The letter “In extremis” of John XXIII congratulates the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas in Manila on its 350th anniversary, extols its historical merits for Church and nation, praises its role in the Christian formation of the Philippines, recalls earlier papal commendations, and confers an “Apostolic Blessing” on its authorities, professors, students, and civil powers, presenting the university as a bulwark of Christian culture and harmonious cooperation between Church, academy, and modern state. Its entire tone and structure, however, reveal the programmatic shift from the supernatural and confessional order to an academicist, nationalist, and humanistic paradigm that dissolves the integral Catholic mission into the preparatory rhetoric of the conciliar revolution.
In extremis: The Manila Letter as Prototype of Conciliar Academic Apostasy
From Catholic University to Ideological Laboratory of the Neo-Church
Already the context and authorship of this document require unmasking.
“In extremis” (6 April 1961) is issued by John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar upheaval and first public architect of the “aggiornamento” that would culminate in the systematic subversion of Catholic dogma and discipline. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, his acts lack true papal authority; they belong to the preparatory phase of that paramasonic, globalist “conciliar sect” which, from 1958 onward, occupied Catholic structures while emptying them of their substance.
This letter is externally modest: a laudatory address to the University of Santo Tomas (UST) on its 350th anniversary. But precisely in such “minor” texts the real program is unveiled: where one would expect an unequivocal reaffirmation of the exclusive rights of Christ the King, the objective necessity of Catholic doctrine for public life, the condemnation of liberal and masonic forces ravaging the Philippines and the world, we receive smooth phrases about culture, progress, national service, and academic prestige. The supernatural is subordinated to the natural; dogma is hidden under sentimentalism and civility.
Let us dissect this systematically.
Factual Level: Selective History to Legitimize the Conciliar Project
The letter opens by calling the University of Santo Tomas:
“a most shining light of Christian wisdom in the farthest East”
and recalls its origins in Archbishop Miguel de Benavides, its pontifical and royal privileges, its merits for evangelization, doctrine, and civil society. It enumerates:
– preservation and propagation of the faith,
– contribution to ecclesiastical life,
– service to synods, councils, episcopal ministry,
– missionaries and martyrs,
– formation of national elites after Philippine independence.
At first glance, this seems orthodox: gratitude for a Catholic university that served evangelization and Catholic formation. However, several decisive distortions appear.
1. The letter instrumentalizes the true Catholic past of UST in order to integrate it smoothly into the new conciliar paradigm.
– The authentic merits of UST occurred in centuries when:
– the Philippines was explicitly Catholic in public law,
– the Most Holy Sacrifice was celebrated according to the immemorial Roman rite,
– the faith, morals, and social order were governed according to *Quas primas* and the condemnation of liberalism exemplified in the *Syllabus of Errors*.
– Instead of clearly stating that these conditions are the normative model to be preserved, John XXIII employs them as decorative background for a new orientation: integration into modern nation-state, laicized legal order, and “dialogue” with contemporary culture.
2. The praise of UST’s role in the independent Philippine state is framed in purely natural and nationalist categories.
– He celebrates that, once the islands “obtained liberty” and became “sui iuris,” the university:
– provided men for public office,
– aided in the drafting of laws and institutions,
– served as “alma mater” of the Philippine nation,
– is called a “strong bulwark” of Christian humanism and culture.
– There is no reminder that:
– states are morally obliged to recognize the true religion, as taught unequivocally by Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (condemning the separation of Church and state, the religious indifferentism of public law, and the idolization of “civil progress”).
– any legal order that does not submit to the reign of Christ the King is disordered and cannot claim full legitimacy before God (Pius XI, *Quas primas*).
– The letter transforms a once-confessional university into the proud ideological partner of a religiously diluted nation-state, without one syllable of doctrinal warning.
3. The supposed continuity with pre-1958 popes is a rhetorical weapon:
– He cites Innocent X, Leo XIII, and Pius X in order to wrap his own agenda in the borrowed authority of true pontiffs:
– Innocent X: that Catholic faith may increase and divine worship be extended;
– Leo XIII: paternal protection for doctrine and teaching;
– Pius X: praise for integrity of doctrine.
