This Latin letter of John XXIII (“Ioannes PP. XXIII”) congratulates Antonio Caggiano, “cardinal” and archbishop of Buenos Aires, on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, praising his episcopal governance, his organizational and social initiatives, his role in Catholic Action, Marian and Eucharistic congresses, his mediation in social conflicts, and granting him the faculty to impart a blessing with plenary indulgence on the occasion of his jubilee.
Epistolary Glorification of Human Merit as Manifesto of the Conciliar Sect
From Apostolic Letter to Antichristic Programmatic Signal
Already the signature IOANNES PP. XXIII and the location of publication (A.A.S. 1962; the apparatus of the structures occupying the Vatican) situate this text within the revolutionary phase that prepared the neo-church of Vatican II. We are not dealing here with a neutral private greeting, but with a concise ideological imprint of the conciliar mentality: celebration of ecclesiastical careerism, social activism, national prestige, and human accord, with systematic silence about the essential: state of grace, doctrinal purity, supernatural end of the priesthood, the Kingship of Christ over society.
This silence is not accidental. The text bears all the marks of a magisterium already internally detached from integral Catholic doctrine, and thus functions as a small but clear symptom of the great apostasy denounced by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Level I – Factual Deconstruction: Whom and What Does John XXIII Celebrate?
The letter exalts Caggiano for several specific elements:
– Long governance in the diocese of Rosario.
– Construction of churches, parishes, schools, seminaries.
– Organization of Catholic Action and “social action.”
– Leadership role in Eucharistic and Marian congresses and in the so-called “great sacred mission” in Buenos Aires.
– Presidency over the council of the Argentinian hierarchy.
– Intervention in a serious conflict between railway authorities and workers, praised as a work of “social equity.”
– Granting, on the occasion of the jubilee, authority to impart a blessing with plenary indulgence.
At first glance, this may appear as a standard papal commendation. Yet under scrutiny according to *unchanging Catholic theology before 1958*, several points are gravely suspect:
1. Total absence of doctrinal criteria.
– No mention of the profession and defense of the one true Faith, no reference to combatting condemned errors: liberalism, socialism, communism, religious indifferentism, Modernism, Freemasonry.
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus* explicitly condemned the idea that the Church should reconcile with liberalism and modern civilization (prop. 80). The letter of John XXIII breathes precisely that spirit of reconciliation: harmony with modern structures, social mediation, polite institutional prestige.
2. Uncritical celebration of Catholic Action and “social action.”
– These movements, when detached from explicit confessional militancy for Christ’s social Kingship, easily become instruments of democratization of the Church, horizontal activism, and naturalistic philanthropy.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught that true peace comes only from the recognition of the reign of Christ over individuals, families, and states; yet here social activity is praised purely in terms of temporal “equity,” not as subordination of public life to the law of Christ the King.
3. Ecclesiastical careerism presented as sanctity.
– Caggiano’s path: diocesan bishop, creator of structures, then metropolitan of Buenos Aires, “cardinal,” president of the national episcopate.
– Nowhere is there even a minimal allusion to the cruciform dimension of the priesthood: *sacrificium*, *expiatio*, defense of the flock against wolves. Success, expansion, and human recognition are made the measure of priestly fruitfulness.
4. Instrumentalization of indulgences.
– The faculty to grant a plenary indulgence is attached to the cult of the person of Caggiano and the jubilee celebration, without any doctrinal reminder of the conditions: true contrition, sacramental confession (in the true rite), detachment from sin.
– This confirms the post-1958 tendency to reduce indulgences to a ceremonial ornament, at the disposal of ecclesiastical managers, desacralizing what previous popes treated with utmost gravity.
The facts highlighted and those systematically omitted show a coherent orientation: the priority is institutional stability and social respectability of the conciliar hierarchy, not the defense of the deposit of faith.
Level II – Linguistic Signals of a New Religion
The rhetoric of the letter is revealing. Its tone is syrupy, bureaucratically laudatory, and horizontally humanistic.
Key traits:
– The priestly jubilee is framed as an occasion of laetitia cleri populique (“joy of clergy and people”), but without the slightest recall to the Cross, to persecution, to the war against error. No *militia Christi*, only institutional festivities.
