Dated 19 February 1962, this Latin letter of John XXIII to Antonio Caggiano, then Buenos Aires hierarch, congratulates him on fifty years of priesthood: it heaps praise on his diocesan administration in Rosario, his organizational skills, his role in Catholic Action, “social action,” Eucharistic and Marian congresses, and a so‑called “great holy mission,” and it grants him the faculty to impart a plenary indulgence on the faithful on an appointed day.
In reality, this short panegyric is a concentrated manifesto of the new paramasonic religion: an exaltation of human structures, social management, and national prestige under a thin sacramental varnish, in open rupture with the supernatural, militant, and uncompromising Catholic ethos codified by the Magisterium before 1958.
Glorifying the Architect of Apostasy: John XXIII’s Cult of Administration
From Supernatural Priesthood to Functional Managerialism
On the surface, the letter seems harmless: a jubilatory note for a sacerdotal jubilee. Yet precisely here its poison lies: in what it praises, what it ignores, and what it reveals about the mentality of the conciliar revolution.
John XXIII presents Caggiano as an exemplary hierarch because he:
– organized diocesan structures;
– multiplied buildings, parishes, schools, seminaries and “pre-seminaries”;
– promoted Catholic Action and “social action” throughout Argentina;
– played a leading role in spectacular events (Eucharistic Congress 1934/1935 in Buenos Aires, Marian congress “from all America,” the “great holy mission”);
– presided over the council of Argentine bishops;
– intervened in socio-economic disputes (railway conflict) as a mediator of “social equity.”
The entire praise is ordered to visible efficiency, organizational capacity, diplomatic management, and collaboration with national structures. Nowhere does John XXIII:
– exhort to preach the necessity of living and dying in the state of grace;
– recall the Four Last Things (*novissima*): death, judgment, hell, heaven;
– insist on the absolute necessity of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* rightly offered and worthily received;
– demand the defense of the integrity of faith against liberalism, indifferentism, naturalism, and socialism, i.e., against exactly those errors solemnly condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII;
– warn against Freemasonry, secret societies, secularism, and state encroachment, all identified by prior Magisterium as mortal enemies of Christ’s Kingdom.
This is not an oversight; it is a deliberate inversion of priorities. A priest is honored not as *sacerdos in aeternum* who offers propitiatory sacrifice and guards dogma, but as a proficient administrator, promoter of mass movements, and negotiator of “social peace.” In the language of the Church, this is the reduction of the priesthood from supernatural mediation to humanitarian leadership.
This naturalistic, horizontal exaltation stands in violent contradiction to Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, who teaches that:
– true peace and order can exist only when individuals and states recognize the social Kingship of Christ;
– secularism, laicism, and the exclusion of Christ from public life are the root of contemporary disaster;
– all authority and legislation must submit to the law of Christ and His Church.
John XXIII’s letter never once recalls Christ’s social reign; instead, it praises the archbishop precisely as a collaborator of temporal, “social” projects, thus implicitly accepting the liberal-democratic paradigm condemned in the *Syllabus* (propositions 39–41, 55, 77–80).
Language of Flattery as a Symptom of Doctrinal Corruption
The rhetoric of the letter is saturated with obsequious panegyric and diplomatic vagueness. This is not the paternal gravity of pontifical admonition, but the courtly compliment of a statesman to a loyal functionary.
Key traits of the language:
1. Exaggerated encomium of human achievements:
– The letter enumerates Caggiano’s structural initiatives as “præclara specimina probandi sacri pastoris” – “distinguished proofs of a good sacred pastor.” The pastoral ideal is functionalized: build, expand, manage.
– It extols his role in large-scale public religious events as decisive achievements, with no concern whether these events truly defended the faith or subtly acclimatized the masses to a new, sentimental, non-doctrinal religiosity.
2. Technocratic and sociological tone:
– Expressions of “social action,” “religious instruction of the people,” “promotion of Catholic Action” are employed without any doctrinal precision. Catholic Action, born as an instrument subordinated to hierarchy for the restoration of the reign of Christ, is here implicitly reduced to a mass-mobilization apparatus useful for national and social programs.
– Caggiano’s intervention in the railway conflict is praised as the act of a “cultor socialis aequitatis” (cultivator of social equity). The priest becomes, in effect, a social engineer, not primarily the guardian of divine law who recalls workers and employers alike to the Decalogue, the rights of God, and the duties of the state toward Christ’s Church.
3. Absence of warfare imagery:
– Pre-1958 Popes speak of the Church militant, of combat against error: St. Pius X calls Modernism the “synthesis of all heresies” and traces with surgical precision the duty to unmask, condemn, and expel it (*Lamentabili sane exitu*, *Pascendi*).
– John XXIII’s letter, written on the eve of the council he himself convoked, breathes the opposite air: accommodation, optimism, humanist goodwill. No enemy is named. No doctrinal battle is evoked. There is no consciousness of a war against the “synagogue of Satan” (Pius IX) and the sects that seek to abolish the Church.