– But John XXIII:
– does not repeat their condemnations of liberalism, naturalism, and masonic conspiracies against the Church;
– does not warn UST against precisely those currents, although by 1961 the Philippines and its elites were deeply penetrated by secularism, Americanist liberal democracy, and freemasonic influence.
– This is the classic conciliar method: quote the past selectively, amputate its anti-liberal teeth, and use it as a facade for a new, humanistic program.
The factual narrative is not a defense of UST’s Catholic identity but a controlled re-framing of its past as legitimation capital for the emerging neo-church.
Linguistic Level: Sentimental Rhetoric as Veil for Doctrinal Evacuation
The language of the letter is outwardly pious and solemn. Yet, a close reading exposes several symptomatic features.
1. Sentimentalism and aestheticism:
– Expressions about:
– “sweet delight,”
– “joy,”
– “garlands of honor,”
– “ever-fresh laurels,”
– “generous palestra of minds,”
– function as a romantic aura around the university.
– This overabundance of affective and ornamental language is not accidental. It displaces rigorous dogmatic clarity and ascetical seriousness. It is the rhetoric of a cult of “culture,” not the grave language of shepherds warning against wolves.
2. Vague formulas without doctrinal density:
– The university is called:
– “bulwark of Christian humanism,”
– “cultivated Christian humanity,”
– “alma mater of the whole Filipino people.”
– What is precisely meant by “Christian humanism” here?
– Pre-1958 magisterium insists on a supernatural order, the kingship of Christ, the necessity of submission of civil society to divine law.
– Here, the phrase is left ambiguous, easily mergeable with secular humanism, open to pluralistic readings in line with later conciliar documents.
3. Absence of combative vocabulary:
– Before 1958, papal teaching about universities, nations, and modernity is replete with words like:
– error, heresy, indifferentism, naturalism, socialism, freemasonry, modernist poison, condemnation.
– In this letter:
– no mention of modern errors,
– no warning about secular universities,
– no denunciation of the great apostasy (already rapidly advancing),
– no explicit recall of Lamentabili or Pascendi, although modernism in theology and exegesis was by then deep in academic institutions worldwide.
– The deliberate omission is itself accusatory. Silence is used as a tool to normalize coexistence with the very errors previously anathematized.
4. The “Apostolic Blessing” as empty seal:
– The culminating gesture is a broad blessing over:
– university authorities,
– benefactors,
– civil magistrates,
– participants in celebrations.
– No condition is attached:
– no exhortation to reject condemned liberal principles,
– no demand that civil laws conform to Christ’s law,
– no call to public recognition of the Catholic Church as the one true Church.
– The blessing becomes a sacralization of the status quo: a university enmeshed with a secularized polity is ratified as an ideal partnership. This is the stylistic and spiritual matrix of the later conciliar “dialogue with the modern world.”
The linguistic sugar-coating serves to tranquilize and sedate Catholic consciences while the foundations are shifted from dogmatic militancy to irenic compatibility with modern civilization.
Theological Level: The Systematic Evaporation of the Supernatural
Measured against the immutable pre-1958 Magisterium, the theological content of this letter is gravely deficient.
1. No reference to the absolute necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation:
– A genuinely Catholic praise of a university would:
– recall that its reason for existence is to lead students and society to the knowledge and love of the one true God in the one true Church;
– subordinate all sciences to sacred doctrine, as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas, whom the document repeatedly names.
– Instead:
– the emphasis is on culture, arts, public service, national identity.
– the supernatural end (salus animarum) is never stated with clarity, only vaguely implied.
This contradicts the integral teaching reaffirmed by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, which condemns propositions such as:
– that human reason alone is sufficient for moral order (prop. 3);
– that man may find the way to eternal salvation in any religion (prop. 16);
– that the Church cannot dogmatically define that Catholic religion is the only true religion (prop. 21).
By refusing to restate these truths in a context where secular pluralism and religious liberty advance, the letter effectively abandons them in practice.
