Si summo (1959): Pious Ornament for a Revolution Against the Sacred Hierarchy
The Latin letter “Si summo” (25 August 1959) from John XXIII to Alfredo Ottaviani appoints him as papal legate for the centenary celebrations of the establishment of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Canada. It praises divine beneficence, extols the historic merits of the Canadian bishops and of François de Montmorency-Laval, urges renewed fidelity to Catholic doctrine, calls for resistance to materialism, and grants indulgences to the faithful participating in the solemnities. Behind this apparently edifying rhetoric, the document functions as a polished liturgical veil concealing the imminent subversion of the very hierarchical and doctrinal order it pretends to honor.
Undermining the True Hierarchy While Praising It
On the surface, “Si summo” appears orthodox: it speaks of gratitude to God, the dignity of the hierarchy, the defense of pure doctrine, and the need to oppose materialism. It appoints Ottaviani as legate to represent Rome in celebrations of the Canadian hierarchy’s centenary and points to Bishop Laval as a model of apostolic zeal. These are precisely the themes which, in a Catholic age, would be natural and laudable.
Yet the decisive datum is the date: August 1959, already within the usurped reign of John XXIII, first in the line of the conciliar pseudo-pontiffs. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this letter is not an innocent pastoral exhortation, but an ideological artifact issued by one who was preparing the conciliar revolution that would devastate doctrine, liturgy, and the episcopate itself.
By 1959, John XXIII had already:
– Announced the future council that would become Vatican II (25 January 1959).
– Set in motion precisely that process of aggiornamento which is condemned in substance by the anti-modernist Magisterium (St. Pius X, Pascendi, Lamentabili sane exitu).
– Begun to surround himself with and promote figures who would later be the architects of doctrinal dilution, ecumenism, religious liberty, and liturgical destruction.
Against this background, the insistence in “Si summo” on the glory of the hierarchy and on fidelity to doctrine takes on a double character: outwardly pious, inwardly preparing the ground for the very inversion of authority—the enthronement of a neo-hierarchy, juridically continuous but dogmatically subverted, in open contradiction to the pre-1958 Magisterium.
The essential contradiction: the letter invokes the authority of the Roman See and of the Catholic hierarchy while that same claimant is already engaged in a project that will dissolve the hierarchy’s divine constitution in favour of collegial, democratized, ecumenical structures later fully manifested in the “conciliar sect.” The document is therefore an example of what might be called sacralized dissimulation: orthodoxy in phrase, revolution in trajectory.
Factual and Historical Level: Selective Memory, Concealed Trajectory
The text briefly recalls the founding of the Canadian hierarchy and emphasizes the virtues of the pioneers:
“Our concern is not to repeat ecclesiastical annals… Yet we cannot be silent about the unfailing praise of your forebears… when the Catholic Church in Canada was to be founded.”
This portrayal is only partially true and significantly incomplete.
1. It omits the integral context of the pre-revolutionary Canadian Church:
– A hierarchy bound to Rome when Rome itself still taught clearly against liberalism, indifferentism, and secular nationalism (Pius IX, Quanta Cura and the Syllabus Errorum; Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Humanum Genus).
– Bishops and missionaries who, despite weaknesses, understood that the Church’s mission is to convert souls to the one true Faith, not to dialogue with false religions and secular systems.
2. It suppresses any warning against the rising liberal, masonic, and modernist forces in civil and ecclesiastical life which had already been repeatedly exposed by the pre-1958 Magisterium:
– Pius IX explicitly identifies masonic sects as the engine of war against the Church and the source of State hostility and laicist legislation (cf. Syllabus Errorum, conclusions and the referenced allocutions).
– St. Pius X’s condemnation of modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi, Lamentabili) directly targets the mentality and methods that will be embraced bolder under John XXIII and his successors.
“Si summo” speaks vaguely against “materialism” but is silent about:
– Freemasonry as organized enemy of the Church.
– Liberalism and religious freedom condemned by Pius IX (propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80 of the Syllabus).
