This Latin letter of John XXIII (“Ioannes PP. XXIII”) congratulates Joseph Frings, archbishop of Cologne, on the upcoming 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination. It praises his personal character, his social initiatives (aid to Japan, Korea, South Africa, hunger relief), his attachment to the Holy See, his support for Vatican Radio, his diocesan accomplishments, and grants him the faculty to impart a blessing with plenary indulgence on a chosen day. The entire text is a self-satisfied panegyric of an episcopate already penetrated by liberal-humanitarian ideas, crowned by the approbation of the very man who inaugurated the conciliar revolution; it is therefore a symptom and instrument of the theological decomposition of the 20th century pseudo-hierarchy.
Humanitarian Panegyric as Preludium to Revolution
Personal Cult and Sentimentalism in Place of the Cross
Already the opening lines expose the underlying pathology. John XXIII addresses Frings as Dilecte Fili Noster, wraps the occasion in emotive language about “sweet memories” and “religious sentiments,” and frames the jubilee as an almost purely psychological and commemorative event:
“faustus tibi… dies, qui plurimas ac suaves in cogitatione defixas excitabit tibi recordationes, ac religiosum animum tuum ad sueto effusiores Deo persolvendas grates impellet”
Not a word about *penance*, *reparation for sin*, *fear of God*, the *judgment of priests* (1 Cor 4:1-4), nor the terrible responsibility of the priest as alter Christus offering the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* for the propitiation of sins.
Instead:
– The priestly life is romanticized as a collection of consoling memories.
– The jubilee is transmuted into an occasion of sentimental thanksgiving without a hint of trembling before the tribunal of Christ (2 Cor 5:10).
– The central supernatural function of the priest—offering sacrifice for the living and the dead, guarding doctrine, fighting error—is eclipsed by the language of character, culture, and human benevolence.
This is not an accidental style. It is the emergent mentality condemned by Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi, where he unmasks the modernist reduction of supernatural realities to religious feelings and historical evolution. Here we witness precisely that: an exaltation of subjective dispositions over objective dogma and sacrificial priesthood.
The pre-conciliar Magisterium speaks differently. When Pius XI in Quas primas proclaims Christ’s Kingship, he links grace, peace, and social order strictly to submission—personal and public—to the reign of Christ the King and to the rights of the Church, not to vague benevolence. The tone of John XXIII’s letter, by contrast, is horizontally anthropocentric: the supernatural is an ornament draped over humanistic virtues.
Canonization of Horizontal Activism and Naturalistic Virtues
The central axis of the letter is the glorification of Frings’ social and humanitarian involvement:
“Iaponia, Corea Australis, Africa Australis… communia finita consilia, ut per universum terrarum orbem pallida fames, quantum fieri posset, arceretur. Quod quidem Catholicae in Germania Ecclesiae prorsus singulare est… aureis inscribendum est litteris.”
In other words:
– Aid to distant countries.
– Organization of relief against famine.
– Promotion of transnational charitable programmes.
What is systematically omitted?
– The primacy of leading souls from mortal sin to the state of grace.
– The necessity of preaching the one true Faith as the sole means of salvation, against indifferentism (condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX, propositions 15–18).
– The duty to combat heresy, secret societies, laicism, and communism not merely by material aid but by dogmatic clarity and condemnation (cf. the Syllabus, and the repeated pre-1958 condemnation of masonic and liberal sects).
– The obligation of bishops to guard against doctrinal corruption and liturgical innovation—which Frings notoriously did not fulfill, but rather betrayed, especially in his role as a leading architect of the conciliar upheaval.
The text thus functions as an early attempt at the “canonization” of a new episcopal model:
– The bishop as international manager of aid, patron of development projects, symbol of “openness.”
– The bishop as media partner, funding technical means so that the “voice” of the new orientation may reach “the ends of Africa.”
This is nothing other than the horizontalization of the Church’s mission:
lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): if what is exalted in the highest ecclesiastical praise is predominantly social activism and media outreach, doctrine and sacrifice are silently relativized. The Syllabus of Pius IX explicitly condemns the liberal thesis that the Church’s mission can be adapted into a merely moral-humanitarian educator coexisting on equal footing with false religions and secular ideologies (cf. errors 39–41, 55, 77–80). John XXIII’s rhetoric anticipates exactly that shift.
Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Public Order
Remarkably, while Pius XI in Quas primas insists:
– that nations must recognize and publicly submit to Christ the King,
– that civil law must be conformed to divine and ecclesiastical law,
– that peace and order cannot exist without His social reign,
John XXIII’s letter—written in 1960, in the midst of militant secularism and legal apostasy in Europe—contains:
– no reaffirmation of the exclusive rights of the Catholic Church,
– no reminder to Frings of his duty to confront the secular state that tramples on God’s law,
– no mention of the Syllabus’ rejection of the separation of Church and State (error 55),
– no call to resist the anti-Christian legislation spreading in Western Europe.
Instead, we see praise for collaboration in “universal” humanitarian projects in a way perfectly compatible with a Masonic narrative: a united humanity alleviating material suffering without the uncompromising proclamation of the necessity of the true Faith and subordination of states to Christ.
