In this Latin letter dated 23 December 1958, John XXIII addresses cardinals and bishops in Germany, responding to their collective message to Pius XII. He praises their loyalty to the Roman See, extols the German nation’s virtues, expresses compassion for those suffering under communism and displacement, commends fidelity to concordats with the Apostolic See, and exhorts the hierarchy to steadfast pastoral governance, concluding with pious wishes for Christmas peace and the Apostolic Blessing.
In reality, this seemingly devout text inaugurates the programmatic inversion of Catholic order: it dresses an emerging conciliar revolution in the language of continuity, neutralizes the supernatural combat against error, and subordinates the public rights of Christ the King to sentimental humanitarianism and diplomatic accommodation.
Sentimental Benediction as Prelude to Revolution
Praise Without Confession: A Nation Flattered, Not Converted
The text abounds in compliments to the German hierarchy and people:
“We see how you persevere in your office with such careful concern and firm constancy and promote what pertains to the Kingdom of Christ.”
John XXIII enumerates German diligence, discipline, culture, artistic and economic achievements. But note what is systematically absent:
– No clear recall to integral Catholic doctrine as defined and defended against the very errors ravaging Germany since the 19th century: Liberalism, Rationalism, Socialism, Modernism.
– No explicit invocation of the doctrinal armory solemnly given by the pre-conciliar Magisterium — Quanta Cura, the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi, Lamentabili sane exitu, Mortalium animos, Quas Primas.
– No denunciation of the poisons condemned by Pius IX and St. Pius X, which had penetrated widely in German theological circles (historical criticism, relativization of dogma, ecclesial democratization) and paved the way to the conciliar apostasy.
Instead of recalling that German errors had already been anathematized, he dissolves the supernatural into national eulogy and respectable bourgeois virtues. The lauded “contributions to Christian and civil culture” are not measured against the unchangeable norm of the faith, but against a vague cultural ideal.
From the perspective of integral Catholic teaching, this is not a harmless courtesy, but a theological falsification:
– Pius IX authoritatively condemned the notion that civilizational progress, science or culture could be treated as neutral grounds detached from the rule of the Church and the rights of Christ (Syllabus, especially errors 3, 4, 56–58, 77–80).
– Pius XI in Quas Primas taught that peace and order are possible only where individuals and nations recognize and submit to the social Kingship of Christ: “Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” — not peace in generic human virtues.
John XXIII empties this truth of its cutting edge. He speaks of “Christ’s Kingdom” but refuses to apply its juridical and dogmatic claims against liberal states, socialist regimes, and modernist theology. The “Kingdom” becomes a decorative phrase compatible with every political and theological arrangement. This is the embryo of the conciliar distortion later canonized in the cult of “religious liberty” and “dialogue.”
Naturalistic Compassion and the Eclipse of the Supernatural End
John XXIII devotes significant space to those suffering:
– Catholics under communist oppression in Eastern Germany.
– Refugees expelled or displaced by war.
– The poor, sick, and afflicted.
He writes movingly, for example, of those “who, undeservedly afflicted, are dearer to us the heavier the burden they bear,” and urges perseverance, charity, and hope.
But examine the omissions, which in Catholic theology are decisive:
– No explicit insistence that persecution and dispossession are to be interpreted principally in the light of the Cross, of divine justice and mercy, of the Four Last Things, and the necessity of perseverance in the one true faith unto death.
– No call to reject collaboration with anti-Christian regimes and errors under pain of mortal sin.
– No warning against the seduction of socialist, masonic, or liberal ideologies which poison souls far more gravely than material suffering.
– No affirmation that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, which would give redemptive, missionary meaning to these trials.
Instead, the letter offers a soft, horizontal consolation, fundamentally naturalistic in tone: empathy, encouragement, humanitarian concern. Supernatural references are present verbally (prayer, grace, Christ crucified) but carefully stripped of the harsh clarity with which pre-1958 popes unmasked the enemies of the Church.
This shift is not accidental. It is the early form of post-conciliar rhetoric in which:
– The vocabulary of faith is retained.
– But its dogmatic content and militant edge are dulled.
– The Cross is transformed from the objective instrument of Redemption demanding conversion and penance into a symbol of universal suffering and solidarity.