– Modernism explicitly condemned by Pius X, whose spirit was already seeping back through theological faculties and episcopal appointments.
This silence is not a neutral omission; it is symptomatic. At the very moment when the conciliar project begins, the letter avoids the precise names of the errors most relevant to the coming assault and thus prepares a climate in which these errors can present themselves disguised as renewal.
Linguistic Level: Pious Generalities as a Cloak for Doctrinal Neutralization
The rhetoric of “Si summo” is deliberately irenic, ornate, and non-combative. Every key notion is diluted in generalities:
– References to the hierarchy emphasize “joy,” “celebration,” “congratulations,” with no serious call to militancy against concrete heresies.
– The exhortations to defend doctrine are vague and unarmed:
“Let the sacred pastors concentrate their care all the more vigilantly, that the pure doctrine of religion be defended from snares and errors and, having become the rule of life, strike deeper root in souls.”
No error is named. No false system is anathematized. No reference is made to the concrete condemnations of Pius IX and Pius X that should bind consciences and form episcopal vigilance.
This style contrasts sharply with the integral papal language prior to 1958:
– When Pius IX condemns propositions, he names them, numbers them, and brand-marks liberalism, religious indifferentism, State absolutism, and modern rationalism as errores opposed to divine law.
– When St. Pius X fights modernism, he describes its methods, authors, and tactics with clinical precision, imposes the Anti-Modernist Oath, and commands concrete disciplinary measures.
“Si summo” instead employs what can be called theological anesthesia:
– It offers praise, consolation, and broad moral reminders, but refrains from the sharp, juridically binding language that characterizes genuine papal guardianship of the deposit of faith.
– It aestheticizes the hierarchy and its past, while avoiding a serious confrontation with the doctrinal crisis that was already destabilizing seminaries and universities worldwide.
This is not accidental. Such language forms part of the conciliar strategy: disarm the instinct of resistance, replace clear condemnations with irenic appeals, and thus prepare bishops and faithful to accept the subsequent conciliar novelties as natural developments of the same benevolent “pastoral” tone.
Theological Level: Invocation of Hierarchy Against Its Own Divine Constitution
The key theological irony:
– The letter solemnly extols the divinely instituted hierarchy as the organ of sacramental administration, preaching of truth, and governance:
“In which [benefits] the constitution of the Sacred Hierarchy rightly and deservedly is considered to hold a preeminent place, whereby through the firm and well-ordered administration of the Sacraments, the proclamation of truth, the regulation of governance, men are purified, enlightened, and joined to the one and triune God.”
This statement, taken in itself, aligns with traditional doctrine: the hierarchy is of divine institution, ordered to sanctification and teaching of revealed truth. However:
1. The same John XXIII who pens these lines simultaneously inaugurates a “council” which will:
– Promote the idea of collegiality and the erosion of papal monarchy in practice.
– Advance a new ecclesiology where the Church of Christ is said to “subsist in” the Catholic Church, opening the door to relativizing her exclusive identity.
– Encourage religious freedom, ecumenism, and dialogue with false religions—positions irreconcilable with the teachings of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI.
2. The divine constitution of the hierarchy, as affirmed before 1958, entails:
– Exclusive authority of the Catholic Church as the one true Church (condemning the notion that all religions are equal paths to salvation; cf. Syllabus 15–18, 21).
– Duty of States to publicly recognize and favor the true religion (Syllabus 55, 77–80; Pius XI, Quas Primas: peace is possible only in the social reign of Christ the King).
– Incompatibility of the Church’s Magisterium with evolutionist dogmatics and liberal subjectivism (Lamentabili, condemned propositions 58–65).
“Si summo” solemnizes the memory of a hierarchy that once embodied these truths, but does not reaffirm them in their integral, pre-conciliar sense. Instead, it leaves the field open for a redefinition of “hierarchy” as the administrative backbone of a new religion of “dialogue,” religious liberty, and ecumenism—the Church of the New Advent.
Thus, the text functions in practice as a theological decoy:
– It uses vocabulary inherited from the true Church to consecrate the emerging structures of post-conciliarism.
