The document “Ex obsequii” (12 February 1963) is a brief Latin letter of John XXIII addressed to Giovanni Dell’Acqua, rector of the University of Ferrara, on the occasion of inaugurating the university’s new premises. John XXIII expresses satisfaction at the new seat, delegates Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani as his representative, extols the historical prestige of the university, invokes God as “Lord of sciences” to protect and increase the institution, and imparts his “Apostolic” blessing upon faculty, students, administrators, and all participants in the ceremony. It is a polished exercise in academic and civic cordiality, whose apparent piety masks the same anthropocentric, naturalistic program that would soon be codified by the conciliar revolution.
Academic Flattery as a Manifesto of the Neo-Church
Historical Context: The Usurper’s Letter as Programmatic Symbol
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this text cannot be read as an innocuous formality. It is issued by John XXIII, the first usurper of the post-1958 succession, architect of the so‑called “aggiornamento,” convoker of Vatican II, and public patron of precisely those tendencies condemned by the pre‑conciliar Magisterium: religious relativism, false ecumenism, and reconciliation with “modern civilization” explicitly rejected in the *Syllabus Errorum* of Pius IX (1864), especially propositions 77–80.
Already this sets the hermeneutical key. In a legitimate pontifical letter, academic encouragement would be subordinated to the *regnum Christi* (the reign of Christ), the safeguarding of doctrine, and the submission of human knowledge to Revelation. Pius XI in *Quas primas* insists that authentic peace, social order, and intellectual life depend on public recognition of Christ’s kingship and His law; denying this is the root of modern disaster. Here, in contrast, we are confronted with a carefully crafted text in which any unambiguous assertion of Christ’s exclusive rights over civil institutions is replaced by courteous humanism, vague religious coloration, and praise of a secular university as such.
This is not accidental; it is paradigmatic. The letter exemplifies how the conciliar sect replaces the supernatural mission of the Church with a benevolent, decorative chaplaincy to liberal culture.
Factual Level: What Is Said—and What Is Systematically Omitted
1. The core content in plain terms:
– John XXIII notes that the University of Ferrara will soon inaugurate its new building.
– He accepts the rector’s desire that his “Person” be represented and sends Cardinal Cicognani as his delegate, whose presence will signify “benevolence and high esteem” of the Apostolic See for this “house of disciplines and arts.”
– He recalls the medieval foundation of the university under Boniface IX and its distinguished history.
– He invokes God as “Dominus scientiarum, Pater luminum” and prays that He protect the institution and cause its steady growth, so that learning, arts, “polite humanity” and “Christian wisdom” may shine together and be bound in “fertile union.”
– He grants an “Apostolic Blessing” as a pledge of fruitful endeavour and unfailing confidence.
2. The fatal omissions, which are the true message:
– There is:
– no call to the University of Ferrara to profess the Catholic faith;
– no reminder of the one true Church and the obligation of intellectual life to submit to Revelation;
– no warning against errors condemned in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* (Modernist exegesis, historicism, dogmatic evolution);
– no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice, sacraments, state of grace, necessity of Catholic moral doctrine, or danger of indifferentism and secularism;
– no insistence that university teaching—especially philosophy, theology, history—must conform to the Magisterium, as required explicitly by Pius X and Pius XII;
– no affirmation of the social kingship of Christ over the university, city, and nation, contrary to the doctrine of *Quas primas* that rulers and institutions must publicly acknowledge Christ’s rights.
Instead, the university is treated as an autonomous “noble arena of minds,” to be blessed in its own terms, with a light sprinkling of biblical language. This silence is not neutral. In Catholic theology, silence where one is obliged to confess constitutes a tacit denial. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent)—and here the consent is to the liberal principle that the university may flourish as a neutral forum of “disciplines and arts,” merely accessorized by a benevolent religious gesture.
Linguistic Level: Vague Piety Cloaking Liberal Naturalism
The rhetoric of the letter is revealing.
1. Cult of human culture:
– The university is extolled as a “noble arena of talents” and a “splendid house of disciplines and arts,” attracting “illustrious fame.”
– The language centres on the dignity of human learning, institutional continuity, and cultural prestige.
– “Politer humanitas” (polished or refined humanity) is praised alongside “christiana sapientia” as if they were coordinate values, bound in a “fertile bond.”
2. Functionalized Christianity:
– The invocation of God as “Lord of sciences, Father of lights” and the citation of James 1:17 are orthodox in themselves; yet they are instrumentalized to endorse the autonomous development of a secular institution, rather than to subject that development to dogmatic truth and the authority of the Church.
– “Christian wisdom” is mentioned, but only as an ornament in a harmonious ensemble of culture, not as the *norma normans non normata* (the unnormed norm) that judges and corrects all human disciplines.
3. Diplomatic euphemism:
– The letter is a model of diplomatic, non-confrontational prose. It abstains from any language that would contrast Catholic truth with error, grace with sin, or Revelation with modern unbelief.
– This is precisely the bureaucratic tone of the conciliar sect: flattering institutions, avoiding doctrinal clarity, erasing conflict between the City of God and the world.
