This short Latin letter of John XXIII congratulates Carlos Maria de la Torre, archbishop of Quito and cardinal of the conciliar structure, on the 50th anniversary of his episcopal consecration. John XXIII praises his pastoral zeal, promotion of Catholic Action and social initiatives, founding of schools and a Catholic university, and grants him the faculty to impart a plenary indulgence on the faithful during the jubilee celebrations. The text’s sugary rhetoric, its silence about the impending doctrinal catastrophe of Vatican II, and its reduction of episcopal mission to sociological efficiency and institutional prestige expose the hallmark features of the conciliar usurpation: pious language masking an already operative revolution against the integral faith of the Church.
Laeti laetum: Epistolary Incense over an Emerging Revolution
Personalist Flattery Instead of the Supernatural Gravity of the Episcopate
John XXIII’s text is externally orthodox in vocabulary, yet internally symptomatic of a different religion. At the eve of the most devastating upheaval in Church history, the usurper showers a prelate with bland humanistic praise. The entire letter is a choreography of compliments, without a single serious admonition about *fides integra*, the danger of error, or the salvation of souls as the supreme law (*salus animarum suprema lex*).
Key features:
– He rejoices in the “happy news” of the jubilee:
“We have received with joy the joyful news: you will soon celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that day always to be remembered, when you were consecrated Bishop…”
– He underscores that de la Torre received episcopal consecration from St. Pius X, using that fact as borrowed capital to adorn a 1962 status quo already preparing to betray Pius X’s anti-modernist line.
– He highlights:
“the sacred ministry zealously carried out, the fruitful use of life, the promotion of Catholic Action and social action, Catholic schools, and a Catholic university in Quito”,
as if the multiplication of institutions, universities and “social action” were self-evident signs of fidelity.
What is conspicuously absent?
– No mention of the obligation to defend dogma against the modernist flood unmasked by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu.
– No reminder that a bishop must guard his flock from false philosophy, condemned liberalism, socialism, naturalism, and the sects identified in the Syllabus Errorum.
– No call to uphold the exclusive public rights of Christ the King, as defined by Pius XI in Quas primas, against laicism and masonic democracy.
– No reference to the need for the integral transmission of the faith “the same in meaning and in judgement” (eodem sensu eademque sententia) against the evolutionist delusion.
Instead, the letter replaces the supernatural drama of the episcopal office with polite institutional congratulations. This is not a minor stylistic issue; it reveals a shift of religion.
Factual Level: Selective Memory and the Instrumentalization of Pius X
John XXIII emphasizes that de la Torre was consecrated by Pius X:
“You will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that day… when you were consecrated Bishop, having obtained this honor of nomination from Our Most Holy Predecessor Pius X.”
This name is used as a decorative halo, while the substance of Pius X’s program is quietly ignored.
– Pius X:
– Condemned modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
– Bound clergy to the Anti-Modernist Oath (1910).
– Affirmed the full authority of the Magisterium to define, judge, and repress error.
– Reinforced pre-eminence of the supernatural order over democratic, naturalistic ideologies.
Yet in 1962 John XXIII:
– Is already steering toward Vatican II, which will:
– Enthrone religious liberty against the Syllabus (condemnation 15, 55, 77–80).
– Undermine the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.
– Promote false ecumenism with heretics and infidels.
– Dissolve the public reign of Christ the King into “dialogue” with the world.
Thus, invoking Pius X while preparing to neutralize his entire anti-modernist strategy is an act of symbolic usurpation. The letter functions as a liturgical incense cloud under which the demolition team works. The silence about the doctrinal battle of the 20th century is not accidental; it is calculated. It presents a world where episcopal success is measured by:
– Structures founded.
– Academic prestige.
– Catholic Action and social activism.
This stands against the pre-1958 Magisterium, which measures episcopal fidelity by:
– Defense of dogma.
– Condemnation of error.
– Preservation of the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacramental integrity.
– Assertion of the Church’s rights over states and societies.
The document’s factual narrowness is itself a judgment: the essential realities are erased, the décor remains.
Linguistic Level: Sugary Humanism and Epistolary Pseudo-Piety
The vocabulary is demonstratively smooth, affective, devoid of battle:
– “joyful news” (*laeti laetum*)
– “festive and congratulatory clergy and people”
– “munificent liberality of heavenly gifts”
– “splendid examples of piety, diligence, industry”
– “brilliant star of hope” shining over the Catholic University
– the episcopal motto shared: “Obedience and peace”
Not one word about:
– heresy,
– modernism,
– Freemasonry,
– socialism and communism as condemned errors of principle (not merely “social problems”),
– danger of damnation,
– necessity of the state’s subjection to Christ.
