In this brief Latin letter, John XXIII addresses Bishop Beniamino Ubaldi of Gubbio on the 8th centenary of the death of St. Ubaldo, praising the city’s traditional devotion to its heavenly patron, commending the planned celebrations, and exhorting the faithful—very generically—to imitate the saint’s virtues, renew Christian life, and trust in his intercession, concluding with an “Apostolic Blessing.” Behind this apparently harmless rhetoric stands the subtle inauguration of a new cult of sentimentality and civic religiosity, designed to cloak the conciliar revolution with a veneer of tradition while evacuating the Faith of its doctrinal sharpness and social kingship of Christ.
John XXIII’s Pious Vernish as a Prelude to Doctrinal Subversion
Contextual Unmasking: A Letter of “Devotion” Issued on the Eve of Revolution
This document, dated 5 May 1960, comes from the pen of John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar upheaval. It appears under the tranquil form of an episcopal congratulation on the anniversary of St. Ubaldo’s holy death. Yet, in light of immutable Catholic teaching prior to 1958 and the known program of aggiornamento publicly promoted by John XXIII, this letter must be read as part of a broader strategy: to harness local traditional devotions as decorative camouflage for a radical reorientation of the Church towards naturalism, humanism, and institutional self-dissolution.
Key elements of the text, which at first glance seem exemplary, in fact betray:
– A reduction of sanctity to civic benefit and emotional attachment.
– An evasive, carefully sanitized language devoid of doctrinal clarity on sin, grace, sacrifice, judgment, and the Kingship of Christ.
– The instrumentalization of an authentic pre-conciliar saint for the emerging neo-religion of “good feelings,” social harmony, and horizontal “renewal.”
Already Pius IX in the Syllabus (prop. 80) condemned the pretension that the Roman Pontiff “ought to come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” Yet John XXIII’s entire pontificate was precisely framed as such a reconciliation; thus even a short occasional letter must be scrutinized as a piece in the same mosaic.
Factual Level: Trivialization and Selective Memory Around St. Ubaldo
The letter outlines, in polished but anodyne phrases, the figure of St. Ubaldo:
– He is praised as pastor and father, “vitiorum acerrimus extirpator, libertatis vindex, pacis fraternaeque concordiae conciliator studiosissimus.”
– His role in protecting the city from temporal danger is highlighted.
– The loyalty of the people of Gubbio towards him, especially in trials, is commended.
But note what is done and what is not done.
1. Emphasis on civic benefit:
– The text underlines how Ubaldo’s holiness “contributed beneficially to the good of the city” and freed it from temporal peril.
– This is true historically, but here the accent is not on the supernatural reign of Christ, not on the Cross, not on penance, not on dogma, but on the saint as guarantor of civil peace and municipal identity.
– This shift from *sacrum* to “sacralized civicism” mirrors the conciliar sect’s later exploitation of local devotions, processions, and “patron saints” as folkloric glue for a community that has lost the Faith.
2. Vague, generic moralism:
– John XXIII urges that, inspired by St. Ubaldo, the faithful “refer the precepts of religion into public and private morals” and renew Christian life.
– Yet no concrete doctrinal or moral content is given: there is no mention of the necessity of the *state of grace*, of avoiding mortal sin, of the Four Last Things, of the binding dogmatic authority of the Church, or of the sovereignty of Christ the King over public life.
– Compared to Pius XI, who in *Quas Primas* explicitly taught that without the social reign of Christ, there can be no true peace, this minimalism is striking. It is a paradigm case of *silentia gravissima* (gravest silences).
3. Lack of doctrinal anchoring:
– The letter never recalls the dogmatic foundations of cultus sanctorum: that saints are crowned victors by grace, models of Catholic doctrine lived to perfection, intercessors precisely because they professed and defended the one true Faith.
– Instead, we encounter a harmless moral exemplar, suitable for any “Christian-inspired” humanitarian narrative.
Thus, in factual terms, the document manipulates true elements (the sanctity of Ubaldo, legitimate devotion, the value of his intercession) but detaches them from the integral doctrinal context, emptying them of their supernatural cutting edge. This is symptom, not accident.
Linguistic Level: Pastoral Sentimentalism as Vehicle of Modernist Dilution
The rhetoric of this letter is paradigmatic for John XXIII’s style: soft, sentimental, resolutely non-combative.
Characteristic features:
– Honeyed formulae: repeated references to “alacre pietatis studium,” “periucundo laetitiae sensu,” “arctissimo suavissimoque amoris vinculo.”
