This Latin letter, issued by antipope John XXIII on July 20, 1961, commemorates the fifth centenary of the canonization of St. Catherine of Siena, addressing Michael Browne as Master General of the Order of Preachers. It rehearses Catherine’s virtues and historical role: her defense of the Roman Pontiff, efforts for the Pope’s return from Avignon, interventions for peace in Italy, love of the Most Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Passion and the Precious Blood, and spiritual influence through her letters and Dialogue. It notes how later pontiffs assigned her patronages (of Rome, of Italy, of women in Catholic Action, of certain congregations) and exhorts the Dominican family and the faithful to celebrate the jubilee in her honor. The text cloaks a grave fraud: the usurper of 1961 parasitically invokes a true medieval saint to confer borrowed legitimacy on the conciliar revolution he is engineering against the very Faith she served unto death.
St. Catherine of Siena and the Conciliar Usurper’s Cultic Appropriation
Instrumentalizing a Saint of Obedience to True Popes for a Regime of Revolt
The most striking fact is not what this letter praises, but who is praising.
We are not dealing with an obscure devotional leaflet, but with an official act of John XXIII, the first in the line of conciliar usurpers who:
– Convoked the neo-modernist Second Vatican Council.
– Installed the very principles condemned by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII: religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegial democratization of authority, and the practical dethronement of Christ the King in public life.
– Elevated to power and protection precisely those tendencies against which St. Catherine of Siena spent her life defending the Papacy and the unity of the Church.
The letter’s structure is simple and apparently orthodox:
– A warm remembrance of Catherine’s canonization and Dominican identity.
– Praise of her defense of the Apostolic See, her insistence that the Pope return to Rome.
– Emphasis on her zeal, her Eucharistic devotion, her contemplation of the Passion, the Sacred Heart, and the Precious Blood.
– Citation of earlier documents: canonization bull, patronage decrees.
– Exhortation to solemn celebrations and invocation of her intercession.
– Apostolic “Blessing.”
On the factual, surface level, little (in isolation) appears heterodox. The poison is subtextual: a usurper, preparing the demolition of the visible order of the Church, presents himself as the spiritual heir of a saint whose entire mission presupposed the real Papacy, the immutable dogma, and the supremacy of Rome as defined by Tradition.
This is simulatio (simulation, deceptive appearance) elevated to a program: cloak a new, anti-Catholic project in the language of the saints, in order to drag the faithful, unsuspecting, into a paramasonic structure foreign to the Bride of Christ.
Factual Level: Selective Praise and Calculated Omissions
The letter highlights true elements of Catherine’s life:
– Her humble origins and elevation by grace.
– Her vigorous defense of the authority of the Roman Pontiff.
– Her insistence that the Pope leave Avignon and return to Rome.
– Her role as peacemaker among warring factions.
– Her burning charity and bold admonition of sinners.
– Her profound Eucharistic and Christocentric spirituality.
All of this is historically and doctrinally consonant with pre-1958 Catholic teaching and with her own writings.
Yet what is systematically omitted, and in this omission unmasked, is decisive:
1. Catherine’s uncompromising doctrine of obedience:
– She bound obedience to the Pope precisely because he is the Vicar of Christ in the strict, dogmatic sense, not a dialectical moderator among religions.
– She never imagined obedience to a “Pope” who would promote religious liberty, denounced as an error in the Syllabus (Pius IX, 15–18, 77–80), nor to one who would treat heretics and infidels as “separate brethren” on the same salvific plane.
2. Her severity against corruption and error:
– Catherine did not flatter. She castigated prelates who betrayed their office and souls living in mortal sin.
– The letter vaguely notes she “rebuked sinners” and reconciled enemies, yet never suggests that in the present crisis of faith clergy or laity must resist doctrinal treason. Instead, it lays gentle ground for a conciliar fantasy of harmony without conversion.
3. Her absolute supernatural horizon:
– Catherine’s Dialogue and letters turn constantly on sin, grace, the necessity of penance, the horrors of hell, the Blood of Christ, the salvation of souls.
– This letter aestheticizes her spirituality as a “pleasant garden,” an “amoenissimus Dei hortus,” but remains silent on the concrete dogmatic and moral demands she embodied. No stress on:
– the necessity of the state of grace,
– the reality of eternal damnation,
– the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church as the one ark of salvation,
– the duty of rulers to subject their laws to Christ and His Church.
