Sancti Iacobi Minoris’ nineteenth centenary of martyrdom provides the pretext for this Latin letter of John XXIII to Basil Heiser, head of the Conventual Franciscans. The text praises Saint James the Less and Saint Philip, commends the Roman Basilica of the Holy Apostles as an appropriate center of celebration, and links renewed devotion to the Apostles with hopeful expectations for the then-forthcoming Second Vatican Council, presenting it as a springtime of “spiritual renewal” under their patronage.
From the perspective of the unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this apparently pious letter is a subtle but real instrument for cloaking the conciliar revolution with apostolic prestige, instrumentalizing true saints to legitimize an emerging neo-church.
Apostolic Names as a Cloak for the Coming Subversion
Instrumentalizing the Apostles in Service of a Revolutionary Council
The text repeatedly extols Saint James the Less and Saint Philip as pillars of the Church, quotes their scriptural witness, and invokes their patronage. In itself this is legitimate: the veneration of the Apostles is integral to Catholic life. However, the crucial move appears when John XXIII explicitly subordinates this renewed cultus to the promotion of the Second Vatican Council:
“…hoc… cedet… cum Sanctorum Apostolorum munimine, praesidio, lumine in praesentiarum, magnum cum instat eventum, scilicet Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum Secundum, summopere opus esse…”
English: “This will turn out beneficially for Our City and for the whole Church, since in the present circumstances, with the great event at hand, namely the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, there is great need of the protection, help and light of the Holy Apostles.”
Superficially orthodox; in practice, deceitful. The entire text functions to weld the name and blood of the Apostles to an assembly that would soon enthrone principles formally condemned by the magisterium, especially by Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum* and by Saint Pius X in *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*. The letter is not a simple devotional exhortation; it is a preparatory act of symbolic capture: appropriating apostolic language to an agenda that would dilute the public Kingship of Christ, relativize the unique rights of the Catholic Church, and open the doors to laicism, ecumenism, and religious liberty—all things explicitly anathematized.
This is the first fundamental indictment: the authentic Apostolic authority is invoked precisely to introduce what the Apostles and their true successors had already condemned.
Factual Level: The Selective Narrative and the Hidden Purpose
On the explicit, factual surface, the letter:
– Recalls the 19 centuries since the martyrdom of Saint James the Less.
– Commends the Conventual Franciscans for planning solemn celebrations at the Basilica of the Holy Apostles.
– Urges catechesis on the life, deeds, and martyrdom of Saint James.
– Highlights the Epistle of James as rich in doctrine and moral teaching.
– Associates this devotion with prayers for the success of the Second Vatican Council and a “spiritual springtime.”
None of these individual points is, considered in isolation, heretical. The corruption lies in what is systematically omitted and how the facts are harnessed.
1. The letter never once recalls the perennial doctrinal combat of the Apostles against false teachers, even though Saint James, like Saint Peter and Saint Paul, stands in the line of those who anathematize adulteration of the Gospel.
2. The letter omits any precise confession of the integral Catholic faith as exclusive, immutable, and non-negotiable. Saint James is famous for teaching that faith without works is dead; John XXIII does not dare apply that rigor to the then-approaching conciliar project or to modern states which had publicly dethroned Christ.
3. Most gravely, the Council is invoked not as a fortress against the modernist plague unmasked by Saint Pius X, but as a vague “floridum ver spiritualis renovationis” (“flowering spring of spiritual renewal”), in open contrast to the anti-modernist discipline of the immediately preceding pontificates.
From the pre-1958 perspective, this is not accidental. It is a calculated softening. The Apostles are presented as harmless patrons of a generalized renewal, not as guardians of a militant, dogmatically exclusive Church that must, by divine right, condemn errors and subdue nations to Christ the King, as Pius XI forcefully demands in *Quas primas*.
Linguistic Level: Pious Ornament as Veil for a New Religion
The rhetoric is outwardly traditional: Latin language, invocations of saints, scriptural citations, references to the Roman Breviary. Yet the very refinement of the style is used as an anaesthetic.
Key linguistic traits betray the underlying program:
– Persistent use of luminous, irenic imagery: *“munimine, praesidio, lumine”*, *“floridum ver”*, *“nova collustrata luce”*. This vocabulary anticipates the conciliar obsession with “aggiornamento” and “opening to the world,” preparing minds to welcome novelty under the guise of “light.”
– Total absence of terms of condemnation: no *anathema*, no *error*, no *haeresis*, no warning against liberalism, socialism, naturalism, Freemasonry—although Pius IX and Leo XIII had explicitly named these as organized assaults of the “synagogue of Satan” against the Church.
