The Latin letter “In extremis,” dated 6 April 1961 and signed by John XXIII, is an adulatory message to the rector of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, celebrating the university’s 350th anniversary. It praises its historical services to Church and society, emphasizes its role in preserving “orthodox faith,” exalts its collaboration with civil authorities and episcopal hierarchies, invokes previous papal commendations, and imparts an “apostolic blessing” upon faculty, students, benefactors, and public officials.
Celebrating a Hollowed-Out “Catholic” Glory under a Usurped Authority
Manifestation of Usurped Pontifical Authority and the Cult of Institutional Prestige
From the first line, this letter is a paradigmatic act of potestas claimed without the fides that grounds it. John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar revolution, speaks in the serene, courtly tone of a reigning Pontiff, yet his entire theological posture—preparing Vatican II’s aggiornamento, legitimizing religious liberty, dialogue, and ecumenism—stands in direct rupture with the unchanging Magisterium solemnly reaffirmed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
This letter must be read as part of that usurpation: an act of apparent continuity used to anesthetize resistance while the foundations are being subverted.
Key features evident here:
– John XXIII assumes and exercises an authority that, according to the perennial doctrine synthesized by St. Robert Bellarmine and reflected in Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, cannot belong to a manifest modernist heretic: hereticus manifestus ipso facto (by that very fact) officio caret (is deprived of office).
– He cloaks his message in references to genuine popes (Innocent X, Leo XIII, St. Pius X) to borrow their capital while directing an institution toward the new conciliar program: service to “civilization,” collaboration with post-colonial political orders, and a “Catholic” humanism increasingly emptied of militant supernatural clarity.
– He reinforces the authority and continuity of a university that will shortly become one of the incubators of post-conciliar theology in Asia, making it an instrument of the “neo-church” rather than a bastion of Thomistic Catholic orthodoxy.
Thus, behind the apparently harmless congratulation we detect the deeper pattern: stabilizing and decorating institutions intended to carry out the conciliar apostasy.
Factual Flattery as a Screen for a New Ecclesiology
On the factual plane, the letter:
– Extols the University of Santo Tomas (UST) as a “most splendid light of Christian wisdom in the Far East,” founded by Archbishop Miguel de Benavides and enriched by papal privileges and royal patronage.
– Praises its contribution to:
– the life and growth of the Church,
– the preservation and diffusion of the “orthodox faith,”
– literary and scientific work,
– assistance to synods, councils, and episcopal hierarchies,
– mission work, even mentioning blood-witnesses.
– Applauds its role in the newly independent Philippine nation, praising its influence on legislation and public life, and calling it alma mater and “strong bulwark of Christian civilization.”
– Repeats and confirms earlier commendations:
– Innocent X: that from studies “the Catholic faith may increase, divine worship extend, truth be known and justice cultivated.”
– Leo XIII: placing the university under his and his successors’ protection because of doctrinal integrity and benefit to Church and society.
– St. Pius X: praising its integrity of doctrine and fruitful influence on religion and letters.
– Asserts his own “special benevolence” and imparts an “Apostolic Blessing.”
On the surface, none of this sounds overtly heretical. That is precisely the danger. The poison of conciliarism often operates not by explicit doctrinal denials in such ceremonial texts but by redirection: naturalizing the Church’s mission, blurring the demands of the Kingship of Christ, and baptizing political and cultural transformations without recalling their strict subordination to divine law.
Crucially, the text:
– Never warns against the chief doctrinal and moral errors already spreading in theological faculties worldwide in 1961: Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu.
– Never binds the university, in concrete, to the anti-modernist oath (then still in force) in rigorous, militant terms.
– Never denounces the errors listed in Pius IX’s Syllabus Errorum, though universities had become the privileged seedbeds of precisely those condemned propositions.
– Never recalls that all teaching must explicitly submit to the infallible Magisterium as historically exercised, not to an invented “spirit of the Council” which John XXIII was preparing.
A letter allegedly from the Vicar of Christ to a Thomistic university, on the eve of the greatest doctrinal crisis in Church history, should have been a trumpet blast against modernism, liberalism, religious indifferentism, rationalism, evolution of dogma, and the dethronement of Christ the King. Instead we find polished compliments and innocuous piety, perfectly suited to lull consciences while preparing their betrayal.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent): the silence regarding the real doctrinal battle reveals the underlying complicity.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Bureaucratic Eulogy Masking Doctrinal Erosion
The rhetoric of this letter is characteristic of the conciliar style in embryo:
1. Ornamental traditionalism:
– Abundant Latin courtesies, references to Marian patronage and St. Thomas Aquinas.
– Allusions to martyrs and missions.
– These elements are true in themselves, yet they are instrumentalized as pious décor, not as weapons in the war for dogma.