– Caggiano is praised for:
– sapientiae plena moderatio et structura – wise administration and organization;
– his role in founding and developing Catholic Action and “social action”;
– his skills in pacifying labor disputes.
– This vocabulary mirrors the liberal thesis condemned in the *Syllabus* that the Church should submit to modern concepts of progress, political equilibrium, and humanistic social order.
More serious are the omissions:
– No mention of Hell, judgment, mortal sin, sacrilege, the danger of heresy.
– No mention of Mary as conqueror of heresies, no appeal to the necessity of public profession of the only true religion for salvation.
– No mention of the exclusive salvific necessity of the Catholic Church, despite the context of Argentina, torn between secularization, Freemasonry, socialism, and Protestant sects.
This rhetorical style corresponds exactly to what St. Pius X condemned in *Pascendi*: a shift from supernatural categories to immanentist, psychological, and social language. When a “pope” speaks at length about pastoral success without a single dogmatic accent, he implicitly accepts the modernist reduction of the Church to a religious-ethical association.
The only more elevated citation is from St. Ambrose, but even this is used decoratively, separated from his intransigent doctrine on sin, penance, and the rights of Christ over rulers. Patristic authority is aestheticized, not operative.
Level III – Theological Exposure: Betrayal of the Nature of the Priesthood
Measured against pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, the entire letter is theologically deficient in a way symptomatic of apostasy.
1. Priesthood reduced to management and activism.
The Catholic priest, according to the perennial Magisterium, is:
– the man of the altar, who offers the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* for propitiation of sins;
– the guardian and preacher of the integral dogma, who must anathematize error;
– the spiritual father who leads souls to Heaven, not to temporal consensus.
In this letter, the priesthood of Caggiano is described almost exclusively in temporal terms:
“insignes explesti partes” in organizing congresses, “Actio Catholica per Argentinae fines constitueretur”, “Actio socialis incrementa susciperet”, “contentionem… composuisti” in labor conflict.
Supernatural elements are almost absent or relegated to generic pious phrases. This is practical Modernism: keeping Catholic terminology as a thin glaze over a new, horizontal understanding of priesthood and episcopate.
2. Contradiction with the social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas).
Pius XI solemnly taught that:
– states and rulers are obliged to publicly worship and obey Christ the King;
– social order is just only when explicitly subject to the law of Christ;
– secularism and laicism are a “plague” that must be openly condemned.
The letter praises Caggiano’s social mediation without any requirement that social relations conform to divine law, without mention of Christ’s Kingship over the nation, without recalling the obligation of civil authority to submit to the Church. Instead of *regnum Christi in societate* there is a proto-conciliar cult of “dialogue” and “equity” in the natural order.
This anticipates the doctrinal catastrophe of Vatican II’s document on religious liberty, which contradicts the *Syllabus* and *Quas Primas* by legitimizing the secular state and false cults. John XXIII’s letter is a small brick in that edifice: replacing the language of royal rights of Christ with the language of social balance and national prestige.
3. Silence on the fight against Modernism and secret societies.
Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI repeatedly exposed Freemasonry and related sects as the principal enemies of the Church and Christian society, condemning collaborationist clergy. In an environment like Argentina, undermined by liberalism and lodges, the first duty of a true Roman Pontiff would be to:
– demand from Caggiano an uncompromising struggle against Freemasonry, socialism, and Modernism;
– praise only those works which explicitly root society in the Kingship of Christ;
– warn against naturalistic “social action” comanaged with enemies of the Faith.
Instead, John XXIII envelops everything in an irenic haze. Such silence about the real enemies of Christ is itself complicity. It is the very attitude that the *Syllabus* and *Lamentabili* reject: surrendering the rights of the Church in the name of progress, good relations, and “equity.”
4. Abuse of indulgences in a doubtful structure.
The grant:
“ut, quo volueris die, adstantibus christifidelibus nomine Nostro Nostraque auctoritate benedicas, plenaria Indulgentia proposita.”
In the integral Catholic order, indulgences:
– rest on true jurisdiction and authentic pastoral solicitude for the salvation of souls;
– are tied to conversion, confession, Communion, prayer, detachment from sin;
– are never mere compliments to human merit.
