Latran Flattery and the Currency of Hollow Indulgences
John XXIII’s 1959 Latin letter to Benedict Aloisi Masella, then “cardinal,” bishop of Palestrina, archpriest of the Lateran Basilica, and prefect of the “Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments,” congratulates him on his approaching 80th birthday and the 40th anniversary of his episcopate. It praises the local clergy and faithful for planning solemn public celebrations, notes with particular satisfaction the inauguration of a marble monument in Palestrina in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the renewal of the consecration of the people to her Immaculate Heart, and grants Masella the faculty, on the set day and after a pontifical Mass, to impart in John’s name a plenary indulgence to the faithful under the usual conditions. The text closes with the “Apostolic Blessing.”
Celebration without Conversion: A Humanist Festschrift Clothed in Piety
At first glance, this short letter may appear harmless: a polite greeting, Marian language, mention of indulgences. But precisely here the pathology of the conciliar revolution is laid bare: a cult of personalities, juridically empty “faculties,” and sentimental Marian ornamentation deployed to mask the progressive evacuation of the supernatural and the slow sabotage of the sacramental order.
Measured exclusively by *immutabilis doctrina catholica ante 1958* (unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958), this text is not “neutral.” It is symptomatic. It manifests:
– A replacement of the primacy of the *regnum Christi* with the primacy of episcopal jubilees and institutional self-congratulation.
– A reduction of indulgences—once instruments bound to penance, confession, contrition, and militant faith—to ceremonial party favors.
– A strategically choreographed Marian vocabulary serving as ecclesiastical cosmetics for the incoming doctrinal and liturgical demolition.
– The signature and pretended authority of John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar upheaval, used to confer spiritual privileges, thereby inserting the faithful into obedience to a nascent *ecclesia nova*.
The entire letter is thus a micro-manifestation of the new religion: polished, courteous, theologically thin, institutionally self-referential, and ultimately ordered not to the reign of Christ the King over nations, but to the consolidation of a paramasonic neo-church.
From Supernatural Combat to Institutional Compliments
On the factual level, the structure is revealing.
John XXIII:
– Applauds the faithful of Palestrina for their plan to offer “publicis venerationis amorisque significationibus” (public signs of veneration and love) for Masella’s jubilee.
– Emphasizes with “joy” the inauguration of a marble monument to the Blessed Virgin and the renewal of consecration to her Immaculate Heart.
– Grants Masella faculty to impart a plenary indulgence “in Our name and by Our authority” to those attending a pontifical Mass and fulfilling the ecclesiastical prescriptions.
– Ends with a warm “Apostolic Blessing.”
What is missing is more decisive than what is present:
– No mention of sin, error, heresy, or the doctrinal crisis already corroding seminaries and theology faculties.
– No reference to the necessity of the *status gratiae* (state of grace), the horror of mortal sin, or the Four Last Things.
– No summons to defend the integrity of the sacraments against the liberal and modernist onslaught repeatedly condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI.
– No echo of *Lamentabili sane exitu* or *Pascendi Dominici gregis* against Modernism, even though the very generation being celebrated had witnessed these condemnations and was now tolerating, even cultivating, their betrayal.
– Absolute silence regarding the public kingship of Christ and the duty of Catholic rulers and societies, so forcefully taught shortly before by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, where he states in substance that peace and order are impossible where Christ’s social reign is denied.
Instead of a clarion call to penance and doctrinal militancy, we find a refined ecclesiastical congratulatory note. This is the voice, not of the Church Militant, but of an ecclesiastical managerial class suiting itself for peaceful coexistence with the world it had once condemned.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent). The silence about the ongoing infiltration of Modernism—already unmasked as “the synthesis of all heresies” by St. Pius X—is not accidental; it is programmatic.
Linguistic Politeness as a Cloak for the New Religion
The tone and rhetoric of the letter expose a deeper mutation.
1. Hyper-clerical flattery:
– Masella is surrounded with phrases of praise, good wishes, blessings, and shared joy.
– There is no admonition, no exhortation to guard the flock against wolves, no reminder that a bishop is constituted to teach, sanctify, and govern in uncompromising fidelity to the deposit of faith.
