Venerable Brother, health and Apostolic Blessing.
In this brief Latin letter dated June 15, 1961, John XXIII congratulates Eugène Tisserant on the fiftieth anniversary of his promotion to the cardinalate (bestowed by Pius XI). The text praises Tisserant’s erudition, his work in the Vatican Library, his role connected with the Oriental Church, his diocesan titles, and his admission to the Académie Française. It culminates in courteous wishes for perseverance in “sincere faith,” wisdom, and further merits, sealed with an “Apostolic Blessing.”
Behind this polished façade of curial compliment lies a distilled expression of the neo-church’s humanist, academicist, and ecumenical self-idolatry, in which the supernatural mission of the Church is silently displaced by the cult of culture, diplomacy, and institutional self-congratulation.
Polite Courtesies as Manifesto of the Neo-Church’s Self-Worship
From Apostolic Exhortation to Courtly Flattery: A Structural Perversion
Already the form of this letter is symptomatic. Where a true Roman Pontiff would take a jubilee as an occasion to recall *salus animarum* (the salvation of souls), the gravity of judgment, and the obligation of a cardinal to defend the faith usque ad sanguinis effusionem (unto the shedding of blood), John XXIII reduces the event to a civilized exercise in mutual admiration.
He emphasizes:
– Tisserant’s “exquisite doctrine,” literary refinement, and scholarly prestige.
– Administrative services (Prefect of the Apostolic Library, Eastern affairs).
– The worldly triumph of membership in the Académie Française.
– An elastic invocation of “sincere faith,” entirely detached from any concrete confession against modern errors.
There is no mention of:
– The Deposit of Faith guarded *eodem sensu eademque sententia* (in the same sense and same judgment; cf. Vatican I, *Dei Filius*).
– The duty to combat heresy, especially Modernism, solemnly anathematized by St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane exitu*.
– The centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the Cross, penance, or the danger of apostasy within the clergy.
– The Social Kingship of Christ over nations, vigorously proclaimed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, and betrayed by the worldly liberalism that already impregnated the conciliar sect.
– The Masonic and liberal assault on the Church (denounced by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, and by Leo XIII and Pius X), against which a cardinal should be a bulwark, not an ornament.
This silence is not accidental. *Silentium de supremis rebus* (silence about the highest things) in an official act of “Apostolic” praise is itself an accusation. When the so-called “pope” speaks to one of his top dignitaries and replaces the Cross with curriculum vitae, we see the program: the Church transmuted into an academy, the cardinalate into a salon, supernatural faith into cultural capital.
Factual and Historical Level: The Carefully Curated Illusion
John XXIII’s text constructs a narrative of continuity and honor:
– He anchors Tisserant’s dignity in the act of Pius XI, suggesting a linear continuity from the pre-1958 Magisterium to his own regime.
– He lists functions: Apostolic Library, Eastern affairs, suburbicarian sees—visible signs of institutional solidity.
What is systematically omitted:
– The doctrinal war of the 20th century against Modernism. Tisserant’s career unfolds in the decades when St. Pius X had just condemned the very tendencies later normalized by the conciliar revolution. The letter ignores any duty to uphold *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili*.
– The ideological and practical infiltration of liberal, ecumenist, and Masonic influences into the hierarchy, repeatedly exposed by pre-1958 popes as the “synagogue of Satan” and secret societies waging war on the Church (cf. Pius IX, *Syllabus* and related allocutions).
– The obligation—declared by previous popes—to resist naturalism, biblical relativism, and surrender to “progress” and “modern civilization” condemned explicitly as incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
By praising Tisserant’s integration into one of the supreme organs of secular French liberal culture (the Académie Française) with no doctrinal caveat, this letter functions as an endorsement of the precise milieu repeatedly condemned by genuine popes as breeding grounds of laicism, indifferentism, and Freemasonry. The very thing Pius IX and Leo XIII warned against is here serenely celebrated as a “rare” and enviable honor.
This is the essence of the conciliar sect: maintain external vestments of continuity while inverting the axis of glory—from Christ Crucified and His immutable truth to the applause of the world.
Linguistic Level: A Sanitized Vocabulary of Comfortable Apostasy
The rhetoric of this letter is revealing. Its language is:
– Courtly, aesthetic, and bureaucratically serene.
– Saturated with praise of intellect, “refined letters,” and cultural honors.
– Utterly devoid of ascetical, sacrificial, or militant vocabulary.
