In this Latin letter dated 20 February 1960, antipope John XXIII addresses William Slattery, superior general of the Congregation of the Mission, on the 300th anniversary of the deaths of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac. He recalls his own devotion to these saints, praises their charity, exalts the Vincentian and Daughters of Charity works as a vast global network of social and charitable initiatives, and urges renewed commitment to organized charitable action adapted to modern circumstances, especially in the face of technological progress, social coldness, and global interdependence. He frames Vincentian charity as a unifying, pacifying force for humanity and concludes with an “apostolic” blessing as encouragement to imitate their example.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this seemingly pious text is a calculated piece of conciliar propaganda: it instrumentalizes authentic saints to sanctify a naturalistic, horizontal, pre-conciliar proto-aggiornamento and to prepare the ground for the neo-church of humanist philanthropy without the social Kingship of Christ.
Perverting Saintly Charity into the Program of the Coming Neo-Church
Factual Manipulation: Using True Saints to Legitimize a Future Revolution
Already at the factual level, this letter is not an innocent commemorative note. It is a strategic move by John XXIII—the initiator of the conciliar revolution—to seize the luminous figures of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac and bend their memory into a legitimation of his coming aggiornamento.
Key elements:
– He presents Vincent de Paul primarily as:
“praeclarum caritatis exemplar” and the generator of a vast system of social and charitable institutions.
– He dwells on:
“varietas et amplitudo operum, … in re ecclesiastica, in re morali et sociali”,
celebrating their impact and ongoing “relevance.”
– He extends this praise to a broad range of Vincentian-inspired initiatives across the world, speaking of them as:
“veluti pacifer exercitus, qui sub evangelicis vexillis contra miseriarum omne genus … militat et serit solatia.”
What is missing is more revealing than what is said:
– No doctrinal precision about what makes Catholic charity specifically supernatural.
– No clear assertion that charitable works are ordered to conversion, to the true faith, to the state of grace, to the salvation of souls, to escape eternal damnation.
– No mention whatsoever of the duty of Catholic states or rulers, nor of the objectively binding rights of the Church vis-à-vis secular authorities.
– No warning against religious indifferentism, liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry—although these were precisely the enemies denounced repeatedly by pre-1958 Magisterium and heavily intertwined with “philanthropic” discourse.
This is the familiar conciliar method: select authentic Catholic symbols, strip them of their doctrinal edge, and reframe them as icons of a humanitarian project. Saintly capital is quietly mortgaged to finance the construction of the coming conciliar sect.
The usurper’s blessing at the end is not a marginal detail; it is the attempted appropriation of Vincentian identity into obedience to a counterfeit authority and into service of a soon-to-be transformed religion.
Soft Rhetoric as a Symptom of Doctrinal Dilution
The linguistic texture of this letter is polished, affectionate, “spiritual,” but subtly symptomatic of the conciliar mentality.
1. Sentimental personalization:
– Frequent use of “dilecte fili” and autobiographical reminiscence about venerating relics in Paris.
– Emotional tone disarms vigilance and invites affective adhesion to the speaker’s authority.
– This is not the strong, juridical, dogmatically edged register of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII; it is the style of a benevolent moderator of “good initiatives.”
2. Reduction of sanctity to social utility:
– Vincent is magnified for organizational genius, prudence, social effectiveness:
“in re ecclesiastica, in re morali et sociali vim habuerunt”;
coordination of clerical formation, missions, charity.
– Saint Louise is praised as “vexillifera sacrarum virginum” and delicate support—but as functional figure within a charitable apparatus.
3. Euphemistic view of history:
– He romanticizes the post-Tridentine era as a time when, after a council, many heroes arise and the kingdom of God is renewed. He then implicitly projects this pattern toward his own planned council:
after his “ecumenical council,” a new springtime of “charity” and “renewal” is expected.
– This rhetorical pattern is precisely the prelude to Vatican II’s myth of a “new Pentecost,” already sketched here in embryo.
4. Ambiguous universalism:
– Phrases about increasing interconnection of nations and the need for charity “to reach distant peoples and vast spaces” sound benign but are key signals:
a shift from confessional mission (convert, baptize, integrate into the one true Church) to sociological presence and humanitarian cooperation.
– The letter carefully avoids any explicit line that would offend liberal states, Masonic powers, or the emerging UN-human-rights ethos. Its charity is diplomatically palatable.
The bureaucratic piety and gentle humanitarian vocabulary are not neutral; they reveal the ideological core: a transition from the forthright supernatural clarity of the pre-1958 Magisterium to a conciliatory, anthropocentric discourse in which dogma is background and “love” is a rhetorical solvent.
Theological Dissection: From Supernatural Caritas to Humanitarian Philanthropy
The decisive question: does this letter express and defend integral Catholic doctrine on charity, Church, and society as taught consistently before 1958?