– The episcopate is presented chiefly as an object of celebration, not as a burden of blood and martyrdom.
This stands in stark contrast to the pre-1958 magisterial gravity, where the Supreme Pontiffs repeatedly warned bishops of their duty to resist liberal, masonic, and modernist assaults (see e.g. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, St. Pius X’s anti-modernist interventions). Here, Masella is congratulated, not commissioned to fight.
2. Sentimental Marianism:
– The inauguration of a marble monument to the Blessed Virgin and the renewal of a consecration to her Immaculate Heart are highlighted as central.
– But Marian devotion is presented merely as a beautiful communal act, without doctrinal edge: no insistence on her role in crushing heresies, no call to imitate her faith against the unbelief of the age, no warning against false devotions that coexist with disobedience.
True Marian piety—confirmed across authentic tradition—is militant, doctrinal, and ordered to Christ’s absolute sovereignty. Instrumentalized Marian sentimentality, especially in the twentieth century, functions as anesthetic while the structures of belief are being rewritten.
3. Technocratic indulgence formula:
– John XXIII grants Masella the power to impart a plenary indulgence on the specified day after a pontifical Mass.
– The letter reduces indulgence to a technical faculty attached to ceremonial observance—precisely as the neo-church would progressively hollow out penitential theology, transforming indulgences into occasional “events” rather than instruments of deep purification contingent upon true contrition, sacramental confession, and firm amendment.
Pre-1958 teaching (e.g. the Roman Catechism following Trent) rigorously ties indulgences to the reality of temporal punishment, satisfaction, and the authority of the Church founded on true faith. Here, the same language is used while the doctrinal vigilance that gave it substance is being quietly suffocated.
The lexicon of this letter is thus emblematic: respectable, smooth, bureaucratically precise, and hermetically closed against references to the doctrinal warfare raging at that very moment. This is how revolutions are introduced: not by crude denials, but by suffocating the supernatural under layers of polite, institutional verbiage.
Theological Inversion: Authority without Orthodoxy
The most serious theological fault line of this document lies in its presupposed authority-structure.
The letter presents:
– John XXIII as Roman Pontiff exercising universal jurisdiction, delegating power to grant indulgences.
– Masella as a faithful high dignitary of the sacramental discipline, presented as trustworthy and exemplary.
– The faithful of Palestrina as rightly united around this hierarchy, receiving spiritual favors through their jubilee celebrations.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, this ensemble collapses once the head is a manifest promoter of the very errors infallibly condemned by his predecessors.
The pre-conciliar theological patrimony—summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine and others and reflected juridically in canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code—affirms that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church; he falls from office *ipso facto*, for he is no longer a member of the Church. The Church has consistently taught that:
– A non-Catholic, a public destroyer of dogma, cannot be the visible principle of Catholic unity.
– Jurisdiction and the power to bind and loose, to attach indulgences, to legislate for the universal Church, presuppose Catholic faith.
When John XXIII convenes and sets in motion the entire aggiornamento, opens the doors to religious liberty, ecumenical indifferentism, and a pastoral council which refuses to condemn the errors previously anathematized; when he elevates to influence the very currents stigmatized by *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*; he stands in objective contradiction to the pre-1958 magisterium he claims to continue.
Therefore:
– The alleged “Apostolic authority” by which he grants faculties in this letter is the authority-claim of an emerging conciliar sect.
– The indulgence structure invoked here is being co-opted as a mechanism of spiritual control, binding souls into the budding *Church of the New Advent*.
– The “Apostolic Benediction” signed “IOANNES PP. XXIII” is the benediction attached to a program of doctrinal dissolution.
The gravest scandal is not that a congratulatory letter exists, but that it presupposes the legitimacy of a man and a system that would soon enthrone religious liberty, collegial democracy, and ecumenist relativism over the solemn condemnations of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X.
Indulgences Emptied: From Satisfaction for Sin to Ritualized Loyalty
The indulgence clause merits closer scrutiny.
The letter:
grants you, freely, power, that in the diocese of Palestrina, on the appointed day, after the Mass celebrated with pontifical rite, you may bless, in Our name and by Our authority, the faithful present, proposing to them a plenary indulgence to be gained according to the prescriptions of the Church.
