all decisive warnings against Modernism, Freemasonry, liberalism, and religious indifferentism.
– Softens the doctrine of Christ’s Kingship into a socially useful ideal, devoid of binding juridical claims.
– Promotes activism and collaboration disconnected from integral doctrine, thereby paving the way for political and theological deviations that will ravage the continent in subsequent decades.
Under the polished Latin and paternal tone lies a calculated redirection: from the Church that condemned error with divine authority, to a paramasonic structure seeking harmony with the modern world on its own terms. Recognizing this mechanism is a duty of those who still hold the unchanging faith: lex credendi and lex orandi (the law of belief and the law of prayer) must remain one with what the Church taught and prayed immutably before this revolution—not with the counterfeit unity fabricated by those who speak softly while dismantling the foundations.
Source:
Ad dilectos – Ad Patres Cardinales atque Archiepiscopos et Episcopos Americae Latinae, quorum anxiam participat curam Beatissimus Pater ob pericula, quae fidei et christianae vitae actioni in iis regi… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025