This Latin letter of John XXIII appoints Cardinal Cicognani as his legate to preside, in his name, over a catechetical convention in Dallas for hierarchs and catechists from North and South America, praising the initiative, lauding catechists as honored laborers, exhorting them to zeal, humility, prayer, and reliance on Christ rather than “persuasive words of human wisdom,” and concluding with an “apostolic blessing” on all participants. In reality, this seemingly pious note is a concentrated manifesto of the nascent conciliar revolution: a cosmetic use of Catholic vocabulary to baptize a new, horizontal, episcopo-bureaucratic machinery that will dissolve supernatural catechesis into pastoral technocracy and prepare the demolition of the Kingship of Christ.
Admodum gratum: The Programmatic Catechetical Drift of the Conciliar Sect
Episcopal Congress as Laboratory of a New Religion
At first sight, the text appears harmless: an approval of a catechetical meeting, a choice of a legate, a few spiritual counsels. Yet from the perspective of *integral Catholic doctrine ante 1958*, this letter must be read as part of a coherent project: the installation of a neo-magisterium replacing the immutable *depositum fidei* with a fluid, pastoral consensus of regional hierarchies.
Key elements:
– The letter enthusiastically endorses a “Conventus catechesi provehendae ex utraque America,” a vast inter-continental gathering of hierarchs and catechists as a strategic event “ad religiosam vitam multarum gentium… spectare.”
– It frames this congress as an opportunity to shape religious life of entire nations through “apt councils” and “experts’ methods” for spreading “divine truth” and moral improvement.
– It sends a papal legate to make the event solemn and authoritative, and commissions him to transmit “some things conceived in Our soul” to the assembled catechists and bishops.
Under pious language, this establishes:
– a technocratic, conference-driven “pastoral” governance, *de facto* parallel to and above the traditional, juridically precise magisterium;
– an early template of the later synodal, collegial, empiricist style of the conciliar sect: truth “applied” and “developed” through regional assemblies, not guarded and imposed as immutable.
The maneuver is clear: cloak structural innovation in language borrowed from true doctrine so that bishops and catechists accept a mutation in the source and mode of teaching without perceiving its subversive nature.
From Supernatural Catechesis to Pedagogical Managerialism
On the factual level, the letter praises the Dallas gathering because it convenes many “sacri Antistites” and catechists, dealing with issues that touch “religious life” across two continents, in order that this life be enlightened ever more with “the light of divine truth” and exhibit “greater holiness of morals.”
What does it omit?
– No mention of original sin and the necessity of supernatural faith.
– No mention of the dogmatic integrity of catechisms already approved (e.g. Roman Catechism of Trent, catechisms in continuity with it).
– No insistence that catechesis is strictly the transmission of defined truths, to be believed with divine and Catholic faith, because God has revealed them and the Church has infallibly proposed them.
– No warning against already rampant Modernism, condemned in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi Dominici gregis*—errors undermining Scripture, dogma, sacraments, and the very notion of immutable truth.
– No affirmation that catechesis must explicitly combat:
– indifferentism,
– liberalism and naturalism,
– religious liberty errors,
– socialism, communism, and masonic infiltration clearly denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
Instead, the Dallas convention is implicitly portrayed as:
– a forum of “experts,”
– devising “apt councils” and “peritus methods,”
– for optimizing religious instruction across nations.
This is the pedagogical managerialism that will culminate in the post-1960s catechetical devastation: relativized dogma, psychologized “faith sharing,” “experience”-based religious education, and doctrinal illiteracy. When catechesis is handled as a field for methodological innovation instead of a sacred transmission of fixed truths, the fruit is apostasy.
Pius X foresaw and anathematized this logic. *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* condemn the idea that dogmas and their expressions must be adapted to modern consciousness and made fluid through history. This letter, by endorsing a transcontinental laboratory of “methods” detached from explicit reaffirmation of those condemnations, creates the precise climate in which those modernist theses flourish under the guise of “renewal.”
The Poisoned Rhetoric of Honor and Subjectivism
The letter instructs Cicognani to tell catechists that they should:
– consider it “an outstanding title of honor” to teach Christian doctrine;
– be convinced they will acquire a “rich harvest of merit” by their labor;
– exercise their role “with diligence, with joy, with ardor and vigor of faith”;
– adhere in intimate prayer to Christ, trusting not in “persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the power of the Word of God”;
– remember the Augustinian dictum that external magisteria are “helps and admonitions,” while “He who teaches hearts has His chair in heaven… the anointing teaches about all things.”
At the linguistic and theological level, several problems appear.
