John XXIII’s Latin letter “Pater Misericordiarum” (22 August 1961) addresses Rufino Santos and the other ordinaries of the Philippine Islands, congratulating them on the state of their seminaries after an apostolic visitation. He praises adequate buildings, growing numbers of candidates, the presence of spiritual directors, the emphasis on discipline, Latin, human letters, and the establishment of pre-seminaries, post-seminaries, and the Pontifical Philippine College in Rome. He exhorts bishops to select worthy candidates, appoint exemplary formators, and foster priestly vocations through parish-based works.
From the standpoint of integral Catholic doctrine, this apparently pious epistle is a carefully measured prelude to the conciliar subversion, subtly shifting the axis from supernatural militancy and doctrinal clarity to bureaucratic optimism and human-centered formation that would soon bear the poisoned fruits of the conciliar sect.
Sentimental Flattery as a Veil for Revolutionary Intent
At first glance, the text appears orthodox: Scripture is cited, seminaries are extolled, discipline and virtue are mentioned, Latin is not yet discarded. But the decisive question is not whether conventional Catholic vocabulary occurs, but in what direction the entire document pushes the minds and structures it addresses.
John XXIII writes to the Philippine hierarchy in 1961, on the eve of the so‑called Second Vatican Council, at the precise moment when the foundations of the visible structures were being prepared for demolition. It is, therefore, essential to measure every line of this letter against:
– the pre‑1958 magisterium on the priesthood, seminaries, and doctrine;
– the concrete subsequent fruits in clergy, seminaries, and faith in the Philippines and worldwide;
– the characteristic marks of *modernist infiltration* condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu.
Once this measuring rod is applied, the letter reveals itself as an exercise in anesthetizing vigilance: replacing the Church’s perennial language of battle, sacrifice, heresy, judgment, and the rights of Christ the King with the conciliatory, self-congratulatory, managerial tone which would soon blossom into the conciliar apostasy.
From Supernatural Combat to Pastoral Bureaucracy
On the factual level, the letter:
– Commends the bishops for rebuilding and expanding seminaries after the war.
– Emphasizes good buildings, health, location, adequate number of houses.
– Notes with satisfaction the growth in priestly vocations.
– Urges careful selection of candidates.
– Stresses the need for capable formators and spiritual directors.
– Approves the unification and rationalization of academic curricula.
– Encourages promotion of Latin and suitable humanities.
– Praises pre-seminaries, post-seminaries, and especially the Pontifical Philippine College in Rome.
In isolation, many of these points are not only acceptable but demanded by the traditional magisterium (cf. the norms of Trent on clerical formation; the constant insistence of pre‑1958 popes on solid seminaries). But the bankruptcy of this epistle lies in what is systematically omitted and how the acceptable elements are reframed.
Note the striking absences:
– No explicit and forceful warning against the contagious errors already condemned by St. Pius X: Modernism, historicism, relativism, the denial of the inerrancy of Scripture, the “evolution of dogma” (Lamentabili propositions 57–65).
– No mention of the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, no recalling of the incompatibility of liberalism, freemasonry, and naturalism with the Catholic priesthood.
– No admonition against false “ecumenism,” religious indifferentism, or the budding cult of human rights severed from Christ the King—errors already rampant in theological faculties and episcopates at that time.
– No clear insistence that seminarians must be formed as militant defenders of the exclusive truth of the Catholic Church and the public social Kingship of Christ, as taught in Pius XI’s Quas Primas, where peace is declared to be possible only in the Kingdom of Christ and under His law.
Instead, we find an essentially administrative praise-report, discreetly idealized, where seminaries are “cenacles” of hope and flower of the Church, but without concrete, doctrinal armament. The letter speaks of discipline, virtues, asceticism—but carefully avoids naming the real doctrinal enemies already identified by the pre‑conciliar magisterium.
This silence is not neutral. Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent) when the enemy is known and condemned. By 1961, the Holy Office had long unmasked the modernist method; to write a programmatic letter on seminaries and omit this war is a symptom, not an accident.
Soft Rhetoric: The Language of Controlled De-Catholicization
The linguistic texture of the epistle betrays its spirit:
– Constantly soothing tone: “singular delight,” “joy,” “prosperous growth,” “ample, salubrious” houses, “noble Filipino nation,” “we have for certain,” etc.
– Homiletic generalities instead of surgical doctrinal precision.
