This short Latin letter of antipope John XXIII to Jaime de Barros Câmara, on the 25th anniversary of his episcopal consecration, is a ceremonious laudatory note: it praises his administrative zeal in various diocesan roles in Brazil, highlights his organization of a 1955 International Eucharistic Congress, commends his efforts for schools and catechesis, and grants him the faculty to impart the apostolic blessing with a plenary indulgence on the occasion of his jubilee.
Beneath this apparently pious ornamentation stands the typical empty saccharine rhetoric of the conciliar upheaval, masking the usurpation of authority and the gradual subversion of the very notion of Catholic episcopacy.
Haud minus: Hollow Jubilation in the Shadow of Usurpation
Laudatory Formalism Detached from the Nature of the Episcopate
At the factual level, the document offers a sequence of compliments:
– It notes that de Barros Câmara has completed twenty-five years as a bishop and currently rules the Archdiocese of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro.
– It enumerates his previous governance of Mossoró and Belém do Pará, his role for Eastern-rite Catholics in Brazil, his position as military vicar, and his presidency of the Brazilian episcopal conference.
– It commends his pastoral visits, missions, formation of clergy and religious, and above all the International Eucharistic Congress in Rio (1955) as a supposedly enduring stimulus to Eucharistic devotion.
– It praises his initiative to raise funds for parochial schools on his jubilee and rewards him with the faculty to impart a “papal” blessing with plenary indulgence.
All of this is wrapped in suave phrases about *caritas*, paternal sentiments, and “egregia voluntas,” giving the appearance of a classical papal letter. But already here the core perversion emerges: the entire text presupposes as an unquestioned fact that John XXIII holds papal authority and that the structure over which de Barros Câmara presides is the Catholic Church. This is the foundational lie upon which all subsequent flatteries rest.
If the root is poisoned, the branches, however ornate, bear no fruit. The letter’s sweetness serves to normalize a counterfeit hierarchy and a counterfeit understanding of the episcopal office, already preparing the conciliar sect’s later inversion of doctrine, liturgy, and discipline.
Language of Courtesy as Instrument of Ecclesiological Subversion
The rhetoric is a model of what could be called anesthetic Latinity: external orthodoxy of form masking internal corruption of content.
1. Continuous emphasis on human merits and bureaucratic functions:
– The letter piles up titles and offices: president of the episcopal conference, military vicar, ordinary for Eastern-rite Catholics, organizer of major events. The episcopate is presented predominantly as administrative coordination, managerial competence, and capacity to stage mass gatherings.
– Missing is any serious mention of the bishop as guardian of *fides integra*, judge of error, defender against heresy, or teacher who condemns Modernism and liberalism.
2. Reduction of Eucharistic piety to spectacle:
– The International Eucharistic Congress is exalted as the great monument of his ministry; the letter states that its memory provides lasting encouragement to worship the Eucharistic mysteries.
– But there is no doctrinal reaffirmation of the Eucharist as propitiatory *Sacrificium*, no mention of the necessity of the state of grace, no warning against sacrilegious Communions, indifferentism, or profanation. It is liturgical triumphalism devoid of dogmatic edge.
3. Sentimental tone without supernatural gravity:
– We read of “candida gaudia,” “gratiarum actiones,” “dulcis recordatio,” and jubilee festivities; we do not read of *judicium Dei*, mortal sin, hell, the reign of Christ the King over nations, or the obligation to resist anti-Christian states and Masonic plots.
– This aligns perfectly with the naturalistic optimism condemned by Pius IX’s *Syllabus*, particularly the notion that the Church should reconcile herself with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (condemned proposition 80). The letter’s tone is that of an institution acclimatized to the world, not of a militant Church.
The language thus betrays what it seeks to conceal: a concept of the Church as a respectable religious corporation embedded in modern structures, not as the unique, divinely constituted *Societas perfecta* waging war against error and reigning publicly by the Kingship of Christ (Pius XI, *Quas primas*).
Theological Vacuum: Silence Where Catholic Doctrine Must Thunder
Measured by the unchanging doctrine consistently reaffirmed before 1958, the omissions of this letter are more damning than its compliments.
