The text is a short allocution of John XXIII to the Canons Regular of St Augustine (26 May 1959), commemorating 900 years since Nicholas II’s Lateran reform of their institute, praising their history, sentimentally recalling San Giorgio in Alga and its illustrious figures (Eugene IV and St Lawrence Giustiniani), and exhorting them—under their newly formed federation and newly appointed superiors—to pursue “higher, purer, better paths of virtue” in the spirit of St Augustine’s maxim: love truth, guard unity, foster charity.
This apparently benign discourse is in reality a delicate anesthetic: a soft-focus humanistic rhetoric that prepares religious for conciliar revolution by replacing supernatural militancy and doctrinal clarity with sentimental moralism and institutional consolidation under a man already resolved to convoke the council that would devastate religious life.
Sentimental Pacification as Preludium to Revolution
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this allocution must be read not as an isolated devotional speech, but as an ideological symptom. John XXIII (Roncalli), the first in the line of antipopes occupying the Roman See, greets a venerable Augustinian institute at the very moment he is plotting the aggiornamento that will dissolve the very foundations they were raised to guard. The speech exemplifies the method later seen across the conciliar sect: preserve traditional names and gestures while hollowing out their content, binding traditional institutes to the program of the coming revolution.
The allocution’s structure itself reveals the program:
– Historical flattery.
– Affective evocation of past glories.
– Enthusiastic approval of structural reorganization (federation, new abbot primate).
– A final moralistic exhortation reduced to generic “truth–unity–charity,” severed from their dogmatic, sacramental, and anti-modernist foundations.
What is missing is more decisive than what is said: no summons to doctrinal combat against condemned modern errors; no recall of the binding anti-modernist teaching of the recent true pontiffs; no warning against laicism, indifferentism, and masonic infiltration so clearly denounced by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. The silence is a verdict.
Historical Continuity Claimed While the Foundations Are Undermined
On the factual and symbolic level, Roncalli attempts to cloak himself in the mantle of pre-conciliar legitimacy:
He recalls Nicholas II’s role in consolidating the canonical life of the Canons Regular. He stresses the historical fruitfulness of their institute “per catholici orbis fines” and then attaches himself to their lineage via San Giorgio in Alga, citing:
From this island came forth two splendid lights: Eugene IV and St Lawrence Giustiniani […] we have succeeded to the place of both; therefore both are Ours and yours, both bind Us and you more closely in Christ.
This rhetorical move is crucial. He forges a fictive continuity: placing himself—already internally oriented towards aggiornamento—as the successor of reforming saints and popes of authentic Catholic reform. Yet genuine Catholic reform, as embodied by those men and by the Lateran decrees he invokes, was always:
– Doctrinally sharpening, not loosening.
– Ascetically more rigorous, not accommodative.
– More clearly separated from the world’s spirit, not surrendered to it.
By 1959, the doctrinal and disciplinary patrimony governing religious life was lucidly defined:
– St Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis and the decree Lamentabili sane exitu had condemned Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and warned especially against “false striving for novelty” and the corruption of dogma under historical relativism. Opposition to those documents incurred excommunication.
– Pius XI’s Quas Primas taught that peace and order depend on the public, social reign of Christ the King, explicitly condemning laicism and the dethronement of Christ from public life.
– Pius IX’s Syllabus Errorum had definitively rejected religious indifferentism, false “freedom of worship,” the separation of Church and State, and the naturalistic cult of man.
– Canon law (1917) and pre-1958 teaching demanded rigorous enclosure, liturgical sobriety, doctrinal orthodoxy, and separation from the world for religious institutes.
A truly Catholic address in 1959—standing on this magisterial bedrock—should have exhorted the Augustinian Canons to:
– Guard the liturgy from profanation and innovation.
– Combat laicism and liberalism.
– Defend the social kingship of Christ in the face of rising secular states.
– Stand immovably against the condemned errors of Modernism and against subversive masonic forces that Pius IX and Leo XIII had unmasked as seeking the destruction of the Church.
Instead, Roncalli offers none of this. The omission is not accidental; it is programmatic. The allocution rebrands continuity as merely sentimental connection to the past, while clearing the field for structural and doctrinal changes that those same Fathers and Popes would have anathematized.
Linguistic Softening: Emotionalism Instead of Supernatural Militancy
The language of the allocution is revealing. It is carefully drained of the virile, objective, dogmatic tone characteristic of the pre-1958 Magisterium. The patterns:
– Emphasis on pleasant sentiment:
– “Fausti eventus… suaviter animum Nostrum tangit et commovet” (happy event… sweetly touches and moves Our soul).
