Dated March 8, 1961, this letter of the usurper John XXIII congratulates Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, Patriarch of Lisbon, on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, extols his loyalty to the “Apostolic See,” praises his administration of the Lisbon Patriarchate (especially liturgical splendour, seminaries, and “Catholic Action”), and highlights as particular glories the erection of a monument to Christ the King and the national consecration of Portugal to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It concludes by granting him the faculty to impart, in John XXIII’s name, a plenary indulgence and by bestowing an “Apostolic Blessing.”
Ceremonial Flattery in Service of the Conciliar Revolution
Personalist Panegyric as a Mask for Doctrinal Subversion
Already from the opening lines, the document reveals its nature: a courtly panegyric by an antipope to a prelate integrated into the emerging conciliar sect, suffused with sentimentalism and political symbolism, completely bereft of doctrinal clarity or supernatural urgency.
John XXIII’s letter:
We were very glad when we were informed that you, beloved Son, will soon celebrate the fiftieth year since you received the priesthood… we send you these letters so that by our congratulations and wishes we may honor so worthy a day and increase your joy and that of your flock.
The entire piece is a choreography of human satisfaction:
– self-referential emotion (“admodum gavisi sumus” – “we rejoiced greatly”),
– mutual compliments,
– emphasis on external success, good reputation, organizational achievements,
– culminating in honorific concessions (faculty to impart a plenary indulgence “in Our Name”).
Not once does John XXIII:
– warn of the lethal errors condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (1864),
– invoke the grave battle against Modernism denounced by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi,
– mention the absolute duty of states and nations to submit publicly to the social Kingship of Christ in the strong, juridical terms of Pius XI’s Quas Primas,
– recall that episcopal office is ordered first to the defense of the faith and the salvation of souls under pain of eternal damnation.
Instead, the letter substitutes true apostolic gravity with courtly flattery and harmless “pious” banalities. This is not accidental courtesy; it is a paradigm: the reduction of the Petrine office (in reality, its usurped shell) to a dispenser of congratulations, indulgenced ceremonies, and natural prestige, while the doctrinal and moral order collapses worldwide.
The letter is a micro-manifesto of the new religion: a humanistic, emotional, ceremonial Catholicism without the sword of dogma, without hatred of error, without the Cross as judgment.
Factual and Historical Level: Cerejeira, Portugal, and the Engineered Piety of the Neo-Church
John XXIII praises Cerejeira as a “vigilant shepherd,” highlighting:
– care for liturgical splendor,
– concern for seminaries and ecclesiastical studies,
– promotion of “Catholic Action” in Portugal,
– the monument to Christ the King near Lisbon,
– and the national consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Each of these apparently “Catholic” elements, when placed in the historical and doctrinal context of pre- and post-1958, reveals a different reality.
1. Catholic Action:
– Pius XI and Pius XII understood Catholic Action as lay collaboration under hierarchical control for the restoration of Christ’s reign in society.
– By 1961, however, “Catholic Action” in many countries had already become the laboratory of democratic, horizontal, activist, and ultimately revolutionary currents that exploded at and after Vatican II.
– John XXIII’s unqualified praise of “Actionem Catholicam” in Portugal fits exactly this line: not as a disciplined instrument for confessional states, but as preparation for participation in a laicized, pluralist, parliamentarist order.
– The letter contains no warning that Catholic Action must combat liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, condemned in the Syllabus and in the numerous allocutions of Pius IX; it presents lay activism as self-evidently good, detached from the doctrinal battle against modern errors.
2. Seminaries:
– He lauds the building of “fitting and spacious” seminary facilities and “fuller and more perfect” formation.
– This is written on the threshold of the greatest collapse of priestly formation in history, unleashed precisely under John XXIII and his successor usurpers.
– No mention of guarding seminaries against Modernism, despite St. Pius X’s explicit insistence that the modernist “pest” lurks especially among clergy and in seminaries.
– No insistence that seminary studies must be strictly Thomistic, obedient to the anti-modernist oath, faithful to the traditional liturgy and discipline.
– The silence is not neutral; it is a programmatic omission. By praising structures and ignoring doctrine, John XXIII encourages the illusion that architectural or institutional growth suffices, while wolves are invited into the flock.
3. Monument to Christ the King:
– John XXIII commends Cerejeira for the monument in Lisbon dedicated to Christ the King.
– But under the integral doctrine reaffirmed in Quas Primas, the Kingship of Christ is not primarily a sentimental statue dominating a liberal state; it is a concrete juridical obligation:
– laws conforming to divine and natural law,
– rejection of religious indifferentism,
– rejection of laicism and the separation of Church and State condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, prop. 55),
– subordination of public life to the law of Christ.
– The letter carefully avoids any such content. Christ the King is reduced to a national symbol, a decorative piety compatible with the creeping acceptance of pluralism and democracy.
– In Pius XI’s terms, such symbolic recognition without submission of public law is hypocritical: “Christ must reign” in laws, institutions, education, not as an empty emblem.
4. National consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
– John XXIII celebrates the national act as performed by Cerejeira.
