In this Latin letter of 29 June 1961, John XXIII addresses Martin John O’Connor, head of the Pontifical Council for Cinema, Radio and Television, on the 25th anniversary of Pius XI’s Vigilanti cura. He praises Pius XI’s concern for cinema, recalls the moral dangers of film (especially for youth), notes ecclesiastical initiatives to promote morally acceptable productions, commends national and international Catholic film organizations, and exhorts continued efforts so that cinema may serve education, culture, and “honest entertainment” under the guidance of competent ecclesiastical authorities. The entire text maintains a tone of pastoral encouragement toward collaboration with modern media and confidence that Catholic structures can elevate cinematic art for the moral and cultural benefit of society.
This apparently pious exhortation, however, is a paradigmatic document of the conciliar revolution: it subtly subordinates the supernatural mission of the Church to the naturalistic cult of culture, entertainment, and dialogue with the world, replacing the Kingship of Christ with managerial optimism about poisoned instruments that are objectively vehicles of apostasy.
Media Optimism as a Symptom of Doctrinal Disorientation
John XXIII’s Nostra Patris must be read not as an isolated administrative note, but as a revealing piece of the program that culminated in the conciliar upheaval. Its language, omissions, and underlying assumptions betray a mentality already detached from the *integral, immutable doctrine* solemnly articulated by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
From the outset, the letter frames the papal “solicitude” in terms of adapting to “recent methods of communicating voices and images,” presenting cinema as an almost neutral or promising terrain, whose dangers can be domesticated by pastoral supervision. The fundamental inversion is immediate:
– Instead of reaffirming with force that every human invention is to be judged first and principally by its subordination to the *regnum Christi* and the salvation of souls, John XXIII adopts a tone of benevolent accommodation, emphasizing “relaxation,” “human culture,” and “honest entertainment” as quasi-autonomous goods.
This is already foreign to the spirit of Pius XI’s Quas primas, where peace and order are explicitly declared impossible unless individuals and states submit to Christ the King and His law. Pius XI did not enthrone “culture” or “neutral media,” but Christ Himself as universal Legislator and Judge. Nostra Patris, instead of placing cinema under the absolute demands of that Kingship, circles around sociological and educational categories, weakening the note of supernatural ultimacy.
From Pius XI’s Warnings to John XXIII’s Managerial Humanism
On the factual level, the letter:
– Commemorates Vigilanti cura.
– Acknowledges real dangers: “they praise passions and lusts, provide occasions of vice, divert youth from the right path, obscure perfection, and extinguish chaste love and the sanctity of marriage.”
– Recalls that the Holy See fostered organizations to influence the film industry.
– Commends the Pontifical Council for Cinema and its president.
– Encourages Catholics to trust ecclesiastical ratings and judgments about films.
– Urges lay Catholics to engage in criticism, pedagogy, aesthetic theory, and psychological and educational sciences related to cinema, so that Catholic influence may permeate this field.
On the surface this appears continuous with Vigilanti cura and with pre-war Catholic initiatives. But the crucial difference lies in what is systematically omitted and how the problem is framed.
Pius XI in Vigilanti cura and Pius XII in their authentic Magisterium grounded every warning not in “culture management” but in:
– The absolute primacy of the divine law.
– The reality of mortal sin, scandal, and eternal damnation.
– The duty of civil authority to repress public immorality.
– The right and obligation of the Church to condemn and prohibit harmful spectacles with binding force.
Nostra Patris reduces this supernatural clarity to a bureaucratic, technocratic paradigm:
– Moral questions are absorbed into the vocabulary of “education,” “formation,” “opinion shaping,” and “honest recreation,” as if the ultimate horizon were psychological well-being and cultural balance.
– Instead of thundering against public sin and demanding that states recognize Christ’s rights and censor corrupt productions, John XXIII places his hope in consultative “Councils,” cultural engagement, and advisory ratings.
This marks a transition from *Magisterium imperativum* (commanding with divine authority) to *Magisterium consultativum* (suggesting, dialoguing, accompanying) – the very modernist shift condemned as corrosive in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, where the Church’s teaching is subtly reduced to historical opinion or pastoral option among others.
Linguistic Softening: The Voice of the Conciliar Sect in Embryo
The linguistic texture of the letter reveals its underlying ideology.
1. Persistent emphasis on:
– “Relaxation of soul and body”
– “Human culture”
– “New knowledge”
– “Honest entertainment”
– “Study of aesthetics, psychology, education, criticism”
2. Absence or near absence of:
– Explicit mention of mortal sin.
– Fear of hell, eternal punishment.
– Necessity of the *state of grace* for pleasing God.
– The duty of governments to conform laws and public morals to the law of Christ the King.
– The binding force of condemnations and indices as grave obligations under pain of sin.
The text mentions “divine law” only in a softened form, as a source of “sense of honesty” and as a norm whose violations good Catholics will “disapprove with untroubled brow.” This is moralism without eschatological teeth.