St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemned this reduction of Revelation to religious sentiment and experience. Yet here the same logic infiltrates papal language: prioritize experience, sensitivity, human affliction, while silencing the absolute obligation to confess, defend, and impose (in the moral and juridical order) the true faith.
The Concordat as Idol: Legalism Without Confession of Christ’s Rights
A central passage concerns the treaties (Concordats) between the Apostolic See and Germany:
“Because standing by agreements is sacred, just as in the past, so in the future the Apostolic See will sincerely and constantly observe the pledged faith; nor does it doubt that the supreme rulers of the German people and other magistrates will ensure that such agreements are diligently implemented.”
At first glance, this seems a legitimate reminder of the moral duty to honor solemn treaties. However:
– There is no mention that a state sins gravely if its laws and public order contradict divine and ecclesiastical law, regardless of concordats (Syllabus, 55; Pius XI, Quas Primas).
– There is no warning that states which promote atheism, religious indifferentism, divorce, secularized education, or socialist ideology violate the rights of Christ the King and of the Church, and that concordats cannot sanctify such rebellion.
– There is no echo of the firm doctrine that civil authority is bound to publicly profess and protect the Catholic religion as the only true religion — a doctrine explicitly taught and defended up to Pius XII.
The concordat is exalted as if mutual legal commitments were the highest concrete expression of the Church–state relationship. The supernatural hierarchy of truths is inverted:
– Instead of proclaiming: “First the Kingship of Christ, then legal arrangements subordinated to it,”
– The text effectively proclaims: “First mutual respect of treaties, within which the Church seeks space for her activities.”
This juridical naturalism is intrinsically opposed to Quas Primas and the Syllabus of Errors. Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to condemn the secularist thesis that the Church should withdraw to the private sphere while negotiating minimal rights within a neutral order. In Quas Primas, he teaches that:
– Christ’s royal dignity requires that public law, education, and institutions be ordered to His commandments.
– The Church must demand freedom as her own right from Christ, not as a concession of the state.
John XXIII’s silence on these points and his optimism toward secular authorities foreshadows the Vatican II betrayal, where “religious liberty” is enthroned against the entire prior Magisterium.
Rhetorical Cloak of Continuity: The Abuse of the Petrine Formula
The letter insists that obedience to the Roman Pontiff remains unchanged despite succession:
“What you think so excellently of the Supreme Pastor is in no way altered because, by the law of death, one after another assumes the government of the Church; for the power of binding and loosing which lives and excels in the See of Peter is venerated by you with unbending obedience and sincere love.”
This appeal to the enduring Petrine authority is orthodox in itself — but here it is instrumentalized.
Key problem:
– The text presupposes that the occupant of the Roman See is automatically the legitimate bearer of the full Petrine authority, without regard to public profession of faith, doctrinal continuity, or possible manifest deviation.
– At the same time, John XXIII is the very figure who will convoke the “pastoral” council that systematically contradicts and undermines the anti-liberal, anti-modernist magisterium, protects and promotes known modernists, and inaugurates the neo-church of ecumenism and religious liberty.
Integral Catholic theology, expressed by St. Robert Bellarmine and the classical canonists (as preserved in the Defense of Sedevacantism file), holds:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church because he is not a member of the Church.
– By public defection from the faith, an office is lost ipso facto (1917 CIC, can. 188.4).
– A man who uses the office to propagate condemned errors reveals that he does not intend to preserve the Petrine mandate received from Christ.
The emphatic insistence that nothing changes in substance masks the fact that a seismic change is being prepared. The formula “what you thought of the previous pope, you now think of me” is deployed as a psychological and rhetorical weapon:
– It binds consciences to a presumed continuity.
– While the content of future acts (Council, liturgical revolution, doctrinal novelties) will prove rupture.
This is the technique of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X: retain forms, change contents; invoke authority to destroy what authority had defined. The letter is an early specimen of this method: a pious facade covering an intention to redirect the Church.
Ambiguous Treatment of Persecutors: The Seed of False Ecumenism
When speaking of regions under communist domination, John XXIII prays that rulers be enlightened, that they cease to hate what should be loved, and that Catholics be granted freedom.