In traditional documents, especially in the face of liberal and Masonic infiltration condemned in the *Syllabus* and in numerous pre-1958 allocutions, popes speak with grave clarity: states and institutions must recognize the Church’s rights and Christ’s kingship; separation of Church and state (prop. 55) is condemned; the pretension of academic autonomy against the Magisterium is condemned (props. 11, 13, 14, 57). In “Ex obsequii,” the usurper adopts the lexicon of peaceful coexistence, precisely what his predecessors anathematized.
Theological Level: Inversion of Ends and Betrayal of Magisterial Teaching
Here the conflict with unchanging pre-1958 doctrine becomes unmistakable.
1. The end of intellectual life:
– Authentic Catholic doctrine: all sciences and arts find their true end only when subordinated to God, Revelation, and the authority of the Church. Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* condemns the emancipation of exegesis and theology from Magisterial judgment; Pius IX denounces the thesis that philosophy and human sciences must be conducted “without any regard to supernatural revelation” (prop. 14).
– In the letter, John XXIII prays that Ferrara be a place “where disciplines and arts, polished humanity and Christian wisdom may shine and be joined in a fertile bond.” This formula subtly equalizes natural culture with supernatural faith, suggesting a partnership of peers rather than the hierarchical subordination demanded by Catholic teaching.
The error: *ordo inversus*. Instead of *gratia perficit naturam* (grace perfects nature), we have nature and a nebulous “Christian wisdom” mutually enriching one another in a liberal-humanist synthesis. This corresponds to the condemned Modernist vision where dogma becomes an expression of religious experience within culture, and the Church serves as an animating principle inside an autonomous temporal order.
2. The social kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches unequivocally that Christ’s royal rights bind individuals, families, and nations; rulers and public institutions are duty bound to profess and defend the true religion. He condemns secularism and laicism as the “plague of our times,” insisting that true peace and order require the recognition of Christ the King in public life.
– In contrast, this letter offers a merely devotional blessing without any demand for public profession of Catholic truth by the university; there is no condemnation of laicist statutes or of secular curricula; no call that legislation, teaching, and governance conform to Christ’s law.
Thus, the letter tacitly endorses the very separation of Church and State, and the subordination of the Church to “modern civilization,” condemned in the *Syllabus* (props. 55, 77–80). It functions as a ceremonial absolution of the liberal model.
3. Authority over doctrine:
– Pre-1958 Magisterium insists that the Church has the innate right and duty to judge all philosophical and theological opinions, to demand prior censorship where necessary, and to condemn errors that threaten faith (cf. *Lamentabili*, propositions 1–8; *Tuas libenter* of Pius IX).
– In the letter, there is not the slightest reminder that the University of Ferrara must submit its teaching and research—especially in theology, philosophy, and biblical studies—to the doctrinal authority of the Church. To the contrary, it confers a benediction that, in context, reads as unconditional approval of the university’s existing orientation.
This is not paternal oversight; it is abdication. The usurper reduces the “Apostolic” blessing to a sentimental gesture, voiding it of its juridical and doctrinal implications. It is the very Modernist tactic condemned by Pius X: allowing errors to flourish under a fog of pious language.
Symptomatic Level: Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution and Systemic Apostasy
This short letter is a microcosm of the post-1958 paramasonic structure’s strategy:
1. Integration into the liberal order:
– By effusively honouring a secular university without doctrinal conditions, John XXIII positions the neo-church as a partner of liberal academia, not its supernatural judge.
– This matches the later conciliar exaltation of “autonomy of earthly realities,” used as a pretext to detach public life from explicit submission to Christ and His Church.
2. Anthropocentrism and the cult of man:
– The focus on human disciplines, arts, prestige, “polished humanity,” and confidence in human progress, accompanied only by a discreet invocation of God as benedictive backdrop, prefigures the cult of man explicitly voiced by Paul VI and propagated by the Church of the New Advent.
– The supernatural is tolerated insofar as it crowns human achievements, not judges or reforms them.
3. Modernist methodology:
– The letter uses biblical phrases and reference to Boniface IX as a facade of continuity, while the operative thrust is discontinuity: a papal figure treating an institution, increasingly shaped by modernist theology and secular ideologies, as an unproblematic locus of “Christian wisdom.”
– This is the Modernist *hermeneutica concilii*: continuity in words, rupture in substance. The usurper does not openly deny dogma; he renders it irrelevant.
4. Masonic and naturalistic alignment:
– Pre-1958 pontiffs unmask Freemasonry and related sects as the “synagogue of Satan” warring to subject the Church to the state, secularize education, and enthrone man in place of God (see the appended text from Pius IX in the provided Syllabus file).
– Here we see the inverse: the pseudo-pontiff submitting the Church’s authority to the expectations of secular academia, lending religious capital to institutions historically at the service of anti-Catholic currents, without calling them to conversion.
– The gesture is not neutral; it is collaboration. The conciliar sect sanitizes structures that systematically propagate errors condemned by *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*.
The Silence That Accuses: No Call to Conversion, No Warning of Judgment
The gravest indictment of “Ex obsequii” is its silence about the realities that define authentic Catholic pastoral discourse:
– No mention of:
– the one true Church as necessary for salvation;
– mortal sin, grace, confession, the Last Things;
– the need for professors and students to avoid heresy and error;
– the obligation to reject Modernism, rationalism, indifferentism, and moral laxity.