1. No affirmation of the integral Catholic faith as binding norm:
– Nowhere does the letter exhort the jubilarian to guard his flock from condemned errors: indifferentism, rationalism, Modernism, socialism, Freemasonry, ecumenism, or religious liberty, all explicitly rejected by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– There is no reference to the anti-Modernist crusade: no mention of *Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*, or the anti-Modernist oath, although Brazil and its clergy were already saturated with precisely the errors targeted there.
2. No assertion of Christ’s social Kingship in a key Latin American metropolis:
– Pius XI teaches: *peace and true order are only possible in the Kingdom of Christ, publicly acknowledged by individuals and states* (cf. *Quas primas*). Brazil’s growing secularism and subjection to masonic liberalism demanded precisely such a reminder.
– Yet the letter speaks only of schools and pastoral initiatives, without the least insistence on the duty of civil authorities to submit to the law of Christ, without denouncing the separation of Church and state condemned in the *Syllabus* (proposition 55). Its muteness is complicity.
3. No confrontation with the enemies of the Church identified by pre-1958 popes:
– Pius IX explicitly points to secret societies as the engine of war against the Church and calls them the “synagogue of Satan,” urging bishops to unmask them and to condemn their false claims of serving “progress” and “mutual benefit.”
– John XXIII’s letter—issued from the same See those Popes held—says nothing. No warning about Freemasonry, no warning against liberalism, no mention of Communism’s infiltration, no insistence on doctrinal vigilance. This silence is eloquent.
4. No stress on the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacramental life in the state of grace:
– The jubilee is treated as a sentimental occasion; there is no call for penance, no appeal to deepen participation in the Unbloody Sacrifice with contrite hearts, no emphasis on confession and conversion.
– The integral Catholic faith judges such silence as intolerable. A bishop’s primary charge is to preach repentance and sound doctrine, not to be congratulated as a functionary of a neo-ecclesial apparatus.
In brief, where Pius X thunders against Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” here we find a velvet void. The letter’s theological anemia is not accidental; it is symptomatic.
Episcopal Conferences and Horizontal Power: Seeds of Democratized Pseudo-Church
One of the more revealing elements is the praise of de Barros Câmara as president of the Brazilian episcopal conference:
“Episcopali Brasiliae Coetui praesidens, ibidem consiliorum sapientia Antistites collegas adiuvas.”
The emphasis on the conference is emblematic of the emerging ecclesiology of the conciliar sect:
– The traditional doctrine affirms: the diocesan bishop receives his jurisdiction from Christ through the Roman Pontiff; episcopal conferences have no divine institution and no proper jurisdiction over bishops; they can be useful technical organs, not parallel magisterial bodies.
– The letter, however, highlights the presidency of the conference as a central mark of merit, reinforcing the idea of a collective governance structure that will later be weaponized to dissolve personal responsibility and blur the vertical order of authority.
This is a proto-conciliar glorification of the “synodal” and “collegial” apparatus that would—after 1962—serve to implement error under a veneer of shared discernment. Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X consistently defended the primacy and clarity of hierarchical authority against national or collegial structures that undermined Roman doctrinal unity. Here we witness, in mild form, the opposite tendency: the baptizing of bureaucratic collegialism that weakens the link between bishop and the authentic Roman See (which, by 1961, the usurper already occupies).
Instrumentalization of Indulgences and Blessings by a Counterfeit Authority
The most serious theological imposture lies in the grant:
“id tibi facultatis facimus, ut, quo volueris die, adstantibus christifidelibus nomine Nostro Nostraque auctoritate benedicas, plenaria Indulgentia proposita.”
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, a manifestly heterodox usurper cannot dispense what he does not possess.
– The power to bind and loose, to attach plenary indulgences and indeed to bless in the name of the universal Church, is inextricably linked to being truly head of the Church.
– Pre-Vatican II theologians (e.g. St. Robert Bellarmine, as summarized in your provided material) are clear that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope; he falls from office *ipso facto* and loses jurisdiction. The 1917 Code (canon 188.4) recognizes tacit resignation through public defection from the faith.
