Sanctimonious Praise of Alcantarine Asceticism in Service of a Coming Revolution
The text is a Latin letter of John XXIII to Augustine Sépinski, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, on the 400th anniversary of the death of St Peter of Alcantara. It extols Peter’s austerity, contemplative spirit, role in reform, collaboration with St Teresa of Jesus, his Treatise on prayer and meditation, and exhorts the Franciscans and the faithful to imitate his poverty, penance, and interior life as an antidote to “naturalism.” It presents Peter as a model of evangelical perfection for clergy and laity, and wraps this commemoration in the solemn “apostolic” blessing of the writer.
What appears at first glance as a harmless encomium of a canonized ascetic is, in fact, a calculated piece of religious cosmetics: a pious facade meant to cloak the person and program of John XXIII — the inaugurator of the conciliar revolution — with the borrowed authority of preconciliar sanctity, while silently preparing the demolition of the very ascetical, doctrinal, and ecclesial order that formed Peter of Alcantara.
Glorifying a Saint to Undermine His World: The Fundamental Contradiction
The entire letter turns on one glaring incoherence: the usurper John XXIII publicly venerates a rigorously Catholic saint formed entirely by the doctrinal, ascetical, and liturgical order of the Tridentine Church, while simultaneously laboring (through the announced and then opened Second Vatican Council) to dissolve that same order in favour of laicismus, religious liberty, false ecumenism, and anthropocentric naturalism — precisely the evils preconciliar popes had condemned and against which Peter’s life stands as a permanent reproach.
This is not innocent inconsistency. It is strategy.
Simulatio sanctitatis (the simulation of sanctity) is here put to the service of ecclesial subversion: the spiritual capital of an authentic saint is invoked to legitimize the authority of one who, by doctrine and deeds, ruptures with the integral faith taught “always, everywhere, and by all” (*semper, ubique, et ab omnibus*).
Instrumentalization of St Peter of Alcantara Against His Own Foundations
On the factual plane, the letter rehearses elements of Peter’s life that are broadly accurate and well-attested:
– Spanish birth (1499).
– Entrance into the Friars Minor, profession of vows.
– Extreme austerity, solitude, penance, construction of El Palancar, the so‑called “alcantarine” observance.
– Collaboration with St Teresa of Jesus in the Carmelite reform.
– Composition of the “Tratado de la oración y meditación.”
– Example of prayer joined with action.
These points are not in dispute.
But the decisive falsification lies in what John XXIII systematically omits and how he selectively reinterprets:
1. He suppresses the dogmatic context which made Peter’s asceticism intelligible:
– No mention of the absolute necessity of the true faith for salvation, though Peter lived and preached within the uncompromising Tridentine affirmation that “outside the Church there is no salvation” rightly understood.
– No mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory, of Eucharistic reparation, of indulgences, purgatory, the terror of judgment, or the horror of heresy — yet Peter’s spirituality was steeped in precisely these supernatural certainties.
2. He abstracts Peter’s penance from the dogmatic battles of his time:
– The saint lived in the post-Reformation Catholic restoration; his penance, preaching, and counsel served the militant defense of Catholic truth against Protestant revolt and moral laxity.
– The letter never connects Peter’s example with the perennial anti-liberal and anti-modernist stand solemnly reaffirmed by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII; instead, the text floats in a timeless, dehistoricized, and theologically disinfected atmosphere.
3. He neutralizes Peter’s radical poverty and discipline by harnessing them to support an authority that was in the act of dismantling religious life:
– In 1962, under John XXIII and his chosen collaborators, the very structures that would later devastate religious orders, relax enclosure, relativize vows, and replace austere observance with horizontal activism were being prepared.
– Yet the writer presumes to exhort Franciscans to “alcantarine” fervour, while his conciliar program would in practice dissolve that fervour.
This is the essential deceit: the saint’s prestige is used to baptize the hands that are already reaching to tear down his altar.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Pious Rhetoric as Smoke Screen
The rhetoric of the letter is classically curial and superficially edifying: florid Marian-garden imagery, references to Peter as “lily,” as “ornament” of Spain and the order, emphatic praise of austerity, contemplation, and reforming zeal.
At several key points, this language functions as theological camouflage:
– The letter abounds in devotional adjectives: “seraphic grace,” “austere penance,” “marvelous contemplation,” “golden treatise,” “exemplary virtues.”
– It speaks affirmingly of:
– solitary places,
– voluntary torments,
– strict observance,
– continual prayer and mortification,
– sufficiency with little,
– bearing “the mortification of Jesus” in one’s body so that His life may be manifested (2 Cor 4:10).
All this is standard Catholic ascetical vocabulary; none of it is heretical in itself.
