In this Latin letter dated October 21, 1960, Giovanni Roncalli (John XXIII) appoints Cardinal Marcello Mimmi as his legate to a Marian Congress in Buenos Aires for the nations of both Americas. He praises the organizers’ zeal, expresses hopes for abundant “spiritual fruits,” invokes peace bound to social justice and “progress,” and commends confidence in the Blessed Virgin as patroness of victories and safeguard of public welfare. Behind the pious phrases, however, this text already displays the essential programmatic features of the conciliar revolution: subordination of supernatural religion to a naturalistic peace-and-progress agenda, Marian devotion severed from the rights of Christ the King and from the fight against error, and a diplomatic, horizontal rhetoric preparing the demolition of the integral Catholic order.

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Mariology Harnessed to the Coming Revolution

Subtle Inversion: From Marian Militancy to Marian Pacifism

On the surface, Roncalli exalts Marian piety, entrusting the Congress and the Americas to the Blessed Virgin. But the entire orientation is horizontal and political.

He commissions Mimmi to encourage participants so that, through their prayers and activities, they may resist “religionis et publicae salutis nocumentis” – harms to religion and public welfare. The order already betrays the disease: “religion” is rhetorically coupled with “public welfare,” as if the Church’s mission were coextensive with temporal well-being rather than primarily ordered to the *salus animarum* (salvation of souls), the supreme law of the Church.

Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine is adamant:

– The Blessed Virgin is *terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata* (Cant. 6:3), the terrible destroyer of all heresies, intimately bound to the victory of her Son’s Cross and to the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church.
– Popes such as Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI consistently link Marian devotion to:
– the condemnation of liberalism and Freemasonry,
– the affirmation of the unique truth of the Catholic Faith,
– the defense of the public Kingship of Christ,
– the unmasking of those “enemies within” (St. Pius X) who corrupt doctrine.

Here, by contrast, Marian devotion is instrumentalized to support a vague agenda of “peace,” “social justice,” and “progress,” carefully severed from any explicit denunciation of the anti-Christian systems condemned in the Syllabus of Errors and in Pascendi.

Not one word exposes:
– Socialism and communism as intrinsically evil systems repeatedly condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
– Freemasonry as the architect of the laicist, naturalist order (Pius IX explicitly identified the “synagogue of Satan” of the sects as the principal agent warring against the Church).
– Protestantism and religious indifferentism as mortal threats to souls.
– Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X, Pascendi), already ravaging seminaries and chanceries.

This silence is not accidental. It is the method. Marian language is retained as an attractive shell; the militant core—war on error, war on heresy, assertion of Christ’s social Kingship—is drained out. This is the conciliar sect’s tactic: preserve the vocabulary, invert the content.

Linguistic Cloak: Diplomatic Piety as a Vehicle of Naturalism

Roncalli’s rhetoric is revealing.

He speaks of:

“Pax, qua tranquillitas ordinis continetur, civitatum summa probe existimatur felicitas”
(“Peace, in which the tranquillity of order is contained, is rightly considered the highest happiness of states.”)

He then extends this to a litany:
“christianae legis exsecutionem, morum integritatem, caritatis operum profectum, socialem iustitiam, … disciplinarum et artium omnium progressiones”
(“the execution of Christian law, integrity of morals, growth of works of charity, social justice, … the progress of all disciplines and arts.”)

This construction seems orthodox at first glance, borrowing Augustine’s “tranquillitas ordinis.” But the decisive point is what is missing and how the key terms are framed:

– “Peace” is not explicitly grounded in the subjection of individuals and states to the Kingship of Christ and the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church, as Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas: peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ, and states must publicly recognize His reign and the rights of His Church.
– “Social justice” and “progress” are invoked without doctrinal guardrails, as if they were self-evident goods detached from the confessional state and from the objective moral order defined by the Church.
– There is no explicit affirmation that the Catholic religion is the one true religion that must be professed publicly by nations (condemnation of the opposite in Syllabus, prop. 21, 77–80).
– There is no warning that “peace” without truth becomes a slogan of naturalism and Masonic humanitarianism.

The tone is that of a benevolent international functionary, not of a Roman Pontiff (in the Catholic sense) defending the flock against concrete, named errors. This bureaucratic and irenic idiom, saturated with diplomatic generalities, is itself symptomatic. It replaces the precise dogmatic and anti-liberal language of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI with soft abstractions.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): when the highest authority speaks in this softened, non-combative register about Marian Congresses and peace, he catechizes clergy and laity into a faith of atmospheres, not dogmas; sentiments, not anathemas. That is how Modernism seeps into the bloodstream.