Key symptomatic points:
1. The alleged “Apostolic” voice limits itself to polite compliments. Instead of *exhortatio ad fidem integram* (exhortation to integral faith) we have a congratulatory note that could be issued by any secular academy.
2. The mention of Tisserant’s role in Eastern affairs is stripped of any insistence that separated Eastern communities must convert to the one true Church. This silence lubricates the later ecumenical betrayal in which “unity” is sought without conversion—exactly the kind of relativism already condemned:
– Pius IX (Syllabus, propositions 15–18) rejects religious indifferentism and any equation of confessions.
– Pre-1958 doctrine asserts the necessity of explicit Catholic unity; yet John XXIII’s tone reframes Eastern competences in the register of cultural management, not missionary zeal.
3. “Sincere faith” is invoked, but never defined. It functions as an empty, irenic formula—compatible with the very modernist conception of “faith” condemned in *Lamentabili sane exitu*, where dogmas are reduced to symbols or evolving expressions of religious feeling. Without doctrinal content, it is a cipher for the pseudo-spirituality of the neo-church.
4. Christ the King is not named; the letter never reminds the cardinal that all honor, including academic renown, is dust unless subordinated to the reign of Christ over intellect and nations, as Pius XI taught in *Quas Primas*. Instead, the logic is inverted: the Church’s esteem follows the world’s recognition.
This is not neutral. It is a carefully polished linguistic shift from supernatural clarity to naturalistic ambiguity. *Verba mutantur, sensus amittitur* (words are changed, the meaning is lost).
Theological Level: An “Apostolic Blessing” Emptied of Apostolic Faith
The theological bankruptcy appears precisely in what the letter refuses to affirm.
1. Absence of the Combat against Modernism
By 1961, the condemnations of Modernism were recent, binding, and explicit. Pius X had:
– Declared Modernism “the synthesis of all heresies” (*Pascendi*).
– Through *Lamentabili sane exitu*, condemned propositions:
– denying the inerrancy of Scripture,
– relativizing dogma as mere historical interpretation,
– subjecting Church teaching to modern criticism,
– dissolving the authority of the Magisterium.
A cardinal formed and active in this era should have been:
– exhorted to vigilance against these errors,
– praised (if true) precisely for defending orthodoxy.
Instead:
– Not a word on doctrinal watchfulness.
– Not a word against the rationalist, historicist tendencies rampant in biblical and patristic studies.
– Tisserant’s erudition is celebrated in abstraction, as though scholarship were a neutral good regardless of whether it serves or corrodes the faith.
This reflects the core modernist maneuver: separate “science” and “culture” from submission to Revelation and the Magisterium, then reintegrate them as equal conversation partners. This is flatly opposed to the pre-1958 doctrinal principle that:
Philosophia ancilla theologiae (philosophy is the handmaid of theology),
not its judge or rival, and that biblical and theological scholarship are strictly bound to the defined faith.
2. Reduction of Ecclesial Office to Human Merit
The letter repeatedly speaks of Tisserant’s “merits,” “benefits,” and “virtues” primarily as:
– scholarship,
– administrative service,
– cultural prestige.
But a cardinal’s essential task is:
– to be a witness of the Faith,
– to defend the Church against error,
– to be ready to die for Christ.
The letter does not mention:
– martyrial readiness,
– confession of faith versus the world,
– the Four Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, hell),
– the gravity of scandal or doctrinal compromise.
Yet the traditional Magisterium insists:
– No human excellence justifies silence about dogma.
– Public office in the Church increases responsibility before God; honors are not decorations but burdens for the defense of truth.
By offering an “Apostolic Blessing” on this naturalistic profile, John XXIII implicitly redefines ecclesial excellence as institutional success plus cultural respectability—an inversion of Christ’s criteria, who promised hatred from the world to His true disciples.
3. Implicit Ecumenical and Liberal Orientation
Tisserant’s portfolio included Eastern affairs. The letter’s uncritical praise anticipates the conciliar sect’s ecumenism:
– engaging schismatics and heretics as if their errors were negotiable variants of Christianity,
– replacing the call to return to the one true Church with “dialogue.”
Pius IX and St. Pius X explicitly condemned:
– the notion that non-Catholic communions are legitimate paths of salvation,
– the relativization of Catholic dogma in interconfessional discourse.
When John XXIII exalts an architect of such relations without any reference to conversion, he signals the coming capitulation: the abandonment of the axiom *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* in practice, under a mirage of benevolent generosity.
Symptomatic Level: A Micro-Icon of the Conciliar Revolution
This letter is not an isolated nicety. It is a concentrated micro-icon of the systemic apostasy of the conciliar sect.
