John XXIII’s Franciscan Flattery: Preparing Religious Orders for the Conciliar Revolution
The letter “Cum natalicia” of John XXIII, addressed in 1959 to the Ministers General of the Franciscan branches on the 750th anniversary of Innocent III’s approbation of the Rule, is a brief panegyric that praises St. Francis, exhorts external fidelity to the Rule, commends poverty, humility and apostolic zeal, and urges the Franciscans to adapt their preaching to “the conditions and ways of our time” while remaining devoted to the “Apostolic See.” Beneath its polished Latin and seemingly pious Franciscan vocabulary, the text functions as an ideological prelude: an attempt by the newly installed antipope to enlist the prestige of St. Francis and of the great mendicant tradition into the service of the coming conciliar upheaval, emptying poverty and penance of their doctrinal edge and subordinating authentic Franciscan spirituality to the programmatic naturalism of the neo-church.
Invocation of Franciscan Glory to Legitimize a Counterfeit Authority
From the first lines, the text operates as a theological sleight of hand. John XXIII recalls Innocent III’s approbation of the Franciscan Rule as a foundational moment, a “little spring” that became a “great river.” He invokes Asisi’s Patriarch as a divinely raised benefactor for a Church in need and then seamlessly welds this memory to his own person and regime, presenting himself as the benign heir and guardian of the same patrimony.
But the foundation of any Catholic reading is clear: auctoritas (authority) and successio in the Roman See are conditions for speaking in the name of the Church. When one who inaugurates and embodies the conciliar revolution—John XXIII, convoker of Vatican II, promoter of condemned “opening to the world,” eulogist of religious liberty and “dialogue” as understood by Liberalism—claims continuity with Innocent III and St. Francis, we are before a usurpation, not a development.
The letter’s entire logic depends on an unspoken premise: that the author is the legitimate successor of Pius XII, and that fidelity to him equals fidelity to the Church. Yet the doctrinal line between Pius XII and John XXIII is not continuity but rupture: from the anti-modernist rigor of Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII (Lamentabili, Pascendi, Quas Primas, Humani generis) to the bland optimism and aggiornamento-program of John XXIII. To accept his praise of Franciscan poverty while he simultaneously prepares to enthrone the anti-doctrine of religious liberty and collegial democratization is to betray the Rule at its roots.
The letter is thus ideologically fraudulent: it borrows the halo of Innocent III to veil the program of a paramasonic structure that will soon enthrone precisely those errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors and in Lamentabili sane exitu.
Naturalistic Reduction of Franciscan Poverty and Holiness
One of the central moves is the quiet transformation of Franciscan poverty into a natural-ethical example, separated from its dogmatic and ecclesial edge.
John XXIII praises St. Francis as:
pauper et dives, humilis et praecelsus, in Christum… figuratus, seraphicis incensus ardoribus, who by his life and words wanted to confirm the evangelical foundation: “Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum” (Mt 5:3).
This sounds orthodox, but observe what is consistently absent:
– No insistence that the Beatitudes presuppose supernatural faith, the state of grace, sacramental life, submission to the integral doctrine of the Church.
– No explicit affirmation that poverty, obedience and chastity in the Franciscan sense presuppose and defend the public reign of Christ the King over societies, laws, and institutions, as Pius XI authoritatively taught in Quas primas.
– No clear statement that true Franciscan reform always operates contra mundum, against the world’s maxims, never by reconciling itself with the “spirit of the age.”
Instead, the letter gently moralizes Franciscan poverty: the Franciscans are to show how “suave and desirable” it is to serve God with little and to “be glad and do good” in this life. The words are borrowed from Ecclesiastes (3:12), but their placement is revealing: the focus shifts towards a humanitarian exemplarism, adaptable to secular expectations, easily harmonized with the rhetoric of “simplicity,” “peace,” and “joy” without the hard dogmatic spine that made St. Francis a defender of the Catholic faith, an adorer of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and a son of the Papacy understood in its full, monarchic authority.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): when a supposed pontifical letter on Franciscan identity eliminates precise dogmatic content, it signals a redefinition. What is praised is not Franciscan intransigence against heresy, not militant zeal for the Catholic city, but a disarmed, sentimental image of Francis—the same image the conciliar sect will weaponize to canonize ecological ideology, interreligious relativism and a cult of “universal brotherhood” divorced from the Cross.
