In this Latin letter of 3 March 1960, antipope John XXIII designates Aloisius Josephus Cardinal Muench as his legate to preside over celebrations in Malta marking nineteen centuries since the shipwreck of St Paul and the Apostle’s evangelization of the island. The text praises Malta’s natural beauty and virtues, exalts its historic fidelity to the Catholic faith, attributes this fidelity to the preaching of St Paul, and exhorts that Malta’s private and social life remain founded on Jesus Christ as proclaimed by the Apostle, while imparting an “Apostolic Blessing” to the island and its authorities. This apparently edifying language, however, functions as a pious cosmetic: it cloaks the authority-void of John XXIII’s usurped office and serves as a preparatory instrument for the conciliar revolution that would soon devastate exactly that faith and order which the letter sentimentally celebrates.
Pauline Rhetoric in the Service of a Counterfeit Authority
The text is brief, smooth, and at first glance orthodox in vocabulary. That is precisely its malice. By 1960 the conciliar conspiracy was already in motion; this letter is one thread in the fabric of moral disarmament—using the language of *integral* tradition to secure docility toward a regime preparing to subvert it.
The key elements:
– John XXIII appoints Muench to act as his representative in Malta for the commemoration of St Paul’s shipwreck and evangelization.
– He praises Malta for welcoming the Apostle, for its long fidelity to the Catholic faith, and for being a “bulwark” of the Christian name.
– He exhorts Malta to keep Christ as the sole foundation of its private and social life, echoing 1 Corinthians 3:11.
– He extends a supposed Apostolic Blessing to the archbishop, hierarchy, magistrates, clergy, and faithful.
All of this is framed as if issuing from the true Roman Pontiff, as if continuous with the papal tradition that Malta indeed served heroically, especially against Islam and heresy. But here the author is the inaugurator of the conciliar sect, and his every act of “ordinary magisterium” is deployed under a usurped name and against the very ecclesial order he claims to honour.
Instrumentalizing St Paul Against the Faith of St Paul
On the factual, surface level, the letter recounts Acts 28 and the traditional view that St Paul planted in Malta the true Catholic faith, “which shines with pure soundness” and has remained unrecovered by heresy. So far the words align with perennial doctrine.
Yet precisely here lies the fraud: the same John XXIII soon convoked Vatican II, whose texts and implementation unleashed religious liberty, false ecumenism, and collegialist subversion, all condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium. To praise Malta as an Ex quo fidem recepisti, recidiva non fuisti (“Since you received the faith, you have not fallen back”) citadel, while preparing an ecclesial revolution that dissolves its Catholic identity into the “dialogue” and pluralism denounced by Pius IX and Pius XI, is not pastoral; it is strategic manipulation.
The rhetorical invocation of 1 Cor 3:11—Christ as the only foundation—must be read against how the conciliar sect would very quickly reinterpret that foundation: no longer as the exclusive, juridically concrete Roman Catholic Church, but as an elastic “People of God,” open to heretics and infidels, denying in practice what Pius IX infallibly reaffirmed in the Syllabus (propositions 15–18, 21, 77–80 condemned). The text’s orthodoxy in phrase is preparation for treachery in doctrine.
Soft Language, Hard Betrayal: The Linguistic Cloak of Modernist Policy
The linguistic register is significant:
– It is warm, paternal, “encouraging,” free from any militant condemnation of contemporary errors.
– It idealizes Malta’s fidelity but entirely omits concrete grave threats already raging in 1960: secularization, Masonic penetration, socialism, Protestant proselytism, and incipient ecclesial liberalism.
– It offers no warning against false religious liberty, no insistence that the State of Malta must publicly acknowledge the Social Kingship of Christ as taught by Pius XI in Quas primas, no reminder of the condemnations of laicism and indifferentism in the Syllabus.
This absence is not accidental. Modernism’s method, unmasked by St Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu, is to retain Catholic vocabulary while draining it of militant content. Here, Christ is invoked, but only in a generalized exhortation; there is no precise doctrinal edge: no denunciation of condemned propositions about Church-State separation, no reiteration that Christ’s reign binds nations and laws, not only “private and social life” in vague moral terms.
Pius XI wrote with crystalline clarity that true peace and order are impossible unless states recognize and submit to Christ’s Kingship; he explicitly condemned the secularist banishing of Christ from civil law, education, and public life (Quas primas, esp. sections condemning laicism and demanding public homage). By contrast, this 1960 letter offers Christ merely as the “foundation” of life, without any juridically binding claim on Malta’s political order. The omission is itself a doctrinal statement: a tacit acceptance of the liberal thesis that the confessional State is optional.
Thus the tone—gentle, apolitical, “uplifting”—betrays the modernist mentality: religion as cultural inspiration, not as a sovereign juridical order binding nations under divine law.