4. Her ecclesial context:
– Catherine’s mission presupposes the Church as societas perfecta (a perfect society) with divine constitution and jurisdiction, as constantly defended against liberalism and statolatry by Pius IX’s Syllabus and Leo XIII.
– John XXIII writes from within a project aimed at reconciling the Church with “modern civilization” explicitly condemned (Syllabus, 80), and preparing Dignitatis humanae’s betrayal of the public rights of Christ the King, refuted by Pius XI in Quas primas: peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ, not in religious relativism.
Thus, even at the factual level, the letter is not innocent commemoration. It is a calculated selection: authentic pieces of Catherine are extracted from their doctrinal matrix and re-framed to ornament a regime that will soon contradict all that matrix in principle and practice.
Linguistic Level: Pious Eloquence as Veil for Revolution
The rhetoric is classically Roman: smooth Latin, biblical allusions, edifying topoi. Precisely here the corruption reveals itself.
1. Sanitized heroism:
– The text calls Catherine “mulier fortis” (a strong woman) and notes her virile firmness, but her strength is dissolved into general virtues: rebuking sinners, reconciling enemies, loving the Eucharist.
– Missing is her readiness to confront prelates, cities, and princes when they resisted the will of God and the true Pope in matters of faith and morality. The sharp edge of her zeal is blunted into “amabile exhortationes.”
2. Vague calls to celebration:
– The exhortation that all classes of society contemplate her as a “friendly star” and implore her help “that peaceful and happy times may dawn” replaces her constant call to penance and uncompromising fidelity to Catholic truth.
– “Peaceful times” are wished for without specifying that authentic peace is only the fruit of submission to Christ’s reign and to His true Church (*Quas primas*). This gentle, undifferentiated desire prefigures the conciliar language of “dialogue” and “shared values,” detached from conversion.
3. Reduction of dogmatic gravity:
– The letter calls for the jubilee to serve the “increase of the Catholic faith,” yet omits any condemnation of the very errors already rampant in the 1950s–60s: modernist exegesis condemned by Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, religious indifferentism, liturgical experimentation, the cult of man.
– The ambiguity—praise of faith with no identification of enemies of faith—is the stylistic hallmark of the coming conciliar sect.
4. Tone of institutional self-congratulation:
– By enumerating how Pius IX, St. Pius X, Pius XII entrusted new patronages to Catherine, John XXIII subtly includes himself within the same continuity, as if his own rule shared their doctrinal mind.
– This is a rhetorical theft of capital: using the names of anti-liberal, anti-modernist Popes to whitewash a project that will repudiate their teachings in practice.
The polished Latin here functions as ideological camouflage. The language, apparently exalted, is carefully emptied of militant Catholic specificity in order to be compatible with the program soon labeled “aggiornamento.”
Theological Level: Saint of the Papacy Deployed to Undermine the Papacy
Measured against the immutable doctrine of the Church before 1958, the letter’s theological strategy is exposed.
1. Catherine’s authority rooted in true Papal primacy:
Catherine recognized:
– that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ with universal jurisdiction (cf. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus),
– that unity with the Pope is unity with the Church,
– that resistance to the Pope in legitimate commands is resistance to God.
She vehemently urged the Roman Pontiff to live up to that office, not to transform or democratize it. Her entire mission is anchored in the dogma that the Church and Papacy are of divine right, not malleable expressions to be adapted to modern ideologies.
John XXIII invokes her as a defender of the Apostolic See while preparing:
– A council that, in its documents and aftermath, dilutes the uniqueness of the Catholic Church (cf. Lumen gentium, Unitatis redintegratio, Nostra aetate) against the consistent prior magisterium.
– A practical redefinition of the Papacy into a “primacy of charity” serving ecumenical diplomacy, not juridical and doctrinal sovereignty.
This is a theological inversion: the saint of papal integrity is used to legitimate the papacy’s self-dissolution into a mere presidency of a pluralistic communion.
2. Pseudomystical legitimation of modernist ecumenism:
Catherine’s peacemaking is emphasized, but without the crucial condition she always presupposed: peace through conversion to the one true Faith and submission to rightful authority.