– The one real danger clearly named is “the allurements of novelties” and worldly pleasures—phrased as a generic moralism, not as the concrete theological novelties condemned in Lamentabili and by Pius XII.
John XXIII writes that superiors must turn youth away from “the allurements of novelties” and a world given to pleasures, and imbue them with “ancient virtues,” sacrifice, obedience, knowledge of the Cross, familiarity with God. These phrases could be read in continuity with tradition. But in his mouth, and in this context, they function as an inoculation: a minimal, non-specific “anti-novelty” line that leaves untouched the doctrinal revolution he himself was already planning to unleash by convoking the council and rehabilitating precisely those circles of “new theology” and historical relativism that Pius XII had warned against.
Here is the inner contradiction:
– The text superficially echoes traditional ascetic language.
– Yet it abstains from naming the concrete, already identified doctrinal poisons that were penetrating seminaries.
– It praises structural expansion and “unified curricula” at the very moment when those curricula were being colonized by modernist method.
This is the rhetoric of controlled demolition: calm, spiritualized verbiage used to mask the removal of doctrinal foundations.
Doctrinal Deformation by Omission: The Betrayal of Pre-1958 Teaching
Measured against the binding pre‑1958 magisterium, the epistle’s omissions are lethal.
1. Silencing the war against Modernism
St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili commanded bishops and seminary formators to:
– Vigilantly exclude modernist and liberal teachers.
– Treat the modernist crisis as a grave internal conspiracy.
– Guard Scripture, dogma, and history against historicist and immanentist reinterpretation.
– Require full submission even to non-definitive doctrinal decisions of the Holy See, especially anti-modernist norms.
The letter under review, addressed precisely to those responsible for seminaries, studiously avoids:
– Any reference to Lamentabili sane exitu explicitly renewed and bound with excommunication by St. Pius X.
– Any mention of the anti-modernist oath (then still in force).
– Any command to exclude teachers infected with the “new theology.”
Instead, it suffices with vague praise and gentle exhortations. This is not innocent; it is a calculated softening of the episcopal conscience. The objective effect: to prepare hierarchs to receive the impending conciliar revolution as a “pastoral development” rather than a condemned deviation.
2. No assertion of the absolute doctrinal authority of the pre-conciliar magisterium
While commending academic progress, John XXIII fails to reaffirm clearly:
– That seminaries must submit wholly to the doctrinal decisions of the Roman Pontiffs and Holy Office against liberalism, rationalism, and religious freedom as condemned in the Syllabus.
– That theology is not a neutral “science among others,” but must submit in every fibre to the Church’s magisterium, against the propositions condemned in Lamentabili (e.g., the idea that dogma evolves, that Scripture is subject to purely historical criticism, that the Church cannot define the sense of Scripture).
By merely exhorting that seminarians not fall for “novelties” while simultaneously praising standardized curricula—precisely the tools later used to inject conciliar ideology—John XXIII effectively paves the way for the subjugation of priestly formation to the very errors Pius IX and St. Pius X had anathematized.
3. Naturalizing the Priesthood
The letter indeed speaks of:
– “integrity of morals,”
– “holiness of life,”
– “wisdom,”
– spiritual directors expert in the ways of God.
Yet there is a subtle anthropocentric recasting: emphasis shifts toward psychological and administrative categories—selection, suitability, academic success, structured stages (pre-seminary, post-seminary)—characteristic of a managerial church, rather than the supernatural, sacrificial, sacramental configuration to Christ the High Priest.
The priest, according to Trent and the perennial magisterium, is:
– principally the one who offers the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiation for sin;
– guardian and teacher of unchanging dogma;
– judge and physician of souls;
– soldier of Christ against heresy and error.
Where is this explicit emphasis? It is dissolved into generalized language about “spiritual directors,” “formation,” “social” preparation, ministry “gradually” undertaken. The very vocabulary anticipates the post‑conciliar shift: from priest as sacrificer and doctrinal sentinel to priest as facilitator, animator, social agent, “pastoral” functionary.
This deflection aligns with the modernist program condemned by St. Pius X: to reinterpret all supernatural realities in terms of experience, function, and community needs.
Seminary Expansion as an Instrument of the Conciliar Sect
Symptomatically, John XXIII highlights with special satisfaction:
“Hac alma in Urbe sumptu magno, tenaci proposito, fide solidissima Seminarium Collegium Philippinarum Insularum condendum curastis… id canonice ereximus, ac rite probatum Pontificio honore ac titulo statim decoravimus.”
