Sexaginta annos is a short Latin congratulatory note in which antipope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) flatters Benedetto Aloisi Masella on the sixtieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, praising his long diplomatic and curial service (notably in Chile, Brazil, and the Roman Curia), commending his zeal and diligence, and imparting an “Apostolic Blessing” on him and those present at the jubilee celebration.
Celebrating a Jubilee inside the Conciliar Labyrinth
Already the opening lines of Roncalli’s text manifest the essence of the conciliar sect: self-referential praise of its own apparatus, invocation of divine benevolence to crown a human career, and total silence regarding the one thing that matters in the priesthood: participation in the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary for the salvation of souls and the defense of the true faith.
The letter reads in translation:
“Soon you will celebrate sixty years since, in the flourishing age of youth, you were raised to the degree of sacred priesthood. Moved by charity and singular esteem towards you, from God, from whom is every good gift and every perfect gift (James 1:17), we earnestly beg that all things may turn out for your salvation and happiness, and that you may enjoy heavenly assistance and unshaken protection for your benefit and the work in which you are engaged.”
He continues by rehearsing Masella’s posts — Apostolic Nuncio in Chile and then Brazil, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments, Bishop of Palestrina, Archpriest of the Lateran Basilica — and extolling his diligence and prudence, concluding with:
“Calling down abundant heavenly helps, we, with willing and joyful spirit, impart to you, our Venerable Brother, the Apostolic Blessing, and we wish it to extend to those who will take part in your sacred anniversary.”
Not one word about defending the integrity of the sacraments against modernist profanation; not one word about the menace of heresy, Freemasonry, or the already raging crisis denounced by St. Pius X; not one word about the absolute duty of the hierarchy to uphold *Quas primas* and the Syllabus of Pius IX against the new cult of man that Roncalli himself was introducing. The entire text is an elegant bow inside a system that has already begun to hollow out the priesthood and substitute bureaucratic distinction for sacrificial fidelity.
Naturalistic Canonization of Career over Supernatural Fidelity
On the factual level, the letter is a simple jubilee greeting. It enumerates Masella’s posts: long service to the Apostolic See, diplomatic missions, curial prefecture, and prestigious titles. But what does Roncalli choose to glorify?
– Diplomatic efficacy.
– Administrative diligence.
– Curial prestige.
– External honors surrounding the Lateran Basilica.
Nowhere does he praise:
– Zeal in combating error and defending the faith against the very modernism solemnly anathematized in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi.
– Fidelity to the unchangeable sacramental discipline as codified in 1917 CIC and in pre-conciliar practice, especially at the very moment when sacramental theology and practice were being placed on the conciliar operating table.
– Defense of the public reign of Christ the King over nations, as demanded by Pius XI in Quas primas.
– Hatred of liberalism, rationalism, indifferentism, and the Masonic “rights of man” condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX.
By celebrating the mere longevity and status of a functionary without reference to the battle for souls, Roncalli reduces the priesthood to a respectable career track within a religious administration. This is the essence of naturalism: treating a supernatural office as an honorable human profession. Such a mentality is precisely what Pius X branded as the modernist dissolution of the supernatural order into history, psychology, and social function.
Where the integral Catholic faith sees the priest as an alter Christus, bound to defend the deposit of faith *usque ad sanguinem* (even to blood), Roncalli’s text designs a decorous tableau of curial success. It is the language of a benevolent humanist superior, not of a true Roman Pontiff set as watchman against the wolves (cf. Ezek 3:17).
Language of Courtly Flattery instead of Prophetic Warning
At the linguistic level, the text is revealing. It operates in a smooth, courtly Latin whose emphases expose its theology:
– The priesthood is presented in aesthetic terms: “iuvenili florens aetate ad sacri presbyteratus gradus evectus” (“raised, in the flourishing age of youth, to the degree of sacred priesthood”) — a stylised promotion, not a sacrificial enlistment under the sign of the Cross.
– Roncalli dwells on Masella’s being “approved to all” through zeal and diligence in diplomatic service: the virtue praised is suitability to men, not militant fidelity to Christ’s Kingship against the world.
– He wishes an increase of merits with “a rich harvest of consolations” (“dulcium opimam solaciorum messem”): the promise is soothing comfort within the ecclesiastical system, not conformity to Christ crucified.
This rhetoric mirrors precisely the modernist moralism condemned by St. Pius X: a Christianity of respectable virtues, humanitarian labor, and institutional harmony, with the sharp note of dogma, anathema, and supernatural combat systematically muted.