– In her vision, factions and kingdoms must abandon sin and schism, not negotiate coexistence among competing creeds.
– The letter subtly repurposes her as a mascot of “reconciliation” palatable to later ecumenism, where unity without doctrinal agreement is sought.
Against this, the pre-1958 Magisterium insists:
– There is one true Church; Protestantism, indifferentism, and latitudinarianism are condemned (Syllabus, 15–18).
– The Church cannot place herself on the same level as false religions nor approve their worship (Syllabus, 77–79).
The silence of the letter on this point, at a moment when the conciliar planners were already preparing the betrayal, is not innocent; it is calculated.
3. Denial by omission of Christ’s public Kingship:
Pius XI in Quas primas teaches:
– Peace and order require the public recognition of Christ’s reign over individuals and states.
– Secularism and laicism are a “plague” to be condemned, not partners in dialogue.
The letter for Catherine’s centenary offers vague wishes for “peaceful and happy times” but never recalls:
– the duty of rulers to submit to divine law,
– the social reign of Christ the King,
– the condemnation of the liberal state’s religious indifference.
Catherine, in her context, constantly addressed rulers with the language of sin and duty before God. John XXIII’s letter to the Dominicans avoids confronting the modern state and modern society with such imperatives. This omission prepares his later public posture: a smiling coexistence with the very errors anathematized by his predecessors.
4. Weaponized continuity:
The letter’s most theologically dangerous element is its simulation of continuity:
– It cites Scripture, canonization bulls, and pre-conciliar Popes.
– It repeats standard Catholic themes: grace, charity, sanctity, Eucharistic devotion.
However:
– It insulates these elements from any reference to the anti-modernist barricade erected by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII.
– It does not recall Catherine as a model against modernism, against liberalism, against naturalism, though her spirit is precisely that of supernatural intransigence.
The tactic is clear: maintain the vocabulary while evacuating its doctrinal content, thus training the faithful to accept future novelties as harmonious with Tradition. This is the hermeneutical fraud condemned already in substance by St. Pius X in Pascendi, which described modernists as those who hide their errors under traditional formulas.
Symptomatic Level: A Saint Co-opted by the Conciliar Sect
This letter is a small but telling symptom of systemic apostasy.
1. Appropriation of spiritual capital:
The conciliar sect (the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican) cannot create authentic sanctity or doctrine. It therefore:
– Exploits true saints canonized long before the revolution.
– Quotes genuine magisterial texts while silently betraying their substance.
– Builds a façade of continuity behind which it introduces religious liberty, ecumenism, syncretism, and the cult of man.
John XXIII’s letter is precisely such an appropriation: invoking Catherine’s prestige to anesthetize vigilance while his regime advances toward Vatican II.
2. The nexus with condemned errors:
Read against the Syllabus and Lamentabili:
– The refusal to confront modern philosophy and liberal politics in this commemorative exhortation is itself a dereliction. Pius IX and St. Pius X insist that shepherds and theologians must explicitly condemn errors; silence in the face of systemic heresy is complicity.
– By 1961, rationalist and historicist exegesis, liturgical subversion, and theological evolutionism were rampant in the “official” institutions. The letter utters not one word of warning, though St. Catherine would have lashed such treason without fear.
This silence is doctrinal: it signals that the new regime will no longer fulfill the munus of guarding the deposit of faith, but will coexist with its assailants.
3. The false cult of saints under an anti-church:
The usurping hierarchy continues to promote devotion to saints canonized before 1958, while simultaneously:
– Denying in practice their teaching on obedience, penance, modesty, the uniqueness of the Church, the horror of heresy.
– Fabricating its own “saints” who embody ecumenism, religious liberty, and doctrinal evolution, thereby attempting to rewrite sanctity according to modernist dogma.
St. Catherine of Siena is held aloft by John XXIII, yet her living voice—demanding a holy, doctrinally faithful Papacy and the subjugation of nations to Christ—is excluded. The cult becomes an empty shell: emotionally pious, doctrinally sterilized, politically useful.
4. Contrast with authentic pre-1958 magisterial use of saints:
Previous Popes invoked saints to:
– Condemn contemporary errors.
– Call to penance, reform of clergy, restoration of Christian social order.
Here, John XXIII:
– Invokes Catherine without identifying any concrete contemporary sin or heresy.