The style betrays the soul. A pontifical text that systematically avoids the language of dogma, combat, and supernatural urgency, and substitutes managerial and sociological vocabulary, manifests the mutation of religion itself. *Lex orandi, lex credendi* here becomes: lex adulandi, lex dissolvendi.
Theological Inversion: Praising the Engine of the Conciliar Revolution
On the theological level, the central scandal of this letter is that John XXIII elevates as a model precisely a hierarch whose concrete record, read in light of Catholic doctrine, reveals complicity with the conciliar and ecumenical revolution.
Even within officially recognized history (setting aside for a moment intelligence and political dossiers), Caggiano is known as:
– a central figure in Argentine episcopacy during the decades leading into and through the council;
– a promoter of Catholic Action in the sense increasingly detached from its antimodernist roots and aligned with the “dignity of the human person” rhetoric that would later blossom into the cult of human rights divorced from Christ’s Kingship.
John XXIII speaks of Caggiano’s work “pro emolumento et decori catholicae religionis et perquam dilectae patriae” – for the advantage and decorum of the Catholic religion and of the beloved homeland. But according to pre-1958 Magisterium:
– The Church’s first duty is not to the “decorum” of external success, but to preserve uncorrupted the deposit of faith; when necessary, to clash with nations, governments, majorities.
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X explicitly warn against using Catholic structures to cloak liberal-national projects; they condemn the idea that state prestige or patriotic rhetoric can guide Church policy.
By blessing this conflation of ecclesial and national “progress,” John XXIII implicitly ratifies what the *Syllabus* condemns: the subordination of the Church’s mission to the categories of the modern state, the quiet acceptance of liberalism as the framework, the tacit separation of religion from politics whenever Christ’s exclusive rights would contradict the reigning order.
Worse, he offers this as an ideal on the threshold of the “council” which would institutionalize religious liberty, ecumenism, and the dethronement of Christ the King from public life: the very secularism that *Quas Primas* declares a “plague.”
Thus the letter functions as a micro-manifesto:
– It dogmatically canonizes the episcopal profile required by the conciliar sect: an efficient manager, organizer of mass religiosity and social dialogue, who never disturbs the liberal order by recalling its intrinsic apostasy.
– It confirms the systematic eclipse of the dogmatic and sacrificial essence of the priesthood.
Selective Piety: The Misuse of Patristic Ornament
At the end of the letter, John XXIII adorns his praise with a quotation of St. Ambrose:
“Ipse oculus noster, ut per illum videamus Patrem; ipse vox nostra, per quam loquamur ad Patrem; ipse dextera nostra, per quam Deo Patri sacrificium nostrum offeramus.”
(“He [Christ] is our eye, that through Him we may see the Father; He is our voice, through whom we may speak to the Father; He is our right hand, through which we may offer our sacrifice to God the Father.”)
This magnificent patristic line expresses:
– the radical Christocentrism of worship,
– the unique mediation of Christ,
– the sacrificial nature of Christian worship as oblation to the Father through the Son.
But placed in this context, it serves only as pious decoration. Nowhere does John XXIII:
– connect this Ambrosian Christology with the objective, propitiatory character of the *Most Holy Sacrifice*;
– warn against any liturgical or doctrinal innovations that would obscure this mediation;
– insist that all pastoral action must be measured by fidelity to the sacrificial and dogmatic constitution of the Church.
On the contrary: the very regime John XXIII initiates will soon replace the Roman rite with a protestantised assembly, overturn the theology of sacrifice, and reduce the priest to “presider” of the community. The Ambrosian quote here is weaponized as camouflage: an orthodox-sounding flourish covering the practical betrayal.
This is a characteristic operation of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X: maintaining formulas while undermining their content. *Lamentabili sane exitu* identifies precisely this method—emptying dogmatic expressions of their fixed meaning and adapting them to new, evolving “religious experience.” The letter exemplifies it: orthodox words grafted onto a modernist paradigm of pastoral practice.
Omissions that Accuse: Silence on Modernism, Freemasonry, and Apostasy
The gravest indictment of this letter lies in its silences.
Written in 1962:
– after decades in which the Popes had unambiguously unmasked Freemasonry and related sects as principal instruments of the “synagogue of Satan” against the Church (Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII);
– after St. Pius X had condemned Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies and imposed an oath against it;
– in the midst of a world aggressively shaped by laicism, socialism, communism, liberal capitalism, and ecumenical agitation;
John XXIII chooses to:
– say nothing about vigilance against Modernist theology in seminaries;
– say nothing about defending the faithful from secularized catechesis and doctrinal dilution;
– say nothing about the infiltration of secret societies and paramasonic networks into political and social life, including Latin America;
– say nothing about the absolute duty of public authorities in Argentina to confess the Catholic faith and reject neutral or pluralist models.
Instead, he blesses a prelate for “balanced” mediation in socio-political disputes and for coordinating the national episcopate—precisely the traits that would facilitate acceptance of conciliar novelties and collaboration with the emerging “Church of the New Advent.”
This silence is not neutral. According to the perennial Catholic principle:
Qui tacet consentire videtur (“he who is silent is seen to consent”).
In a pontifical document, persistent silence about the central spiritual threats, coupled with praise for those who adapt to the new order, signifies complicity.