This silence is not neutral; it is accusatory. At the height of the 20th-century war against Christ’s social kingship, the man in white writes to one of Germany’s most powerful prelates and says nothing about:
– the supremacy of divine law over human law,
– the duty to resist secularizing legislation,
– the condemnations of “progress,” “liberalism,” and “modern civilization” as autonomous orders (Syllabus, error 80).
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent). The letter itself becomes a showcase of the capitulation denounced by Pius IX and Pius X.
Instrumentalizing Vatican Radio for the Neo-Church Agenda
Particularly revealing is the emphasis on Frings’ donation of “summi pretii instrumenta” to Vatican Radio:
“Radiophonicae Vaticanae Stationi summi pretii instrumenta dono danda curasti, quibus ita Nostra amplificatur vox, ut extremas quoque Africae oras puro et claro sonitu attingat.”
Translated: Frings is praised for financing technical means by which “Our voice” (that is, the voice of John XXIII and his project) can reach even the remotest regions of Africa.
On the surface, this might appear as a laudable support of evangelization. But in context:
– John XXIII is already preparing the council that will institutionalize religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the dethronement of Christ the King in public life.
– Frings himself will soon emerge as a leading figure of the progressive bloc, attacking the Holy Office and undermining the defensive mechanisms against heresy.
– The “voice” being amplified is not the voice of Quas primas, the Syllabus, or Pascendi, but the voice of aggiornamento, dialogue, and accommodation to the world.
Thus, the letter reveals a program: deploy modern technology not to thunder the perennial anathemas against error, but to broadcast the new conciliatory religion. The structures occupying the Vatican later did precisely that, using media as a tool for the diffusion of post-conciliarism, the cult of man, and the relativizing of dogma.
In genuine Catholic doctrine, media is subordinated to the immutable Magisterium; here, it becomes an instrument of the coming revolution. Laudatio of Frings’ donation is therefore the laudatio of complicity in the construction of the paramasonic structure that will eclipse the visible Church.
Empty Praise of “Attachment to the Holy See” in the Midst of Emerging Apostasy
John XXIII extols Frings’ “devoted and bound” will toward the See of Peter as “custodi veritatis et magistrae virtutis” (guardian of truth and teacher of virtue). At first glance, this sounds doctrinal. But examine closely:
– No reference is made to the concrete doctrinal acts whereby that See, before 1958, condemned the very errors that Frings and his theological circle would soon propagate.
– “Attachment” is praised not as fidelity to the defined dogmas and anti-liberal condemnations, but as benevolent support for John XXIII’s projects, symbolized by media patronage and humanitarian activism.
This is a perverse inversion:
– Obedience is detached from its object (unchanging doctrine and discipline) and reattached to a person who is about to inaugurate doctrines and practices incompatible with the prior Magisterium.
– Loyalty is aestheticized: outward gestures of harmony are valued over the integral confession of Faith.
Pius X, in Pascendi, explains that modernists demand obedience to “living authority” while they dissolve sound doctrine under the pretext of historical development. Here we see that mechanism in embryonic form. The letter does not say: “You Frings are praised because you defend the Syllabus, Pascendi, Quas primas.” It implicitly says: “You are praised because you serve Our new orientation and Our global projects.”
Such “obedience” is precisely what pre-conciliar teaching rejects: the Roman Pontiff, and all bishops, are bound by the deposit of faith and cannot turn authority into a vehicle of novelty. When that happens, fidelity is owed to the Faith, not to innovative persons who set themselves against it.
Selective Augustinianism: Pious Varnish for a New Ideology
John XXIII concludes with a carefully chosen quote of St Augustine:
“Otium sanctum quaerit caritas veritatis, negotium iustum suscipit necessitas caritatis”
(“Charity for truth seeks holy leisure; the necessity of charity undertakes just business.”)
But notice how this patristic maxim is used:
– To provide spiritual legitimacy for Frings’ activism.
– To present his administrative and humanitarian work as a harmonious fruit of contemplation.
– To wrap his episcopal career in a patina of Augustinian sanctity.
What is not mentioned:
– Augustine’s vehement defense of dogma against heretics, his insistence on coercive measures against obstinate enemies of the Church for the salvation of souls.
– Augustine’s theology of the Church as a visible, doctrinally united body, intolerant of heresy within.
– Augustine’s insistence that true peace rests on rightly ordered submission to God and His law, not on humanitarian voluntarism.
Thus, Augustine is partially quoted to perfume an essentially modernist profile. This is a typical technique condemned already in Lamentabili: the Fathers are invoked selectively to justify the evolution of doctrine while their actual doctrinal rigor is suppressed. It is an abuse of authority and tradition as ornament, not as binding norm.
Granting Indulgences to a Program of Capitulation
Towards the end, John XXIII grants Frings the faculty to impart, in his name, a blessing with plenary indulgence for the faithful.
In authentic Catholic theology, indulgences are acts of the Church’s treasury, ordered to remission of temporal punishment for sin under strict conditions: state of grace, detachment from sin, sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion, prayer for the intentions of the true Supreme Pontiff.
