The document attributed to John XXIII and addressed to Rufino Santos and the other hierarchy of the Philippine islands congratulates them for the growth, material development, and organisation of their seminaries. It praises buildings, numbers, structures, the coordination of curricula, attention to spiritual directors, and encourages the promotion of vocations and the creation of a national college in Rome as a sign of ecclesial maturity. It is a serenely bureaucratic self-congratulation of a system that, on the eve of the conciliar revolution, was already internally severed from *integral Catholic faith* and preparing an army of functionaries for the future conciliar sect.
John XXIII’s Seminary Strategy as Programmatic Engine of the Conciliar Revolution
From Catholic Seminary to Incubator of Neo-Church Clericalism
This letter stands at a precise moment: 1961, when John XXIII had already announced the council that would dissolve, in practice, the public reign of Christ the King and enthrone *homo religiosus* and religious pluralism. The author addresses the Philippine hierarchy with florid paternal language while effectively consolidating a formation model that would generate the obedient executors of that revolution.
Key elements from the text (English first, then Latin where present):
– “We rejoiced greatly when the Sacred Congregation… declared to us the outcome of the Apostolic Visitation recently carried out in your renowned nation… we know that the seminaries flourish with favourable growth and that you… spare neither labours nor expenses… so that whatever pertains to the proper formation of ecclesiastical youth may grow stronger day by day.”
– “We praise before all your care in providing suitable dwellings for your seminaries… most dioceses can rightly glory in their own seminary.”
– “The number of those called to the priesthood is increasing notably… remove the impediments which stem from the poverty and difficulties of families… the ‘Work of ecclesiastical vocations’ will nourish the flame of love for priesthood and seminary.”
– “With prudent severity receive only those… and cautiously impose hands in sacred ordination.”
– “Spiritual fathers… must avert the rising minds from the allurements of novelties and a world turned to pleasures, and imbue them with ancient virtues.”
– “We have heard with joy of considerable progress in the fields of study… the curriculum has been unified… future priests should cede in nothing to lay students in learning.”
On the surface this appears orthodox. But read in light of the pre-1958 Magisterium and of what immediately followed, it discloses its true nature: a carefully balanced rhetoric that preserves Catholic vocabulary while silently reprogramming the nerve-centres of the Church — the seminaries — to serve the coming *abominatio desolationis*.
Linguistic Cosmetics Hiding an Ecclesiological Mutation
The text is steeped in pious formulas, yet the rhetoric itself betrays a technocratic and horizontal mentality:
– Continuous emphasis on:
– infrastructural success: “ample, healthy, elevated buildings”;
– administrative efficiency: coordinated curricula, national college, systematic funding;
– numerical expansion of candidates.
This quantitativist obsession sharply contrasts with the robust supernatural realism of previous Roman teaching.
Compare:
– Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that the miseries of nations come from having “removed Christ and His law from public life” and that true peace is possible only in the public Kingdom of Christ the King. He links all renewal to explicit restoration of Christ’s social reign.
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemns the myths of religious neutrality, the separation of Church and State (prop. 55), and the deification of the State (prop. 39), unmasking the liberal-democratic religion as anti-Christian.
– St Pius X, in Pascendi and Lamentabili, exposes Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” especially its evolutionary view of dogma and its absorption of the Church into immanentist, historical processes.
By contrast, this 1961 letter:
– Never once calls the Philippine bishops to combat liberalism, indifferentism, religious freedom ideology, or masonic infiltration, despite the grave global situation already denounced repeatedly by Pius IX and Pius X.
– Never recalls the necessity of defending the rights of Christ the King against secular legislation, contrary to the line of Pius XI in Quas Primas.
– Speaks of “novelties” only in a vague ascetical key (worldly pleasures), never in the precise doctrinal sense condemned by Lamentabili and Pascendi — precisely as the same John XXIII was preparing the greatest explosion of pernicious novelties in the history of the Church.
This reduction of the word novitates to mere moral distractions is a linguistic sleight of hand. It neutralises the technical meaning given by St Pius X, who condemns the “false striving for novelty” in doctrine as destructive of the faith. The letter replaces doctrinal vigilance with generic moralism, while in reality architecting the triumph of dogmatic evolutionism.
Omissions That Accuse: Silence on Modernism, Freemasonry, and the Social Kingship of Christ
The gravest indictment of this text is what it does not say.
1. No warning against Modernism:
– St Pius X had imposed an anti-modernist oath on clergy (1910) to block precisely the subversion that the conciliar sect would later institutionalise.
– Here there is no exhortation to guard against the condemned propositions of Lamentabili or the errors of Pascendi.
– Instead we meet a soft vocabulary about “ancient virtues” and “spiritual fathers” without anchoring them to specific doctrinal battles already defined by the Magisterium.
2. No warning against liberalism and laicism:
– The Philippines, like other nations, was subjected to U.S.-style religious liberty ideology and masonic influence.