Such euphemistic language corresponds exactly to the modernist and liberal tendencies condemned by:
– Pius IX in the Syllabus (notably errors 56–60 on naturalistic morality divorced from God’s authority, and errors 77–80 on reconciling with liberal modern civilization).
– Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi, where he censures the attempt to recast dogma and morality in terms acceptable to “modern man,” softening supernatural realities into immanent experiences and cultural values.
Where the integral Catholic faith speaks of *peccatum mortale*, *scandalum*, *infernum*, *regnum Christi*, and the public obligation to obey Christ and His Church, John XXIII speaks of “education” and “selection of films” and “confidence in competent evaluators.” This is the language of cultural administration, not of the Apostolic See conscious of possessing *iure divino* the authority to “bind and loose” (Matt 16:19) under pain of eternal loss.
Theological Evacuation: Silence on Grace, Sacraments, and Last Ends
The gravest indictment of Nostra Patris is its systematic silence on the supernatural order as the governing criterion. It speaks of dangers, but never goes to the root: sin against God, loss of sanctifying grace, eternal damnation.
Measured against unchanging doctrine (Council of Trent, Roman Catechism, pre-1958 papal teaching), the letter’s omissions are devastating:
– No affirmation that participation in immoral films is itself grave sin and an occasion of sin, requiring confession and firm amendment.
– No insistence that the faithful must avoid not only intrinsically immoral content but all proximate occasions of sin, especially regarding purity; this is non-negotiable Catholic moral theology.
– No reminder that those who produce, promote, or approve such spectacles incur guilt of scandal and cooperate in others’ sins, as Catholic moralists and previous popes have taught.
– No indication that secular “artistic freedom” is subordinate to the *lex divina* and that the State has the duty to repress public obscenity (Syllabus, propositions condemned 55, 79, etc.).
– No explicit link between sound use of media and participation in the Most Holy Sacrifice, frequent confession, Eucharistic reparation, devotion to the Kingship of Christ, or the social reign of Christ over nations.
Instead, the guiding horizon becomes a vague “human betterment,” a rhetoric of balance: the same cinema that leads youth to vice may, if managed, serve as education and entertainment. This equilibrium language is alien to the patristic and scholastic rigor that sees the world, flesh, and devil as permanent enemies, and judges things according to their real moral structure, not their potentialities in the abstract.
Such silence fulfills precisely the methodological criterion specified: omission of supernatural matters is the gravest accusation. A text that allegedly addresses public moral danger without propounding the Four Last Things, without recalling the dogmatic obligations of the faithful, without affirming the duty of rulers to subject media to Christ, is operating within a *naturalistic* paradigm.
Subordination of Ecclesiastical Authority to Liberal Mechanisms
Another key element is the functional resizing of Church authority.
Nostra Patris:
– Appeals to “judgments” of “approved men” delegated by ecclesiastical authority in each nation to classify films.
– Exhorts the faithful to “obey” these judgments with trusting docility.
On the surface, this might look like ordinary Catholic discipline. Yet several distortions emerge:
1. Reduction of the Church’s coercive power:
– No assertion that the Church’s moral decisions about media bind in conscience as participation in the *Magisterium authenticum*, under pain of sin (cf. Tuas libenter, Syllabus 22).
– Instead, decisions appear as expert opinions, one consultative voice among others in a pluralistic media landscape.
2. Shift from hierarchical command to technocratic mediation:
– The central role is given not to solemn papal prohibitions, indices, or doctrinal censures, but to committees, commissions, and “institutes” engaging in criticism and cultural activity.
– The supernatural authority of Peter is obscured beneath a network of “councils” that negotiate with an industry dominated by enemies of Christ.
3. Naive collaborationism:
– The letter treats cinema as an arena where, with skillful Catholic presence, a “mutual understanding” or “elevation” can be achieved.
– This contradicts the repeated pre-1958 warnings against “clerico-liberal” illusions, secret societies, and Masonic infiltration (as exposed in the Syllabus and subsequent papal condemnations). The worldwide film industry is historically and structurally aligned with precisely those anti-Christian forces.
By avoiding any explicit confrontation with the hostile anti-Christian powers that weaponize cinema to destroy faith and morals, the letter assumes a de facto capitulation: the Church will content herself with rating systems, advisory bodies, and cultural discourse within the liberal order, instead of exercising the divine right to command, forbid, and anathematize.
Symptomatic: The Conciliar Spirit Incubated in One Page
Viewed symptomatically, Nostra Patris is not about reels of film; it is about a new ecclesiology in nuce.
Key symptoms:
– Anthropocentric orientation: the text is concerned with “human culture,” “relaxation,” “education,” and “information,” not with the glory of God and the salvation of souls as absolute measure. The supernatural end becomes one element in a broader humanistic picture.
– Naturalistic moral discourse: vice is mentioned, but separated from its theological dimension as offense against God and path to hell. The categories employed are largely psychological and sociological.
– Democratized mediation: the weight falls on lay experts, critics, commissions, “participation.” The episcopal and papal voice recedes into managerial encouragement. This foreshadows the democratization and parliamentarization of doctrine institutionalized at Vatican II.