Doctrinal Paradox: Praising Uncompromised Faith While Engineering Its Erosion
The letter insists that the faith given by St Paul to Malta is:
“pura sanitate fulget et per saeculorum cursum insidiis non territa, rupe maris undis percussa firmior est, ductrix morum, honestatis et sanctitatis altrix, concordiae vinculum, felicitatis pignus perpetuum”
(“It shines with unblemished soundness and, undaunted by the snares through the course of the centuries, like a rock beaten by the waves is made firmer; a guide of morals, a nurturer of honesty and holiness, a bond of concord, an everlasting pledge of happiness.”)
But John XXIII’s entire historical role is to open the way for that very “unblemished soundness” to be relativized. Not through explicit denials in this brief letter, but through:
– The convocation of a council conceived and guided under principles contrary to the anti-liberal, anti-modernist condemnations of his predecessors.
– The moral rehabilitation of the very errors that Pius IX and St Pius X anathematized: collegialism, democracy in the Church, religious liberty, false ecumenism, doctrinal evolution.
Hence, a glaring contradiction: he extols Malta as “never relapsed” while simultaneously ushering in structures that would demand relapse—into recognizing false religions, suppressing the confessional State, and trivializing Catholic exclusivity. The praise functions as flattery to secure loyalty to his person and to the future council, disarming precisely those who might resist when the revolution becomes explicit.
This is not shepherding; it is psychological conditioning.
Selective Memory: Silence on Modernism, Freemasonry, and the Real Enemies
From the perspective of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, the most damning feature is silence.
– No mention of modernism as condemned in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu.
– No mention of the Masonic assault on Catholic states and education, which Pius IX explicitly exposed as the “synagogue of Satan” orchestrating war on the Church.
– No warning against socialism, communism, liberalism, naturalism—all roaring through Europe and the Mediterranean.
Instead, the text speaks of Malta’s virtues, natural gifts, and hopes for prosperity, while reducing the supernatural battle to a vague encouragement. This mimics the worldly humanitarian tone that would later dominate the conciliar sect: polite, affirmative, allergic to condemning concrete heresies.
St Pius X insisted that those who defend modernist theses or oppose the anti-modernist decrees incur condemnation and even excommunication. Yet John XXIII, who as antipope actively suspended, diluted, or simply ignored this anti-modernist apparatus, here poses as guardian of Pauline orthodoxy. *Contradictio in adjecto*—a contradiction in terms. The omission of any real warning is itself an implicit betrayal: qui tacet consentire videtur (“he who is silent is seen to consent”), especially when charged with the duty to guard the flock.
Public Reign of Christ vs. Maltese Civil Authority: A Safely Defanged Exhortation
The text extends the supposed blessing also to the civil “magistratus.” Yet it does not remind them that:
– The State must recognise the Catholic religion as the only true one (Syllabus, condemned proposition 77).
– The separation of Church and State is condemned (Syllabus 55).
– Public law, education, marriage legislation, all are bound by divine and ecclesiastical law.
Instead, the appeal is sentimental: Malta has a precious heritage; may it remember Christ as foundation. That is the language of moral influence, not the voice of the Vicar of Christ demanding juridical obedience. It is the language compatible with modern liberal pluralism.
Compare this with pre-1958 papal statements, which explicitly vindicate for the Church not only interior assent but public rights: jurisdiction over teaching, marriage impediments, education (Syllabus 45–48; Quas primas; numerous allocutions). John XXIII’s letter does not dare to restate this program, because his conciliar agenda requires reconciling the Church with “modern civilization”—precisely what Pius IX condemned (Syllabus 80).
Therefore, the entire exhortation stands as a politically safe, doctrinally diluted gesture: talk of Christ, omit His Kingship; talk of faith, omit the anathemas; talk of Malta as “bulwark,” omit what bulwark concretely entails in civil and legal order.
The Legate as Mask: Sacralizing the Counterfeit Structure
Designating Muench as legate “personam Nostram gerens” (“bearing Our person”) has a specific function: to imprint on the Maltese celebrations the stamp of the conciliar regime as if it were the same Roman See that sent St Paul and once commissioned true apostolic legates.
But from the standpoint of integral Catholic doctrine:
– A usurper manifestly favouring modernist principles and convoking a council to neutralize previous condemnations is not morally nor theologically equivalent to the Popes who raised the bastion of Malta against Islam and heresy.
– To treat the legatine mission as an expression of the same authority is to falsify ecclesial continuity.
Thus, what appears as a liturgical and devotional gesture is in reality an operation of legitimacy-manufacturing: employing St Paul’s authority to authenticate the conciliar sect about to be unleashed. The Maltese faithful are invited—by an act framed in traditional Latin—to bind their filial devotion to the very system that will, within a few years, attempt to re-educate them into religious liberty and ecumenism.