– Pius IX clearly identified masonry as the organised enemy: “the synagogue of Satan… which thinks itself master of the world.”
– John XXIII’s text is utterly silent about these organised forces; it praises adaptation to post-war conditions without recalling that Catholic formation must be intrinsically anti-liberal, anti-masonic, and militantly confessional.
3. No mention of the public reign of Christ the King:
– Pius XI taught that states must “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” warning of nullity of laws opposed to divine law.
– A letter about forming clergy, in a country undergoing political and social transformation, should insist that seminarians be prepared to demand civil recognition of Christ’s Kingship and reject religious indifferentism.
– Instead, the formation ideal is framed in safe, vague terms detached from the battle for the social Kingship: interior piety, moral discipline, academic excellence — all easily absorbed into a neutral pluralist society.
This triple silence signals complicity with that “reconciliation with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” which Pius IX condemned as an error (Syllabus, prop. 80). The document effectively shifts the axis of clerical identity from supernatural militancy for Christ’s Kingdom to professionally managed, well-adapted religious service — the psychology of the coming conciliar apparatchik.
Theology Diluted into Bureaucratic Humanism
At the theological level, the letter exhibits a subtle but decisive shift.
1. Vagueness about grace and state of grace:
– There is talk of “sanctity of life,” “virtues,” “asceticism,” yet no precise insistence on:
– necessity of the state of grace;
– horror of mortal sin;
– centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory;
– dogmatic orthodoxy as condition of valid ministry.
– Pius X explicitly tied every dimension of seminary training to defense of objective, immutable dogma against evolutionism. This document refuses that clarity.
2. Absence of doctrinal armament:
– The letter does not direct seminarians to the great anti-liberal encyclicals, to the Syllabus, to Pascendi, to Quas Primas.
– Instead, it quotes, selectively and superficially, Pius XII’s Menti Nostrae about priests not being inferior in learning to laymen, turning an exhortation into a slogan of academic egalitarianism: priests must match the world on its own terms.
– But it does not restate the essential: that all studies must be subordinated absolutely to scholastic theology, as Leo XIII required, and to the Magisterium’s anti-modernist definitions.
3. Instrumentalisation of ascetic language:
– Passages about voluntary mortification, obedience, and the science of the Cross are orthodox in wording.
– Yet they are embedded in a structure silently loyal not to Pius X’s anti-modernist programme, but to a “pastoral aggiornamento” that will nullify those very principles in practice.
– This is the method of Modernism denounced by St Pius X: keeping formulas while subverting the meaning and orientation — *eadem verba, alius sensus* (the same words, another sense).
The result is a pseudo-Catholic spiritualism perfectly compatible with a Church that will, within a few years, deny in practice the exclusive truth of the Catholic religion, desacralise the liturgy, and embrace the cult of man.
Symptomatic Fruits: The Philippine Hierarchy within the Conciliar Sect
We must judge a tree by its fruits (Mt 7:16). What did the seminaries so lovingly commended in this letter actually produce?
– They produced clergy and hierarchy who:
– enthusiastically embraced the new paramasonic structure of the “Church of the New Advent”;
– accepted the new rite fabricated according to ecumenical principles, obscuring the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of the Mass, which previous popes had defended as touchstone of faith;
– promoted religious liberty and interreligious “dialogue” in a country historically marked by Catholic confessionality, directly contradicting the pre-1958 Magisterium;
– tolerated or fostered syncretic devotions and charismatic pseudo-mysticism rather than enforcing the doctrinal discipline of Pius IX and Pius X.
The celebrated Philippine College in Rome, erected and crowned by this letter, became not a fortress of counter-revolution, but a conduit of conciliar ideology, training clergy in obedience to the usurpers and their neo-doctrines. This is not an accidental deviation; it is the coherent outcome of the formation ideal implicitly promoted here.
A Carefully Curated Blindness to the Real Enemy
One of the most telling aspects of the letter is its total lack of awareness — or its deliberate suppression — of the already-identified enemy: Modernist infiltration and organised secret societies.
Pre-1958 Magisterium:
– Pius IX:
– clearly recognises the coordination of anti-Catholic sects (“masonic or otherwise”) as the main engine of war against the Church, calling them the “synagogue of Satan”.
– condemns the idea that the Church must “come to terms” with progress and liberalism.
– Leo XIII:
– unmasks Freemasonry as intrinsically opposed to Christ’s reign and Catholic order.
– insists on the duty to expose and resist it in all nations.
– St Pius X:
– identifies Modernists as enemies “within the Church” seeking to demolish from inside;
– demands rigorous screening of candidates and professors; expels those infected with modernist tendencies; binds them by oath.
Against this background, the 1961 letter:
– Praises increased numbers without real doctrinal criteria.
– Speaks of “prudent severity” but provides no objective measure: no reference to condemned propositions, no obligation to the anti-modernist oath (which John XXIII would soon relativize and effectively bury).