2. Avoidance of precise dogmatic battle lines:
– No mention of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation as defined by the Council of Florence and reiterated by earlier popes.
– No invocation of Pius IX’s condemnation of indifferentism (Syllabus, propositions 15–18).
– No echo of Pius XI’s Quas Primas, which demands the public reign of Christ the King over nations and laws, not a vague “Christian humanism.”
– No warning against secret societies and masonic or paramasonic influences, despite the clear teaching of Pius IX and Leo XIII that universities and political elites are primary targets of these sects.
3. Syncretic political language:
– The praise for UST’s role in the independent Philippine state is framed in terms that subtly detach civil order from explicit subjection to Catholic truth:
– The university is hailed for helping shape “laws and institutions” of the new nation—yet there is no demand that these laws recognize the exclusive rights of the true religion as taught before 1958.
– This anticipates the conciliar false doctrine that the state must grant equal civil rights to false cults, condemned by Pius IX (prop. 77–80) and directly contrary to Quas Primas, where Pius XI affirms that rulers and nations must publicly honor and submit to Christ the King.
The tonal effect is anesthetic: the letter flatters, reassures, and integrates the institution into a post-colonial, pluralist framework under the banner of “Christian wisdom,” without explicitly affirming the hard, exclusive claims of the Catholic faith over all social and political life. This is how the “hermeneutic of continuity” operates: continuity of language, rupture of substance.
Theological Emptiness: A Thomistic Name without Thomistic Steel
The letter repeatedly invokes St. Thomas Aquinas, yet it never confronts the concrete errors Thomism exists to refute. This omission is devastating.
A genuinely Catholic exhortation to a Thomistic university in 1961, faithful to Pius X’s Pascendi, would:
– Command rigorous adherence to:
– the anti-modernist oath,
– the doctrine of the immutability of dogma,
– the objective, historical truth of Scripture and miracles against rationalist criticism (explicitly condemned in Lamentabili).
– Denounce:
– novelty in dogmatic matters as corruption, not “development,”
– historicism and the notion that doctrine evolves with human consciousness,
– false ecumenism which treats Protestantism or other religions as paths to salvation,
– collegialist or democratic conceptions that subvert the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the Church.
Instead, we read only abstract praise:
“Sit eadem lectorum ingeniorum generosa palaestra; floreant istic, una cum disciplinis et artibus, christianae in exemplum excultae virtutis ornamenta.”
“Let the same [university] be a noble arena of the talents of learners; let there flourish there, together with disciplines and arts, the ornaments of Christian virtue cultivated as an example.”
Fine words—but utterly generic. There is no doctrinal content sufficient to arm against the specific modernist assault already condemned by the Magisterium. Thomism is invoked as a cultural emblem, not as a binding norm of metaphysics, dogmatic theology, and ecclesiology.
This selective silence contradicts the mind of the pre-1958 popes:
– St. Pius X explicitly condemned those who would “reform” Catholic doctrine in the sense of adapting to modern philosophy and science, warning that such innovators are the most dangerous enemies within.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas insisted that Christ’s reign must permeate laws, schools, customs, and institutions; any attempt to neutralize or privatize His kingship is rebellion.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemned the very liberal principles that were already being normalized in academic life and would be fully embraced at Vatican II.
John XXIII’s letter stands in implicit contradiction with this integral teaching, not by what it affirms, but by what it refuses to say: it praises an academic bastion while failing to bind it to the concrete anti-liberal, anti-modernist positions taught by his predecessors. This is not innocent omission; it is a strategic evacuation.
Instrumentalizing History: Using True Popes to Legitimize the Neo-Church
A central maneuver in this letter is the appropriation of earlier popes’ commendations of UST:
“Innocent X wished that ‘from literary studies the Catholic faith may be increased, the cult of the Divine Majesty extended, truth recognized and justice cultivated.’ Leo XIII took it under his protection. St. Pius X honored it for doctrinal integrity and fruitful influence.”
This is factual; those pontiffs did indeed hope UST would serve doctrinal integrity and the reign of Christ. But John XXIII uses these testimonies as a seamless chain culminating in his own “special benevolence,” as if his program were their logical continuation.
This is theological fraud:
– Innocent X, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X anchored university life in:
– the objective, exclusive truth of Catholic doctrine;
– opposition to religious indifferentism and rationalism;
– subordination of states and cultures to Christ’s kingship.
– John XXIII, by preparing a council that would promote religious liberty, ecumenism, and a man-centered “pastoral” orientation, in fact betrays those principles.
By wrapping his modernist-friendly benevolence in references to these true popes, he enacts a classic tactic: captatio traditionis, capturing the symbols of Tradition to smuggle in its opposite.