Praising Inherited Fidelity While Preparing Its Dissolution
The letter extols the faith as an “inestimable treasure” passed down “quasi hereditate” from St Paul and the ancestors. Authentic Catholic doctrine agrees: the faith is received, not reinvented; the depositum fidei (deposit of faith) is fixed, not evolving (cf. Vatican I, Dei Filius, and the condemnations in Lamentabili against dogma evolution).
But the conciliar program that John XXIII inaugurates is explicitly built on a contrary principle: development and aggiornamento as practical dogma; the “reading of the signs of the times” as a norm for theology; the reduction of condemnations to “outdated” reactions. The letter’s praise of inherited fidelity is, therefore, gravely duplicitous:
– St Paul’s Malta is praised for never relapsing.
– The conciliar sect then demands that Malta accept new liturgies, ecumenical relativism, religious liberty, and the softening of missionary exclusivity—all incompatible with the steadfastness lauded here.
This is not merely irony; it is inversion. The rhetorical canonization of Malta’s past fidelity prepares its future betrayal under the slogan of the same Apostle who warned against “another gospel” (Gal 1:8–9). The conciliar sect is precisely the “other gospel”: a naturalistic, humanistic religion dressed in Catholic vestments.
Silencing the Sacrifice: The Sacramental Void Behind the Blessing
A subtle yet grave omission: the letter, though speaking of faith and morals, remains liturgically vague. It mentions “religious feasts” and “sacred rites,” but gives no robust doctrinal accent on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as propitiatory, nor on the need to remain attached to the traditional Roman Rite as integral to the faith Malta received.
Given what followed—the systematic demolition of the traditional liturgy and the engineering of a rite aligned with ecumenism and Protestant sensibilities—this silence is more than accidental. It anticipates the reduction of liturgy to cultural celebration and communal assembly, emptied of sacrificial centrality. A real Pope defending Malta’s heritage in 1960 would have:
– Explicitly recalled the Holy Sacrifice as the heart of Maltese Catholic life.
– Warned against profanation, innovation, or Protestantizing tendencies.
– Reinforced anti-modernist safeguards.
None of this occurs. Instead, there is generic approval of solemnities, without doctrinally precise anchoring. Hence the “blessing” extends over future celebrations that, under the conciliar project, would themselves be colonised by a new theology. The text thus becomes a bridge from true liturgical piety toward the manufactured cult of the neo-church.
Systemic Symptom: The Letter as Microcosm of the Conciliar Revolution
On the symptomatic level, this document crystallizes the method of post-1958 apostasy:
1. Retain traditional, pious, biblical vocabulary (St Paul, Christ as foundation, fidelity, blessings).
2. Omit concrete condemnations of liberalism, indifferentism, modernism, Freemasonry, errors explicitly identified by previous Popes.
3. Flatten the Social Kingship of Christ into moral inspiration, devoid of binding juridical demands on states and laws.
4. Use gestures of continuity (Latin, legates, references to Acts) to camouflage a program of rupture.
5. Cultivate emotional loyalty of the faithful to the person of the usurper and his representatives, so that later, when doctrinal novelties arrive, they are received as organic developments of the same “pastoral” care.
Thus this short letter, read through the lens of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, is not an innocent commemoration. It is a polished instrument of transition: sanctifying obedience to an authority that is in practice dismantling the very militancy, clarity, and exclusivity that made Malta a bastion of the faith.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy Behind the Devout Facade
When judged solely by the immutable Magisterium prior to 1958:
– The moments of orthodox phraseology in this letter are not sufficient to legitimate its source, because Catholic doctrine abhors the mixture of truth with a subversive project. *Non potest arbor mala fructus bonos facere* (a bad tree cannot bear good fruit).
– The carefully crafted omissions—no attack on modernism, no explicit demand for confessional statehood, no reaffirmation of anti-liberal anathemas—expose a mentality already reconciled with what Pius IX and St Pius X condemned as mortal poison.
– The invocation of St Paul and Malta’s fidelity is converted into propaganda for the conciliar sect, instrumentalizing apostolic glory to adorn a counterfeit authority.
What presents itself as an act of paternal care for Malta is thus spiritually and theologically bankrupt: it refuses to name real enemies, refuses to reaffirm binding condemnations, refuses to defend the full rights of Christ the King, and serves only to strengthen the obedience of the faithful to a regime that would soon attack their liturgy, doctrine, and ecclesial identity.
The true honour to St Paul and to Malta’s nineteen centuries of fidelity is not sentimental acquiescence to such texts, but an unyielding return to the integral Catholic faith as taught and defended by the authentic Magisterium before the conciliar usurpation—faith which demands that Christ reign publicly, that error be condemned, and that any “blessing” separated from this truth be recognized as an empty sign of a structure that no longer serves God but the world.
Source:
Undeviginti saecula – Ad Cardinalem Muench, quem legatum deligit, ut celebritatibus praesit in insula melita agendis ob undeviginti impleta saecula, ex quo S. Paulus apostolus ad eam oram naufragus ad… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025