Weaponized Vagueness: “New Ways” as a Code for Adaptation to the World
The central ideological nerve of the text appears in the exhortation that the Franciscans:
“incumbatis… in verbi Dei praedicandi munus prisco animi ardore et novis, si oportet, aetati nostrae rationibus et viis congruentibus”
(“apply yourselves to the office of preaching the word of God with ancient fervour of soul and by new methods and ways suited to our age, if necessary”).
This apparently innocuous phrase encodes the conciliar project:
– “Ancient fervour” is invoked rhetorically, but
– “new methods and ways suited to our age” becomes the operative principle.
Under integral Catholic theology, modalities may change (accidentia), but the doctrinal content (substantia) is absolutely immutable. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII repeatedly wage war against the thesis that doctrine must be adapted to “modern consciousness.” Lamentabili condemns as heretical the notion that dogmas are mere interpretations of religious facts evolving under historical forces; Pascendi brands as Modernism the claim that forms, language, and concepts must be reshaped according to immanent experience and the needs of the age.
John XXIII’s formula is precisely the Modernist dialect: he does not overtly preach dogmatic evolution, but demands “new ways” in a context where his entire public program is that of aggiornamento, optimism towards the world, indulgence towards errors, and preparation of a council that will enthrone religious liberty and ecumenical indifferentism condemned in the Syllabus (propositions 15-18, 77-80).
Thus, the vagueness is not innocent. It is a programmatic ambiguity, enabling the Franciscans to be co-opted as instruments of adaptation, not guardians of immutable Tradition. The “new methods” quickly become “new doctrines,” precisely the path exposed and anathematized by St. Pius X: corruptio dogmatis sub praetextu evolutionis (corruption of dogma under pretext of development).
Silencing the Battlefront: No Mention of Modernism, Heresy, or the Eucharistic Sacrifice
The gravest accusation against this letter is its strategic silence.
In 1959, the wounds of the modernist infiltration condemned by Pius X had not healed; the post-war world was ravaged by atheistic communism, laicism, moral dissolution, and the increasing penetration of liberal, Masonic, and existentialist errors into seminaries and academies. Franciscan families, historically central in preaching, missions, and doctrinal defense, were suffering laxity, doctrinal erosion, and liturgical abuses brewing beneath the surface.
Yet in this letter:
– There is zero mention of Modernism, though St. Pius X had declared it the “synthesis of all heresies” and imposed an oath precisely to prevent what John XXIII was about to unleash.
– There is no warning against religious indifferentism, condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus and Leo XIII.
– There is no reference to defending the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, no call to guard the Latin liturgy, no insistence on Eucharistic reverence—the very points that the conciliar sect will soon attack by the Novus Ordo and sacrilegious communion practices.
– There is no call to combat communism or the atheistic and Masonic forces Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius XI clearly named.
– Above all, there is absolute silence on sin, divine judgment, hell, the necessity of remaining in the state of grace, the danger of heretical contagion within the clergy.
Instead, John XXIII speaks of “mad pride” of the age, atheism, neglect of divine law, and a looming “icy winter” of souls lacking the spiritual sun—and immediately offers as remedy a Francis who returns through his sons as a moral preacher of “penance and charity,” in practice reduced to soothing rhetoric. No reference to doctrinal anathemas, to combat against specific condemned propositions, to the papal teaching that the State must publicly recognize Christ.
This silence is not an oversight; it is method. By muting doctrinal combat and replacing it with general spiritualized language, the author de-fangs religious life and disarms the Franciscan Order, preparing it to be an obedient engine of the conciliar aggiornamento. The real enemy for John XXIII is not heresy inside “the Church,” but a generic atheism to be met with witness and adaptation, not militant restoration of the social kingship of Christ and the anti-modernist fortifications painstakingly raised by his predecessors.
Subordination of the Franciscans to the Conciliar Sect
Twice the letter hammers the theme of “attachment” and “devotion” to the Apostolic See as defined by John XXIII’s regime:
– He exhorts them to be “Apostolicae Sedi… in exemplum addicti” — devoted to the Apostolic See according to their institute and customs, as a model for others.
– He frames the observance of the Rule and statutes in the context of obedience to his person and to the structures about to be subverted by Vatican II.
On the surface, obedience to the Roman Pontiff is Catholic. But here we are faced with a juridical and theological perversion: binding religious obedience to a program of dismantling the very doctrinal, liturgical, and canonical order to which these vows were originally directed.
The effect is fatal:
– Franciscans are told that loyalty to John XXIII’s “Apostolic See” is part of their charism, so when his successors install the new liturgy, ecumenism, religious liberty, and denunciation of “proselytism,” the sons of St. Francis will think it obedience to abandon their own Rule’s spirit and their founder’s faith.
