The letter attributed to John XXIII (“Ioannes PP. XXIII”) appoints Cardinal Cento as legate to the celebrations in Ávila marking four centuries since St Teresa of Jesus began the Discalced Carmelite reform, praises Teresa’s contemplative and penitential ideal, extols cloistered prayer as eminent apostolate, and links Teresian spirituality to hopes for abundant fruits from the then-upcoming Second Vatican Council. It clothes the conciliar revolution with borrowed Teresian authority, instrumentalizing a great Doctor of the Church as a pious veil for the incipient neo-church.
Teresa of Jesus Co‑opted: Mystical Doctor as Ornament of the Conciliar Revolt
Historical Reality versus Conciliar Appropriation of St Teresa
At the factual level, this letter constructs a carefully curated narrative:
– It recalls that St Teresa of Jesus, in Ávila on 24 August 1562, founded the monastery of St Joseph as the starting point of the Carmelite reform, characterized by austerity, enclosure, poverty, and contemplative prayer.
– It evokes her collaboration with St John of the Cross and the erection of Discalced houses for men and women.
– It rightly notes her zeal for priests, theologians, and missionaries, her desire for the salvation of souls, and her insistence that her daughters embrace prayer, penance, and reparation as a true apostolate.
– It rather solemnly lauds enclosed contemplative life as profoundly fruitful for the Church, even amid the growing demands of external apostolate.
– It then welds this genuine doctrine directly to the expectation that the imminent Vatican II will be a “new springtime” of beauty and grace for the Church, and explicitly exhorts the Teresian family to purchase these hoped-for conciliar fruits with prayer and voluntary sufferings.
Here the letter performs a double operation:
1. It borrows the unimpeachable authority of St Teresa — canonized in 1622, praised by Gregory XV, honored by St Pius X — to confer a halo of continuity on the conciliar project.
2. It silently suppresses the dogmatic, anti-liberal, anti-modernist orientation of the pre-1958 Magisterium, which condemned precisely the principles that Vatican II and the conciliar sect would enshrine.
This is not innocent praise; it is a strategic annexation of a Counter-Reformation mystic into the ideological arsenal of the revolution that would dismantle the Counter-Reformation.
Conciliar Flattery Cloaked in Piety: The Linguistic Mask of Apostasy
The rhetoric of the letter is outwardly devout, restrained, apparently orthodox. Yet its language reveals a program:
– It continually speaks of “joy,” “celebration,” “triumph,” “flowers,” “springtime,” to dissolve the gravity of combat against error into sentimental festivity.
– It avoids any mention of:
– the dangers of heresy ravaging the 20th century,
– condemned liberalism and laicism,
– the concrete doctrinal battles to which Teresa’s reform was historically allied (Trent, anti-Protestant defense, strict dogmatic fidelity).
– St Teresa’s severe words about damnation, false spiritualities, disobedience, and laxity are selectively cited, shorn of polemical edge, converted into generic exhortations to “pray for sinners,” while the principal concrete sinners of 1962 — modernists inside the hierarchy — are never named.
Most revealing is the passage which bends Teresian sacrifice to serve the conciliar agenda:
“peculiaribus supplicationibus et voluntariis cruciatibus divinam largitatem eidem conciliet, qua e proximo Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano Secundo novum veluti ver, cumulatae pulchritudinis spiritualis praenuntium, exoriatur”
(“that by particular supplications and voluntary sufferings [the Teresian family] may win for her [the Church] the divine bounty, whereby from the forthcoming Second Ecumenical Vatican Council there may arise, as it were, a new springtime, the harbinger of accumulated spiritual beauty.”)
Here the mask drops. The cloistered victims are summoned not to obtain the defeat of Modernism, but to underwrite with their blood and tears the very assembly that would enthrone it. The Discalced Carmel, raised by St Teresa to protect the Church’s dogmatic integrity and priestly holiness, is conscripted liturgically to legitimize the conciliar subversion.
The tone is therefore duplicitous: suaviter in modo, sed callide in re. It feigns continuity while carefully redirecting supernatural capital (Teresian sanctity) toward a naturalistic, humanistic project later codified in religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterium: Teresa Set against Pius IX and Pius X
Measured against integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958 — the only legitimate norm — the key move of this text is the fusion of:
– authentic Catholic praise of contemplative religious life; and
– the expectation that Vatican II (as conceived by John XXIII) will be a grace-laden “new spring.”
But the principles actually articulated and implemented by the conciliar revolution are those solemnly condemned by the true Magisterium:
– The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemns the separation of Church and State, indifferentism, religious liberty, and the subordination of the Church to secular ideologies. Yet Vatican II’s Dignitatis humanae and its praxis canonize what Pius IX proscribed, namely:
– the notion that the State must accord juridical freedom to all cults as a positive ideal,
– the practical abdication of the public rights of Christ the King.
– Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi anathematizes:
– the evolution of dogma,
– subjection of doctrine to historical consciousness,
– reduction of revelation to experience,
– denial of the Church’s right to bind consciences to her anti-modernist decisions.
The council towards which this letter directs Teresian prayer is precisely the forum through which the conciliar sect would:
– rehabilitate the errors of liberalism and Modernism,
– dilute the anti-Masonic and anti-liberal condemnations of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
– substitute “dialogue” and “human dignity” for the non-negotiable regnum Christi in society, explicitly defended in Pius XI’s Quas primas.
Thus the letter’s theological strategy is:
– to annex Teresa to a project that contradicts the doctrinal context in which the true Church had always placed her;
– to mute her Counter-Reformation militancy, leaving only a de-fanged, “spiritualized” Teresa who can be invoked alongside aggiornamento.
This is a betrayal of Teresa herself. Her reform flourished as part of the Tridentine consolidation of doctrine, discipline, and anti-Protestant clarity. To weaponize her against integral Catholicism by chaining her name to Vatican II is an act of spiritual forgery.
Selective Teresianism: Mysticism without Dogmatic Militancy
The text rightly notes:
– Teresa’s insistence on enclosure, poverty, mortification.
– Her conviction that prayer and self-offering for priests and preachers are central to her vocation.
– Her burning zeal for souls, including infidels and heretics.
What it does not dare to say:
– Teresa’s mystical life is inseparable from absolute submission to dogma, to the Roman Pontiff as then truly Catholic, and to the anti-heresy combat of her age.
– Her zeal for “heretics” is not ecumenical sentimentalism; it presupposes that they must enter the one true Church or perish.
– Her severity about illusions, false revelations, and disobedient “spiritualities” directly condemns the very ethos of modernist subjectivism.
Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion — that in 1962 her spirit demands renewed and harsher condemnation of Modernism, Freemasonry, laicism, and all forms of doctrinal dilution — the letter diverts her intercession to support the Council that will repeal in practice the Syllabus, relativize Quas primas, and suffocate Pascendi.
This silence is itself an accusation. In an age when St Pius X had identified Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies”, a genuine successor of Peter recalling Teresa’s reform would necessarily:
– exhort Carmel to pray and do penance for the extirpation of Modernism;
– demand unwavering adherence to anti-modernist oaths;
– denounce liberal and ecumenist infiltrations of clergy and seminaries;
– present Teresa as model of doctrinal intransigence and anti-worldliness.
Instead we find saccharine recollection and a programmatic omission of the real enemy: the “enemies within,” against whom St Pius X had warned. This omission is not accidental; it is programmatic.
Usurped Auctoritas: How a Paramasonic Structure Uses Saints as Decoration
The letter belongs to the early stage of the conciliar sect’s strategy: to maintain a façade of continuity while preparing doctrinal and liturgical demolition. Its method is recognizable:
– invoke saints canonized before 1958;
– quote their spiritual counsels;
– link them by smooth transitions to conciliar themes: “new springtime,” “aggiornamento,” “pastoral” openings;
– never repeat the anti-liberal, anti-modernist definitions that gave those saints their concrete doctrinal context.
This is precisely the hermeneutica subversionis: a counterfeit “hermeneutic of continuity” that cloaks rupture under borrowed language.
From an integral Catholic standpoint, several points are decisive:
1. The one who signs as “Ioannes PP. XXIII” initiated a council whose texts and implementation stand in objective contradiction with the solemn condemnations of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. A manifest, consistent promotion of condemned principles (religious liberty, collegiality understood against Vatican I, ecumenism with false religions, practical denial of the social kingship of Christ) is incompatible with the papal office as defined by Vatican I and the universal teaching of the Fathers.
2. Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): by turning Teresian Carmel into spiritual support troops for Vatican II, the conciliar sect attempts to bend the lex orandi of contemplative orders to serve its new lex credendi.
3. Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu (“good arises from an integral cause; evil from any defect”): the apparently orthodox praise of Teresa is rendered poisonous when used as a means to endorse and sacralize the conciliar revolution.
The saints are not the property of a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. To cite Gregory XV or St Pius X while preparing the systematic inversion of their doctrinal work is a refined blasphemy.
Naturalistic “New Spring” versus the Kingship of Christ
The letter’s climax is the invocation of a “new springtime” from the coming council, described in flowery, aesthetic categories: “pulchritudo spiritualis,” “ver novum.”
Contrast this with Pius XI in Quas primas:
– He teaches that true peace and order will not return until states and societies publicly recognize and submit to the social reign of Christ the King.
– He condemns laicism, indifferentism, neutral states, and the expulsion of Christ from public life as the root of modern disasters.
– He insists that Christ’s rights over individuals and nations are objective, juridical, and must shape laws, education, and political authority.
The council that John XXIII is soliciting Carmel to support would in fact:
– effectively abandon the program of Quas primas,
– enthrone the myth of religious liberty as a “right” of error,
– extol “human dignity” and “human rights” in a laicized framework,
– reduce the Kingship of Christ to an interior, “eschatological” or “spiritual” symbol, precisely what Quas primas rejects.