2. No assertion of the social Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches clearly that peace and order in nations are only possible when Christ reigns publicly; states are obliged to recognize Him and govern according to His law.
– John XXIII’s letter:
– praises the role of UST in forming leaders and shaping laws,
– yet does not say that those laws must explicitly confess Christ’s law,
– nor that any refusal of the state to recognize the Catholic religion is a grave disorder.
– Thus, the document moralizes the liberal nation-state by Catholic academic prestige, without calling it to conversion and submission to Christ the King.
Lex Christi super omnis lex humana (the law of Christ is above every human law) is silently relativized.
3. No warning against modernism in theology and academia:
– By 1961:
– the Church had already solemnly condemned the propositions of modernist exegesis and doctrine (*Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*).
– Catholic universities were known battlefields where these errors infiltrated.
– Yet, in a document about a major university, allegedly dedicated to St. Thomas, there is:
– no mention of the obligation to adhere to anti-modernist norms,
– no reaffirmation of the condemned status of evolutionist dogma theories, relativist exegesis, or the democratic “church of the people.”
– This silence is not accidental; it is programmatic. It prepares the shift toward the very errors condemned by St. Pius X.
4. Invocation of St. Thomas Aquinas emptied of Thomistic substance:
– The letter calls St. Thomas guide and teacher of “perfect, immaculate doctrine.”
– But it does not mention:
– his teaching on the subordination of temporal power to the spiritual,
– his intransigence against heresy,
– his insistence on the objective, immutable nature of dogma.
– St. Thomas becomes a decorative patron for a university that is being rhetorically authorized to slide into the conciliar vision that St. Pius X had identified as *Modernismus, omnium haereseon conlectus* (Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies).
The theology of the letter is not explicitly heretical; it is worse: it is systematically evacuated, reduced to a benign backdrop for naturalistic collaboration between academy, Church-name structures, and secular nation.
Symptomatic Level: The Manila Letter as Seed of the Conciliar Academic Regime
Seen in the wider history of the conciliar revolution, “In extremis” is emblematic.
1. The conciliar sect’s strategy: occupy institutions via soft language
– The paramasonic structures occupying the Vatican never began their work with frontal denials of dogma. They began by:
– praising existing Catholic institutions,
– affirming continuity,
– speaking of “Christian humanism” and “service to humanity,”
– omitting anti-liberal condemnations,
– gradually shifting priorities from supernatural salvation to natural development.
– This letter is a textbook instance:
– UST’s Catholic past is “canonized” in words,
– while its future is gently oriented toward being a prestigious, state-serving, culturally Christian but practically pluralistic university.
2. Transformation of Catholic universities into engines of the neo-church:
– Once the doctrinal edge is blunted:
– theology departments become laboratories for evolutionary dogma theories;
– philosophy departments substitute perennial metaphysics with personalism and historicism;
– formation of elites supports pluralistic democracy instead of confessional statehood.
– If a university is told that its glory lies in:
– national service,
– cooperation with secular law,
– being a “bulwark” of a vaguely defined Christian humanism,
– then any future resistance to religious liberty, ecumenism, interreligious syncretism is indirectly delegitimized.
– That is precisely what unfolded across the world in the wake of the conciliar upheaval: institutions once founded for the defense of dogma became engines of error.
3. Co-opting true martyrs and missionaries into a new narrative:
– The letter notes missionaries and martyrs who went forth from UST, some shedding blood for the Gospel.
– Yet:
– their sacrifice is annexed to a narrative which now tends toward “dialogue” with non-Catholic religions, religious freedom, and abandonment of missionary urgency.
– This is theological abuse:
– the blood of those who died for the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith is used to crown a structure moving toward relativization of that same exclusivity.
4. The glaring absence of combat against Freemasonry and liberalism:
– Pius IX and Leo XIII forcefully exposed masonic sects as the “synagogue of Satan” conspiring to destroy the Church and Catholic society.
– The Philippines and its elites were deeply influenced by masonic ideology in their nationalist and liberal movements.