He exults in the erection of the Pontifical Philippine College in Rome as a great achievement for the Filipino nation and the Kingdom of God.
From the perspective of immutable doctrine, the crucial questions are:
– What doctrine and spirit would this Roman institution transmit?
– Under whose effective control and according to which theological orientation were its curricula to be shaped in the following years?
The post‑1962 reality answers:
– These “international” and “pontifical” colleges became privileged channels of conciliar indoctrination, propagating false ecumenism, religious liberty, anthropocentrism, and liturgical subversion back into their home countries.
– Many of those trained under the influence of John XXIII’s and his successors’ regime became promoters of the new rite, diluted catechesis, interreligious syncretism, and the cult of man, devastating the faith of millions.
Therefore, the triumphant tone of this letter regarding the college is, in retrospect, a self-accusation: the very structures he extols were used by the conciliar sect as relay stations for the “abomination of desolation” in the sanctuary.
Here the principle of Our Lord applies: “A tree is known by its fruits.” The fruits of this epistle’s program—once realized under the subsequent usurpers—were:
– emptied seminaries,
– effeminate and doctrinally corrupted clergy,
– acceptance of the neo‑protestantized rite,
– silence on the social reign of Christ,
– practical apostasy of nations.
That which claims continuity must be judged by continuity of doctrine and fruits with the pre‑1958 magisterium. The rupture is manifest.
Contradiction with the Kingship of Christ and the Syllabus of Errors
Particularly aggravating is the total absence of any reminder that priests are to be formed as defenders and apostles of the public rights of Christ the King over nations, as laid down infallibly in the constant teaching culminating in Pius XI’s Quas Primas and in Pius IX’s Syllabus.
– Quas Primas solemnly teaches that true peace and order are possible only where states and societies acknowledge and obey Christ as King; laicism and religious indifferentism are branded as a “plague.”
– The Syllabus condemns the propositions that:
– the state may be neutral or indifferent toward religion (55),
– all religions enjoy equal civil rights (77–79),
– the Roman Pontiff must reconcile with liberalism and “modern civilization” (80).
A truly Catholic letter on seminaries, in 1961, addressed to bishops of a nation emerging from colonial and political upheaval and facing aggressive secular forces, should have:
– Armed future priests to combat liberalism, socialism, freemasonry, and false notions of religious freedom;
– Firmly inculcated the duty to work for the social subjection of laws, education, and public life to Christ and His Church;
– Warned against the nascent ecumenical confusion and “dialogue” with false religions.
Instead:
– The text abstains entirely from these themes.
– It reduces the priestly mission to generic spiritual and pastoral categories.
– It sows the mentality of accommodation which would later make the Filipino hierarchy pliable instruments of the conciliar ideology and the cult of “human rights” severed from the Kingship of Christ.
Such systematic silence, in the light of the strong, precise pre‑1958 condemnations, cannot be excused as oversight; it is a step in the project of practical abrogation of the Syllabus and Quas Primas, later dogmatically contradicted by the conciliar sect’s teaching on religious liberty and ecumenism.
The Modernist Method: Affirm Truisms, Subvert Their Foundations
The theological method at work in this epistle is precisely the modernist tactic unmasked by St. Pius X:
– Retain certain traditional formulas (semaries as cenacles; need for virtue; role of spiritual directors).
– Surround them with an atmosphere that avoids sharp doctrinal lines and anti-error militancy.
– Shift emphasis to:
– optimism about “progress,”
– centralized pastoral structures,
– standardized programs,
– human sciences criteria of selection and formation.
– Prepare minds emotionally and institutionally to accept later, more explicit doctrinal innovations as “organic developments.”
Thus, when John XXIII states that superiors must shield seminarians from “novelties” and worldly pleasures, it is entirely abstract, devoid of names like:
– Kantian immanentism,
– historicism in exegesis,
– the “new theology” of doctrinal evolution,
– ecumenical relativism.
Yet these were precisely the “novelties” infiltrating seminaries. To condemn “novelties” as a word while rehabilitating their authors in practice is not orthodoxy; it is subversion.
The law of non-contradiction applies: one cannot be the faithful guardian of the anti-modernist magisterium and simultaneously protect, promote, or fail to resist the forces that magisterium has condemned. The epistle’s blandness about concrete doctrinal errors is thus not a minor pastoral choice; it is evidence of rupture.