These words carefully avoid:
– Naming and condemning the intrinsic perversity of atheistic communism as Pius XI did in Divini Redemptoris, where he exposes it as a “satanic scourge” incompatible with Christian civilization.
– Affirming that cooperation with such regimes in persecuting the Church or propagating their ideology is a grave sin.
– Warning shepherds against compromising the faith for the sake of a tolerated institutional presence.
Instead, we see the dawn of the Ostpolitik mentality:
– Seek modus vivendi.
– Moderate tone.
– Suggest that hostility is due more to “false opinions and fear of losing earthly goods” than to deliberate malice or diabolic hatred of Christ.
This anthropology is already softened, naturalistic, and horizontal. It anticipates the conciliar sect’s approach toward communists, heretics, and false religions: treat them as dialogue partners, never as obstinate enemies of Christ and His Church who must be called to conversion.
Pius IX’s Syllabus (errors 15–18, 55, 77–80) and Pius XI’s Mortalium animos utterly reject this relativistic approach. There can be no moral equivalence or neutral space between the Church and the enemies of Christ. Yet John XXIII’s rhetoric tends toward precisely that: he prepares the moral imagination of bishops to accept “dialogue” and “coexistence” instead of doctrinal combat.
Selective Use of Patristic and Scriptural Citations
The letter decorates its appeals with Scripture and patristic references:
– Psalm 33: “Magnify the Lord with me.”
– 1 Tim 2:2 on praying for rulers for a peaceful life.
– Romans 8:18 on sufferings not worthy to be compared with future glory.
– Ignatius of Antioch’s exhortation to Polycarp to steer the ship.
– Augustine on Christ as the wise yet infant King of peace.
However, observe the method:
– Citations are chosen to support consolation, obedience, and harmony.
– Absent are those which speak of separation from unbelievers, condemnation of heresy, royal rights of Christ over nations, and the necessity of public profession of the true faith.
This is not innocent selectivity. It is a rhetorical construction of a partial “canon within the canon”:
– A Christianity of comfort, respectability, sentiment.
– Without the sword of the Word that divides, condemns, and judges.
By contrast, Quas Primas places at the center the texts that proclaim Christ’s universal dominion, the duty of states to submit, and the judgment on nations that reject Him. Lamentabili and Pascendi counter those who would reduce Scripture to edifying myth or adaptable symbol; John XXIII’s practice, while not explicitly denying, functionally aligns with their program: Scripture as reservoir for harmless consolations, not as juridical and dogmatic imperative.
Silence Regarding Modernism: The Loudest Accusation
The most damning aspect of this letter is what it refuses to see and say.
Late 1950s Germany was a principal laboratory of:
– Historical-critical exegesis that dissolved the literal and dogmatic sense of Scripture.
– Ecclesiology tending toward collegiality, democratization, and relativization of papal primacy.
– Moral and sacramental laxity, intellectual infatuation with Protestant and secular philosophies.
All of this had been prophetically condemned:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus, which strikes at liberalism, indifferentism, state absolutism, rationalism.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi, identifying Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and demanding vigilance, censorship, and firm discipline.
– Previous pontiffs who upheld the absolute prerogatives of the Church over Christian education, marriage, and public life.
John XXIII, in his first year, writing to one of the nations most infected by these tendencies:
– Says nothing of the danger of Modernism.
– Issues no solemn warning against the errors explicitly listed in Lamentabili — errors already present among German theologians.
– Offers no strong paternal correction, no demand for doctrinal purification, no insistence on implementing the anti-modernist oath in spirit and truth.
This calculated silence is itself programmatic. It signals to bishops and theologians:
– Rome will no longer “persecute” modern ideas.
– The era of doctrinal battle is over; the era of optimism, accommodation, and “aggiornamento” dawns.
Thus the letter is not a neutral spiritual exhortation; it is the coded renunciation of the pre-1958 Magisterium’s combative posture. Where prior popes wielded anathemas to guard the deposit of faith, John XXIII wields compliments and diplomatic niceties. This is the spiritual bankruptcy: replacing dogmatic clarity with benevolent ambiguity.
From Catholic Militancy to Conciliar Humanism: A Symptomatic Reading
On the symptomatic level, several structural traits reveal the inherent continuity between this letter and the later conciliar catastrophe:
1. Anthropocentric tone:
– The focus is on the dignity, virtues, and sufferings of the German people.