– It baptizes continuity at the very threshold of rupture.
– It anesthetizes resistance by wrapping a looming revolution in incense and Latin.
Symptomatic Level: The Early Manifestation of Conciliar Strategy
From the perspective of the unchanging Catholic theology before 1958, several symptomatic features reveal the inner logic of “Si summo”:
1. Refusal to Identify the Real Enemy
The letter mentions:
“This age, in which many men, entangled in the depraved doctrines of materialism, rush headlong along the steep paths of dark pride…”
But:
– It says nothing of communism by name (despite its relevance to 1959).
– It says nothing of Freemasonry, liberalism, or modernism.
– It offers no doctrinal or canonical directives to combat actual errors infiltrating clergy and academia.
This is consistent with the conciliar pseudo-magisterium’s pattern: replace concrete enemies (masonry, heresy, apostasy) with abstract, depersonalized “isms,” thereby avoiding the binding condemnations already issued and opening the path to diplomatic “dialogue” instead of spiritual war.
2. Instrumentalization of Ottaviani and the “Conservative” Aura
By appointing Ottaviani—then perceived as a guardian of orthodoxy—as legate, the letter cultivates the impression of continuity and rigor while the higher direction is bent toward aggiornamento.
– This is a tactical co-optation: use respected doctrinal figures to legitimize the regime, then neutralize or circumvent them when the revolution matures.
– The abuse of such figures’ names and reputations to adorn a project diverging from pre-1958 doctrine is morally and theologically grievous: it mimics fidelity to the Holy Office while preparing its effective dismantling under post-conciliar “reforms.”
3. Indulgences and External Piety as Substitutes for Doctrinal Militant Spirit
The granting of a plenary indulgence to participants in the celebrations is, in itself, part of Catholic practice. But here it serves a double function:
– It reinforces the impression that full Catholic authority is at work.
– It associates supernatural favors with an ecclesial event framed entirely within a nascent conciliar mentality devoid of clear condemnations and integral doctrinal confession.
When indulgences are detached from the vigorous assertion of truth and the clear rejection of error, they risk being reduced to decorative instruments in a pseudo-Catholic system that keeps forms while annihilating substance.
Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: A Grave Omission
A centenary of the hierarchy in a major nation would, in continuity with Pius XI’s Quas Primas, demand a strong reaffirmation that:
– Christ is King not only of individuals but of societies and States.
– Civil authority is bound to recognize the true religion and submit its laws to the divine and ecclesiastical law.
– Religious indifferentism and laicist separation of Church and State are condemned errors, not options among others.
Instead, “Si summo” is conspicuously silent on:
– The duty of Canada as a nation to profess the Catholic faith publicly.
– The intrinsic incompatibility between Christ’s kingship and pluralist indifference.
– The condemnations in the Syllabus of the separation thesis (proposition 55) and of liberal “civil liberty of all forms of worship” (79).
This silence is not neutral. It prepares the mental terrain for the later conciliar exaltation of religious liberty and indifferentism (cf. Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae), a direct contradiction of integral Catholic doctrine.
Where Pius XI insists that peace and order cannot exist unless States recognize Christ’s reign, John XXIII’s letter speaks only of individual fidelity, internal piety, and generic opposition to materialism, carefully avoiding the political and social dimension of Christ’s rights.
Thus:
– The omission functions as a denial in practice.
– The Canadian hierarchy is invited to celebrate itself, but not to reaffirm its duty to labor for the public triumph of the Catholic faith over the nation.
– The Church is rhetorically praised while being implicitly reduced to a spiritual association alongside others, prefiguring the conciliar sect’s theology.
Defense of Doctrine Without Weapons: Empty Shell Catholicism
“Si summo” exhorts bishops to defend pure doctrine. But the measure of Catholic authenticity is not whether one utters the word “doctrine,” but whether one:
– Names and condemns the concrete errors opposed to that doctrine.
– Reaffirms previous dogmatic and doctrinal definitions in their identical sense (eodem sensu eademque sententia – in the same sense and the same judgment; cf. Vatican I, Dei Filius).