Doctrinal Omissions: Where the Silence Condemns

Measured against the integral pre-1958 Magisterium, the omissions in this letter are the loudest element. Note the themes that should have been central for a genuine Catholic leader addressing a Marian Congress in 1960, especially in Latin America:

1. No affirmation of the absolute necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church for salvation.
– Against Syllabus prop. 16–18, 21, the Catholic doctrine is clear: it is an error to hold that any religion or Protestantism is as pleasing to God as the Catholic Church, or that man may find salvation in any religion whatsoever.
– Yet the letter avoids any strong statement about the unique salvific role of the Church, preferring neutral language about “religion” and peace.

2. No demand for the public reign of Christ the King over nations.
– Quas Primas (Pius XI) insists that rulers and states have the duty to recognize Christ’s Kingship, order laws by the Gospel, and that peace depends on this submission.
– Here, “civitates” and “Res Publica” are mentioned only in the sense of temporal happiness and generic cooperation, with no assertion of their obligation to submit to the law of Christ and His Church.

3. No reference to the satanic nature of Freemasonry and its assault on Church and society.
– The Syllabus and multiple pre-1958 documents explicitly unmask the role of Masonic sects; Pius IX speaks of the “synagogue of Satan” coordinating attacks on the Church and notes that governments hostile to Catholics are implementing their designs.
– In the Latin American context, where Masonic and socialist forces had long worked to secularize states and undermine Catholic order, silence here is eloquent—and damning.

4. No denunciation of Communism, despite its expansion and atrocities.
– By 1960, Pius XI’s and Pius XII’s condemnations of communism were part of living memory.
– A truly Catholic letter to a continental Marian Congress should have explicitly rallied bishops and faithful against atheistic socialism.
– Instead: neutered abstractions about a “social question,” framed in terms that conveniently dovetail with the social-democratic language later exploited for conciliar “openness.”

5. No mention of Modernism or internal doctrinal corruption.
– St. Pius X: Modernists are “the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church” because they operate within.
– In 1960, the infiltration of modernist theology in seminaries, universities, and episcopates was a grave, visible reality.
– Yet the letter offers no warning about false theology, liturgical subversion, biblical rationalism, or the evolution of dogma—though these were precisely the “religionis nocumenta” that should have been treated as priority.
– The silence is consistent with Roncalli’s broader pattern of rehabilitating modernist suspects and preparing the council that would enthrone their principles.

The theological indictment is clear: this is Marian and “peace” rhetoric weaponized precisely by omission. The Blessed Virgin is invoked as celestial varnish over a project that refuses to name the enemies condemned authoritatively by the pre-1958 papal Magisterium.

Marian Congress as Instrument of Conciliar Humanism

Roncalli urges that peace be promoted through:

– “social justice,”
– “equitable relations between employers and workers,”
– “progress of all disciplines and arts,”
– the faithful as “sal terrae” to sustain this order.

In itself, Catholic social doctrine, articulated by Leo XIII and Pius XI, indeed defends just wages, rights of workers, duties of capital, etc. However, those popes anchor all social doctrine in:

– the Kingship of Christ,
– the objective authority of the Church over moral questions,
– the condemnation of socialism, communism, liberalism, laicism, indifferentism.

Here, the structure is inverted:

– Social language is foregrounded.
– Confessional, anti-liberal, anti-modernist precision is absent.
– Marian devotion is conscripted to bless this softened program.

This anticipates the neo-church’s later maneuvers:
– “Peace,” “justice,” “rights,” and “development” recited endlessly, while dogma, anathema, and the claim of the Catholic Church as the one Ark of Salvation are progressively eclipsed.
– Marian imagery used to sentimentalize an interconfessional, humanitarian religion of man—exactly the errors condemned in the Syllabus (prop. 3, 4, 15–18, 55, 77–80).

The Congress is effectively presented as a spiritual prop for this emergent ideology. The faithful are not called to conversion from error, but to collaborate in a generalized social betterment, under a Marian banner emptied of doctrinal combat.

Displacement of the Battle: From Heresy and Apostasy to “Social Question”

Particularly revealing is the treatment of the “social question,” which Roncalli notes “magnopere…praesertim in America Australi” preoccupies statesmen. He exhorts the application of “christianae socialis doctrinae principia,” stating that these principles both order temporal goods justly and raise minds to higher goods.

At first glance, this alludes to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. However:

– Nowhere does he repeat the solemn condemnation of socialism as intrinsically perverse.
– Nowhere does he warn against class struggle ideology, dialectical materialism, or revolutionary movements that were then capturing large sectors of Latin American society and “clergy.”
– Nowhere does he remind that laicist states and false religious liberty are condemned as grave evils (Syllabus prop. 55, 77–80).