– Commends academic parity with secular universities, a notoriously liberal milieu, without warning against naturalism, rationalism, or historicism.
The effect is disastrous: the seminarians are sent into the intellectual atmosphere condemned by Pius IX and Pius X, with merely moralistic exhortations as “protection,” while their superiors are already aligned with John XXIII’s plan for an “aggiornamento” Council. This is not prudence; it is betrayal masked as pastoral care.
The Hidden Premise: Seminaries at the Service of a New Ecclesiology
Behind the gentle phrases lies a decisive ecclesiological shift:
– The seminary is no longer primarily:
– a supernatural school of the Cross,
– a fortress of immutable doctrine,
– a boot camp for soldiers of Christ the King called to subjugate error and vice.
Instead, it is quietly reconceived as:
– an institutional training centre integrated into a global ecclesiastical bureaucracy;
– oriented towards “service,” “dialogue,” and “pastoral adaptation”;
– measuring its success by number of entrants, modern infrastructure, university compatibility.
This is precisely the ecclesiology condemned in embryo by Pius X in Pascendi, where the Church is reduced to a religious-social organism evolving with history. The letter’s silence on the absolute, juridical, dogmatic prerogatives of the Church against the modern State (which the Syllabus and Quas Primas defend) and its stress on organisational efficiency reveal the nascent conciliar mentality.
The seminarians thus formed would later accept:
– religious liberty as a “right” of error;
– ecumenism as a mutual enrichment among “churches”;
– the erosion of scholastic theology in favour of historical-relativist methods;
– the dilution of the Most Holy Sacrifice into a convivial assembly.
They would obey not because they had been rooted in the anti-liberal, anti-modernist line of the perennial Magisterium, but because they had been trained in institutional conformism to the reigning apparatus, which after 1958 had passed into the hands of usurpers.
The Contradiction with Pre-1958 Seminary Doctrine
To expose fully the bankruptcy of the attitudes in this document, we contrast it with the clear pre-1958 principles on seminaries.
Integral Catholic doctrine demanded:
– Absolute primacy of Thomistic philosophy and theology:
– Leo XIII (Aeterni Patris) orders a return to St Thomas as bulwark against modern errors.
– St Pius X legislates that seminarians must be trained in Thomism as normative.
– Militant anti-modernist vigilance:
– Pascendi demands careful examination of candidates, removal of infected professors, surveillance of publications.
– Clear confessional and anti-liberal stance:
– Pius IX, Pius XI, Pius XII: the priest must be defender of the rights of Christ the King against secularist regimes.
– Formation ordered to the altar of the true Most Holy Sacrifice:
– The priest’s identity is inseparable from the august mystery of the propitiatory Sacrifice and from the objective deposit of faith he must guard.
The 1961 letter, despite pious asides about the Cross and virtues, subverts this in practice by:
– relativising doctrinal battle into unqualified rhetoric about “novelties” and “virtue”;
– aligning studies with secular standards, instead of subordinating them rigorously to Thomism and Magisterium;
– omitting any reminder of the anti-modernist oath or of the concrete condemned errors;
– integrating the Philippine clerical formation into the orbit of the emerging conciliar power-structure in Rome.
Thus the document is not a harmless exhortation. It is a strategic piece in the construction of seminaries no longer as arsenals of Catholic dogma, but as nurseries for the future administrators of post-conciliarism.
Conclusion: The Smile that Prepared the Ruin
Considered with the light of the unchanging pre-1958 Magisterium, this letter:
– replaces the supernatural, combative ideal of priesthood with a polished, institutional, numerically expansive clericalism;
– systematically omits the decisive doctrinal fronts (Modernism, liberalism, masonic infiltration, religious liberty, ecumenism) where seminaries should have armed future priests;
– employs Catholic vocabulary while evacuating it of its anti-liberal and anti-modernist edge;
– integrates the Philippine Church into the global machinery that would soon promulgate a new ecclesiology, a new liturgy, and new doctrines incompatible with the prior, infallibly taught positions.
The apparent solicitude for “ancient virtues” thus serves as camouflage for redirecting the entire formation system towards obedience to the conciliar sect. The result is visible in history: not an increase of saints, confessors of the Social Kingship of Christ, and defenders of dogma, but an abundant crop of functionaries, ecumenists, and naturalistic activists of the neo-church.
In that sense, this seemingly benevolent text is a paradigm of the method of the revolution: never frontal denial, always gentle displacement; never open contradiction, always selective silence; never confessed apostasy, always “pastoral” redirection. And precisely for that reason, judged by the standard of the pre-1958 Catholic faith, it stands condemned as an instrument of disorientation and preparation for systemic apostasy.
Source:
Pater misericordiarum – Ad Rufinum tit. S. Mariae ad Montes S. R. E. Presbyterum Cardinalem Santos, Archiepiscopum Manilensem, ceterosque Ordinarios Insularum Philippinarum, quibus gratulatur de impen… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025