From the perspective of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine:
– A pontifical letter that fails to recall the binding condemnations of Pius IX’s Syllabus, Leo XIII’s anti-liberal teachings, and St. Pius X’s anti-modernist decrees, while solemnly confirming an institution about to become an instrument of conciliar aggiornamento, does not stand in continuity but in usurpation.
– The authority claimed by John XXIII collapses before the principle articulated by Bellarmine and classical theology: a manifest modernist, undermining what the Papal Magisterium has definitively taught, cannot be the head of the Church whose faith he subverts.
Thus the letter’s apparent continuity functions as a mask for the conciliar revolution—a revolution that would enthrone religious liberty and ecumenism condemned by Pius IX and Pius XI, and replace Thomistic clarity with historicist ambiguity.
From Christian Civilization to Naturalistic Humanism
The symptomatic thrust of the letter is the transition from the integral Catholic order to a naturalistic humanism draped in Catholic vocabulary.
Notice the underlying emphases:
– UST is praised as:
– a benefactor of the nation’s legal order,
– a cradle of leaders,
– a bulwark of “Christian humanism” and “civilization” in the Philippines.
But the letter:
– Does not insist that the Philippine state must:
– constitutionally recognize the Catholic Church as the one true religion,
– suppress public offenses against the true faith,
– reject the liberal principle of equal rights for false religions—precisely the points Pius IX condemned and Pius XI corrected through Quas Primas.
– Does not warn against:
– secular nationalism,
– socialism,
– freemasonic influence,
– Protestant and other sectarian inroads,
– all of which had already been recognized by pre-1958 popes as mortal threats and were gaining enormous influence in Asia.
By praising the university’s national role without binding that role to the hard, counter-revolutionary demands of the Kingship of Christ, the letter effectively blesses a synthesis of Catholic form with liberal content.
This is the seed of the later conciliar teaching that:
– States need not confess the true faith,
– all religions may seek recognition in the public forum,
– “dialogue” and “human rights” replace the imperative of conversion and the condemnation of error.
Such positions are irreconcilable with:
– Pius IX’s rejection of religious indifferentism and state religious neutrality.
– Leo XIII’s insistence that civil law must conform to the divine and natural law.
– Pius XI’s doctrine that no lasting peace can exist until states submit to Christ the King.
The letter’s silence on these principles is not a minor lacuna; it is the signature of the incoming revolution.
Academic Structures as Engines of the Conciliar Sect
Finally, we must see how this text prefigures the role universities would play in the conciliar sect (Church of the New Advent):
– Institutions historically founded as bastions of Thomistic orthodoxy are:
– praised,
– confirmed,
– integrated into the new program
without a single concrete demand that they resist modernism.
– Very soon after, many such institutions:
– abandoned the anti-modernist oath,
– embraced historical-critical methods condemned by Lamentabili,
– promoted religious liberty and ecumenism,
– relativized the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation,
– diluted Thomistic philosophy into pluralist “theology faculties.”
This letter, devoid of doctrinal militancy, functioned as a benediction over that trajectory. It is the gentle, perfumed preface to the demolition.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine:
– A genuine Roman Pontiff, seeing the advance of Modernism rebuked by St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies,” would never limit himself to gentle institutional flattery.
– He would exhort with severity, bind with clear obligations, condemn prevalent errors by name, and demand uncompromising adherence to Thomistic doctrine as a bulwark against liberalism and rationalism.
– The absence of such paternal severity, replaced by bureaucratic congratulation and politically pleasing language, is itself an indictment.
Non possumus (we cannot) recognize as the authentic voice of Peter a message that, in content and in strategic omissions, harmonizes with the conciliar program of dogmatic dilution and social naturalism.
Conclusion: An Elegant Document of the Abomination’s Preludes
“In extremis” reveals its bankruptcy not through crude blasphemy but through refined betrayal:
– It adorns a venerable institution with phrases of continuity while discreetly detaching it from the hard edges of pre-1958 doctrine.
– It refuses to confront the doctrinal crisis of its time, thereby facilitating the infiltration of Modernism into academic and ecclesial structures.
– It uses the names of true popes to legitimize a line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII, whose teaching and acts stand irreconcilable with the anti-liberal, anti-modernist Magisterium.
Under a thin crust of Thomistic and Marian language, the letter blesses the mutation of a Catholic university into an instrument of post-conciliarism. It is not a beacon of “christiana sapientia,” but an early, polished page in the script of the conciliar sect’s self-justification, preparing the ground on which the abomination of desolation would establish its academic and cultural throne.
Source:
In extremis – Ad Ioannem Labrador O. P., Pontificiae et Regiae Manilanae Studiorum Universitatis a S. Thoma Aquinate Moderatorem, trecentesimo quinquagesimo anno exeunte, ex quo idem Athenaeum constit… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025