– Optimistic evolutionary rhetoric: there is an implicit belief that engagement with modern media, through ongoing studies and dialogues, will gradually yield positive outcomes. This is practically a pastoral version of the condemned idea that truth and culture evolve harmoniously with modern civilization (*error 80*, Syllabus).
– No demand for the Social Reign of Christ: the state is invisible. The letter does not even intimate that civil authority sins if it permits the public corruption of morals. This silence aligns with the false thesis that Church and State should be separated and that religious liberty is a positive ideal (Syllabus 55, 77–79).
All this aligns perfectly with the modernist program condemned by Pius X: transforming the Church from a divinely constituted, doctrinally absolute society into a historical, dialogical, culturally integrated institution whose pronouncements are adapted to the spirit of the age.
Nostra Patris is a fragment of that deformation. Under a respectful tone toward Pius XI, it empties his stance of its teeth, neutralizing the integral Roman intransigence into a mild pastoralism compatible with the subsequent conciliar sect.
The Inversion of Ends: Entertainment Before Sanctification
Integral Catholic doctrine, as taught by the perennial Magisterium and classical moral theology, establishes:
– The first end of man: the glory of God and the salvation of his soul.
– The means: faith, supernatural grace, sacraments, obedience to divine and ecclesiastical law, and flight from occasions of sin.
– All temporal goods and arts are subordinate, *in ordine ad Deum* (ordered to God). If they endanger salvation, they must be renounced; if they cannot be purified, they must be condemned.
Nostra Patris never clearly articulates this hierarchy in relation to cinema. Instead, it:
– Concedes and legitimizes cinema as a quasi-necessary element of modern life.
– Speaks sympathetically of the human need for “relaxation” and “entertainment.”
– Treats the problem as one of selecting “honest” films and fostering better production, rather than fundamentally questioning whether an industry structurally dedicated to impurity, violence, and anti-Christian propaganda can be reconciled with Catholic life.
A truly Catholic document would say plainly:
– If cinema as practiced leads multitudes into mortal sin, then Catholics must reject it, and authorities must repress it.
– One mortal sin of a single soul outweighs any benefit in “cultural enrichment.”
– Public dissemination of impurity is a grave offense that cries to heaven for vengeance, destroys families, and merits divine chastisement on nations.
By shifting emphasis to regulated enjoyment and cultural participation, Nostra Patris inverts the logic of salvation: entertainment is normalized; holiness is assumed, not fought for.
Perennial Doctrine vs. the Conciliar Media Project
The Church before 1958 equipped us with clear criteria:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus denounces the independence of civil society from religion, the exaltation of “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” as reconciled with the Church, and the error that freedom of public immorality is harmless.
– Pius XI in Quas primas affirms that society’s disorders stem from the exclusion of Christ and His law from public life, and that only submission to His Kingship can bring order and peace.
– Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns attempts to adapt doctrine to modern culture, transform dogma into symbolism, and reduce the Magisterium to consultative guidance.
Measured against these, Nostra Patris:
– Accepts the liberal media landscape as a given and seeks insertion, not its subjugation to Christ the King.
– Speaks of “art,” “humanity,” and “entertainment” more readily than of the Social Reign of Christ and the non-negotiable right of the Church to demand censorship of immoral productions.
– Relegates ecclesiastical action to commissions and critics rather than exercises of sovereign, binding authority.
This is not a mere nuance; it is an ecclesiological mutation. The letter is a small but telling contribution to the construction of the conciliar sect, the “Church of the New Advent,” which blesses, manages, and accompanies the very mechanisms that dissolve Catholic faith and morals.
Conclusion: Nostra Patris as a Step in the Programmed Neutralization of the Church
Nostra Patris presents itself as a continuation of Vigilanti cura and Pius XII’s teaching. In reality it functions as an anesthetic:
– It retains some vocabulary of moral concern, but drains it of its supernatural clarity and juridical force.
– It legitimizes a cooperative stance with an intrinsically corrupt media system, instead of condemning and resisting it in the name of Christ the King.
– It displaces the axis of judgment from *Dei gloria et salus animarum* to “balanced engagement,” “honest recreation,” and “cultural development.”
– It prefigures the conciliar sect’s broader betrayal: exchanging the militant, dogmatic, supernatural Church for a dialogical, naturalistic, culturally integrated structure.
In light of the unchanging doctrine reaffirmed by the authentic Magisterium up to Pius XII, the attitudes distilled in this letter stand condemned by objective Catholic principles themselves. Any faithful Catholic, formed by Quas primas, the Syllabus, Lamentabili, Pascendi, and the traditional moral theology of the Church, must recognize in this document not the voice of the perennial Roman Pontiff, but the programmatic language of the impending apostasy that enthroned the world in the sanctuary and reduced the Spouse of Christ to an advisor in the empire of images.
Source:
Nostra patris – Epistula ad Martinum Ioannem O'Connor, Archiepiscopum titulo Laodicenum in Syria, Pontificii Consilii Rei Cinematographicae, Radiophonicae ac Televisificae praepositi Praesidem, q… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025