For a figure launching a council that would enshrine religious liberty and ecumenism, to distribute indulgences as ceremonial ornaments confirms a desacralization of this treasure. Furthermore, once the conciliar sect broke with the integral Faith, its claims to dispense the spiritual treasury became objectively void: one cannot grant graces in the name of a Church whose public doctrine contradicts that of previous popes.
Level IV – Symptomatic Reading: The Conciliar Sect in Miniature
This short letter condenses the essential traits of the conciliar revolution:
1. Anthropocentric flattery instead of supernatural vigilance.
– The entire text is saturated with praise of human achievements, administration, building, organizing, mediating.
– There is no trace of the biblical and patristic realism that constantly recalls unworthiness, need for penance, fear of judgment.
– The “bishop” appears more as a statesman and negotiator than as successor of the Apostles who must be ready to die for the truth.
2. Pastoralism without dogma.
– No doctrinal propositions are recalled as the measure of Caggiano’s ministry.
– His supposed merits are not linked to staunch defense of dogma against errors condemned by Pius IX and Pius X.
– This separation of “pastoral” from dogmatic is the very methodological key of Vatican II and of the Church of the New Advent.
3. Social harmony as supreme good.
– The letter glorifies resolution of the railway conflict as an example of “social equity.”
– But Pius IX and Leo XIII made clear: peace without truth and justice according to God is false. When Church leaders act as neutral arbitrators, without demanding submission to Christ, they betray their mission.
– The conciliar sect thus replaces the Cross with consensus, anathematization with arbitration.
4. Collegial, national structures legitimized.
– Praise for Caggiano’s presidency over the council of Argentinian bishops signals the push towards episcopal conferences, which dilute Roman primacy and dogmatic clarity into bureaucratic collegiality.
– Pre-1958 warnings against “national churches” (Syllabus prop. 37) are ignored in practice.
5. Preparation for ecumenical and masonic “openness.”
– A “pope” who abandons the language of condemnation of errors and full assertion of Christ’s public Kingship logically proceeds to endorse religious liberty, ecumenism, and dialogue with the world.
– The letter is an early specimen of this mentality. Its smooth, worldly tone is incompatible with the intransigence of Pius IX’s condemnations and Pius X’s anti-modernist oath.
The Silent Blasphemy of Omissions
The gravest accusation against this document is not what it explicitly says, but what it refuses to say.
Measured against *Quas Primas*, *Syllabus of Errors*, and *Lamentabili sane exitu*, the omissions are damning:
– No proclamation that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
– No demand that public life in Argentina conform to the commandments of God and the law of Christ the King.
– No warning against liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, or Modernism.
– No emphasis on the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice offered in a spirit of propitiation for sins.
– No reminder of the obligation to defend dogma unchanged from the Fathers and Councils.
Instead:
– A cult of infrastructure and organizations.
– A humanistic celebration of social mediation.
– Dispensing of indulgence privileges as courtesies.
Such systematic silence is not pastoral prudence; it is the practical denial of the Faith. When a supposed successor of Peter behaves like this in an official letter, he manifests adherence to a different religion: a naturalistic, human-centered, conciliar ideology which the pre-1958 Magisterium had already anathematized in principle.
Conclusion – Epistolary Symptom of the Abomination
This letter, taken in isolation, might look harmless. But within its proper context – the threshold of Vatican II, the rise of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man – it stands as a compact illustration of the conciliar sect’s ethos:
– Priests and bishops redefined as administrators and social agents;
– Doctrinal militancy replaced by irenic compliments;
– Christ’s royal and juridical rights over nations eclipsed by talk of “equity” and national prestige;
– Spiritual treasures treated as protocol.
Thus the text is not a simple jubilee greeting, but a quiet manifesto: the Church, as understood by John XXIII and his collaborators, is no longer the militant Ark of salvation, but a friendly chaplaincy of the modern world.
Measured exclusively by unchanging Catholic teaching before 1958, this is nothing less than theological and spiritual bankruptcy: the letter praises what is human, omits what is divine, and thereby betrays the essence of the true priesthood and of the true Church.
Source:
Piae cum certatione – Ad Antonium tit. S. Laurentii in Panisperna S. R. E. Cardinalem Caggiano, Archiepiscopum Bonaërensem, decem lustra implentem ex quo sacerdotio auctus est (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025