1. Selective use of Augustine
The citation of Augustine about the inner teaching of God is orthodox in itself. However, deployed in this context — a mass conference of “experts” and catechists — without simultaneously stressing:
– the objective authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium,
– the obligation of adherence to defined dogma,
– the condemnation of private judgment and doctrinal “creativity,”
it becomes a perfect gateway to modernist interiorism: faith as inner experience, catechist as facilitator, the “anointing” of the community as criterion for truth.
Pius X in *Lamentabili* explicitly condemned propositions making the internal religious sense the source or criterion of dogma. The Dallas framework, baptized by this letter, effectively hands Augustine’s mystical language to pedagogues who will weaponize it against dogmatic clarity: “the Spirit” as pretext for revising content.
2. Emotionalism and Self-Referential Merit
The emphasis on joy, honor, and personal “harvest of merit” is acceptable when subordinated to objective teaching obligations. Here it floats in an atmosphere where the content of doctrine is assumed, not defined. The catechist is praised before being bound. This tone nourishes an incipient cult of the pastoral agent:
– catechist as protagonist,
– catechesis as field of “self-realization” and spiritual achievement,
– reduced stress on the fear of God, judgment, hell, and the danger of teaching error.
Integral Catholic tradition insists that to teach falsely is to incur a terrible judgment (cf. Jas 3:1), and that the content, not the psychological attitude, is decisive. The letter’s rhetoric, by omitting this, fosters a therapeutic, self-congratulatory pedagogy.
3. Ambiguity of “not in human wisdom”
The invocation of 1 Cor 2:4 – not relying on “persuasive words of human wisdom” – is strikingly ironic. The entire post-1958 trajectory of the conciliar sect is one of:
– replacing doctrinal clarity with “dialogue,”
– subordinating catechesis to human sciences,
– adopting methods from secular pedagogy and psychology,
– flattering modern “autonomy” and human rights ideology.
The letter’s pious phrase thus functions as a verbal veil: the structures it blesses will, in practice, enthrone precisely the “human wisdom” St. Paul rejects.
Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Social Order
Issued only a few years after Pius XI’s *Quas Primas* had solemnly taught *Regnum Christi* as the foundation of social order, one would expect a continental catechetical assembly to be explicitly charged with:
– teaching the universal and public Kingship of Christ,
– rejecting religious indifferentism and laicism,
– insisting that states, as well as individuals, are bound to adore and obey Christ and His Church.
Pius XI stated unambiguously that peace and order among nations are impossible unless they recognize Christ’s royal rights over laws, education, and public life. He diagnosed secularism and the marginalization of Christ in public affairs as the root of modern disasters.
This letter, however:
– makes no mention of Christ the King,
– does not urge catechists to combat liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, or the false principles condemned by Pius IX’s *Syllabus Errorum*,
– says nothing of the duty to form consciences against religious liberty errors and modernist ecumenism.
Given that the meeting involves the United States, Canada, and Latin America—regions already assaulted by freemasonic, liberal, and socialist forces—this omission is devastating.
This silence is not neutral; it is programmatic. It shifts catechesis from:
– the supernatural, dogmatic, and political Kingship of Christ,
toward:
– a generalized “religious life” and “moral holiness” disconnected from the obligation of states and societies to submit to the true Church.
Such omission directly contradicts the prior magisterium which anathematized the separation of Church and State and the exaltation of religious indifferentism (errors 55, 77–80 in the *Syllabus*). It prepares the ground for post-conciliar “religious freedom” and “pluralism” as dogmatic values—an inversion of Catholic order.
Conciliar Collegiality and the Undermining of True Authority
By solemnly delegating his “person” to preside over a continental assembly, John XXIII:
– symbolically decentralizes teaching authority into transnational bureaucratic structures,
– legitimizes a shift from the clear voice of the See of Peter (as it existed before the vacancy) and universal, objective catechisms to locally engineered “pastoral” programs.
Integral doctrine teaches that:
– the Church is a *societas perfecta*, of divine right, with a determined constitution; her teaching authority is not democratic, sociological, or conference-based;
– genuine magisterium proclaims definitively received doctrine; it does not subject it to the experiments of “experts.”
Pius IX and St. Pius X explicitly rejected attempts to make the teaching Church dependent upon the so-called “experience” or “consciousness” of the faithful or of theologians’ assemblies. Yet here, the very structure of the Dallas event reveals a new ecclesiology:
– bishops and catechetical “specialists” gathered as co-designers of pastoral content,
– the papal legate less as guardian of defined doctrine, more as encourager of a collective process.
This anticipates the infamous synodal mechanisms of the later conciliar sect, where doctrine becomes the product of working groups and “listening” sessions, no longer the top-down promulgation of immutable truths.
Doctrinal Minimalism as Prelude to Catechetical Ruin
The Dallas letter mentions:
– divine truth,
– holiness of morals,
– merit of catechists,
– prayerful union with Christ.