– A truly Catholic letter in 1961 should have:
– warned UST against infiltration by masonic and liberal principles;
– recalled that academic freedom cannot mean freedom to propagate condemned doctrines.
– Instead:
– total silence.
– Such silence, in this precise historical context, is a de facto abandonment of the prior magisterial line and a concession to the enemy.
The Manila letter functions as a minor “charter” of the conciliar academic orientation: continuity in words, rupture in priorities, silence where prior popes thundered, flattering of secular powers, and reduction of the university’s mission to polished naturalism.
Exposure of Core Errors and Omissions
We can synthesize the gravest points as follows, marking the most serious with emphasis.
1. Suppression of the exclusive salvific necessity of the Catholic faith:
– The letter nowhere teaches that only in the integral Catholic faith and in submission to the true Church is there salvation.
– This omission, given the audience and context, amounts to practical indifferentism.
2. Failure to proclaim the public Kingship of Christ over the Philippine state:
– The university’s role in shaping public officials and laws is lauded without asserting that such laws must recognize Christ’s reign and the rights of the Church as superior to the state.
– This contradicts the spirit and teaching of *Quas primas* and the *Syllabus*.
3. Instrumentalization and dilution of St. Thomas Aquinas:
– His name is used, but his doctrinal force is anesthetized.
– This paves the way for those pretending to be traditional Catholics to maintain Thomistic vocabulary while accepting conciliar novelties.
4. Total silence on modernism, condemned by St. Pius X, in a letter about a central academic institution:
– No recall of the anti-modernist oath,
– No restatement of the condemnations of Lamentabili or Pascendi,
– Thus, tacit tolerance of precisely those errors.
5. Sentimental consecration of the alliance between a conciliarized university and a secularized nation:
– The civil magistrates are blessed and praised with no call to correct laws according to Catholic teaching.
– The university is confirmed as “alma mater” of the entire nation, regardless of whether that nation remains objectively Catholic in public law and morals.
6. Blessing without conditions of fidelity to pre-1958 doctrine:
– An “Apostolic Blessing” is spread as a blanket over all, without any public demand for adherence to the unchanging magisterium.
– This is emblematic of the conciliar sect’s sacrilegious use of sacred language to lend a counterfeit aura of legitimacy to disordered realities.
Conclusion: A Gentle Appearance Masking a Systemic Betrayal
“In extremis” might appear to the inattentive as a harmless, even edifying commemorative letter. In reality, it is a precise example of how the conciliar usurpers operated:
– by selectively invoking authentic Catholic history while silencing its anti-liberal edge;
– by flattering Catholic institutions into embracing a “Christian humanism” compatible with secular modernity;
– by omitting all mention of condemned errors at the very moment they are triumphing;
– by using blessings and references to saints as a varnish over an emerging regime that would soon enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man.
The University of Santo Tomas is thus lyrically praised, not to bind it more strictly to the immutable doctrine of the true Church, but to incorporate it more subtly into the network of institutions serving the “Church of the New Advent,” the neo-church that would publicly manifest itself at, and after, the council convened by John XXIII.
A genuinely Catholic response must be the opposite of the letter’s spirit:
– an unambiguous reaffirmation that all academic life is subordinate to divine Revelation and the doctrinal decrees of the perennial Magisterium;
– an insistence on Christ’s social Kingship over the Philippines and every nation;
– a militant rejection of modernism, liberalism, Freemasonry, and any compromise with naturalistic ideologies;
– a demand that any university bearing the name of St. Thomas and calling itself “Pontifical and Royal” be judged solely according to pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, not by the praises of those who inaugurated and advanced the conciliar apostasy.
Anything less is complicity in the ongoing betrayal of Christ, His Kingship, and His one true Church.
Source:
In extremis, Epistula ad Rev.mum Patrem Ioannem Labrador O. P., Pontificiae et Regiae Manilanae Studiorum Universitatis a S. Thoma Aquinate Moderatorem, trecentesimo quinquagesimo anno exeunte, ex quo… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025