After briefly invoking the Holy Ghost, John XXIII announces his decision to convoke the First Synod of the Roman Diocese, to be opened on Sunday, 24 January 1960, in the Lateran Archbasilica, with the stated aims that the Catholic faith should be more vigorous in Rome as an example to others, that Christian morals should grow, and that the discipline of clergy and people be better adapted to “the needs of our age” and strengthened. In this seemingly pious administrative note appears the programmatic seed of the conciliar sect: the subordination of doctrine, morals, and ecclesiastical discipline to the mutable demands of the contemporary world, under the usurped authority of a manifestly modernist antipope.
The Foundational Gesture of the Neo-Church: A Synod against the Eternal Rome
From Roman Primacy to Diocesan Experiment: A Program of Inversion
The text is short, but its significance is immense. Here the self-styled John XXIII, already preparing the pseudo-council that would dissolve public Catholicity, convokes the “First Synod” of the Roman Diocese in 1960. He frames it as:
“ut catholica fides… magis magisque revirescat… ut christiani mores salutare incrementum capiant, utque cleri populique disciplina aptius nostrae huius aetatis necessitatibus respondeat” – “that the Catholic faith may grow stronger, that Christian morals may take on salutary increase, and that the discipline of clergy and people may respond more fittingly to the needs of our age.”
On the factual surface:
– He invokes the Holy Ghost and traditional Roman patrons (the Blessed Virgin Mary as Salus Populi Romani, St John the Baptist, St John the Evangelist, SS Peter and Paul).
– He situates the event at the Lateran, the true episcopal cathedral of Rome.
– He gives it solemn canonical form as “Primam Synodum” of the Diocese of Rome.
But within this brevity lies a calculated inversion. The one who had already signalled aggiornamento sets up Rome itself as a laboratory in which “discipline” is explicitly to be re-shaped according to “the needs of our age.” The See which must be the visible bastion of immutable doctrine is turned into the pilot-project of adaptation. This is not accidental rhetoric; it is the methodological blueprint of the Church of the New Advent.
Rhetoric of Piety as a Veil for Programmatic Rupture
John XXIII clothes his decree in the venerable language of Roman devotion:
– Marian title *Salus Populi Romani*;
– Reference to the Lateran as “Nostra Cathedralis aedes”;
– Invocation of Apostolic patrons.
Yet, as unchanging Catholic theology teaches, *devout language does not validate a subversive intention*. The Fathers and pre-1958 Magisterium consistently unmask those who, while invoking Christ and the saints, undermine the foundations of the faith in practice and legislation.
Key observation on tone and structure:
1. The strong supernatural vocabulary (Holy Spirit, glory of God, saints’ patronage) is immediately yoked to the program of aptior responsio necessitatibus huius aetatis – a “more fitting response to the needs of this age.” The ordering is inverted:
– Instead of judging the age by the rule of faith, the text prepares to adjust ecclesiastical discipline to the age.
2. Supernatural ends are not concretely specified:
– No mention of the *state of grace*.
– No mention of the *Four Last Things* (death, judgment, heaven, hell).
– No emphasis on the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as propitiatory, nor on the unique necessity of Catholic worship for salvation.
– No denunciation of errors already ravaging the 20th century: Modernism, indifferentism, socialism, Freemasonry, false ecumenism.
This silence is not neutral. In the wake of Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, after the condemnations in *Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*, *Quas Primas*, *Mortalium Animos*, *Humani Generis*, the Bishop of Rome’s claim to seek renewal of faith and morals, while omitting any explicit reaffirmation of condemned errors and their remedies, is theologically symptomatic. The gravest omission is precisely the absence of a clear profession of the integral doctrine these predecessors taught, replaced by an elastic formula of “responding to the needs of our age.”
The Poisoned Phrase: “Responding to the Needs of Our Age”
The heart of the chirograph lies in:
“disciplina aptius nostrae huius aetatis necessitatibus respondeat ac firmiter roboretur.”
Analysis:
– *Disciplina* in Catholic tradition is not arbitrary regulation but the concrete embodiment and protection of doctrine. It flows from dogma; it is not an autonomous or experimental field.
– To subject discipline to “the needs of our age” without first defining those “needs” in terms of man’s supernatural end, the kingship of Christ, and the condemnation of modern errors, is to open the door to the very naturalism and liberalism condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* exposes the root of contemporary evils as the rejection of the reign of Christ over public and private life, and he prescribes the public recognition of Christ’s Kingship as the remedy: peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ. To speak, therefore, of strengthening discipline by adapting it to the “needs” of an apostate age, without explicitly subordinating those “needs” to the reign of Christ the King, contradicts that encyclical’s entire logic.