Yet precisely here the linguistic operation reveals itself:
1. The text is studiously silent on doctrinal precision.
– There is no clear reaffirmation of the Church as the one ark of salvation.
– No militant rejection of condemned errors: liberalism, religious indifferentism, socialism, communism, false “human rights” divorced from the rights of Christ, ecumenical relativism.
– No explicit appeal to the authoritative anti-modernist Magisterium: *Syllabus Errorum*, *Quanta Cura*, *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili*, *Quas Primas*, etc.
2. Sin is reduced to vague “naturalism.”
– The letter warns about a “naturalism” that encloses life within earthly limits. But it fails to name the concrete doctrinal and moral abominations of the age:
– Masonic secularism condemned repeatedly by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– Modernism condemned definitively by St Pius X (*Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*, the anti-modernist oath).
– This nebulous rebuke allows the same authority to inaugurate a council that will, in the name of “aggiornamento” and “dialogue,” adopt exactly the horizontal, man-centred religion which Peter’s life contradicts.
The tone is therefore anesthetizing: it offers enough traditional vocabulary to soothe unsuspecting Catholics, but carefully avoids those doctrinal markers that would expose the incompatibility between pre-1958 Catholicism and the conciliar project.
Doctrinal Evasion in the Face of Pre-1958 Magisterium
Measured against the unchanging Catholic teaching prior to 1958, the letter’s omissions and context are damning.
1. On the Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches plainly that peace and order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly acknowledge the reign of Christ the King and submit civil laws to His law.
– The letter praises an ascetic saint yet does not once recall the obligation of nations and governments to recognize Christ’s social kingship — a silence entirely consistent with the conciliar shift towards religious liberty and the secular state.
– To encourage Alcantarine mortification without reaffirming the rights of Christ over public life is to sever asceticism from its social and political consequences, turning it into a safe, privatized spirituality compatible with liberal regimes.
2. On condemned liberal and rationalist errors:
– Pius IX’s *Syllabus* (esp. propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80) decisively condemns religious indifferentism, freedom of cult, separation of Church and state, and reconciliation with “modern civilization.”
– The letter, issued under the hand of the very man who convoked the council that would promote precisely those positions, does not confess this prior teaching, does not bind the faithful to it, and does not alert Franciscans that fidelity to Peter means uncompromising opposition to such principles.
3. On Modernism:
– St Pius X, reconfirmed in *Lamentabili*, brands Modernism “the synthesis of all heresies.” He explicitly condemns the “false striving for novelty,” the historicization of dogma, relativization of Scripture, and democratization of Magisterium.
– By 1962, the conciliar milieu fostered by John XXIII was already rehabilitating and elevating those very currents and theologians previously censured.
– The letter utters not one word enforcing *Pascendi* or *Lamentabili* upon the order or linking Alcantarine spirituality with strict doctrinal anti-modernism.
This silence is not accidental; it is programmatic. A real Roman Pontiff, formed in the pre-1958 line, praising Peter of Alcantara in 1962 would necessarily:
– Recall explicitly the binding condemnations of liberalism and modernism.
– Present Peter as a model of fidelity precisely against such errors.
– Command the Friars Minor to defend Catholic dogma publicly in opposition to secular and interconfessional pressures.
John XXIII does none of this. He harvests the saint’s prestige and discards his doctrinal steel.
Theological Hypocrisy: Commending Penance While Preparing Its Destruction
The letter extols:
– continual prayer,
– severe mortification,
– love of poverty,
– enclosure,
– fidelity to “regular discipline,”
– the primacy of interior life for apostolic fruitfulness.
Each of these corresponds to the traditional understanding of religious life as codified by Trent and consistently defended by the preconciliar Magisterium.
Yet in the historical light:
– Under John XXIII and his successors in the conciliar sect, religious life was subjected to:
– aggiornamento, experimentation, abandonment of habit,
– dissolution of strict observances,
– subordination of contemplation to social and political activism,
– practical relativization of vows,
– infiltration of laicist psychology and worldly ideologies.
The letter’s beautiful exhortations must therefore be read as:
– either utterly ineffectual words devoid of intention to defend these ideals with juridical and doctrinal authority,
– or intentionally duplicitous: a smokescreen to maintain confidence among the faithful while the foundations are quietly weakened.
Either interpretation reveals theological and moral bankruptcy. To praise Peter of Alcantara while collaborating in a process that would eradicate his spirit from the very Franciscan houses that once bore his name is a betrayal wrapped in incense.
Symptomatic Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
The document is a paradigm of how the Church of the New Advent operates:
1. Apparent continuity:
– Texts full of citations of Scripture.
– Pious references to canonized saints of the authentic Church.
– Calls to prayer, penance, contemplation.