– Denounces attempts to reinterpret dogma through historical relativism, vital immanence, or evolution of meaning, as condemned in Lamentabili (e.g., propositions 58–65).
In this letter:
– There is no reaffirmation of the binding character of the Anti-Modernist Oath.
– There is no warning against the evolving currents that will soon dominate seminaries and episcopal conferences.
– There is no application of the precise condemnations previously articulated by the Holy Office with which Ottaviani was then associated.
The result: a hollow orthodoxy—words about defending doctrine without specifying what that doctrine is and against which adversaries it must be defended. This is emblematic of the conciliar style: weaken the sense of dogmatic conflict, and thus paralyze resistance.
Hierarchy as Ornament of the Neo-Church
By celebrating the hierarchy while simultaneously paving the way for that hierarchy to be absorbed into a “conciliar sect,” “Si summo” reveals a crucial mechanism of the post-1958 usurpation:
– Maintain external canonical and hierarchical forms.
– Keep the vocabulary of “Sacred Hierarchy,” “pure doctrine,” “mission,” “indulgence.”
– Use these forms as a façade legitimizing a new religion that will:
– Embrace religious liberty and ecumenism.
– Dilute dogma under the pretext of “pastoral development.”
– Replace the Most Holy Sacrifice with a protestantized communal rite.
– Transform bishops into administrators of a global, paramasonic humanitarian federation.
The Canadian celebrations presided by the legate of John XXIII therefore become, in retrospect, an early ritual of co-option: the authentic historical Catholic hierarchy of Canada is symbolically annexed to the emerging neo-church and used as its moral capital.
Integral Catholic Counter-Principles
Against the diffuse, anesthetizing language of “Si summo,” the integral Catholic principles—unbroken before 1958 and binding on all consciences—stand as sharp, non-negotiable points:
– Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (“Outside the Church there is no salvation”): no ecumenical reinterpretation, no recognition of false religions as salvific paths.
– The Church is a *perfect society* with innate, divine rights, subject to no secular power in her proper sphere (Syllabus 19, 39–42).
– The State is morally obliged to recognize and favor the Catholic religion and to suppress open offenses against it, as consistently taught by Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI.
– Dogma does not evolve in meaning; all attempts to adapt doctrine to modern errors by changing its substance are condemned (Lamentabili, Pascendi).
– Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies and must be extirpated, not integrated, not “dialogued with.”
– Any claimant who systematically undermines these principles by ambiguity, omissions, or contrary legislation cannot be exercising the authority of the Roman Pontiff in continuity with his predecessors.
“Si summo,” read in isolation, might appear tolerable. Read in its true historical and doctrinal context, it is part of the prelude to that systematic inversion. It is a document that praises the sacred hierarchy while preparing to employ that very hierarchy as an instrument of the conciliar revolution.
Conclusion: A Devotional Veil for Systemic Apostasy
The theological and spiritual bankruptcy exposed here does not lie merely in an isolated phrase, but in the structure, omissions, and historical function of “Si summo”:
– It sacralizes the memory of the hierarchy while refusing to arm it doctrinally against modernism, liberalism, and masonic secularization.
– It speaks of pure doctrine while carefully avoiding reaffirmation of the concrete, hard condemnations of the preceding Magisterium.
– It invokes the authority of the Roman See at the very moment when that See is instrumentalized to introduce a new religion in continuity of words and rupture of substance.
Under the polished Latin and courteous praise stands a foundational gesture of the Church of the New Advent: use the language of Tradition to anesthetize Tradition, so that when the open revolution comes, the faithful—unwarned, sentimentally attached to forms and ceremonies—will follow their own hierarchical structures into the abyss of post-conciliar apostasy.
Source:
Ad Alfredum S. R. E. Cardinalem Ottaviani, Supremae Sacrae Congregationis S. Officii Prosecretarium, qui legatus deligitur ad Sollemnia, quibus saecularis memoria Sacrae Hierarchiae in Canada Constitu… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025