Pius IX’s *Syllabus* condemns propositions that the Church must adapt to liberal civilization, submit to the State, accept religious indifferentism, and reconcile itself with “progress” so understood (notably propositions 55, 77–80). The language of John XXIII’s decree harmonizes not with the Syllabus, but with the very mentality it anathematized, by insinuating that the epoch itself sets non-negotiable conditions to which ecclesiastical life must “respond.”
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): a diocesan synod of Rome, conceived in this spirit, prepares the alteration of the Church’s practical self-expression so that the faith itself can be reinterpreted.
Linguistic Symptoms of Modernist Mentality
Even this minimalist text manifests a problematic rhetoric:
1. Abstract optimism:
– Talk of faith “reinvigorated,” morals “growing,” discipline “strengthened.”
– No mention of sin, error, heresy, hell, or divine punishment.
– This is the psychological optimism explicitly unmasked by Pius X as typical of Modernism, opposed to the sober doctrine of fallen nature.
2. Indefinite “needs of our age”:
– Who defines them? According to what criterion?
– The text is silent, implicitly surrendering that discernment to the same world which rejects the social kingship of Christ.
– This naturalistic indeterminacy is the entry-point to all subsequent abuses: collegiality, democratization, false “rights,” ecumenism.
3. Sacralizing bureaucratic revolution:
– Invocation of saints and the Holy Ghost creates an aura of continuity.
– The actual operative clause is bureaucratic and programmatic: a diocesan synod as structural mechanism for adaptation.
– Thus the ancient devotions are reduced to ceremonial decoration for a new ecclesial project.
This is precisely how a *paramasonic structure* speaks: retaining sacred vocabulary while directing it toward an anthropocentric, epoch-serving transformation.
Doctrinal Contrast: True Synodality vs. Conciliarist Engineering
Authentic diocesan synods in Catholic tradition:
– Are instruments by which the bishop applies universal doctrine in a concrete manner;
– Presuppose complete submission to the perennial Magisterium;
– Aim at repressing errors, abuses, and laxity in discipline so as to restore traditional order.
Pre-1958 Popes, especially Pius X, demanded:
– Condemnation of Modernist propositions;
– Strict censorship and oath against Modernism;
– Maintenance of scholastic theology and Thomistic method.
In this light, a Roman diocesan synod convoked by John XXIII:
– Without reaffirming the anti-Modernist oath;
– Without denouncing the liberal and Masonic errors that Pius IX and Leo XIII had shown to be at the root of social apostasy;
– While already announcing a “council” designed, as subsequent history proved, to reconcile the conciliar sect with liberalism and religious relativism;
is not a neutral or praiseworthy act. It is **a juridical facade for doctrinal subversion**.
Salus animarum suprema lex (the salvation of souls is the supreme law) cannot be invoked to justify conforming ecclesiastical discipline to secular mentalities condemned by the Magisterium. When such language is used without doctrinal clarity, it is evidence that the authority claimed is not exercised in continuity with the true Church, but against it.
The Silence on the Kingship of Christ: Implicit Denial by Omission
In *Quas Primas*, Pius XI teaches:
– That the calamities of the world stem from the exclusion of Christ and His law from public life.
– That the remedy is the public, juridical, social reign of Christ over individuals, families, and states.
– That the Church must never reconcile herself with laicism and secularism.
Measured against this:
– John XXIII’s decree, despite speaking of “maior Dei gloria,” does not reassert the duty of public authorities—including those of Rome itself—to submit to Christ the King and His Church.
– It speaks of “example to others,” yet does not define that example as intransigent fidelity to Rome’s anti-liberal doctrine, but as an adaptive discipline accommodating contemporary demands.
Such silence, in a magisterial-style act from the occupant of Rome, is not a detail. It is the procedural denial of Christ’s Kingship in the very place where it must be confessed most explicitly. To omit, where tradition demands clarity, is to betray. The path from this omission leads directly to the later celebration of religious liberty, collegiality, and the cult of man in the Council and the subsequent actions of the conciliar sect.
Continuity of Condemned Errors under a Sacral Mask
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, several structural correspondences emerge:
– The idea that ecclesial discipline must adapt positively to modern civilization echoes the condemned proposition 80 of Pius IX’s *Syllabus*: that the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.
– The veiled prioritization of “this age’s needs” prepares the acceptance of errors condemned repeatedly:
– Religious indifferentism (Syllabus 15–18).
– Separation of Church and State (Syllabus 55).
– Autonomy of human reason and secular law from revealed truth (Syllabus 3, 56–57).
– The post-1960 implementation—already visible to us historically—confirms that this chirograph was a small but decisive gear in a larger machine:
– Replacement of the Unbloody Sacrifice with a meal-assembly rite in the neo-church.
– Spread of false ecumenism where the unique Church of Christ is relativized.