– John XXIII inaugurates and symbolizes the conciliar revolution leading directly to the doctrinally deviant system later codified by his successors; his pontificate is the historical and doctrinal hinge of the neo-church. Consequently, his alleged indulgences, acts, and “papal” faculties are juridically null and spiritually deceptive.
Thus, this letter is not a harmless token. It is the simulated exercise of keys no longer held, used to confirm in their positions men embedded in a structure drifting toward apostasy. What it promises as spiritual treasure is, in reality, empty currency printed by a parallel regime.
Eucharistic Congresses and the Cult of Spectacle without Dogma
Central in the praise is the 1955 International Eucharistic Congress:
“perpetuo memorandus inscriptus est Eucharisticus ex omnibus gentibus anno MCMLV celebratus Conventus… dulcis adhuc animis eorum, qui illic interfuerunt, eius recordatio inest et ad Eucharistica mysteria colenda, frequentanda, extollenda durabile incitamentum indit.”
On the surface, nothing seems more Catholic than a Eucharistic Congress. Yet we must judge fruits and context.
1. Reduction to emotional recollection:
– The Congress is presented in terms of “sweet memory” and ongoing encouragement. No doctrinal precision: no forthright affirmation of the Real Presence as dogma against rising Protestantized tendencies; no clear proclamation that the Eucharist is primarily the propitiatory Sacrifice for sins; no condemnation of those who would diminish its sacrificial nature or turn it into a communal meal.
– This abstraction from dogmatic clarity is the hallmark of the conciliar mentality: preserve external devotions while silently preparing their reinterpretation.
2. Preparation for liturgical revolution:
– By the late 1950s, liturgical innovators and Modernists were already at work; the push toward a communal, anthropocentric, horizontal conception of worship was advancing.
– Grandiose Eucharistic events, detached from doctrinal militancy, foster an atmosphere in which emotional participation replaces catechetical precision. Such spectacles become launchpads for the later deformation of the Most Holy Sacrifice into an assembly “meal.”
3. Contrast with pre-1958 papal teaching:
– Pius XII (in *Mediator Dei*) defends the objective sacrificial nature of the Mass, warns against novelty and false “community” emphases, and insists that liturgy cannot be a laboratory for innovators.
– John XXIII’s letter offers only applause and sentiment—with no guarding wall of doctrine. This reticence, at such a sensitive time, is not neutral; it is preparatory betrayal.
The Congress thus appears in this letter as a proto-conciliar show: Catholic in vocabulary, but increasingly voided of the sharp doctrinal content that would prevent its co-option by the revolution.
Education Without Combat: Schools as Neutral Social Project
The letter warmly approves the initiative to raise funds for parochial schools on the occasion of the episcopal jubilee:
“Laudamus inceptum eique exitus cupimus opimos, cum de re summi momenti agatur; quodsi enim tenellae aetati prospiciatur, ut pie et probe succrescat, melioris aevi solidissima fundamenta collocantur.”
Again, correct words—*if* understood in the traditional sense. But the context and omissions invert their meaning.
1. Total silence on the doctrinal content of education:
– No insistence that schools must teach the integral Catholic faith, uncompromisingly reject liberalism, socialism, Modernism, false religions, mixed marriage errors, and indifferentism.
– No reference to the condemnations in the *Syllabus* of secular, neutral, or state-controlled education (propositions 45–48).
2. Education as vague moral uplift:
– “Pie et probe succrescat” remains unprotected by any concrete doctrinal criteria. In the conciliar environment which soon followed, this vagueness was exploited to introduce “Catholic” education based on humanism, democracy, religious liberty, and pluralism.
3. Failure of episcopal duty:
– A true bishop must ensure that youth are trained to confess the one true Church and to reject the errors of the age. Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X explicitly charge the hierarchy with this task.
– This letter, instead of reminding the jubilarian of such a grave obligation, flatters him with indulgences and good wishes. The mindset is pastoralism without dogmatic teeth: a preparatory stage of the cult of “dialogue” and “tolerance” that would soon be enthroned.
In sum, Catholic language is used, but its militant content—its ordained conflict with modern errors—is methodically censored.
The Conciliar Sect’s Strategy: Legitimation by Continuity of Forms
Viewed from the symptomatic level, this letter is an instructive specimen of how the conciliar sect entrenched itself:
1. Preservation of forms:
– Latin text, classical phrasing, references to Eucharistic devotion and schools, epistolary courtesies—all suggest nothing has changed.