In authentic Catholic theology (Council of Trent; pre-1958 moral theology):
– Indulgences presuppose:
– Valid jurisdiction.
– Legitimate authority of the Roman Pontiff in continuity with his predecessors.
– True doctrine about sin, punishment, purgatory, and satisfaction.
– Integration into a penitential life (confession, contrition, amendment, works of piety).
Here, no word of penance. No admonition about confession. No reminder of the anti-modernist oath, no insistence on guarding the flock from condemned errors.
Instead, the indulgence is tethered to:
– Attendance at the celebratory pontifical Mass.
– Participation in episcopal jubilee honors and Marian monument inauguration.
Thus, spiritual benefit is attached less to conversion from sin and adherence to integral doctrine than to participation in a ceremony affirming hierarchical and devotional loyalty to the new regime. This transforms an instrument of supernatural mercy into a token of belonging to the conciliar project.
This is the logic of a paramasonic structure: use once-Catholic forms (Mass, indulgences, Marian language) as vehicles to divert souls from the true fight against error into docile adjustment to a remodeled religion.
Marian Imagery as a Screen for the Conciliar Strategy
The emphasis on:
“marmoreum monumentum inaugurabitur in honorem Beatae Mariae Virginis eiusque Immaculato Cordi publica religiosi populi consecratio renovabitur”
appears, superficially, orthodox. The Immaculate Heart is honored, a public consecration is “renewed.” However:
– No doctrinal clarity is provided that such consecration demands rigorous submission to the full pre-1958 magisterium.
– No denunciation of Modernism, which St. Pius X called a sewer of all heresies, and which necessarily profanes Marian devotion by divorcing it from doctrinal exactitude.
– No link is made between Marian consecration and the social reign of Christ the King over states, as vigorously preached by Pius XI: peace is possible only in the kingdom of Christ; secularist states must submit to His law.
Instead, Marian consecration is folded into an aesthetic and emotional framework: a marble statue, a solemn ceremony, a jubilee celebration. Such gestures—devoid of militantly confessional content—become instruments of pacification, giving the impression of continuity while internally redirecting piety toward a Church that is preparing to betray its own doctrinal foundations.
Authentic Marian devotion is incompatible with complicity in Modernism. Where Marian imagery is used to shelter silence about doctrinal treason, it becomes not devotion but misuse—an abuse of the Mother of God’s name to consecrate the dismantling of her Son’s rights.
Omissions that Accuse: Silence on Christ the King and the Social Order
Pius XI’s *Quas Primas* (1925), which instituted the feast of Christ the King, solemnly teaches that:
– The calamities of nations flow from having excluded Christ and His law from public, social, and political life.
– True peace and order require public recognition of Christ’s kingship by rulers and states.
– The Church has both the right and the duty to demand such recognition.
This letter, written a few decades later by the architect of the council that would exalt “religious liberty” and relativistic “dialogue,” shows:
– No insistence that the faithful and clergy of Palestrina work for the public acknowledgment of Christ’s rights over their city, laws, and institutions.
– No warning against the liberal errors condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, particularly the separation of Church and State and the cult of “progress” and “modern civilization” denounced as incompatible with the Catholic faith.
– No rejection of laicism, socialism, or masonic infiltration—all of which earlier popes explicitly attacked and traced to the “synagogue of Satan.”
This silence is not neutral. It prefigures the doctrinal inversion of the conciliar sect, in which “human dignity,” “religious liberty,” and “pluralism” are enthroned where once stood the non-negotiable claim of Christ’s kingship.
Thus, this brief letter participates in the great betrayal under the guise of harmless courtesy: it trains clergy and laity alike to live within a Catholic vocabulary emptied of its anti-liberal core. It educates them, gently, to forget *Quas Primas* and the Syllabus, to shift their focus from Christ ruling nations to bishops being celebrated and monuments being unveiled.
Episcopal Dignity without Apostolic Combat
Masella is praised as one who has completed “eight lustra of episcopate” and is about to reach his 80th year. But the text never touches the question: what is an episcopate for?
According to constant Catholic doctrine:
– A bishop is primarily a defender of the deposit of faith, guardian of sacraments, enemy of heresy, and shepherd ready to shed blood.