– Yet, instead of presenting it as a call to rigorous public penance, doctrinal purification, and militant fidelity to Tradition, it is absorbed into the language of “joy,” “honor,” “harmony,” without any denunciation of liberal, masonic, and socialist forces ravaging Portugal and the world.
– This fits the pattern: Marian devotion emptied of its militant and anti-modernist significance, instrumentalized as emotional capital for the conciliar reform.
Argumentum ex silentio (argument from silence) here is decisive: in a text that enumerates the prelate’s public, nation-scale religious acts, there is no slightest mention of the doctrinal and political obligations that these acts entail according to the pre-1958 Magisterium. The silence unmasks the real project: a sentimental, socially harmless “Catholicism” preparing the way for religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
Linguistic Level: Sentimentalism, Bureaucratic Courtesy, and the Eclipse of the Supernatural
The rhetoric of the letter is a clinical example of the new conciliar idiom:
– soft, affective (“beloved Son,” “increase joy,” “pleasing remembrance”),
– managerial praise (efficiency, “good reputation,” “prudent counsels,” organizational success),
– carefully non-combative, devoid of condemnations, anathemas, or clear doctrinal markers.
Key features:
1. Anthropocentric tone:
– Focus on the feelings of the addressee and of the faithful.
– Christ appears almost exclusively as an object of cultural homage (monument) rather than as the sovereign Lawgiver and Judge.
2. Absence of eschatological seriousness:
– Not a single mention of:
– eternal judgment,
– necessity of remaining in the state of grace,
– danger of heresy,
– obligation of bishops to guard against error.
– Instead: wish that the jubilee be “more salutary,” with a plenary indulgence attached as a kind of spiritual decoration, not as a trumpet-call to repentance.
3. Functional dilution of supernatural authority:
– John XXIII grants Cerejeira the faculty to impart, on a chosen day, a plenary indulgence “in Our Name.”
– Historically, indulgences are tied to penitential practice, doctrinal orthodoxy, and the authority of a true Roman Pontiff.
– In the mouth of an antipope engaged in the dismantling of Tradition, this is a simulacrum: a juridical form detached from the substance of faith.
The language is thus both revealing and accusatory: it perfectly embodies what St. Pius X condemned — the replacement of virile, dogmatic, sacrificial Catholicism by a humane, optimistic, “pastoral” discourse that caresses rather than converts, applauds rather than warns, flatters rather than judges.
Where Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI spoke with the thunder of dogma against liberalism, naturalism, Freemasonry, and modernist exegesis, John XXIII murmurs felicitationes and avoids every hard word; this is not charity, but betrayal.
Theological Level: The Letter as a Manifestation of the New Ecclesiology
Measured by *unchanging Catholic theology before 1958* (the only legitimate standard), the letter is not innocent. It manifests a coherent set of deviations that would be fully articulated in the conciliar and post-conciliar pseudo-magisterium.
1. Eclipse of the Church’s Militant Character
The pre-1958 Magisterium constantly affirms:
– the Church is the societas perfecta, endowed with full rights from Christ (condemning propositions 19, 21, 55 of the Syllabus),
– her pastoral office is essentially doctrinal, judicial, and sacrificial, ordered to save souls from heresy, sin, and hell.
John XXIII’s letter:
– never presents Cerejeira primarily as defender of the true faith against error,
– never mentions vigilance against Modernism (despite its rampant presence),
– never exhorts him to stand against the world, but only to continue his “diligent” pastoral administration.
This is a functional redefinition of the episcopal office:
– from guardian of dogma to manager of devotions and associations,
– from watchman against wolves to celebrated figurehead of national religiosity,
– from authoritative teacher to collaborator in a harmonious, non-conflictual religious sphere.
2. Embrace of Naturalistic Symbolism
The monument to Christ the King and national consecration are praised as high points, but within a conceptual vacuum:
– no insistence that the Portuguese state must outlaw public offenses against Christ,
– no condemnation of the principle of religious liberty as later promoted by the conciliar sect,
– no application of Pius XI’s solemn doctrine: peace and order are impossible where the reign of Christ is not publicly recognized in law and social institutions.
Thus, the Kingship of Christ is subtly transformed:
– from juridical, objective sovereignty over peoples and laws,
– into a sentimental, cultural, and private devotion,
– exactly the falsification later used to “baptize” liberal-democratic regimes while abandoning confessional states.
3. Instrumentalization of Marian Piety
By highlighting national consecration to the Immaculate Heart, John XXIII:
– exploits Marian symbolism,
– but empties it of its anti-modernist and anti-liberal edge.
Authentic consecration to Our Lady:
– demands conversion from liberalism, impurity, and naturalism,
– is inseparably linked to obedience to the perennial Magisterium and rejection of errors.
Here, consecration is merged into a narrative of “joy” and institutional prestige, not of penance and militant fidelity. Marian language becomes a decorative veil covering ecumenism, religious liberty, and eventual doctrinal pluralism.
4. Abuse of Indulgences in a Context of Doctrinal Defection
Indulgences presuppose:
– true jurisdiction,
– true doctrine,
– true sacraments,
– faithful subject to the Roman Pontiff.