– Acceptance of religious liberty in direct contradiction with prior teaching.
– The cult of man proclaimed in the very basilicas invoked in this decree.
Thus, this act is illuminated retrospectively as part of the paramasonic operation to transform the visible structures occupying the Vatican into an *abomination of desolation*.
Authority and the Manifest Heretic: Why This Document Cannot Bind
Integral Catholic theology, as taught by pre-1958 authorities, clarifies:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church.
– A non-Catholic cannot possess jurisdiction in the Church, for he is no member of her visible body.
St Robert Bellarmine, in the sense preserved and explained in traditional theology, states that the manifestly heretical “pope” ceases by that very fact to be pope and head. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code declares that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office by tacit resignation, without further declaration.
Applied here:
– John XXIII’s broader program—doctrinal ambiguities, promotion of condemned liberal tendencies—marks him as at least favoring Modernist principles already anathematized.
– A chirograph initiating a synod to adapt discipline to the present age, silence on modern errors, and setting the stage for a pseudo-council whose fruits are doctrinally poisonous, is the exercise not of Petrine guardianship but of a foreign spirit.
Therefore:
– This act has no binding force on the true Church, which cannot be led by the Holy Ghost into an orientation condemned by her own perennial Magisterium.
– The “First Roman Synod” so convoked belongs to the internal juridical history of the conciliar sect, not to the history of Catholic Tradition, except as an object of warning.
Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur (the first See is judged by no one) applies only where that See is occupied by a Catholic. When a man publicly inaugurates a process in open friction with prior dogmatic condemnations, he self-excludes from holding the office whose charism he contradicts.
Symptom of the Coming Deluge: Rome as Laboratory of Apostasy
The symptomatic dimension of this brief chirograph is decisive:
– It treats Rome not as the unshakable rock, but as a “model” for experimentation.
– Its vagueness is not innocent: ambiguity is the privileged instrument of Modernism, which Pius X identified as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Precisely such mild, irenic phrases—“reinvigoration,” “salutary growth,” “responding to needs”—enable revolutionary content to be introduced gradually.
– It anticipates the entire method of post-conciliarism:
– Begin with solemn but content-light invocations.
– Introduce a small procedural change with elastic phrasing.
– Use that procedural opening to recast doctrine at the level of pastoral practice.
– Claim continuity by pointing to the unchanged vocabulary, while the underlying meaning is reversed.
What begins here in the Diocese of Rome is the pattern replicated worldwide:
– National and diocesan “synods,” “pastoral councils,” “renewal processes,” all subordinating belief and worship to sociological analysis, psychology, and the rhetoric of “signs of the times.”
– The gradual replacement of supernatural categories (sin, grace, sacrifice, kingship of Christ) with naturalistic ones (dialogue, human rights, inclusion, self-realization).
In this light, the chirograph of 16 January 1960 is not a benign administrative note but an inaugural liturgical-political gesture of the Church of the New Advent’s self-constitution in Rome itself.
Conclusion: Call to Reject the Conciliar Program and Hold Fast to the Eternal Magisterium
Confronted with this document, read in continuity with the pre-1958 Magisterium and in the devastating light of subsequent history, the only coherent judgment from integral Catholic faith is:
– The chirograph is an ideological signal of submission to “our age” rather than to the reign of Christ the King.
– Its omissions—silence about condemned errors, about the social kingship of Christ, about the duty to resist liberalism and Masonic influence—constitute a betrayal of prior papal teaching.
– Its rhetoric and aim align with the condemned propositions of the *Syllabus* and the errors exposed in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, not with them.
– As issued by an antipope and architect of the conciliar revolution, it is devoid of true authority over the faithful Church and belongs to the juridical mythology of the conciliar sect.
The answer is not to imitate the false “synodal path” but to return entirely to:
– The unchanging doctrine of Christ the King as proclaimed by Pius XI.
– The doctrinal intransigence of Pius IX against liberalism and religious indifferentism.
– The anti-Modernist discipline of Pius X, who saw clearly that any accommodation to “the modern spirit” would dissolve the faith.
– The conviction that the Most Holy Sacrifice, the true sacraments, and the perennial Magisterium subsist only where the Faith of all ages is integrally professed, apart from the paramasonic structures occupying the Vatican.
Firmiter teneamus (let us hold firmly): no synod, no “pastoral adaptation,” no sacralized bureaucratic act can override the solemn teaching of the Church before 1958. The Roman Diocese’s true example to the world must be fidelity unto blood, not aggiornamento unto apostasy. Everything in this chirograph that serves the latter must be unmasked and rejected as an instrument of the great falling away.
Source:
Chirographum quo prima Romanae Dioecesis Synodus celebranda indicitur, die XVI m. Ianuarii a. 1960, Ioannes PP.XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025