– The letter never once roots obedience in the condition stated by the classic theologians and canonists: that no obedience is owed to commands contrary to faith, morals, or the constitutions of the Church. Instead, there is an unconditional personalization of fidelity.
Thus the document functions as a spiritual trap: it wraps the noble Franciscan vow of obedience around a false “Apostolic See” which will force them, step by step, into complicity with the conciliar sect’s errors. This is not pastoral; it is abusive manipulation of religious docility.
Franciscan Vocation Emptied of Mission to Restore Christ’s Social Kingship
Pius XI in Quas primas unequivocally teaches that the core of the Church’s mission is to establish and defend the social reign of Christ the King; peace and order can only result from public recognition of His law. Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemns the separation of Church and State, the religious neutrality of law, and the exaltation of pluralism as “progress.” St. Pius X insists that Christian civilization must be restored in its entirety under Christ’s law.
St. Francis, emerging under Innocent III, is a luminous instrument of a Church that is juridically and dogmatically sovereign, that binds rulers and peoples, that sends mendicants to preach conversion from heresy and infidelity into the one true Church.
John XXIII’s letter dismantles this context by omission and by naturalistic redirection:
– He mentions “civil life” and “progress of doctrine and arts,” the influence of Francis on cultivated Christian nations and on peoples to be brought into “freedom and kingdom of the Gospel.” But he refuses to define that “kingdom” as the one Catholic Church; the language can be read in purely interiorized, spiritualized terms, easily harmonized later with ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.
– He speaks of Franciscans as promoters of “light” and “the kingdom of God,” but without any assertion that this entails the rejection of false religions, secret sects, and condemned liberal systems.
The result: Franciscan preaching is reframed as a contribution to a vague “better world,” rather than as militant work for the visible, juridical reign of Christ in Church and State. This is exactly the conciliar move later systematized in Dignitatis humanae and the post-conciliar cult of human rights and democracy: a migration from the Catholic City to an ideologically neutral public square, where the Church is tolerated as charitable NGO and moral voice, not as the one Ark of salvation commanding obedience.
By not commanding Franciscans to fight for Christ’s Kingship against secular States, Masonic forces, and modernist infiltration, John XXIII effectively commands them to acquiesce in laicism. The letter stands in veiled opposition to Quas primas and to the Syllabus of Errors, not by explicit contradiction, but by their systematic erasure.
Abuse of Mystical and Scriptural Imagery to Mask Institutional Subversion
The text adorns itself with Scriptural allusions and poetic metaphors: the “small spring” becoming a great river, the “winter” of souls without light, Francis as “legislator” filled with seraphic ardour. But Catholic doctrine teaches that the devil often clothes deception with pious vocabulary. The question is not whether Scripture is quoted, but to what end.
Consider several symptomatic points:
– Francis is called legifer, “lawgiver,” whose Rule John XXIII praises. Yet only a few years later the same conciliar revolution demolishes the integral observance of religious life, pushes aggiornamento, mitigates enclosure, dilutes poverty, and subjects all Orders to experimental constitutions. This 1959 letter functions as a pious anesthesia before surgery.
– The call that “your life may speak even if you are silent” and that morals should teach faith, modesty, continence, candour, is orthodox in itself. But, detached from the command to confess defined dogma and resist heresy, it is weaponized to reduce religious witness to a moralistic example compatible with false religions and secular admiration. It is the prefiguration of the “silent witness” rhetoric used to replace preaching the necessity of conversion.
– The mention that “variety,” which God permitted in Franciscan institutes, should move them to emulation of better gifts, is true on the surface. But in context it hints at preparing them to accept a pluralism of forms, disciplines, and, eventually, doctrines under the conciliar umbrella. The authentic principle that distinct charisms enrich one faith is silently replaced by an ecumenical-style celebration of diversity.
Simulata sanctitas, vera perfidia (feigned holiness, true treachery). Scriptural ornaments are conscripted to sanctify a redirection of the Order from doctrinal militancy to conciliar compliance.
Franciscan Identity Co-opted Against Anti-Modernist Tradition
An especially revealing element is John XXIII’s autobiographical remark: he notes that he himself was enrolled in the Franciscan Third Order in his youth. On the surface, this seems a gesture of humility. In reality, it is a claim of spiritual affinity and insider authority over the Franciscan families.