Instrumentalizing Episcopal Obedience to Serve the Neo-Church
The letter repeatedly praises and gently directs the Filipino bishops, reinforcing their deference to the Roman center as embodied in John XXIII. This would be legitimate under a true pope faithfully transmitting Tradition. However, once the supreme office is used to diffuse ambiguities and prepare a revolution, such appeals become instruments of spiritual capture.
Key points:
– John XXIII insists on careful selection, on trusting spiritual directors, on channeling vocations into the structures he blesses.
– He associates all this closely with his own authority and benevolence, culminating in the apostolic blessing.
The psychological effect:
– Bishops are made to feel seen, approved, honoured for their seminaries.
– Their sense of loyalty to John XXIII is deepened.
– When the council convoked by this same figure later spews out liberalizing documents, these same bishops, already disarmed by flattery and habituated to obey him in seminary matters, follow him into the abyss.
Authority, designed by Christ to guard Tradition, is thus cunningly employed to neutralize resistance to a program that contradicts the Syllabus, Lamentabili, and Quas Primas. Obedience separated from truth ceases to be a virtue. The letter is an example of such misdirected obedience: the usurper’s word is treated as the continuation of Pius XI and Pius XII, while in fact undermining their doctrinal foundations.
Seminaries Without Dogmatic Teeth: The Road to Idolatrous Structures
One of the gravest consequences of the mentality embodied in this letter is the transformation of seminaries:
– from fortresses of integral doctrine and guardians of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary,
– into training centers for ministers of a new cult—where the Sacrifice is replaced by a “meal,” dogma by pastoral “process,” the Kingship of Christ by the cult of man and the United Nations mentality.
The epistle never:
– Warns that altering the Mass, the sacraments, or doctrines would be apostasy and sacrilege.
– Reminds that seminaries exist primarily to form men to offer the true Sacrifice and guard unchanged dogma.
Yet within a decade:
– The conciliar sect imposed a fabricated rite hostile to Catholic theology of sacrifice and Real Presence.
– “Priests” trained in the new line preside over rites that, at best, are doubtful and, in many cases, are mere empty ceremonies of the neo-church, if not direct idolatry.
– Those same structures teach indifferentism, religious liberty, and ecumenical relativism condemned by all pre‑1958 popes.
The letter of 1961 must be read as part of this trajectory. By refusing to nail down the non-negotiable principles—immutability of dogma, sacrificial essence of the Mass, condemnation of liberalism and ecumenism—it prepares the very seminaries it praises to mutate into engines of apostasy.
Conclusion: A Pious Mask for the Machinery of Apostasy
When dissected on factual, linguistic, theological, and symptomatic levels, this letter is revealed as:
– A carefully crafted piece of ecclesial diplomacy that:
– flatters the hierarchy,
– encourages structural and numerical growth,
– uses traditional-sounding language,
– avoids all concrete doctrinal combat.
– A text that deliberately omits:
– the anti-modernist measures binding on bishops and seminaries,
– the Syllabus’ condemnation of liberal errors already infecting the milieu,
– the robust affirmation of the social Kingship of Christ demanded by Pius XI.
– A milestone in the shift from:
– seminaries as bastions of Catholic militancy,
– to seminaries as laboratories of “pastoral aggiornamento” that soon would spew forth the clergy of the conciliar sect.
Its theological and spiritual bankruptcy does not lie in explicit propositional heresy in this narrow text, but in its consummate execution of the modernist strategy condemned by St. Pius X: speaking sweetly, praising structures, using orthodox fragments, while removing the antibodies against error, preparing the body for infection.
A letter on seminaries that, in 1961, fails to arm bishops and formators with the weapons of Lamentabili, the Syllabus, Trent, and Quas Primas, but instead conditions them for the forthcoming conciliar betrayal, stands condemned by its omissions and its fruits. Against this soft betrayal, the integral Catholic faith demands an unyielding return to the doctrinal intransigence of the true magisterium, the restoration of authentic seminaries, and the rejection of the conciliar pseudo-structures that have brought devastation to souls.
Source:
Pater misericordiarum, Epistula ad Rufinum tit. S. Mariae ad Montes S. R. E. Presbyterum Cardinalem Santos, Archiepiscopum Manilensem, ceterosque Ordinarios Insularum Philippinarum, quibus gratulatur … (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025