The Latin text presented is a congratulatory letter of John XXIII to Clemente Micara on his approaching eightieth birthday. It heaps praise on Micara’s alleged zeal, prudence, loyalty to the Roman See, his diplomatic service, his work in the Curia, his administration in Velletri, his rebuilding of churches and seminary structures after the war, and his role as Vicar of Rome, culminating in the imparting of an “Apostolic Blessing” upon him and those celebrating with him.
Panegyric as Program: The Humanistic Cult Behind John XXIII’s Flattery
The text seems, at first glance, like a harmless courtesy note. Yet precisely here the mask slips. This brief letter is a distilled manifesto of the conciliar sect’s mentality: the substitution of supernatural Catholic criteria with bureaucratic self-congratulation, natural virtues, ecclesiastical careerism, and architectural activism; the invocation of “Peter’s See” while preparing its systematic betrayal; the use of episcopal panegyric as a legitimation of the new religion that would soon erupt at Vatican II under this very usurper.
Glorification of Career and Structures, Silence on Grace and Salvation
On the factual level, the letter does almost nothing but recite a curriculum vitae:
– Diplomatic posts.
– Promotion to the college of “cardinals.”
– High offices in Roman congregations.
– Episcopal governance in Velletri.
– Administrative efficiency as Vicar of Rome.
– Building and restoring churches and seminaries.
John XXIII’s phrases exalt Micara’s “religionis studium, prudentiam, sollertiam” (“zeal for religion, prudence, skill”), and the “praeclara merita” (“distinguished merits”) which earned him purple and curial responsibilities. The closing invokes divine assistance and extends an “Apostolic Benediction.”
What is systematically absent is more revealing than what is said:
– No mention of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as propitiatory offering for sin.
– No mention of the *state of grace*, sanctifying grace, or the necessity of true Catholic faith for salvation.
– No mention of *judgment*, *hell*, *purgatory*, or the fear of God.
– No mention of *defense of doctrine* against modern errors (Modernism, laicism, communism, liberalism).
– No mention of *conversion of sinners* or *care for souls* as the primary standard of episcopal merit.
– No mention of the obligation of public society to acknowledge the social Kingship of Christ, which Pius XI had solemnly reaffirmed in Quas primas only three decades earlier.
Instead, episcopal excellence is measured almost exclusively by:
– Institutional loyalty to the post-1958 “Roman See” as occupied by John XXIII.
– Diplomatic and bureaucratic efficiency.
– The reconstruction and multiplication of external buildings.
This is a textbook example of naturalistic reduction. The unchanging Catholic magisterium (e.g. the Syllabus of Pius IX; Lamentabili and Pascendi of Pius X; Quas primas of Pius XI) insists that the Church’s mission is supernatural: to teach revealed truth, condemn error, administer true sacraments, and lead souls to eternal life; all human and institutional activity is subordinate to this. Here, those supernatural notes are practically eclipsed by a cult of administration.
By traditional Catholic criteria, such an omission in a pontifical letter is not neutral. It is symptomatic. It manifests precisely that climate denounced by Pius X: the displacement of dogma and the supernatural by “pastoral” pragmatism, sentimental moralism, and humanistic optimism. The letter functions as a micro-icon of that mentality which would shortly produce the conciliar revolution.
Linguistic Evasions: The Rhetoric of Horizontalism
The rhetoric of the letter is notable for its:
– Courtly flattery.
– Institutional self-satisfaction.
– Absence of penitential or militant language.
Key features:
1. Hyperbolic praise of human merits:
– “indubiis testimoniis tuum religionis studium, prudentiam, sollertiam…”
– The focus is on personal and administrative virtues, presented as self-evident and sufficient grounds for exaltation.
– No ascetical realism about the danger of honors, the need for humility, or the burden of judgment on shepherds who may mislead their flocks.
2. Eulogizing curial and diplomatic service as if these, in themselves, guaranteed fidelity to Christ.
– Pius IX and Pius X insist that offices, honors, and structures are nothing if divorced from integrally professed faith and the combat against error. This letter inverts that logic: office and recognition within the conciliar apparatus become treated as proof of virtue.
3. The absence of the language of spiritual combat.
– Before 1958, the papal magisterium repeatedly unmasks secret societies, liberalism, indifferentism, the usurpation of Church rights, the masonic war against the Church.