1. Cult of Man and Culture
Where the authentic Church exalts:
– Christ the King,
– the Cross,
– the supernatural order,
the neo-church, as exemplified here, exalts:
– the cultured cleric,
– academic recognition,
– humanistic moderation.
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, teaches that true peace and order rest solely on the public recognition of Christ’s sovereignty. Here, “peace” is the serene comfort of a cardinal perfectly at ease in the elite of an anti-Catholic Republic, with no hint of militancy for Christ’s Crown and Law.
2. Naturalism and Secular Standards of Success
Pius IX in the *Syllabus* condemns as errors:
– the sufficiency of human reason and progress without reference to God,
– the claim that Church authority must yield to modern civilization.
This letter tacitly canonizes those very tendencies:
– academic bodies of laicist states become “rare honors” to be celebrated as crowning achievements of a prince of the Church.
– No warning is given regarding the anti-Christian ideologies historically represented in such institutions.
3. Softening of the Magisterial Edge
The letter’s tone is the opposite of the grave, virile voice of Pius X, who explicitly threatened excommunication for defenders of modernist theses. Instead of:
– commanding,
– correcting,
– warning,
John XXIII:
– compliments,
– affirms,
– avoids.
This “softness” is not charity. It is a deliberate disarming of the Church’s defensive walls, precisely while enemies—naturalists, Masons, modernists—advance. The result is the well-known pattern:
– post-1958 documents drowning in ambiguity, irenicism, and bureaucratic verbiage,
– dogmatic edges blunted,
– error no longer confronted but courted.
4. Prefiguration of the Abomination
This text belongs chronologically and ideologically to the pre-conciliar twilight in which:
– the usurper’s regime had already begun to erode the doctrinal fortifications,
– future architects of the conciliar apostasy were being flattered, promoted, and enveloped in an atmosphere of “openness” and “cultural engagement.”
In that light, this letter appears as a small but telling stone in the edifice of the *abominatio desolationis* (abomination of desolation) that would soon manifest liturgically, doctrinally, and institutionally:
– The Most Holy Sacrifice replaced by a man-centered assembly.
– Ecclesiology dissolved in ecumenism.
– Moral doctrine relativized.
– Christ the King dethroned in favor of religious liberty and the cult of human dignity detached from grace.
The Gravity of Silence: Omission as Confession of Guilt
The most damning indictment of this letter is its silence concerning the supernatural.
Measured by the integral Catholic faith (pre-1958), the omissions are lethal:
– No reference to the immutable Magisterium as norm for Tisserant’s scholarship.
– No invocation of the Holy Ghost as guardian of dogma against innovation.
– No mention of the sacred duty to reject and combat modern errors.
– No reminder of the cardinal’s responsibility for souls, nor of his accountability at judgment.
– No proclamation of the Kingship of Christ over societies ravaged by laicism and Masonic influence.
According to the logic of the true Church:
– An “Apostolic” document that systematically avoids the Apostolic core (Repent, believe; hold fast to tradition; reject error) ceases to function as a Catholic act.
– Such silence in a context that demands confession becomes complicity.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent). In the face of Modernism, such silence is not innocent; it is an open gate.
Conclusion: A Polite Seal on a Program of Subversion
This short letter to Eugène Tisserant, viewed within Catholic doctrine from before 1958, reveals:
– A radical naturalistic shift: from supernatural mission to cultural respectability.
– A linguistic strategy of anesthesia: replacing doctrinal clarity with courteous vagueness.
– A theological defection: the “Apostolic Blessing” used to ratify a vision of the Church as an esteemed partner of the world’s elites, not the militant Ark of Salvation.
– A symptomatic stage of the conciliar sect’s mutation: retaining external forms—Latin, titles, curial protocol—while emptying them of the uncompromising content solemnly defended by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
Under the criteria of integral Catholic faith, such a document is not harmless. It is a polished fragment of the same revolution that would enthrone the cult of man, relativize dogma, profane the liturgy, and drag countless souls toward indifferentism and apostasy.
Where a true successor of Peter would have thundered with Pius IX against liberal illusions and with Pius X against modernist betrayal, John XXIII smiles, flatters, and blesses. In that gentle betrayal lies the key to the ensuing devastation.
Source:
Ad Eugenium S. R. E. Cardinalem Tisserant, Episcopum Ostiensem, Portuensem et S. Rufinae, quinque lustra implentem ex quo Sacra Romana honestatus est Purpura (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025