Measured solely by that standard, it fails gravely.
1. Omission of the primary end of charity – salvation of souls
Authentic Catholic doctrine is unambiguous: *caritas* is first love of God above all things, then love of neighbor for God’s sake, ordered sub specie aeternitatis, under the light of true faith, sacraments, and submission to the Church.
– Pius XI in Quas primas teaches that peace and social order are possible only when individuals and states recognize the public reign of Christ the King and submit laws and institutions to His law. He explicitly denounces secularism and religious neutrality.
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* condemns the ideas that morality and society can flourish without reference to God and the Church (e.g., propositions 3, 56–57, 80).
In this letter:
– There is no mention of the necessity of the true faith for salvific value of works.
– There is no mention that charity without the supernatural order of grace, without right doctrine, is insufficient and may degenerate into naturalism.
– The cited Augustinian passage on charity is used ornamentally, but severed from its rigorous doctrinal context (Church, sacraments, hierarchy as divinely constituted).
Silence here is not neutral. By addressing a worldwide Vincentian family and celebrating their historical impact, to omit explicit teaching on:
– the state of grace,
– the necessity of the Catholic faith,
– the evil of heresy and indifferentism,
– the reality of hell and judgment,
is to implicitly redefine charity as an autonomous humanitarian value. This is precisely the modernist and liberal tendency condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi: the reduction of revealed religion to ethical sentiment and evolving social praxis.
2. Refusal to assert the Kingship of Christ in the social order
The letter laments:
“frigore quodam … quo saepe hominum animi nimio et illicito sui amore capiuntur, domesticus convictus labat, publicae gentium rationes potius mutuo metu quam amore reguntur.”
He diagnoses egoism, fear, coldness. But he studiously avoids the only Catholic diagnosis given by his predecessors:
– Nations deny the rights of Christ the King.
– Laws are divorced from divine law.
– Secret societies (particularly Masonic) wage systematic war on the Church.
– Liberalism, socialism, modernism undermine belief and morals.
Pius XI in Quas primas directly connects the world’s ills with the refusal to recognize Christ’s royal rights and calls for His reign in public life. Pius IX denounces the separation of Church and state and “liberty of cults” as pernicious errors.
John XXIII, instead, speaks only of “progress of technical arts,” “greater interconnection,” “need for charity’s warmth.” No mention that states must submit their laws to Christ and His Church; no call for restoration of confessional order; no condemnation of the liberal system. The supernatural and juridical claims of the Church are veiled behind a soft moralism.
This is a theological betrayal by omission. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent). In such a context, persistent silence is complicity with liberal, naturalistic conceptions of “charity” and “human dignity.”
3. Instrumentalizing saints for a naturalistic agenda
Authentic Vincentian charity was:
– inseparably united to doctrinal orthodoxy;
– rooted in the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacramental life;
– concerned above all with the salvation of the poor, not merely temporal alleviation.
Saints before 1958 never presented charity as a free-floating universal ethic; they fought heresy, denounced error, and demanded conversion to the one Church.
Here, the memory of St. Vincent and St. Louise is used to boost globalized social activism, described in terms compatible with a secular NGO ethos:
– “opera … per totum catholicum orbem diffusa sunt veluti pacifer exercitus”:
a pacifying army combatting “all kinds of misery” and sowing “consolations”—without doctrinal contours.
This anticipates the later conciliar sect’s model: Catholic orders and congregations mutated into humanitarian agencies integrated into UN-style paradigms, interreligious “solidarity,” and human-rights rhetoric, often emptied of confessional zeal.
4. Failure to defend the immutability of doctrine
St. Pius X’s Lamentabili and Pascendi condemn the notion that charity, mission, sacraments, and church structure evolve according to historical consciousness, detaching themselves from fixed dogma.
Yet this letter:
– Hints that new “ways” and “forms” of charity, adapted to technological and global contexts, are demanded.
– Never reaffirms that such adaptations must be strictly subordinated to immutable dogma and to the exclusive salvific claim of the Catholic Church.
The absence of this anchor, in a text from the very architect of a coming council, is not accidental; it is methodological. It prepares minds to accept a “pastoral” council that will claim continuity while in practice dissolving doctrinal clarity into elastic “renewal.”
Systemic Pattern: A Proto-Manifesto of the Conciliar Sect
Placed in historical context, this letter (1960) is emblematic. Its theological and rhetorical choices are a microcosm of the post-1958 revolt:
1. Substitution of supernatural finality with horizontal universalism
– Before 1958, papal documents relentlessly subordinated social action to the reign of Christ, submission to Magisterium, condemnation of error.
– Here, the key emphasis is:
– organizational charity,
– psychological and social “warmth,”
– adaptation to global conditions,
– promotion of massive networks of works.