– He is strictly bound to Rome’s perennial magisterium and must resist, not collaborate with, state and ideological encroachments.
Pius IX, in the passages associated with the Syllabus and related letters, insisted that:
– Governments and sects assault the Church with masonic methods.
– Bishops must oppose such powers and defend the divine constitution of the Church against civil usurpation.
– Laws contradicting the divine constitution of the Church are null and void.
St. Pius X, in renewing condemnations of Modernism, emphasized that shepherds who tolerate, excuse, or promote modernist ideas betray their office.
Yet here:
– Masella’s long tenure is unconditionally lauded.
– No inquiry is made whether he fought Modernism, defended scholastic theology, purged seminaries, or opposed liberal governments.
– His office as prefect of the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments is not presented as a bulwark against sacramental profanation, but simply as a title to decorate.
Thus the letter reflects a new conception of the episcopate:
– Less apostolic sentinel, more courteous administrator in a harmonious, worldly-respected religious institution.
– The office becomes detached from its dogmatic responsibilities and is legitimated by longevity and ceremonials, not by fidelity to the anti-modernist struggle.
This is how the conciliar system manufactures “hierarchs” loyal to its program: through a culture of mutual compliments and shared celebrations rather than the fear of God and the solemn obligation to hand down intact what was received.
Fruit of the Conciliar Spirit: Small Text, Same Revolt
On the symptomatic level, this 1959 letter is a fragment of the same architecture that would:
– Convene a pastoral council refusing to condemn liberal and modernist errors.
– Lead to a new “mass” that, by its structure and rubrics, subverts the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice.
– Replace the assertive condemnation of false religions with “dialogue” and esteem.
– Trivialize indulgences, sacramentals, and devotions into sociological and psychological supports for a human-centered spirituality.
– Promote “saints” of doctrinal evolution and ecumenical relativism as exemplars of the new Catholicism.
The mechanisms are already visible here:
– Legitimation of a hierarchy that will implement the new order.
– Reliance on external Marian and devotional forms to create a sense of continuity.
– Use of indulgences and papal blessings to bind consciences to a betraying authority.
– Strategic silence regarding the doctrines that clash with planned “renewal.”
This letter is not an isolated courtesy; it is a brick in the edifice of the neo-church: an edifice founded not on the rock of immutable magisterium, but on the sand of Modernism, diplomacy, and human respect.
Conclusion: Behind the Courtesies, the Demand for a Choice
Evaluated by the sole legitimate standard—integral Catholic teaching before 1958—this document demands a clear and unforgiving verdict:
– It presupposes the authority of one who inaugurated the conciliar subversion of the magisterium.
– It deploys Catholic language severed from the doctrinal militancy that gave that language meaning.
– It offers indulgences and blessings as confirmation of adherence to a system drifting toward officially sanctioned error.
– It instrumentalizes Marian devotion and episcopal prestige to immunize the faithful against resistance to that drift.
– It is a practical denial of the Church’s perennial condemnation of liberalism, religious indifferentism, and Masonic infiltration, not by argument, but by calculated silence.
Those who love the true Church are therefore compelled:
– To reject the conciliar cult of personalities and jubilees when these function as sacralization of apostasy.
– To hold fast to the anti-modernist magisterium, from the Syllabus to *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, interpreting all later claims of “authority” in that irrevocable light.
– To refuse the illusion that blessings and indulgences dispensed under a usurped authority, in service of a heterodox program, can bind conscience or mediate grace.
Non licet nobis tradere hereditatem patrum pro lenticula novitatis (It is not permitted for us to trade the heritage of the fathers for the lentil dish of novelty). The faithful must discern beneath the polished Latin compliments the stark alternative: either the immutable doctrine of Christ the King and His true Church, or the smiling, marble-decorated structures of the conciliar sect, adorned with indulgences and monuments, but emptied of truth.
Source:
Fideles Praenestini – Ad Benedictum S. R. E. Card. Aloisi Masella, Episcopum praenestinum, Patriarchalis Basilicae Lateranensis Archipresbiterum ac Sacrae Congregationis de Disciplina Sacramentorum Pr… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025