Where St. Pius X warned that neglecting these errors would devastate souls, John XXIII’s letter suffocates supernatural concern under human compliments. That is why this brief text, read in continuity with his program, is a moral and theological document of indictment.
The Symptom of the Conciliar Sect: A New Model of “Bishop”
The figure that emerges from this letter is paradigmatic for the conciliar sect:
– The “bishop” as coordinator of episcopal conferences and commissions;
– The “bishop” as implementer of Catholic Action, now emptied of its militancy against liberalism and turned into grassroots infrastructure for democratic and ecumenical integration;
– The “bishop” as mediator in social conflicts, speaking the language of “equity,” “dialogue,” “progress,” while never insisting on the rights of Christ the King over law, education, and public morality;
– The “bishop” as impresario of grand religious shows: congresses, missions, processions—spectacular, emotional, numerically impressive—but carefully detached from doctrinal clarity and from anathematizing errors.
This model stands under direct condemnation of the pre-conciliar Magisterium:
– Pius IX (Syllabus) rejects the subjugation of the Church to civil power and the neutralization of her teaching authority.
– Leo XIII teaches that politics and social questions must be governed by the principles of the Gospel and that social peace without submission to Christ is illusion.
– St. Pius X, in *Pascendi*, unmasks precisely the type of pastor who, under pretext of pastoral sensitivity and adaptation, dissolves dogma into sentiment and democratic process.
– Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, demands open and public recognition of Christ’s kingship and denounces the exclusion of this kingship from political life as apostasy.
John XXIII’s letter ignores these teachings in practice. It never reminds Caggiano that his duty is:
– to condemn socialist, communist, liberal, and masonic principles;
– to defend the rights of the Church against state interference;
– to protect liturgy and doctrine from experimentation;
– to resist, not collaborate with, the spirit of the age.
By rewarding opposite behavior, the letter reveals itself as a piece of the new ecclesiology: collegial, worldly, horizontal, and doctrinally anesthetized. This is why it rightfully belongs to the corpus of the paramasonic “Church of the New Advent,” not to the living Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Indulgence Instrumentalized: From Penitential Gravity to PR Gesture
The concession of a plenary indulgence is perhaps the most telling liturgical-theological element. John XXIII grants Caggiano faculty to impart, on a chosen day, a plenary indulgence in his (John’s) name and by his authority on the occasion of the jubilee.
In Catholic doctrine, indulgences:
– presuppose firm doctrine on sin, temporal punishment, purgatory, satisfaction;
– presuppose contrition, confession, detachment from sin, and sacramental life according to the divine law;
– express the Church’s authority to dispense the Treasury of Christ and the saints.
Here, the indulgence is tacked onto a personal celebration whose entire framing is naturalistic flattery. There is:
– no call to conversion;
– no mention of conditions necessary for gaining the indulgence;
– no reminder of purgatory, of the necessity of penance, of the fear of God.
The indulgence becomes a decorative gesture, a spiritualized award for long service. This banalization betrays the same Modernist tendency: evacuating penitential reality, preserving only the shell as a symbol of benevolent inclusion.
The contrast with the sharp condemnations of moral laxity and doctrinal indifferentism by pre-1958 Popes is stark. It illustrates how sacramental and devotional elements are being subordinated to a new cult: the cult of the institution, the cult of human achievement, the cult of “pastoral” success.
Conclusion: A Concise Charter of the Neo-Church’s Episcopate
This short letter of John XXIII cannot be excused as an insignificant courtesy. Read in light of immutable Catholic teaching, it:
– exalts a prototype of the conciliar “bishop”: administrator, social mediator, organizer of spectacle, functionary of national and episcopal structures, silent about the doctrinal war and content with naturalistic projects;
– systematically omits Christ’s social Kingship, the denunciation of condemned errors, the reality of judgment, and the gravity of heresy;
– misuses patristic and sacramental language as ornamental piety that veils practical apostasy;
– treats indulgences, missions, and congresses as symbolic capital of institutional prestige, not as instruments of radical conversion and dogmatic fortification.
By these traits, the document is a symptom and instrument of the conciliar sect that would soon enthrone religious liberty, “dialogue,” and ecumenism in open defiance of the teaching reaffirmed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. Its theological content is not merely weak; it is structurally ordered to replace the Catholic paradigm with a humanist, managerial, post-dogmatic counterfeit.
Against such texts, the only Catholic response is to hold fast to the doctrine always taught:
– that Christ is true King of societies as well as souls;
– that His Church is a perfect society, possessing full authority independent of states;
– that Modernism in all its forms must be rejected as condemned;
– that pastors are called not to be architects of temporal consensus, but custodians of immutable faith and ministers of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* for the salvation of souls, in uncompromising opposition to the “spirit of the world” which this letter so eagerly flatters.
Source:
Piae cum certatione – Epistula ad Antonium tit. S. Laurentii in Panisperna S. R. E. Cardinalem Caggiano, Archiepiscopum Bonaërensem, decem lustra implentem ex quo sacerdotio auctus est, d. 19 m. Febru… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025