The style reveals:
1. A therapeutic, consolatory tone: the bishop is reassured, celebrated, caressed.
2. A bureaucratic optimism: everything is “opimum fructum,” abundant fruits, progress, blessings.
3. A naturalistic assumption: building a “Catholic” university in the capital suffices as proof of authentic ecclesial flourishing, with no examination whether its doctrines firmly reject condemned propositions of Lamentabili and the Syllabus.
This lexical choice is not neutral. It expresses an ecclesiology that has ceased to see itself as the Church Militant (Ecclesia Militans) and instead poses as an NGO of “religious culture,” politely integrated into the liberal state and its educational system—precisely what Pius IX and Pius XI condemned.
Pius XI in Quas primas warned that:
– the exclusion of Christ and His law from public life is the root of modern miseries,
– peace is possible only in the Kingdom of Christ,
– rulers sin gravely by refusing public homage to Christ and His Church.
Yet John XXIII’s letter, addressed to a chief pastor in a historically Catholic nation assaulted by secularism, offers no exhortation to assert this kingship politically, no reminder that “the Church… demands for itself… full freedom and independence from secular authority” (Quas primas). The language of “obedience and peace” drifts toward a pacifist submission to the liberal order, not to the militant defence of Christ’s rights.
Theological Level: Pastoralism without Dogma, Social Action without the Kingship of Christ
The central theological fault is not in what is positively asserted (which, taken in isolation, can sound pious), but in what is systematically excluded. From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, several points emerge:
1. Reduction of episcopal mission to activism and administration
The letter’s praise focuses on:
– promotion of Catholic Action and “social action,”
– opening schools,
– founding a Catholic university.
There is no explicit:
– affirmation of the bishop’s duty to condemn heresy,
– insistence on guarding the flock from poisoned philosophy,
– call to enforce the disciplinary measures prescribed against modernist tendencies.
Yet St. Pius X had made it clear that:
– Those promoting condemned errors fall under censure and must be removed from teaching and government.
– The Magisterium has authority to bind consciences even in non-definitive acts; contempt of such acts is culpable (cf. Lamentabili propositions 2–8 condemned).
John XXIII’s silence on these non-negotiables, praised bishop in hand, signals a de facto suspension of the anti-modernist struggle. The bishop is canonized administratively, without scrutiny on whether his schools and university are bulwarks of orthodoxy or Trojan horses of aggiornamento.
2. Confusion between the Church’s supernatural end and “social progress”
The letter celebrates the Catholic University of Quito as bringing “benefit and honour to religious and civil matters,” and speaks of it as a “star of hope.” This expression suggests harmony with the secular order without restating clearly that:
– all civil order must be subordinated to divine and ecclesiastical law;
– “the Church ought to be separated from the State” is explicitly condemned (Syllabus, 55);
– the civil teaching system without ecclesiastical control is condemned (Syllabus, 45–48).
By failing to recall these principles at the precise point where education is discussed, the text tacitly accommodates the new liberal paradigm: the university as a respectable player in the pluralist arena, instead of a fortress of dogma under ecclesiastical sovereignty. This is the theological mutation behind the gentle phrasing.
3. Mechanistic concession of indulgences without confronting sacramental reality
John XXIII grants de la Torre the faculty:
“that, after you have celebrated the sacred rites with solemnity, you may in Our name and with Our authority bless the faithful present, with a plenary indulgence duly proposed.”
In the integral Catholic order, indulgences are linked to:
– true jurisdiction,
– authentic papal authority,
– valid and Catholic sacraments.
But by 1962, the same authority preparing to subvert the liturgy and discipline presumes to scatter indulgences as ceremonial favours while preparing to alter the very conditions of grace, penance, and sin in the conciliar ideology. The letter never underscores:
– necessity of the state of grace,
– detachment from sin,
– confession,
– the reality of hell and judgment.
The indulgence appears as another congratulatory ornament, not as a grave spiritual weapon. This instrumentalization betrays a desacralized mentality: sacramental treasures as protocol elements of institutional celebrations.