Even the invocation of James 1:17 — *“from God, from whom is every good gift and every perfect gift”* — is emptied of doctrinal edge, turned into a generic benediction of human achievements rather than a reminder that every authentic gift is ordered to the glory of Christ and submission to His revealed truth. In *Quas primas*, Pius XI explicitly connects all true peace and social order to public submission to Christ’s royal rights; here Roncalli invokes divine gifts to gild a human cursus honorum without calling him to the defense of those royal rights.
Such language is not a neutral stylistic choice. It is a symptom. Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): when ecclesiastical letters become soft panegyrics of office and omit any reference to doctrinal warfare, they betray a church that no longer believes she is at war.
Silence on Dogma and Sacraments: The Most Condemning Testimony
The gravest indictment of this letter is its eloquent silence.
Masella, as Prefect of the Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments, supposedly stood guard over the integrity of the sacraments at the very edge of the conciliar upheaval (1962). This is the moment when:
– The liturgy was being prepared for demolition by the Bugnini clique.
– Sacramental theology was about to be reshaped to fit ecumenism and anthropocentric “active participation.”
– The entire post-Tridentine protective wall was being dismantled in the name of aggiornamento.
And yet Roncalli’s note contains:
– No exhortation to defend the sacraments against profanation.
– No reminder of the Council of Trent’s canons on the sacraments as eternal norms.
– No allusion to the anathemata against those who reduce sacraments to symbols, social rites, or mere reminders — errors explicitly condemned in Lamentabili (see propositions 39-51) and Trent.
– No reference to the priest’s essential work at the altar, offering the Most Holy Sacrifice for the remission of sins, in continuity with the immemorial Roman rite.
Instead, we find bland praise of “diligence” and “prudence” in administration. This is precisely what Pius X warned about: modernists “disguised as lambs” inside the Church, transforming the supernatural into the sociological, the sacramental into the ceremonial.
According to the unchanging doctrine, the Prefect responsible for sacramental discipline should be recalling:
– That sacraments are ex opere operato channels of grace instituted by Christ, not subject to fashion.
– That no one, not even a Pope, has the authority to create a rite which undermines Catholic sacramental theology.
– That public defectors from the faith lose jurisdiction ipso facto (1917 CIC can. 188.4; cf. the consistent theological tradition invoked in the Defense of Sedevacantism file), and thus a system that embraces heresy cannot validly guarantee sacramental integrity.
Roncalli’s silence on these duties, at precisely the historical inflection point when they should have been underscored, is not an omission of courtesy; it is a manifestation of complicity with a project that would soon devastate sacramental discipline and counterfeit the rites themselves.
From the Syllabus of Errors to Roncalli’s Humanist Optimism
The integral Catholic faith, as articulated by Pius IX and Pius X, sets clear boundaries:
– Condemnation of religious indifferentism and liberalism (Syllabus, propositions 15–18, 77–80).
– Rejection of the idea that dogma evolves with historical consciousness (Syllabus; *Lamentabili* 58–65; *Pascendi*).
– Affirmation that the Church is a perfect society endowed with divine authority, independent of the state (Syllabus 19–21, 55).
Roncalli’s persona, program, and entire pontificate stand in open tension with these norms: “opening the windows,” praising the modern world, convoking a council to “update” presentation and even substance of doctrine through praxis — the very modernist strategy condemned by St. Pius X.
This brief jubilee letter lives in that same mental universe. Its marks:
– Absence of any militant doctrinal note: no reminder that the priest’s mission is to defend the fullness of Catholic truth against error.
– Tacit assumption that long-standing service within the apparatus suffices as a guarantee of fidelity.
– Reduction of supernatural language to ornamental flourishes on a naturalistic commendation.
Where Pius IX thunders against the Masonic and liberal conspiracy (“synagogue of Satan” undermining the Church) and vindicates the Church’s divine constitution against state usurpation, Roncalli in this letter serenely praises a functionary of that very diplomacy and curialism which, in practice, would cease to resist the world and instead seek its approval.
A Symptom of the Systemic Apostasy of the Conciliar Sect
Some might object: is it just to infer so much from so little? Yes, because:
1. The letter must be read within its historical and theological context:
– It is dated May 26, 1962, months before the opening of the so-called Second Vatican Council, which Roncalli convened to “renew” the Church in a direction utterly incompatible with the prior Magisterium on religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and liturgy.
– Masella is praised precisely as Prefect of Sacramental Discipline at the threshold of the liturgical revolution that would attempt to replace the Catholic rite with an ecumenical, protestantized assembly service.