Thus the most serious unspoken premise of the letter is:
that the renewal of the Church will come not from a firmer application of pre-existing condemnations and the social Kingship of Christ, but from a novel “pastoral” council which will reconcile the Church with liberal modernity.
This premise is condemned:
– implicitly by Pius IX’s rejection of the idea that the Roman Pontiff must “come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” (Syllabus, prop. 80);
– explicitly by Pius X’s denunciation of the attempt to “reconcile” Catholicism with the errors of the age as the program of Modernism.
Therefore, the letter’s “hope” is not theological hope grounded in immutable doctrine; it is ideological expectation of a man-made revolution, perfumed by the language of Teresa.
Erasing the True Battle: Silence on Modernism and Internal Enemies
Most damning is what the letter does not say.
In 1962:
– Modernist theology had already corroded seminaries and universities.
– Ecumenical experiments and liturgical tampering were underway.
– The enemies St Pius X identified — those who “hide within the very bosom of the Church” — were preparing to dominate the Council.
Yet this letter:
– never mentions Modernism by name;
– never recalls the binding force of Pascendi, Lamentabili, the Anti-modernist Oath;
– never warns Teresian Carmel against false mysticism, rationalist exegesis, or liturgical profanation;
– never calls for the defense of the integrity of the Most Holy Sacrifice against innovators.
Instead, it directs the prayers and sacrifices of cloistered nuns toward the success of an event designed and exploited by those very internal enemies. This diversion of supernatural resources away from the real battlefield toward the enthronement of the enemy program is spiritually catastrophic.
Silence here is culpable. When a text speaks extensively of prayer and reparation but omits the name of the reigning heresy, it functions as a smokescreen for that heresy.
Contemplation as Alibi for Structural Apostasy
The letter is correct in affirming:
– contemplative life is not opposed to apostolate, but its heart;
– cloistered prayer is a powerful, even “eminent,” apostolate.
But in the hands of the conciliar sect, this truth is turned upside down:
– The contemplatives are urged to pray for the prosperity of structures, texts, and “reforms” which systematically dismantle the doctrinal, liturgical, and ascetical framework necessary for authentic contemplation.
– The same post-conciliar apparatus would go on to:
– dilute enclosure,
– desacralize liturgy within monasteries,
– introduce horizontal “community” ideologies into cloisters,
– suppress or deform many traditional contemplative institutes.
Thus contemplation is first invoked, then strangled. St Teresa’s daughters are asked to intercede for the success of the very revolution that will suffocate the Teresian spirit. The letter is the gentle prelude to subsequent acts of violence against religious life.
A genuine Catholic document would have done the opposite:
– warn of looming attacks on cloister and liturgical integrity;
– command the Teresians to hold fast to their constitutions against innovators;
– identify their prayer as a shield against Modernist infiltration.
Instead, this letter arranges their candid cooperation in their own future undermining.
Conclusion: Teresa Cannot Be Patroness of the Conciliar Sect
When stripped of pious verbiage, the logic of the letter is:
– St Teresa’s contemplative, penitential reform is good and fruitful.
– Therefore, let her family, in union with “John XXIII,” pray and suffer so that Vatican II may produce a “new springtime” of the Church.
– Implicitly: Vatican II is the divinely willed continuation and flowering of Teresa’s work.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine:
– This identification is intolerable. The conciliar program — as expressed in its texts and more clearly in its consistent praxis — negates the Syllabus, suffocates Quas primas, relativizes Pascendi, and enthrones principles already condemned. It is not Teresa’s springtime, but the ver modernismi — the “spring” of Modernism.
– To conscript Teresa as patroness of such a project is an act of spiritual usurpation. Her true legacy belongs with Trent, with the anti-Protestant and anti-liberal Magisterium, with the defense of the Most Holy Sacrifice and Catholic dogma, not with the conciliar sect that profanes all three.
Therefore:
– The authentic Teresian vocation today is not to bless the conciliar “new advent,” but to oppose it:
– to cling to the traditional Latin liturgy and sacramental theology;
– to adhere to pre-1958 condemnations of liberalism, indifferentism, and Modernism;
– to offer prayer and sacrifice for the restoration of the visible structures of the Church to the integral Catholic faith, and for the defeat of the paramasonic pseudo-church occupying her places.
Any text that dares to yoke Teresa of Jesus to the conciliar revolution, while remaining silent about Modernism and the Kingship of Christ over societies, stands self-condemned as part of that revolution’s ideological superstructure: superficially devout, essentially subversive.
Source:
Ad Ferdinandum tit. S. Eustachii S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem Cento, quem Legatimi eligit ut Abulae in Hispania religiosis caerimoniis praesideat, quarto saeculo exeunte ab inchoata a S. Teresia a Iesu … (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025