Here, indulgence is fused with:
– Celebration of a model episcopate drenched in naturalistic activism.
– Silence regarding the threats of Modernism, condemned as “the synthesis of all heresies” by Pius X.
– Implicit confirmation of a trajectory that leads directly into the conciliar subversion that will devastate faith and worship.
The supernatural economy is being politically mobilized to canonize, in practice, attitudes and priorities that pre-1958 doctrine brands as suspect or gravely erroneous. This is not a neutral pastoral gesture; it is a sacramental endorsement of a new religion germinating under Catholic forms.
Frings as Prototype of the Conciliar Bishop
The letter enumerates events in Cologne:
– New churches built.
– Synod with “salutary norms.”
– A large Catholic congress under the slogan: “Ecclesia signum Dei inter gentes” (“The Church sign of God among the nations”).
Taken in isolation, some of these could be innocent. But historically and theologically:
– “Church as sign” language anticipates the conciliar reduction of the Church from the exclusive ark of salvation to a sacramental “sign” alongside other “religious experiences”; the same logic undergirds false ecumenism and the blurring of boundaries between the Catholic Church and sects separated from her.
– The fact that John XXIII singles out such language as emblematic reveals the shift from the dogmatic clarity of “the only true Church” (condemned to be denied in Syllabus, error 21) to symbolist, ambiguous formulations.
Moreover, Frings’ later role in attacking the Holy Office and promoting theological subversives is not an accident: it is prefigured in this very profile:
– expansive humanitarianism,
– emphasis on dialogue and international projects,
– sentimental fidelity to “Rome” understood as institutional center of aggiornamento rather than guardian of non-negotiable dogma.
The letter thus becomes a self-indicting document: it shows how the conciliar sect manufactured and celebrated its own agents before unveiling its full-scale revolution.
Systemic Fruit of the Conciliar Mentality, Not an Isolated Flattery
This epistle is not merely a polite congratulation. It is:
– a programmatic snapshot of the transition from integral Catholic ecclesiology to the conciliar humanist religion;
– a practical repudiation, by omission and inversion, of the doctrines previously taught infallibly and vigilantly defended by the authentic Magisterium.
Observe the convergence of symptomatic features:
1. Naturalistic accent: Constant exaltation of humanitarian and cultural achievements with minimal, generic supernatural references.
2. Doctrinal silence: No reaffirmation of dogmatic anti-liberal, anti-modernist teaching at a moment when those errors dominate Europe.
3. Media ideology: Vatican Radio as flagship of a “voice” that prepares and later spreads the conciliar errors.
4. Manipulation of tradition: Augustine and pious language used selectively to sanctify a modernist-adjacent profile.
5. Institutional self-legitimation: Indulgences and papal praise weaponized to bind consciences to persons and programs at odds with prior teaching.
The integral Catholic faith, as consistently expressed before 1958:
– condemns religious indifferentism and the idea that mere human solidarity is salvific;
– demands from bishops the clear, public condemnation of heresy and error;
– requires that ecclesiastical honors be linked to fidelity to the deposit of faith and zeal for souls, not to popularity in secular opinion or multilateral programmes.
Measured by that standard, this letter is not a benign historical curiosity; it is a piece of the apparatus by which the conciliar sect reeducated clergy and faithful into accepting a soft, sentimental, naturalistic caricature of the Church.
Reasserting the Pre-1958 Catholic Criterion Against the Neo-Church Rhetoric
Against the underlying premises of this document, the immutable principles must be reiterated:
– Unum ovile, unus pastor (“one fold, one shepherd”): Salvation is found only in the Catholic Church, which cannot place herself alongside other “partners” in generic humanitarianism without betraying her divine mandate.
– Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church no salvation): Omitting this truth, or obscuring it behind horizontal action, is a grave dereliction of episcopal duty.
– The social kingship of Christ (Pius XI, Quas primas): States and societies must recognize and submit to Christ and His Church; bishops must proclaim this, not dissolve it into neutral “service to mankind.”
– The Syllabus of Errors: Liberalism, religious indifferentism, separation of Church and State as autonomous, and the cult of “progress” are condemned; any episcopal model that blends into such errors is not to be acclaimed, but corrected.
– Pius X’s anti-modernist stance: Doctrinal evolutionism, reduction of faith to experience, and historical relativization of dogma are anathema; praising and relying on figures who facilitate such trends is a betrayal.
Seen in this light, John XXIII’s letter to Frings is the opposite of authentic papal exhortation. It is a polished mask covering the face of the conciliar subversion that would soon erupt; a text whose omissions speak louder than its decorous Latin phrases.
The only Catholic response is to strip this mask: to measure every such document solely by the unchanging doctrine handed down before 1958, to reject the modernist humanistic paradigm it promotes, and to hold fast to the integral Faith that demands worship of God, defense of truth, and the restoration of the reign of Christ the King over persons, families, and nations.
Source:
Proximo mense – Epistula ad Iosephum tit. S. Ioannis ante Portam Latinam presb. Cardinalem Frings, Archiepiscopum coloniensem, quinquagesimum ab inito sacerdotio impletum annum celebraturum, d. 5 m. I… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025