But what does it mean when the man who will convoke the Council that systematically neutralizes the anti-modernist magisterium claims Franciscan tertiary status? It signals an attempt to re-signify the Franciscan charism itself: from a bulwark of fidelity and literal poverty into a banner for the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic neo-church that preaches “peace, dialogue, fraternity,” while dissolving dogma, undermining the Most Holy Sacrifice, and exalting human dignity over the rights of Christ the King.
Under integral Catholic faith, a religious family’s charism is always ordered to protecting and propagating the deposit of faith, not to serving a revolution against it. The more Franciscan identity is bound to John XXIII’s person and program, the more it is forced, in practice, to betray St. Francis, Innocent III, and the entire pre-1958 magisterium.
Deliberate Non-Condemnation of Freemasonry and the Modern Sectarian Assault
Pre-conciliar pontiffs explicitly name and anathematize Freemasonry, secret societies, and liberal nationalism as primary enemies of the Church, as recalled even in the Syllabus excerpts: the “synagogue of Satan,” plotting the submission and destruction of the Church, persecuting bishops, corrupting laws, enslaving education.
John XXIII, in this letter, mentions “vesana superbia” and atheism, but offers no clear identification of the organized forces behind it, no renewal of the solemn papal condemnations of Masonic sects. He speaks in mild, general terms, thereby neutralizing vigilance. For Franciscan Orders historically tasked with preaching penance and unmasking the works of darkness, this is catastrophic. If the shepherd refuses to name the wolves, the flock is exposed.
This omission becomes even more sinister when we consider that the conciliar sect after 1958 will promote documents and gestures hailed by Freemasons and secularists as the Church’s reconciliation with “modern civilization” (precisely condemned by Pius IX in proposition 80 of the Syllabus). The silence in 1959 is thus preparatory: it habituates religious minds to a discourse where enemies are abstract, never doctrinally located, where the only “extremism” to fear is intransigent fidelity to Tradition.
Franciscan Obedience Turned into a Tool of Self-Destruction
Finally, the concluding blessings and wishes—growth in numbers and virtue, promotion of the kingdom and light of God—must be read in light of what immediately followed historically:
– Under the conciliar and post-conciliar regime, Franciscan branches hemorrhaged vocations, abandoned strict poverty, contaminated their theology with Modernism, collaborated in liturgical vandalism, and became vehicles of ecological and social activism at the expense of doctrinal clarity.
– Fidelity to “Apostolic See” as then presented meant accepting the Novus Ordo, ecumenism, religious liberty, and a false conception of conscience and dialogue, all incompatible with the solemn condemnations of the pre-1958 magisterium.
Thus what is presented as paternal solicitude is, in substance, a demand that the Franciscans tie their vowed obedience to an authority already determined to corrupt their life and faith. This is the most devastating indictment of the letter: it uses the holy virtue of obedience as an instrument to lead souls into the conciliar labyrinth.
Obedientia non est virtus, si ad malum ducere intendit (obedience is not virtue if it is directed to evil). A true successor of Peter may bind the faithful to obedience because he is custodian of the deposit. When one inaugurates a revolution against that very deposit, his call for obedience transforms into an abuse and must be resisted in fidelity to Christ and His unchanging Church.
Conclusion: A Franciscan-Language Manifesto for the Neo-Church
Viewed from the light of unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, “Cum natalicia” is not an innocuous commemorative letter. It is:
– A strategic appropriation of St. Francis and Innocent III to decorate a nascent conciliar ideology.
– A naturalistic softening of Franciscan poverty, detaching it from militant doctrinal and liturgical fidelity.
– A coded invitation to “new methods” that, in context, means adaptation of preaching, life, and discipline to the world’s expectations.
– A grave silence about Modernism, Freemasonry, religious indifferentism, liturgical integrity, and the social Kingship of Christ, in defiance of prior magisterial clarity.
– A subtle but real demand that Franciscan obedience be transferred from the perennial Magisterium to a revolutionary conciliar authority.
The spiritual and theological bankruptcy of this letter lies not in explicit heresy but in its calculated omissions, its ambiguous formulas, and its exploitation of Franciscan symbols to facilitate the self-destruction of the Order in service to the conciliar sect. Against this, only one path remains for those who truly wish to be sons of St. Francis: to re-embrace without compromise the immutable Catholic faith, liturgy, and discipline upheld by the Church until 1958, and to reject every attempt—however piously phrased—to conscript the Seraphic Father into the army of the neo-church.
Source:
Cum Natalicia – Ad Augustinum Sépinski, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Ministrum Generalem; Victorium Costantini, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Conventualium Ministrum Generalem; Clementem A Milwaukee, Ordinis Fra… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025