This omission is not merely incomplete; it is a dereliction of duty. Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches that ignoring Christ the King in public life leads to discord, war, and moral ruin. Pius X, in condemning Modernism, warns that failing to exercise the Church’s right to judge doctrine leaves the faithful exposed to the “synthesis of all heresies.” Yet John XXIII, in the very years when these errors are metastasizing within universities, confines himself to compliments, a neutral invocation of God, and a “blessing” detached from any call to repentance.
*Tacitus consensus errori* (silent consent to error) is precisely the method by which the neo-church has catechized generations into apostasy: blessing everything, condemning nothing.
Instrumentalization of the Apostolic Blessing: From Juridical Act to Sentimental Token
Traditionally, the Apostolic Blessing is deeply bound to the Church’s visible, juridical reality: it presupposes communion in the true faith and is oriented to the salvation of souls. To confer such a blessing unconditionally upon structures promoting doctrinal relativism would be at least gravely irresponsible.
In “Ex obsequii”:
– The “Apostolic Benediction” is given:
– indiscriminately to faculty, students, administrators, and all present;
– without reference to their adherence to Catholic doctrine or moral life;
– as a “pledge of fruitful activity and unfailing confidence,” language more appropriate to a secular motivational address than a supernatural benediction.
The effect is to desacralize the blessing, reducing it to a religiously tinted certificate of good standing within the liberal order. It is congruent with the later practice of the conciliar sect: showers of blessings bestowed on ecumenical gatherings, Masonic-aligned organizations, and secular institutions, without calls to renounce error.
Such use of ecclesiastical forms to endorse naturalistic projects is not pastoral charity; it is sacrilegious co-option of sacred things into the service of the revolution.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Condemnations of Modernist Academia
When we measure “Ex obsequii” against binding pre-1958 doctrine, the incompatibility is stark.
1. Against *Lamentabili sane exitu*:
– That decree condemns, among others, the propositions:
– that exegesis and theology are exempt from ecclesiastical censorship (prop. 1),
– that ecclesiastical judgments merely reveal a conflict between faith and history (prop. 3),
– that the Magisterium cannot determine the sense of Scripture (prop. 4),
– that Catholic authors may disregard Roman condemnations (prop. 8).
– Universities had become the main laboratories of these errors; a true pope, addressing a major university in 1963, would remind it of these condemnations and demand obedience.
– John XXIII instead cloaks the institution with praise and confidence, implicitly legitimizing its existing trajectory.
2. Against the *Syllabus Errorum*:
– Denied propositions include:
– that the Church must not judge philosophy (prop. 11),
– that education should be emancipated from ecclesial authority (props. 45–48),
– that the Catholic religion need not be the only state religion (prop. 77),
– that freedom of public worship for all religions is harmless (prop. 79),
– that the Pontiff must reconcile with liberalism and modern civilization (prop. 80).
– “Ex obsequii” is a practical implementation of proposition 80: cordial reconciliation with the liberal-academic world, without demanding submission to Catholic truth.
3. Against *Quas primas*:
– Pius XI orders Catholic pastors to labour so that civil institutions recognize Christ’s royal rights in their laws, education, and governance.
– John XXIII’s letter strips out this essential dimension, transforming the putative papacy into a patron of “culture” severed from the obligation to recognize Christ as King.
It is therefore not a harmless disparity of emphasis, but a diametrical opposition. The same See cannot both condemn these liberal principles as pernicious and then act as though they are the natural framework of ecclesial presence. *Non est idem dies et nox* (day and night are not the same). The continuity is a fiction.
Conclusion: A Polite Seal on the University of Apostasy
“Ex obsequii” may appear short and ceremonial, yet its theological and symbolic weight is considerable:
– It publicly aligns the usurper in Rome with a secular university order already imbued with rationalism, historicism, and relativism.
– It deploys pious language without asserting the exclusive sovereignty of Christ and the Church over intellectual life.
– It extends a counterfeit “Apostolic Blessing” as a seal of approval upon an academic system historically used to erode Catholic faith, without calling that system to conversion or submission to the Magisterium.
Thus this letter is not an isolated courtesy; it is a precise manifestation of the conciliar sect’s essence: diplomatic humanism, doctrinal silence, and sacrilegious legitimation of liberal institutions. Where Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI speak with supernatural clarity and juridical authority, John XXIII offers smiles and slogans. Where true popes condemn the Masonic, laicist project, the usurper flatters its universities.
In this way, “Ex obsequii” stands as one more small but eloquent piece of evidence that the structure occupying the Vatican since 1958 is not the faithful continuation of the Catholic Church, but an instrument employed to enthrone the autonomy of man and culture against the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of all nations, all institutions, and every human mind.
Source:
Ex obsequii – Epistula ad clarissimum virum Ioannem Dell'Acqua, Universitatis Studiorum Ferrariensis Moderatorem, ob novam illius Athenaei sedem inaugurandam, d. 20 m. Februarii a. 1963, Ioannes … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025