– Absence of any warning: there is no allusion to the contemporary crisis of faith, to heresy, to modernism, to moral corruption, to the attacks of masonry and secularism, although Pius IX and St. Pius X had already unmasked these as central enemies of the Church.
– Euphemistic appeal to “renewal”: calls for “christianae vitae renovatio” are left entirely undefined, creating the linguistic corridor through which, a few years later, the conciliar revolution would claim legitimacy for its own “renewal” against immutable doctrine.
This linguistic strategy is not innocent. St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and the decree *Lamentabili sane exitu* condemned precisely the tactic of cloaking doctrinal subversion in elastic, irenic, emotive language, avoiding dogmatic sharpness while invoking “life,” “experience,” and “renewal.”
Here, John XXIII’s vocabulary foreshadows the Council’s destructive ambiguity:
– No *anathema sit*;
– No precise doctrinal enunciation;
– Only a mellifluous exhortation compatible equally with integral Catholicism and with its modernist parody.
Verba volant, dogmata pereunt (the words drift, the dogmas perish) when authority abandons the clear, combative style demanded by prior popes in the face of error.
Theological Level: Silencing Christ the King and the True Nature of the Church
From the perspective of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, the gravest indictment of this letter is not what it says, but what it systematically omits.
1. No assertion of the exclusive truth of the Catholic Faith
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus (prop. 15–18), condemned religious indifferentism and the notion that any religion might lead to salvation. Authentic papal teaching in similar commemorations repeatedly emphasized the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church.
– This letter speaks only of “christifideles” and “religionis ardor,” as if their Faith were an unproblematic given in 1960, without warning against errors or the encroaching liberalism which Pius IX and St. Pius X vehemently denounced.
– There is no militant affirmation: *Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* in its proper sense; no call to defend the Faith against modernist infiltrations branded by St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
The silence, in light of the historical moment and the magisterial tradition, is theologically deafening.
2. No explicit call to public recognition of Christ’s Kingship
– Already Pius XI in *Quas Primas* demanded that individuals and states submit publicly to the social reign of Christ, teaching that the calamities of nations arise because they exclude Christ and His law from public life.
– John XXIII refers to temporal benefits brought by St. Ubaldo, but never draws the doctrinal conclusion that city and state laws must conform to divine and ecclesiastical law; never reminds civil authority that it is bound *ex iustitia* to honor Christ and His Church.
– This omission aligns with the trajectory that would culminate in the conciliar sect’s cult of “religious liberty” and the separation of Church and State condemned in Syllabus (prop. 55, 77–79).
Thus, the saint is turned into a patron of civic prosperity and horizontal concord rather than a champion of the objective rights of Christ the King and His one Church.
3. No mention of sacrifice, sin, or the necessity of grace
– The Most Holy Sacrifice, confession, penance, Eucharistic reparation — all central in pre-conciliar saints’ lives — are effectively invisible.
– The “renewal” proposed is moralistic, not sacramental and dogmatic; it is a call to behave better, not to root life in the propitiatory Sacrifice, in true doctrine, and in separation from error.
– St. Pius X in *Lamentabili* condemned the reduction of dogma and sacraments to symbolic expressions of religious feeling. This letter’s tone, though not formally heretical, moves perceptibly in that direction by its omissions and ambiguities.
In theology as in medicine, suppression of essential elements produces lethal deficiency. The letter is an exercise in theological anemia.
Symptomatic Level: A Prototype of the Conciliar Sect’s Manipulation of Tradition
This page must be read prophetically in light of what followed:
– John XXIII soon convenes the council that becomes the platform for doctrines and practices condemned by prior magisterium: religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, anthropocentric liturgy.
– The conciliar structures occupying the Vatican thereafter deploy precisely this model: retain selected external devotions, local feasts, and saintly figures; saturate them with vague ethical exhortations; eradicate doctrinal militancy and the demand for social subordination to Christ.
– Authentic saints are conscripted into the propaganda of a new religion which Pius IX and St. Pius X had already identified as a work of Masonic, naturalistic undermining of the Church.
From this perspective, the letter is:
– A catechetical instrument of de-fanging sanctity: St. Ubaldo becomes a symbol of “peace, liberty, concord,” detached from militant defense of Catholic truth.
– A rehearsal of the conciliar style of teaching: sentimental, “pastoral,” non-condemnatory; speaking of “renewal” while never defining its doctrinal content, thus allowing revolutionary reinterpretation.
Corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst). To retain the name of a saint while gutting his doctrinal significance is worse than open hostility; it is a sacrilegious misuse of what is holy.