– Strategic vagueness: “spiritual renewal” is invoked without being defined by the permanent magisterial condemnations of modern thought; “hope” is exalted without mention of the precise doctrinal foundations which alone justify supernatural hope.
This stylistic choice is not neutral. It constitutes an abandonment of the traditional papal duty to speak in clear, juridical, dogmatic terms when the faith is imperilled. *Lex orandi, lex credendi* (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): when the language of the highest authority ceases to condemn modernist principles, it tacitly legitimizes them.
Thus the ornate devotional style operates as camouflage: beneath the hymnic praise of the Apostles we find the careful excision of any element that would contradict the program of the upcoming Council. This is precisely how Modernism behaves as described by Saint Pius X: hiding subversion under reverent formulas.
Theological Level: Contradiction with the Immutable Magisterium
Now we confront the text with the pre-1958 magisterium that the analysis must uphold as the sole norm.
1. Unicity of the True Church and Condemnation of Religious Indifferentism
Pius IX in the *Syllabus* condemns as errors:
– the notion that man is free to embrace any religion based on reason alone (prop. 15),
– that salvation can be found in any religion (prop. 16),
– that good hope is to be held for those who remain outside the true Church as such (prop. 17),
– and that Protestantism is another form of true Christianity (prop. 18).
Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches that peace and order are impossible until states and societies publicly submit to Christ the King and recognize the Roman Catholic Church as His kingdom on earth. He explicitly denounces laicism and the exclusion of Christ from public life as the root of social ruin.
Against this backdrop, John XXIII’s letter commits a telling omission: while invoking the Apostles as “true lights of the world,” he never once asserts that their doctrine, preserved and defined by the pre-conciliar Church, demands the rejection of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the secular State. Instead, the Apostles’ patronage is invoked for a Council that would soon endorse precisely those condemned positions in practice and text.
Silence here is complicity. When a supposed supreme teacher speaks of an “ecumenical council” as a universal hope without binding it explicitly to the anti-liberal, anti-modernist doctrine already magisterially defined, he implicitly presents doctrine as open to evolution. This collides with Saint Pius X’s condemnation of the thesis that revelation and dogma must be reshaped according to “the progress of science” and “the consciousness of the faithful” (cf. *Lamentabili*, especially propositions 58–65).
2. Modernist Evolutionism Under a Devotional Mask
The letter’s language about a “flourishing spring” of spiritual renewal, and “new light” and “new strength” for the Church, is not anchored in a call to restore the already defined Faith against the condemned errors of the age. Instead, it prepares the psychological ground for treating the Council as a point of departure for a “new Pentecost,” a “new epoch”—precisely the narrative that would later justify doctrinal and liturgical novelties.
The immutable teaching, reaffirmed by Vatican I, is that the sense of dogma is perpetually to be retained in that which Holy Mother Church has once declared, *nec unquam ab eo sensu… recedere sub specie intellegentiae profundioris* (“nor is it ever permissible to depart from that sense under the pretext of a deeper understanding”). Any rhetoric that relativizes the past and absolutizes an upcoming council as a definitive “new light” implicitly contradicts this.
John XXIII’s omission of anti-modernist doctrine here is theological speech: his “renewal” is clearly not a call to enforce *Pascendi*, the anti-modernist oath, the condemnations of the *Syllabus*. It is the opposite. The Council he promotes would, in fact, silence and later abrogate these safeguards in practice.
3. Undermining the Militant Character of the Church
The Breviary hymn he cites calls the Apostles:
“Ecclesiarum principes, belli triumphales duces, caelestis aulae milites, et vera mundi lumina.”
English: “Princes of the Churches, triumphant leaders in battle, soldiers of the heavenly court, and the true lights of the world.”
Yet the “battle” entirely disappears from his application. The Apostles are not presented as warriors against error, but as benign patrons of a “synod” whose purpose is undefined and whose subsequent documents notoriously refuse to condemn Communism by name, soften language on heresy, and promote “dialogue” with false religions.
This is a direct clash with the pre-1958 papal doctrine that the Church must condemn error for the salvation of souls. Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII consistently teach that the hierarchy must rebuke, correct, condemn. The letter instead idealizes a Council as an event of pure benevolent enlightenment, not as a defensive and offensive act against entrenched enemies of Christ.
Theological verdict: The text is formally pious but materially modernist in its omissions and orientations. It divorces apostolic veneration from apostolic militancy and uses the former to bless the suppression of the latter.
Symptomatic Level: A Prototype of the Conciliar Sect’s Tactics
From the stance of integral Catholic faith, this letter epitomizes the pathology of the conciliar sect:
1. Appropriation of Symbols, Abandonment of Substance
– Uses Latin, saints, martyrs, relics, Roman basilica, Breviary hymns.
– Simultaneously evacuates explicit references to the doctrinal intransigence integral to those very symbols.