All this can be—and in the coming decades will be—shared with heretics, infidels, and secular institutions without conversion, without doctrinal confrontation, under the banner of “dialogue” and “cooperation.” This is the seed of the conciliar sect’s cult of man.
2. Hollowing Catholic concepts for later re-use
– “Caritas,” “evangelical banners,” “Christian perfection” are all employed.
– But they are detached from the concrete claims condemned by the *Syllabus*’ enemies: one true Church, condemnation of false religions, rejection of the separation of Church and state.
– This semantic emptying enables subsequent actors of the neo-church to appeal to the same terms while promoting religious liberty, ecumenism, and syncretism.
3. Co-opting religious families into the conciliar machine
By praising Vincentians and Daughters of Charity in these terms and conferring his “apostolic blessing,” John XXIII works to bind these congregations morally and psychologically to his authority and forthcoming council.
The strategy:
– Use revered saints as a bridge.
– Attach their spiritual children to obedience to the usurper.
– Channel their institutional energy into the coming revolutionary “renewal.”
In later decades, the systemic decay of many such institutes into horizontal activism, abandonment of habit, doctrinal silence, interreligious projects, and complicity with social-justice ideologies perfectly confirms the trajectory inaugurated here.
4. Consonance with modernist propositions condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium
While the letter does not explicitly state the heresies condemned in Lamentabili, its spirit harmonizes with them:
– Christ and His Church reduced primarily to inspiration for moral and social engagement.
– Historical evolution of forms of charity and mission implicitly detached from a rigid dogmatic framework.
– Pastors speaking in a way that does not bind consciences doctrinally but motivates emotions.
St. Pius X explicitly condemned the idea that the Church cannot demand interior assent to its condemnations, and that doctrine mutates with life. The tone and omissions of this letter exemplify precisely that modernist posture: no anathemas, no doctrinal edge—only invitations.
The Gravity of Silence: When Not Naming Apostasy Becomes Complicity
The most damning aspect of this text is not what it affirms about St. Vincent and St. Louise—these affirmations, taken materially, can be largely sound. The crime lies in the systematic silencing of the essential supernatural and militant dimensions of Catholic charity precisely at a moment when they were most needed.
By 1960:
– The advance of laicism, socialism, Freemasonry, communism, and liberal democracies opposed to the social Kingship of Christ was undeniable.
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII had exposed and condemned the philosophical and political roots of this anti-Christian order.
– Secret societies and paramasonic forces sought to infiltrate and neutralize the Church from within.
In such a context, an authentic Roman Pontiff, commemorating St. Vincent de Paul, would have:
– Reaffirmed the necessity of Catholic doctrine, sacraments, and hierarchy for true charity.
– Warned against false philanthropy, secular NGOs, socialist demagogy.
– Condemned cooperation in indifferentist, interconfessional projects.
– Called for reconquest of social structures for Christ the King, as Pius XI did in Quas primas.
Instead, John XXIII:
– Speaks of “technical progress,” “interdependence,” “need for charity’s warmth,” as if the crisis were emotional, not doctrinal.
– Offers no resistance to the liberal-secular paradigm.
– Sows the logic later fully deployed by the conciliar sect: endless talk of “love,” “poor,” “peace,” “fraternity” severed from the exclusive rights of the true Church.
In light of integral Catholic theology, such silence is not pastoral moderation. It is the methodical self-disarming of the visible structures soon to be occupied by the conciliar revolution—a revolution whose antipopes, culminating in Leo XIV, parade humanitarian slogans while trampling the perennial doctrine and worship.
Conclusion: Saint Vincent against the Conciliar Hijacking of Charity
Seen under the light of unchanging Catholic teaching before 1958, this 1960 letter is theologically and spiritually bankrupt precisely where it pretends to be most elevated. It:
– exploits genuine saints to consolidate obedience to a usurper;
– exalts works while evacuating their supernatural finality;
– promotes a concept of charity easily amalgamated with secular humanitarianism;
– refuses to proclaim the non-negotiable rights of Christ the King and His Church in society;
– prepares congregations and faithful for the aggiornamento that will enthrone man, religious liberty, and false ecumenism in the place of the integral Catholic Faith.
Authentic fidelity to St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac today demands the exact opposite of what this letter insinuates:
– a return to doctrinal clarity;
– subordination of every charitable work to the salvation of souls in the one true Church;
– rejection of all collaboration that presupposes religious indifferentism or acceptance of the neo-church;
– open denunciation of the conciliar sect which has twisted “charity” into a tool of apostasy.
Only under the true reign of Christ the King, confessed publicly and without compromise, can the burning *caritas* of the saints flourish again as supernatural fire, not as the tepid philanthropy of a paramasonic counterfeit religion.
Source:
d P. Villelmum Slattery, tertio exeunte saeculo a pio obitu S. Vincentii a Paulo et S. Ludovicae de Marillac (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025