It does not mention, even in summary form, the concrete doctrinal content which must dominate catechesis:
– the Trinity and the consubstantial Divinity of Christ against anti-trinitarian errors;
– the Incarnation, true God and true Man;
– the Fall, original sin, and the absolute necessity of grace;
– the uniqueness of the Catholic Church as the one Ark of Salvation;
– the condemnation of heresy, schism, Freemasonry, and secret societies;
– the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory;
– the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell;
– the objective gravity of mortal sin and the danger of eternal damnation.
This omission is no accident. It is the productive silence of Modernism: retain a mist of generic “divine truth” to maintain Catholic affect, while evacuating the precise, offensive articulations that clash with liberal and ecumenical sensibilities.
St. Pius X in *Pascendi* unmasks exactly this tactic: modernists leave formulas in place but alter their content or their practical role. Catechesis, under such a regime, becomes:
– moral uplift,
– religious sentiment,
– sociological integration into a “church community,”
instead of initiation into the hard, supernatural, exclusive claims of the Catholic faith.
A Catechetical Congress under the Shadow of Condemned Errors
Symptomatically, this letter is dated 1961: on the threshold of the council that the conciliar sect exalts as its charter. Select traits evident here are the seed of that upheaval:
– Appeal to “experts” and pastoral conventions rather than simply enforcing traditional catechisms.
– Theological vagueness, allowing later innovators to smuggle in condemned theories while claiming continuity.
– Language of encouragement detached from concrete dogmatic commands and anathemas.
– Introjection of a “horizontal” ecclesiology where regional bodies deliberate and innovate.
The fruits are historically verifiable:
– catastrophic ignorance of basic catechism truths among those formed after the conciliar upheaval;
– moral relativism and acceptance of grave sins as compatible with “Christian life”;
– practical indifferentism regarding Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, and false cults;
– the inversion of mission into dialogue.
From the vantage of the pre-1958 magisterium, the catechetical anemia and doctrinal apostasy of the neo-church are not accidental failures but the logical maturation of seeds blessed in documents like this.
Pseudo-Devotional Camouflage and the Abuse of Blessing
The closing of the letter imparts an “Apostolic Blessing” to the legate and all participants.
Two grave points arise:
1. Abuse of the Petrine Symbol
When an antipope uses the language of Peter’s office to promote structures that will in practice neutralize the prior condemnations of error, he exploits the trust of the faithful. The form (a “papal” blessing on a catechetical assembly) is used to legitimize a substantive mutation in catechesis. This is precisely how a paramasonic structure seeks to capture consciences: through counterfeit continuity.
2. Blessing Detached from Doctrinal Conditions
Catholic tradition does not bless doctrinal ambiguity. Authentic papal acts either:
– explicitly reaffirm Catholic doctrine and condemn contrary errors, or
– at minimum do not create occasions for error and confusion.
Here blessing is lavished on a process that is undefined in content but rich in modern managerial assumptions. It confers a sacred aura on what, in praxis, becomes the staging ground for modernist pedagogies.
Conclusion: Catechesis Subverted by Conciliar Human Engineering
Measured solely by the standard of unchanging Catholic doctrine as taught by the pre-1958 Magisterium:
– This letter is not an innocent exhortation, but an enabling decree for a new catechetical regime.
– It instrumentalizes quotations from Scripture and Augustine to sanctify a conference culture which relativizes the binding force of dogma.
– It conspicuously omits the Kingship of Christ, the condemnations of liberalism and religious indifferentism, and the anti-modernist bulwark erected by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– It prefigures the conciliar sect’s staples: pastoral technocracy, synodalism, equivocal language, and silence on the Four Last Things and on the unique necessity of the Catholic Church.
True catechesis, according to the perennial magisterium, is:
– the faithful, docile transmission of what Christ taught, as defined infallibly by the Church;
– explicitly anti-modernist, anti-indifferentist, anti-naturalist;
– ordered to the public reign of Christ the King over persons, families, and states;
– anchored in the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments as real, propitiatory, supernatural means of salvation.
Any structure, convention, or document—however smooth in tone—that eclipses these marks and replaces them with managerial, experiential, or humanistic priorities reveals its affiliation not with the Bride of Christ, but with the conciliar caricature that occupies her visible structures. In this light, the Dallas letter stands as a modest yet crystalline witness of the systematic catechetical sabotage that follows: a carefully-worded stepping stone from the fortress of anti-modernist Catholicism to the spiritual wasteland of the Church of the New Advent.
Source:
Admodum gratum – Epistula ad Hamletum Ioannem tit. S. Clementis S. R. E. Presbyterum Cardinalem Cicognani, quem Legatum deligit ad. Conventum catechesi provehendae ex utraque America in urbe Dallas (T… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025