– This is deliberate: retaining externals buys time, disarms resistance, and fools souls into presuming continuity.
2. Evacuation of substance:
– The total absence of doctrinal militancy, the silence on Modernism, Freemasonry, liberalism, and false religions, the omission of Christ’s Kingship over states, are not accidental oversights; they are programmatic.
– Where pre-1958 popes explicitly denounced the myths of “progress” and “modern civilization” unmoored from Christ, John XXIII’s mode is flattering, irenic, and politically safe. It is already tacitly aligned with propositions condemned by the *Syllabus*.
3. Moral and spiritual damage:
– Bishops thus praised and rewarded in this way are not exhorted to be confessors of the faith but to be managers of large-scale events and clerical bureaucracies.
– The faithful are habituated to an authority that smiles, blesses, and never condemns. This prepares them to accept later, more explicit doctrinal betrayals as natural “developments.”
This is the essence of the conciliar deception: *mutatio in sensu* (change in meaning) carried out under an apparent continuity of language and ceremonial.
Contradiction with Pre-Conciliar Magisterium on Church, State, and Error
When collated with the authoritative pre-1958 teaching your provided sources exhibit, the incompatibilities sharpen:
– Pius IX’s *Syllabus* and related allocutions affirm:
– The Church is a true and perfect society with innate rights, not subordinate to the state.
– The separation of Church and state, religious indifferentism, and unlimited liberty of cults and press are condemned.
– Secret societies, especially Masonic, are unmasked as principal enemies of Christ and His Church.
– Pius XI’s *Quas primas* asserts:
– Christ must reign socially and politically; states, rulers, and laws are bound to His law.
– Peace and order are possible only under His public Kingship.
– Secularism and laicism are a “plague.”
– St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*:
– Condemn attempts to historicize, relativize, evolve dogma, and subordinate the Magisterium to “experience” or modern thought.
– Impose on pastors the grave duty to extirpate Modernism.
This letter of John XXIII:
– Never reaffirms the Kingship of Christ over Brazilian public life.
– Never condemns secular liberalism, socialism, or anti-Christian legislation.
– Never recalls the duty to root out Modernist and liberal theology in seminaries or schools.
– Never warns against false ecumenism, religious indifferentism, or collaboration with condemned sects.
– Instead, rewards a figure integrated into the burgeoning apparatus of episcopal conferences and national-level ecclesial politics—structures later used to promote precisely what the prior Magisterium had anathematized.
The result is not continuity but practical repudiation. The silence itself is evidence of the shift from the integral Catholic position to the conciliatory, naturalistic stance of the neo-church.
From Ornament to Apostasy: Why This “Harmless” Letter Matters
One might be tempted to dismiss this piece as an insignificant congratulatory note. That would be naïve.
– Every such letter, issued under the name of “Pope” by a usurper and accepted docilely by a hierarchy in mutation, played a role in normalizing the new regime.
– The continuous stream of sweet Latinity, praises, and indulgences, without any exercise of the traditional papal and episcopal duty to condemn errors and defend dogma, habituated clergy and laity to a counterfeit magisterial style.
– Form without substance, blessing without battle, jubilee without judgment: this is how the structures occupying the Vatican prepared the ground for the Council and its aftermath.
Measured by the standard of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine and practice, this letter is spiritually bankrupt:
– It lacks doctrinal clarity.
– It omits the central supernatural stakes.
– It flatters episcopal human achievements instead of summoning to heroic fidelity.
– It simulates jurisdiction and indulgentiary power while emanating from a line that had begun to betray the faith.
Therefore, this document, though externally pious, must be recognized as part of the continuum of conciliar corruption: a polished mask of continuity concealing the progressive dismantling of the Catholic episcopate and the public reign of Christ the King.
Source:
Haud minus ad Iacobum Tit. Ss. Bonifatii et Alexii S. R. E. Presb. Card. De Barros Càmara, Archiepiscopum S. Sebastiani Fluminis Ianuarii, quinque lustra a suscepta episcopali dignitate implentem (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025