– Christ and His Kingship are referenced, but functionally subordinated to national, cultural, and psychological considerations.
2. Diplomatic ecclesiology:
– The Church relates to states through concordats, mutual trust, and appeals to good will.
– The intrinsic duty of states to profess the Catholic faith is erased.
3. Aversion to conflict:
– No denunciation of specific, named errors.
– No threats of discipline against bishops or theologians who betray doctrine.
– Everything is cast in terms of encouragement, esteem, and cooperative spirit.
4. Rhetoric of continuity concealing rupture:
– Perpetual reference to the See of Peter and the line of popes.
– Zero precise reference to their concrete doctrinal condemnations, as if those were embarrassing or outdated.
These elements prefigure:
– The “hermeneutic of continuity” used by the conciliar sect to justify palpable contradictions with prior teaching.
– The cult of “human dignity,” “rights,” and “peace” severed from explicit submission to the Kingship of Christ (condemned in the Syllabus and corrected by Quas Primas).
– The false ecumenism in which non-Catholics are praised and embraced without being called to conversion.
In short, this letter is an early charter of the Church of the New Advent: the paramasonic structure that will overturn the altars, sabotage the Most Holy Sacrifice, and enthrone the idol of man in place of the crucified King.
The Contrast with Integral Catholic Doctrine Before 1958
Measured against the authoritative pre-1958 Magisterium, the deficiencies of In primordio are not accidental but structural.
– Pius IX, Syllabus:
– Condemns the separation of Church and State (55), religious indifferentism (15–18), and the notion that the Pope must reconcile himself with liberalism and modern civilization (80).
– John XXIII’s logic moves toward precisely such reconciliation, through silence and flattery.
– Leo XIII and Pius XI:
– Assert that civil rulers are obliged to recognize and favor the Catholic religion; deny that “neutrality” is acceptable.
– The letter to Germany never affirms this duty; it speaks only of honoring concordats and allowing Catholics to live peacefully.
– St. Pius X, Lamentabili and Pascendi:
– Demand exposure and condemnation of modernist exegesis, relativism, evolutionism.
– John XXIII declines even to name these evils in a country where they are rampant; instead, he praises its bishops and theologians collectively.
– Pius XI, Quas Primas:
– Teaches that only the public reign of Christ the King can bring true peace, and that the Church must proclaim His rights against secular apostasy.
– John XXIII “spiritualizes” the Kingdom into a comforting rhetoric that offends no earthly power and demands no public submission.
Thus, evaluated by the only legitimate criterion — unchanging Catholic doctrine taught before the conciliar usurpation — this letter is doctrinally and spiritually bankrupt:
– It refuses to wield the keys against error.
– It flatters a hierarchy that was already harbouring grave infections.
– It exalts treaties and human virtues while silencing the absolute and exclusive rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church.
Conclusion: A Mild Voice That Prepared the Great Betrayal
This text is not yet the open explosion of Vatican II, but it is the calm, smiling overture. Its essence:
– Reassure.
– Sedate.
– Disarm.
– Replace the militant clarity of Pius IX and St. Pius X with a sentimental, horizontal, legally domesticated religion.
By choosing to speak in this way at the “primordio” of his rule, John XXIII revealed his program: to transform the apparent papal magisterium into a vehicle for humanistic optimism and diplomatic accommodation, opening the door to the conciliar sect which today occupies the visible structures and persecutes the remnant of those who hold the integral Catholic faith.
The Catholic response is not to be enchanted by the pious phrases, but to judge by the perennial rule: *lex orandi, lex credendi* (the law of prayer is the law of belief), and *eadem sensus eademque sententia* (always the same sense and the same meaning). Wherever these are abandoned, even under the guise of pastoral sweetness, there we recognize not the voice of the Bridegroom, but the preparation of the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not.
Source:
In primordio – Ad Iosephum S. R. E. Card. Frings, Archiepiscopum Coloniensem; Iosephum S. R. E. Card. Wendel, Archiepiscopum Monacensem et Frisingensem; Iulium S. R. E. Card. Doepfner, Episcopum Berol… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025