– Limits himself to encouraging commemorations and celebrations, in continuity with a purely horizontal and festive religiosity that will soon emerge.
This is the psychology of apostasy: replace dogmatic clarity with devout vagueness; replace calls to conversion with calls to “celebrate”; retain the shell of Catholic devotion while injecting the substance of humanistic optimism.
Reasserting the Integral Catholic Criterion Against Conciliar Manipulation
To unveil fully the bankruptcy of the attitudes embedded in this letter, we must oppose to it the non-negotiable principles of the integral Catholic faith:
1. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation):
– Confirmed by councils and Popes, never revoked.
– St. Catherine acted as though this were absolutely true: her labors aimed at strengthening the visible, united Catholic Church under the true Pope.
Any regime that hesitates to proclaim this, or buries it under ecumenical platitudes, stands condemned by the prior Magisterium.
2. Ecclesia est societas perfecta (The Church is a perfect society):
– The Church has from Christ full authority, independent of the state, to legislate, judge, teach, and sanctify (Syllabus, 19–27; Pius IX).
– Catherine fought for the integrity and freedom of this authority; she did not reduce the Church to a partner in pluralistic dialogue with secular powers.
John XXIII’s silence on these truths, as he maneuvers toward “opening to the world,” exposes his program’s incompatibility with Catholic ecclesiology.
3. Condemnation of liberalism and modernism:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus, Leo XIII’s encyclicals, St. Pius X’s Lamentabili and Pascendi, Pius XI and Pius XII’s teachings form an unbroken front.
– St. Pius X singled out modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies,” requiring oaths, vigilance, and condemnations.
John XXIII instead:
– Loosens discipline.
– Rehabilitates previously suspect theologians.
– Adopts language that avoids confrontation with precisely those errors.
His honeyed praise of Catherine, devoid of anti-modernist teeth, thus becomes an icon of capitulation.
4. Public reign of Christ the King:
– Quas primas insists on Christ’s rights over states and laws; secularism is intrinsically evil.
– Catherine would never bless a neutral or laicized politics.
The letter’s horizon of “felicia tempora” without the explicit condition of recognizing Christ’s kingship is naturalistic: it seeks temporal harmony without the necessary triumph of the social Kingship of Christ.
In this light, the theological-spiritual posture of the letter stands condemned by the very saints and Popes it cites. Its devotional language is true only insofar as it repeats traditional facts; its deeper function within the conciliar trajectory is to secure psychological obedience to a pseudo-magisterium preparing to contradict the Faith.
Conclusion: St. Catherine Against the Neo-Church that Invokes Her
When stripped of illusions, this 1961 letter is not an edifying Catholic milestone but an early movement in a larger strategy:
– To wrap the coming conciliar revolution in the mantle of ancient sanctity.
– To neutralize saints like Catherine by domesticating their radical demands within an innocuous, sentimental cult.
– To insinuate that loyalty to John XXIII and his successors is equivalent to loyalty to the Roman Pontiffs defended by Catherine—precisely when their doctrine and praxis diverge from the pre-1958 Magisterium.
The integral Catholic response is clear:
– St. Catherine of Siena belongs to the perennial, anti-liberal, anti-modernist Church; her authority condemns any “Petrine” figure or ecclesial structure that betrays the Faith, relativizes dogma, or collaborates with secular apostasy.
– Her example reveals the contradiction of a conciliar sect that preaches aggiornamento while mouthing her name. She would not have urged obedience to innovators who dismantle the Faith; she would have summoned them to repentance or denounced their infidelity.
– Authentic devotion to St. Catherine today requires precisely what this letter avoids: an unflinching repudiation of the modernist project, a return to the unchanging doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church that canonized her, and a refusal to grant moral or theological legitimacy to those who have erected an anti-church upon the ruins of Christendom.
To invoke St. Catherine is to invoke the fire of truth against compromise, not to bless the slow erosion of the Faith. Her name on the lips of a conciliar usurper is not a sign of continuity, but an accusation.
Source:
Hoc anno – Ad Michaëlem Browne, Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Moderatorem Generalem, quinto exeunte saeculo, ex quo Sanctorum Caelitum honores Pius Pp. II S. Catharinae Senensi decrevit (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025