Symptomatic Level: A Microcosm of Conciliar Apostasy in Formal Orthodoxy
On the surface, nothing looks overtly heretical. But integral Catholic doctrine teaches us to judge by principles and by omissions, not only by explicit statements. This letter is a distilled sign of the conciliar sect’s method:
1. Preserve pious external forms (Latin, blessings, reference to Pius X).
2. Empty them of their polemical, dogmatic, and militant content.
3. Subtly shift emphasis to:
– human achievements,
– social activism,
– institutional expansion,
– soft “obedience and peace” rhetoric detached from the war against error.
4. Prepare minds to accept a council that will contradict, in practice and doctrine, the pre-1958 Magisterium, while presenting itself as its “continuation.”
This is the *modus operandi* of modernism as condemned by St. Pius X: maintain Catholic words, infuse them with new meaning, dissolve dogma in sentimental and historical relativism. *Verba manent, res mutantur* (the words remain, the realities are changed).
– The Syllabus Errorum condemns the liberal theses which Vatican II’s “religious freedom” and “ecumenism” would normalize.
– Lamentabili condemns the historicist dissolution of dogma which post-conciliar theology would adopt.
– Quas primas asserts the public, juridical Kingship of Christ, which the conciliar sect buries under the cult of “human dignity” and “dialogue.”
This letter to de la Torre, dated 1962, sits exactly where the masks are still intact but the logic has shifted. It praises a “Catholic” university without any demand that it be an anti-modernist bastion; it lauds “social action” without reference to condemned social errors; it invokes Pius X without continuing his fight. It is the smile of a revolution that knows it will soon legislate.
Obedientia et pax: Slogan of Capitulation or Motto of the Church Militant?
The closing passages are revealing. John XXIII notes that the motto “Obedientia et pax” appears on both his and de la Torre’s coats of arms, and interprets it merely as fragrant wishes for “true happiness.”
But authentic ecclesial obedience is:
– obedience to the perennial Magisterium,
– obedience to the anti-modernist condemnations,
– obedience to the Kingship of Christ in public and private,
– obedience to the duty to resist errors even if spread by those occupying ecclesiastical offices.
Peace, in Catholic doctrine, is:
– the tranquillity of order rooted in truth and submission to Christ,
– never the irenic silence that tolerates heresy,
– never the adaptation of the Church to liberal democracy or masonic schemes.
By collapsing “obedience and peace” into the language of harmonious coexistence with the contemporary order, the letter subtly redefines both:
– *Obedientia* becomes acceptance of the imminent council and its novelties.
– *Pax* becomes the end of doctrinal condemnations and “negative” language.
This inversion stands against the entire tradition from Pius IX to Pius XII, for whom true peace presupposes the condemnation of error. Pius XI explicitly links the feast of Christ the King to the public rejection of secular apostasy; here, we have “peace” without that rejection, flattering language without militancy—the ethos of the conciliar sect.
From Hollow Praise to Systemic Apostasy
Viewed in isolation, this letter might seem like a benign ceremonial note. Viewed under the light of pre-1958 doctrine and the known trajectory of John XXIII’s regime, it becomes a significant document of transition:
– It instrumentalizes the name of Pius X while abandoning his program.
– It venerates structures, activism, and prestige while ignoring the doctrinal war.
– It grants spiritual favours in a tone that evacuates the gravity of sin, penance, and judgment.
– It exalts “obedience and peace” in a way compatible with liberal humanism, not with the Church Militant.
Such texts anesthetized episcopal consciences, preparing them to welcome the conciliar revolution as a simple “updating,” because they had already been trained to think in terms of:
– sociological success,
– polite optimism,
– sentimental spirituality.
Against this, the immutable Magisterium insists:
– Dogma does not evolve into its opposite.
– The Church cannot contradict her previous solemn condemnations.
– The rights of Christ the King and His Church over nations are non-negotiable.
– Any structure that blesses liberalism, religious indifferentism, or doctrinal relativism reveals itself, by its fruits, as a counterfeit.
In this light, Laeti laetum is not a harmless congratulation; it is the velvet glove over the iron hand that would strike against the citadel of Tradition. Its theological and spiritual bankruptcy lies precisely in its sweetness: an episcopal jubilee celebrated without the Cross of doctrinal combat, without the sword of truth, without the cry that outside integral Catholic faith and obedience to the perennial Magisterium, there is no salvation.
Source:
Laeti laetum – Ad Carolum Mariam Tit. S. Mariae in Aquiro S. R. E. Presb. Cardinalem de la Torre, Archiepiscopum Quitensem, quinquagesimo a suscepto episcopatu exeunte anno (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025