– Here, John XXIII speaks as if in a neutral, peaceful world, concerned mainly with birthdays and buildings, not with wolves ravaging the flock.
– This anesthetizing tone is consistent with the program that would follow: opening the windows to “the modern world,” silencing condemnations, dissolving doctrinal clarity into dialogue.
4. The invocation of “Apostolic Blessing” without Apostolic doctrine.
– The blessing is pronounced without any condition tied to fidelity to defined dogma, rejection of modern errors, or fulfillment of serious episcopal duties.
– It is emptied into a vague good wish—precisely what Pius IX and Pius X reject: *benedictio sine veritate* (a blessing evacuated of truth).
Language here is not accidental; it is an instrument. The text betrays a mentality in which:
– Hierarchy is auto-referential.
– Supernatural categories are presumed—never confessed, never defended.
– Human achievements in ecclesiastical bureaucracy are liturgically crowned.
This is the rhetorical seed of the later cult of “human dignity,” “dialogue,” and “accompaniment” that replaces preaching Christ’s Kingship and condemning error.
Theological Subversion Through Omission and Flattery
Measured against unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this letter is theologically perverse not because of an explicit heretical formula, but because it normalizes a concept of the Church radically at odds with that doctrine.
1. The Church Reduced to a Polite Institution
The entire piece presupposes the Church as a harmonious bureaucratic body, where virtue equals loyal service to the reigning structures. Pius IX in the Syllabus explicitly condemns the false notion that the Church is subject to civil or external criteria, and insists she is a *societas perfecta* ordered to supernatural ends. Pius XI in Quas primas demands public subjection of nations to Christ the King, not sociological adjustment.
This letter, by contrast, reveals a new unwritten creed:
– The good bishop is the smooth functionary.
– The heroism praised is that of administration and construction.
– There is no word of guarding doctrine against liberalism, Masonry, Modernism—even though Pius X had directly unmasked Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
The silence is devastating. Qui tacet consentire videtur (“he who is silent is seen to consent”). To praise a prelate at length without any reference to his fidelity in defending orthodoxy, at the historical moment when Modernism is consolidating its revenge, is a tacit enthronement of indifferentism and doctrinal minimalism.
2. The Inversion of Magisterial Priorities
The pre-1958 magisterium is dominated by:
– Condemnation of liberalism, rationalism, naturalism, socialism, communism, secret societies.
– Affirmation of the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church.
– Assertion of the kingship of Christ over states and laws.
– Defense of the integrity of dogma and the immutability of revealed truth.
– Insistence on the vigilance of bishops as watchmen.
In this letter:
– None of those central, burning concerns appears.
– The episcopal life is painted as a sequence of promotions and restorations.
– The “Roman See” is invoked as if its mere mention sufficed, while the actual doctrinal program of that See under John XXIII is already diverging from its predecessors.
This is what integral Catholic theology recognizes as a practical denial of the faith by omission. By replacing the supernatural drama of truth vs. error with a comfortable narrative of internal mutual admiration, the neo-church reveals itself.
3. False Apostolicity
John XXIII signs as “IOANNES PP. XXIII,” pretending to speak as successor of Peter. But the content of his governance—convoking the council that would enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality against prior condemnations, and orienting the Church toward reconciliation with “modern civilization” explicitly condemned by Pius IX—betrays his rupture.
When he:
– Elevates and praises those aligned with his new orientation.
– Recognizes as exemplary precisely those administrators who will cooperate with the conciliar revolution.
– Dispenses “Apostolic Benediction” as a rubber stamp of his emerging program.
He manifests himself as an antipope in the theological sense articulated by classical theologians: a manifest promoter of doctrines and orientations incompatible with the constant magisterium, and therefore lacking the authority he claims. The letter’s simpering panegyric is not neutral; it is part of the machinery by which the usurped structures consolidate compliance.
Micara’s Profile as Symptom of the Neo-Church’s Clerical Ideal
Examining how Micara is portrayed reveals the model bishop of the conciliar sect:
– Diplomat in service of mutable political balances.
– Curial manager of “legitimate rites” and religious institutes—functions that would soon be weaponized to dismantle the Roman Rite and enslave congregations to the new religion.
– Rebuilder of physical churches and seminary buildings—while no word is given about ensuring those seminaries impart the integral doctrine against Modernism.