The Betrayal of Pre-Conciliar Magisterium: Contrast with Pius IX and St. Pius X
To expose the bankruptcy of this approach, it suffices to juxtapose it with the principles laid out in the documents provided (which reflect the authentic magisterium):
1. Against Modernist Evolution and Silence
– St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* condemns the propositions that dogmas evolve from religious experience, that the Church cannot fix the sense of Scripture definitively, that faith is a sum of probabilities.
– John XXIII’s ethos—as seen even here—is to avoid doctrinal combat; he neither recalls these condemnations nor warns against the already rampant currents they target.
– The purely exhortative tone, detached from prior condemnations, functions practically as their suspension in the consciousness of the faithful, preparing acceptance of what had been anathematized.
2. Against Secularist Autonomy
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the notion that morality and civil laws can be separated from divine and ecclesiastical authority (prop. 56–57).
– Instead of reaffirming this in a civic context (city, patron, temporal protection), John XXIII reduces himself to pious compliments without recalling that states and municipalities are objectively bound to Christ’s law and the rights of the Church.
– This passivity nourishes the illusion that religion may be limited to cultural ornament and personal sentiment, precisely as the enemies of Christ desired.
3. Against Naturalistic Humanism
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* identifies laicism and the exclusion of Christ from public life as the root “plague” of society; the remedy is explicit confession of Christ’s kingship.
– John XXIII, while mentioning “gravibus Ecclesiae temporibus,” never names the real causes indicted by his predecessors: modernism, liberalism, masonry. Nor does he call Gubbio to public acts recognizing Christ as King of society.
– Such omissions are not neutral; they effectively concede space to naturalism and the cult of man.
Therefore, judged by the pre-1958 norm—which is the sole authentic Catholic norm—this letter stands condemned as a symptom of doctrinal and pastoral abdication.
On Authority, “Blessing,” and the Conciliar Usurpation
The letter concludes with an “Apostolic Blessing,” presumed to flow from the Roman Pontiff. However:
– Catholic theology (summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine and others, as recalled in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file) teaches that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church: *non potest esse caput qui non est membrum* (he cannot be the head who is not a member).
– John XXIII, by convoking and steering an agenda that would contradict prior papal teaching on religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the immutability of doctrine, positions himself objectively at variance with the consistent magisterium of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI.
– Hence his “blessing,” within the logic of integral Catholic doctrine, lacks the guarantee of a true pontifical act protecting the flock in truth; it belongs to the counterfeit authority of the conciliar revolution.
This letter, then, is not a benign curial courtesy, but an artifact of a usurped structure seeking to maintain external appearances of continuity while internally shifting the axis away from dogma and the social Kingship of Christ.
Saints Enlisted Against the Faith They Defended
The most perverse effect of such documents is pedagogical:
– The faithful are trained to associate sanctity with:
– Cultural festivities;
– Generic moralism;
– Emotional attachment to a “patron” invoked primarily for temporal protection and civic unity.
– They are not reminded:
– That saints, including St. Ubaldo, were defenders of hierarchical, dogmatic Catholicism;
– That they would have abhorred the modernist dissolution of doctrine and the leveling of all religions condemned by the Syllabus and *Pascendi*;
– That their intercession cannot be invoked in the service of a neo-religion which dethrones Christ socially and doctrinally.
Thus, this type of letter functions as a catechesis of spiritual disarmament. It teaches Catholics to love saints without imitating their doctrinal intransigence; to celebrate tradition while tolerating its subversion.
Conclusion: Beneath the Perfume of “Alacre Pietatis,” the Stench of Apostasy
Measured by the unchanging standard of the pre-1958 magisterium:
– This text is theologically emaciated, carefully avoiding clear doctrinal affirmations that had been insisted upon by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI.
– It exemplifies the modernist method condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: maintain traditional forms and names, but drain them of precise doctrinal content, replacing them with sentimental, adaptable exhortations.
– It prepares the faithful to accept the conciliar sect’s project: a Church reconciled with liberalism, religious pluralism, and the cult of man, adorned with nostalgic devotions emptied of their militant Catholic essence.
Therefore, the integral Catholic conscience is compelled not to be bewitched by the smooth Latin and courteous epithets, but to recognize in this “pious” letter the early, perfumed vapors of the smoke that would soon darken the sanctuary. The only authentic homage to St. Ubaldo is to stand where he stood: with the perennial, anti-modernist, socially royal Christ, against every attempt—however sugar-coated—to dethrone Him.
Source:
Alacre pietatis – Ad Beniaminum Ubaldi, episcopum eugubinum, octavo expleto saeculo a Sancti Ubaldi, illius civitatis caelestis patroni, pio obitu (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025