2. The omissions are not accidental:
– When a true Pope writes to a high ecclesiastical official on such an anniversary, especially amid grave dangers, he calls him to vigilance, perseverance in tradition, and resistance to novelty.
– Here we find only soft, horizontal, humanist encouragement.
3. The rhetoric aligns perfectly with the well-documented modernist method:
– Avoid clear doctrinal confrontations.
– Promote a pastoral, “benevolent” tone.
– Emphasize human qualities and institutional loyalty.
– Submerge all in a saccharine “charity” devoid of truth.
This is the “Church of the New Advent”: a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, preserving the shell of Catholic forms while injecting a new substance — humanitarian optimism, dogmatic relativization, and submission to the secular weltanschauung. A perfunctory jubilee letter that canonizes bureaucratic success and omits any call to dogmatic combat is entirely at home in that anti-church.
Contradiction with the Spirit of Quas Primas and the Kingship of Christ
Pius XI, in Quas primas, teaches with crystalline force that:
– The calamities of the world arise because “very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their customs, from private, family, and public life.”
– True peace cannot exist until individuals and states “recognize the reign of our Savior.”
– The Church must publicly assert Christ’s kingship against secularism, liberalism, and false religions.
Set this normative teaching against Roncalli’s jubilee letter:
– No mention of Christ’s social reign.
– No exhortation to Masella to defend the rights of Christ the King in his diplomacy or in his governance of sacramental discipline.
– No condemnation of the liberal errors which the Syllabus and Quas primas identify as the root of social ruin.
Instead, Roncalli petitions that “all things may turn out for your salvation and happiness” in the work Masella performs — a work that, in reality, was positioned to collaborate in the preparation of reforms directly subversive to the triumph of Christ’s Kingship in worship and public life.
Thus the letter, though outwardly pious, implicitly blesses the apparatus steering the visible structures toward accommodation with the modern world, in flat defiance of Quas primas. By praising without warning, Roncalli in effect ratifies a priesthood increasingly at peace with secularism, not at war against it.
Priesthood as Status: A Foretaste of the Cult of Man
Integral Catholic doctrine sees the priest as configured to Christ Crucified:
– To offer sacrifice, forgive sins, preach truth “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2).
– To be hated by the world that hates Christ (John 15:18–20).
– To guard the flock from wolves, including wolves in mitres.
Roncalli’s presentation, by contrast, prefigures the Council’s cult of man and the neo-church’s clericalism of function:
– The priest is praised as a polished diplomat and administrator.
– His success is measured by posts held and honors accumulated.
– Spiritual “consolations” are promised as the ripe harvest of such a career.
Nothing is said of:
– The cross.
– Persecution.
– Combat against heresy.
– Fidelity to the “immutabile depositum” (unchangeable deposit) against every novelty.
This is not merely incomplete spirituality; it is a different religion in embryo. It is the religion that would climax in the abominable scenes of the later usurpers and their interreligious spectacles, where man, culture, and conscience are enthroned above the exclusive rights of Christ and His one true Church.
A Hollow Benediction from a Vacant Throne
Finally, the so-called “Apostolic Blessing” imparted by Roncalli is itself theologically void. According to the perennial doctrine:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, nor can he wield jurisdiction in her (as expounded by St. Robert Bellarmine and the consistent theologians summarized in the Defense of Sedevacantism material).
– Public defection from the faith severs a man from the body of the Church and from any power of governance (1917 CIC can. 188.4).
– A structure which endorses modernist principles and prepares to ratify them in a council stands outside the visible bounds of the Catholic Church, regardless of external continuity.
Thus the blessing pronounced by Roncalli upon Masella and his entourage is not an act of the Roman Pontiff strengthening a faithful servant; it is the vacuous benediction of one already aligned with the conciliar revolution, conferring nothing but comfort inside the anti-church.
The letter’s smooth Latinity and respectful tone cannot conceal that it is a fragment of a greater program: the replacement of the militant, dogmatic, sacrificial Catholic Church by a conciliatory, bureaucratic, anthropocentric neo-church. Against such a program, the only Catholic response is that of the pre-1958 Magisterium: unyielding rejection, adherence to the unchangeable doctrine, and refusal to be deceived by elegant words that mask the dismantling of the faith.
Source:
Sexaginta annos – Ad Benedictum S. R. E. Cardinalem Aloisi Masella, Episcopum Praenestinum, Patriarchalis Basilicae Lateranensis Archipresbyterum atque S. Congregationis de disciplina Sacramentorum Pr… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025