– Vicar of Rome, responsible for multitudinous “pastoral” structures, praised for multiplying “aedificia sacra… spirituali fidelium curae necessaria” (“sacred buildings necessary for the spiritual care of the faithful”)—as if the multiplication of structures guaranteed orthodoxy.
It is precisely this type of ecclesiastical politician-administrator who, in the following decade, would preside over:
– Acceptance and implementation of the new pseudo-liturgical rites that attack the theology of the propitiatory Sacrifice.
– Toleration and propagation of doctrinal relativism.
– Pastoral integration of masonic and liberal principles condemned by earlier popes.
The letter, therefore, does not merely flatter an individual; it canonizes a type: the bishop of the neo-church, who receives papal acclaim not for defending the deposit of faith (depositum fidei) but for obediently implementing the program of aggiornamento.
From Courtesy Note to Conciliar Revolution: Continuity of Treason
Some may object that reading such programmatic significance into a short congratulatory note is excessive. That objection collapses under scrutiny once we recall:
– The Church’s pre-1958 discipline: even in seemingly “minor” texts, papal language recurrently affirms core doctrinal axes—truth of the faith, rejection of errors, supernatural purpose of the Church.
– The context: 1959 is the year John XXIII announces the council that will systematically contradict, relativize, or silence key elements of the Syllabus, Lamentabili, Pascendi, and Quas primas.
– The method of Modernism as exposed by Pius X: gradual erosion through language, emphasis, and omissions, not always crude frontal denials.
Measured against this, the letter is symptomatic in four decisive ways:
1. Supernatural eclipse:
– No doctrinal confession, no combat against error, no emphasis on salvation and judgment.
– Only generic references to God’s help, emptied of concrete doctrinal content.
2. Humanistic exaltation of functionaries:
– Episcopal excellence equated with diplomatic, administrative, and architectural achievements.
– This aligns more with a paramasonic corporation than with the militant Church of Christ.
3. Instrumentalization of “Peter’s See”:
– The authority of the See is invoked to crown the very collaborators in a trajectory of rupture.
– This is exactly how false authority legitimizes revolution: using sacred titles to bless anti-sacred projects.
4. Preparation of the faithful for the cult of men:
– The faithful are formed, by such documents, to admire “great churchmen” for their worldly stature, not for their doctrinal intransigence.
– From this to the canonization industry of the conciliar sect is a straight line.
In the light of authentic papal teaching, particularly Pius XI’s insistence that “peace will not shine upon the nations as long as individuals and states deny the rule of Christ” and his denunciation of laicism as a “plague,” this letter’s sterile horizontalism exposes itself. It speaks the language of a church already mentally reconciled with that “modern civilization” Pius IX declared irreconcilable with the Catholic faith.
Conclusion: A Small Document as a Clear Symptom of a Great Apostasy
This short epistle, when measured rigorously against pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, stands condemned by what it does not say, by what it glorifies, and by whom it emanates from.
– It is the voice of an antipope crowning his own apparatus.
– It proposes an ideal of episcopal life in which loyalty to a revolutionary hierarchy and success in natural tasks eclipse the defense of the immutable faith.
– It exemplifies the Modernist method: doctrinal dilution through sugary rhetoric, “pastoral” courtesies, and the systematic silencing of supernatural absolutes.
Authentic Catholic criteria, as set forth by the perennial Magisterium, compel a stark verdict: such a text is not anodyne; it is one thread in the seamless garment of the conciliar revolt, in which the Church’s visible institutions and vocabulary are co-opted to serve a new religion of man, dialogue, and institutional self-worship.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Likewise: lex laudandi, lex credendi. Whom and what a pseudo-pontiff publicly praises reveals the faith he truly professes. Here, the applause offered to Micara under the sign of John XXIII is one more small but precise signal that the structures occupying the Vatican no longer speak with the voice of the Catholic Church, but with that of the conciliar sect which must be rejected by all who wish to remain within the unchanging Kingdom of Christ the King.
Source:
Octogesimum mox – Ad Clementem S. R. E. Cardinalem Micara, Episcopum Veliternum ac Vice Sacra Urbis Antistitem, octogesimum aetatis annum implentem, die 12 m. Decembris a. 1959, Ioannes PP.XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025