Instead, he places the emphasis on a technocratic and philanthropic treatment of the social problem, in perfect harmony with the later conciliar sect’s language which absorbed the socialist lexicon while muting the anti-socialist anathemas.

This is the method of Modernism applied to social doctrine:
– Retain fragments of previous teaching,
– detach them from the doctrinal foundations and condemnations that give them Catholic meaning,
– recast them in a vocabulary acceptable to the anti-Christian world.

The Blessed Virgin is invoked as “murus inexpugnabilis” (an impregnable wall), but against what? Not against official, named heresies and sects, but against undefined “harms” to religion and public welfare—an elastic category compatible with liberal, socialist, and Masonic appropriations.

Instrumentalization of Mary Without the Sovereignty of Christ the King

Pius XI in Quas Primas is unequivocal:

– Peace and social order depend on acknowledging Christ’s sovereign rights over persons and societies.
– States must publicly honour Christ and conform laws to His law.
– The Church must be free and independent, and all liberal attempts to confine religion to the private sphere are condemned.

Measured by this standard, Roncalli’s letter is gravely deficient:

– He does not call the American nations to recognize Christ as King of their constitutions, legislation, and public life.
– He does not demand the repudiation of religious indifferentism, secularism, or separation of Church and state condemned as errors.
– He dilutes Christ’s rights into general moral aspirations and “peaceful” cooperation.

By using Marian devotion to promote a “peace” detached from the explicit confession of Christ’s social Kingship, Roncalli turns Marian piety against the very integral Catholic order defended by his predecessors. This is a deeper betrayal than a blunt attack—because it proceeds under the semblance of tradition.

Conciliar Anticipation: The Letter as Programmatic Symptom

This brief document, dated 1960 and signed by John XXIII, stands at a critical threshold:

– The anti-modernist bulwark of St. Pius X (Lamentabili, Pascendi) is still formally unrepealed.
– The Syllabus and Quas Primas remain unrevoked doctrinal landmarks.
– The errors of liberalism, rationalism, socialism, and Modernism have been exhaustively mapped and condemned.

Yet in this moment, the man recognized by the world as “pope” outlines a style and program that:

1. Avoids all specific anathemas.
2. Shifts emphasis from supernatural ends (state of grace, judgment, hell, necessity of conversion) to temporal “peace” and “social progress.”
3. Uses Marian and evangelical language to sanctify a project that can be, and will be, read in an ecumenical, naturalist, and humanistic key.
4. Conditions clergy and laity to expect from “Rome” not condemnations of error, but sentimental encouragements and diplomatic platitudes.

This text is thus a concise embodiment of the conciliar sect’s method:
– Not open doctrinal contradiction at first, but *systematic under-saying* of Catholic truth.
– Not explicit repudiation of the Syllabus and Pascendi at once, but their practical burial under vague rhetoric.
– Not abolition of Marian devotion, but its exploitation as an emotional engine pulling the wagons of laicism, peace ideology, and incipient false ecumenism.

In light of the immutable Catholic doctrine before 1958, such an approach cannot be reconciled with the duties of the true Roman Pontiff, whose office, as defined by Vatican I and exercised by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, includes:
– guarding the deposit of faith,
– condemning errors by name,
– affirming the rights of Christ the King and His Church against modern states and sects,
– nourishing Marian devotion precisely as a weapon against heresy, not as a sentimental adhesive for naturalistic consensus.

When a supposed successor of Peter systematically refrains from exercising this office in the face of triumphant errors, and instead blesses an agenda of humanistic “peace” and indeterminate “harm prevention,” his own words witness against him.

Conclusion: Pious Phrases as the Vestments of Apostasy

This 1960 letter to Cardinal Mimmi, at first glance an innocuous and devout commission to a Marian Congress, is in reality a concentrated sign of the theological mutation then being imposed from the highest level of the conciliar structure:

– It retains Catholic-sounding forms without their militant, exclusive content.
– It praises Marian devotion while detaching it from the open combat against liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, Modernism, and false religions.
– It glorifies “peace” and “social justice” without subjecting them to the non-negotiable rights of Christ the King and the one true Church.
– It reduces the spiritual mission of such a congress to strengthening a horizontal order that even enemies of the Faith can applaud.

From the perspective of unchanging pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, this is not an authentic exercise of the Petrine munus but an abuse of sacred language to anesthetize resistance to the impending revolution. The gravest scandal is not what is explicitly stated, but what—against all previous papal teaching—is consistently and deliberately left unsaid.

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Source:
Libenter mox – Ad Marcellum S. R. E. Cardinalem Mimmi, Episcopum sarinensem et mandelensem ac Sacrae Congregationis Consistorialis a secretis, quem Legatum mittit ad Marialem Conventum in urbe Bono Aë…   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025