– Thus habituates the faithful to accept a new orientation as if it were the organic continuation of the old.
2. Replacement of Anathema with Sentiment
– The historical papal voice: doctrinal, juridical, condemnatory when necessary.
– Here: soft encouragements, “hope,” “springtime,” “new light,” “maternal gifts” – but no warning that rejecting truth damns souls; no assertion that error has no rights.
– This is precisely the transition from the Church militant to the Church of humanistic consolation.
3. Conflation of Holiness with Conciliar Obedience
– By linking the celebrations of Saint James to prayer for the success of Vatican II, it insinuates that fidelity to the Apostles now means support for the upcoming conciliar agenda.
– Any resistance to that agenda is implicitly placed outside apostolic piety.
4. Preparation of Clerical Minds for Surrender
– Addressed to a head of a major religious order, the letter models the new language: devotional, irenic, council-centred.
– This trains “clergy” to pivot their spiritual life and pastoral activity around a revolutionary assembly, rather than around the perennial magisterium’s anti-modernist fortifications.
This is how a paramasonic pseudo-church grows within Catholic structures: not first by frontal denials, but by a systematic refusal to speak as the true Church always spoke, while adorning novelty with traditional imagery.
God’s Law Versus the Humanistic Drift of the Conciliar Project
Measured against *Quas primas*, the letter’s invocation of a “spiritual spring” tied to Vatican II is ominous.
Pius XI teaches that:
– true peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ;
– individuals and states are obliged to recognize publicly the royal rights of Christ and the authority of His Church;
– laicism and the separation of Church and State are grave evils;
– the Church has an inalienable right to freedom and to govern souls independently of secular power.
John XXIII’s letter—on the eve of a Council that would de facto bless the secular-pluralist order by its silence and by its documents on religious liberty and ecumenism—does not reaffirm these theses. It offers no reminder that apostolic faith demands the public subjection of nations to Christ the King. It thereby facilitates the shift from a supernatural, hierarchical, theocratic vision to the naturalistic “dialogue” orientation of the Church of the New Advent.
This silence about the public reign of Christ and the social kingship doctrine, at such a strategic moment, is the loudest testimony against the author.
On Authority, “Clergy,” and the True Church
The letter assumes the voice of the Roman Pontiff. But the integral Catholic doctrine, as articulated by theologians such as Saint Robert Bellarmine and reflected in canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, makes clear that a manifest heretic cannot hold papal office, and that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office by the fact itself.
When one observes that the same figure who issued this letter convoked and directed a council that:
– would implicitly contradict the *Syllabus*,
– would pragmatically shelve the anti-modernist measures of Saint Pius X,
– would open the path for doctrinal relativism, ecumenical indifferentism, and religious liberty,
it is theologically coherent to state that such a revolutionary cannot be regarded as a true successor of Peter in continuity with Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII.
Thus:
– The “clergy” who adapt themselves to this new language, who treat such a council as normative over against prior condemnations, align themselves not with the Apostles, but with an anti-church usurping apostolic premises.
– Lay anti-clerical rebellion remains illegitimate; judgment belongs to the true hierarchy. But the hierarchy is identified, according to perennial doctrine, by adherence to the complete pre-conciliar Faith, the true sacraments, and the rejection of modernist novelties—not by occupancy of Vatican palaces or control of communications “dicasteries.”
Conclusion: An Apparently Harmless Letter as a Manifest of Transition
This brief letter, though devoid of overt heresy in isolated phrases, is theologically significant as a paradigmatic text of transition:
– It confirms the method diagnosed by Saint Pius X: Modernism cloaks itself in tradition while emptying tradition of its binding, dogmatic, condemnatory force.
– It exploits authentic devotion to a true Apostle-Martyr to bless a council which would become the matrix of post-conciliarism, the “conciliar sect,” and the progressive dissolution of Catholic identity.
– It replaces the vigilant, anti-liberal, anti-Masonic, anti-modernist stance of prior pontiffs with a sentimental optimism in “renewal,” without reaffirming the doctrinal non-negotiables that bind every true pastor.
Therefore, judged solely by the unchanging doctrine prior to 1958, this text is not an innocuous act of piety. It is a controlled use of apostolic symbolism to sanctify the approaching demolition of apostolic tradition. It prefigures the systematic betrayal: the name of James the Apostle invoked, while the faith he died for is prepared to be procedurally neutralized in favour of a man-centred, conciliatory, naturalistic neo-religion.
Source:
Apostolorum choro – Epistula ad Basilium M. Heiser, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Conventualium Moderatorem Generalem, undevicesimo volvente saeculo ex quo S. Iacobus Minor Ap. glorioso martyrio cursum vita… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025