John XXIII, as a manifest promoter of the conciliar agenda that would:
– recognize false religions as partners,
– inaugurate religious liberty,
– dismantle the traditional liturgy,
– tolerate and promote modernist theology,
cannot be regarded, in the light of Bellarmine and pre-conciliar canonists, as a true Catholic pontiff. A manifest heretic, or one publicly favoring condemned errors, cannot be the head of the Church, *quia non potest esse caput eius quod non est membrum* (“he cannot be head of that of which he is not a member”). Therefore:
The ostentatious grant of indulgence faculties in this letter is a tragic parody: juridical forms surviving in a structure already mutating into a paramasonic neo-church.
Symptomatic Level: How This Letter Prefigures the Systemic Apostasy
This seemingly minor congratulatory epistle is a concentrated symptom of the deeper revolution.
1. Cult of Personality and Episcopal Careerism
The letter:
– glorifies Cerejeira’s “good reputation” and “vigilance,”
– associates him with monumental projects and national ceremonies,
– presents Rome (in its usurped form) as approving and rewarding such figures.
Such rhetoric:
– strengthens the system of human respect and ecclesiastical careerism,
– discourages bishops from doctrinal combat (which would disturb this harmony),
– trains them to seek papal praise for external achievements, not for defending Truth against the world.
2. Harmonization with the World
The absence of any denunciation of:
– secularism,
– socialism,
– Freemasonry (explicitly described by Pius IX as the “synagogue of Satan” working to destroy the Church),
while praising public gestures compatible with liberal regimes, shows the strategy: peaceful coexistence, dialogue, adaptation, politeness.
This is precisely the mentality that would:
– approve religious liberty in practice,
– embrace ecumenical gestures,
– cease to challenge the state’s apostasy.
3. Replacement of Anathema with Diplomacy
Before 1958, Roman documents often contained:
– doctrinal precision,
– condemnation of specific propositions,
– grave warnings to bishops who neglected their duties.
Here:
– only congratulations, wishes, and kindly exhortations “to continue.”
– no anathema sit, no error est, no clear doctrinal boundaries.
This is not mere style; it is substance:
modus loquendi (manner of speaking) reveals modus credendi (manner of believing). A Church that no longer speaks like the Bride of Christ sounding the trumpet against error has already begun to think like the world.
4. Controlled Piety as a Tool of the Conciliar Sect
By exalting:
– devotional acts (monuments, consecrations),
– institutional flourishing (seminaries, Catholic Action),
without binding them to intransigent doctrine, John XXIII:
– maintains an external Catholic façade,
– while preparing both clergy and laity to accept the revolution soon to be launched at the so‑called “Vatican II.”
This is the method:
– keep the forms,
– hollow out the content,
– then reinterpret everything “pastorally.”
The Lisbon letter is entirely consistent with this: every element is orthodoxy in appearance, Modernism in orientation.
The Silence that Accuses: Missing Elements that Condemn the Text
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, the gravest indictments arise from what is not said:
– No affirmation that:
– outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation,
– Protestantism and other sects are false religions (contra Syllabus prop. 18),
– indifferentism is a mortal danger.
– No warning:
– against heresies infiltrating seminaries and “Catholic Action,”
– against the laicization of the state,
– against the errors condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi.
– No insistence that:
– Christ the King must reign in the Constitution, laws, education, and judiciary,
– the separation of Church and State is a pernicious error,
– bishops must fight liberalism, naturalism, socialism with all their strength.
Such omissions are incompatible with the authentic voice of the Roman Pontiff as known before 1958 and expose John XXIII’s letter as the product of a different religion: a religion that tolerates, even blesses, precisely what the true Popes condemned as instruments of Satanic subversion.
Conclusion: A Polite Document of a Counterfeit Authority
This 1961 letter is outwardly gentle and “Catholic.” Yet, read under the light of the pre-1958 Magisterium, it unveils:
– a counterfeit ecclesiology that prizes human respect, prestige, and ceremonial over dogmatic clarity;
– a sentimental distortion of the Kingship of Christ, reduced to monuments and consecration ceremonies, detached from juridical and political obligation;
– a Marian vocabulary assimilated into a modernist, pacified narrative, no longer the terror of heresies;
– a manipulative use of indulgences and blessings by one who prepares and inaugurates a doctrinal revolution.
What we see here is not the paternal voice of Peter strengthening his brethren in the faith, but the courteous tone of an antipope legitimizing the slow demolition of the Catholic order through flattery, ambiguity, and selective silence.
Measured solely by the unchanging doctrine of the Church prior to 1958, this letter is theologically weightless, spiritually dangerous, and historically symptomatic: a small but vivid fragment in the mosaic of the conciliar apostasy, where ceremonial smiles cover the construction of the paramasonic neo-church that usurped the visible structures of Catholicism.
Source:
Admodum gavisi, Epsitula ad Emmanuelem Tit. Ss. Marcellini et Petri S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem Gongalves Cerejeira, Patriarcham Lisbonensem, quinquagesimum a suscepto sacerdotio annum implentem, d. 8 … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025