2. Substantial discontinuity:
– Systematic omission of the sharp doctrinal edges: exclusivity of the Church, condemnation of error, royal rights of Christ over societies, necessity of submission to pre-existing Magisterium.
– Replacement of integral Catholic militancy with a vague moralism against “naturalism.”
3. Psychological manipulation:
– The faithful are meant to assume: “If John XXIII so honours Peter of Alcantara, he must be Catholic in the same sense as the saint.”
– Meanwhile, the same authority advances a council that:
– exalts religious liberty against the *Syllabus*,
– dilutes the kingship of Christ into mere eschatological rhetoric,
– launches ecumenism built on relativization of dogma,
– tolerates or promotes new rites and disciplines incompatible with Catholic theology of sacrifice and priesthood.
This is modus operandi of a paramasonic structure: use symbols of the old order as ornamentation while hollowing out their content.
Misuse of Authority and the Question of Office
For one assessing from the integral Catholic standpoint:
– The same moral person cannot:
– solemnly uphold the pre-1958 papal condemnations of religious liberty, indifferentism, syncretism, and modernization of dogma,
– and at the same time inaugurate and approve doctrines and practices intrinsically opposed to those condemnations,
– without falling either into manifest heresy or into practical denial of the Church’s indefectible teaching.
Pre-1958 theological authorities (e.g., St Robert Bellarmine, the classical commentators, and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code) hold that:
– a manifest heretic, by that fact, cannot be head of the Church, since he ceases to be a member.
– public defection from the faith voids ecclesiastical office automatically.
While this letter itself is not the most explicit heretical act, it participates in a pattern:
– An ostentatious use of papal forms to promote a trajectory incompatible with the previous, irreformable Magisterium.
– A calculated refusal to act as guardian of tradition against modernist infiltration.
In that light, invoking Peter of Alcantara to confirm John XXIII’s “apostolic” blessing becomes theologically intolerable. The blessing of one who sets in motion the conciliar dissolution cannot be presumed to be the blessing of the Vicar of Christ; it is rather the benediction of a structure that has turned against the very principles for which Peter lived and suffered.
What the Letter Never Dares to Say
The gravest indictment of this text is not what it affirms, but what it refuses to affirm:
– It does not say that Peter’s example condemns:
– religious liberty as a public principle,
– ecumenical relativism,
– separation of Church and state,
– liturgical desacralization,
– democratization of doctrine.
– It does not say that:
– Peter’s austerity stands in judgment over the soft, world-friendly “pastoral” religion being prepared in the very years of this letter.
– Franciscan fidelity demands resistance to doctrinal novelty.
– true apostolate is impossible within structures that corrupt the faith.
– It never once calls the faithful to discern between:
– authentic Catholic authority transmitting what was handed down,
– and counterfeit “authority” using the Church’s language to promote another religion.
Silence where the truth must be confessed is itself a sign of infidelity. A text that could have been a trumpet blast against the approaching avalanche of modernism is reduced to perfumed fog.
True Honor to St Peter of Alcantara: Return to Integral Catholicism
To honour St Peter of Alcantara according to the mind of the pre-1958 Church is:
– to embrace his total adherence to defined Catholic dogma,
– to imitate his love of the Most Holy Sacrifice and Eucharistic reparation,
– to practice true poverty, enclosure, mortification, and contemplative prayer,
– and simultaneously to reject:
– the conciliar sect’s doctrines,
– its cult of man,
– its false ecumenism,
– its profanation of the liturgy,
– its reconciliation with liberalism and secularism condemned by Pius IX and his successors.
Any attempt, such as this letter, to appropriate Peter’s halo while betraying his doctrinal foundations, is a desecration of his memory.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): the saint’s life was formed by the ancient Roman rite, by the uncompromising catechism of Trent, by obedience to the solemn papal condemnations of modern errors. The conciliar program that John XXIII launched attacks these very pillars. Therefore his invocation of Peter’s name does not demonstrate continuity; it exposes contradiction.
The faithful who contemplate this letter today must not be seduced by its polished Latin and edifying phrases. They must see through the veil:
– A true successor of Peter, praising Peter of Alcantara, would anchor every exhortation in the dogmatic and anti-modernist Magisterium.
– An authority who will not do so, and instead steers the Church towards condemned principles, cannot claim that saint as his ally.
The only coherent way to “convert the gaze” toward St Peter of Alcantara is to follow him away from the neo-church of the conciliar age and back into the unchanging, integral Catholic faith that existed before the revolution was unleashed.
Source:
Lilium – Ad Augustinum Sépinski, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Ministrum Generalem, quarto revoluto saeculo ex quo S. Petrus de Alcantara in caelum migravit (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025