– Romanticized nostalgia for San Giorgio in Alga as a picturesque, now silent island.
– Vague moral encouragement without doctrinal content:
– “ad elatiora, ad puriora, ad meliora virtutis itinera” – “towards loftier, purer, better paths of virtue” – but without specifying which truths, which enemies, which concrete obligations.
– Repeated focus on organizational success:
– Praise of the “feliciter inita foederatio” of four congregations.
– Announcement of the new Abbot Primate “ab Apostolica Sede renuntiatus.”
– Optimistic wish that all “bring an evangelical harvest of grace.”
None of these expressions is per se erroneous. The poison lies in the context and the exclusions. The rhetoric is naturalistic, horizontal, institutional—void of:
– The supernatural drama of salvation: sin, grace, judgment, hell, the Cross, the necessity of the state of grace.
– The militancy of the Church against heresy and the world’s errors.
– The royal rights of Christ over nations and laws, as expounded by Pius XI in Quas Primas.
– Any reminder of the binding anti-modernist oath (still in force at that time), which imposed rejection of the very tendencies Roncalli would soon unleash.
By reducing the discourse to pleasant historical recollection and generic exhortations, the speaker anesthetizes religious consciences. This is the exact strategy condemned by St Pius X: replacing the Church’s supernatural, dogmatic note with a humanitarian, psychological, “pastoral” tone that leaves core truths unspoken and thus effectively denied.
Mutilated Use of St Augustine: Charity Detached from Veritas
Roncalli culminates with a citation of St Augustine:
Love truth, keep unity, foster charity.
Then the famous exhortation to be “fervent in spirit, enkindled with the fire of charity,” so that the fervent may inflame the tepid.
Is this Augustinian? As words, yes. As employed here, no. The essence of Augustinian charity is inseparable from intransigent adherence to Catholic truth and ruthless rejection of heresy. For Augustine:
– Caritas without veritas is a lie.
– Unity without the true faith is not unity but conspiracy against God.
– “Love” divorced from dogma is sentimentality serving error.
Roncalli’s usage subtly inverts Augustine’s hierarchy. He presents “truth–unity–charity” as symmetrical values, then practically collapses Truth into a mild spiritual atmosphere of “virtues” and community cohesion. There is no hint that:
– Truth is objective, defined by the Church once for all.
– Unity means submission to the integral Catholic faith, not future ecumenical federations and relativistic dialogues.
– Charity demands hatred of error: to tolerate doctrinal corruption is to fail in love.
Compare this with the doctrinal tenor of St Pius X’s Lamentabili and Pascendi (explicitly renewed and armed with excommunication): any minimization of the Church’s right and duty to define, judge, and condemn modern errors is itself condemned. Roncalli flatters a venerable order with Augustinian language while positioning them psychologically to accept the upcoming conciliar dilution of dogma and the ecumenical betrayal of Catholic exclusivity, also condemned in the Syllabus (e.g. the propositions that any religion leads to salvation, or that the State must be neutral).
In other words, the allocution weaponizes a mutilated Augustine against Augustine himself.
Absence of Anti-Modernist Guardrails: The Loudest Silence
Measured against pre-1958 teaching, the most damning element of the text is its studied silence concerning:
– Modernism as condemned by St Pius X.
– Liberalism, laicism, socialism, and the sects (including masonry) as condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– The public reign of Christ the King, which Pius XI demands as the only safeguard of peace and true freedom.
– The necessity of doctrinal vigilance and separation from the spirit of the world, which all previous pontiffs insist upon.
This allocution is delivered in 1959:
– After the anti-modernist oath has been in force for decades.
– After multiple solemn condemnations of religious indifferentism and the secular “rights of man” ideology.
– At the dawn of the very pontificate which will convoke Vatican II and inaugurate the conciliar sect.
Yet the speech contains:
– No warning against doctrinal novelties.
– No insistence on the unchanged and unchangeable doctrine of the Church.
– No denunciation of the secular state’s persecution of the Church, of masonic machinations, or of pseudo-religious currents invading Catholic thought.
Instead, Roncalli speaks as though the principal task of the Canons is to rejoice at their federation, honour their past, and cultivate a pleasant internal fervour. This is, in effect, the suspension of supernatural alertness. It is the pastoral method that precedes collapse: distract with anniversaries and administrative adjustments, silence the trumpet against errors, then present the “council” as a natural extension of that serene atmosphere.
Where the true Magisterium prior to 1958 tirelessly exposed and condemned specific modern errors, this allocution embraces the modernist tactic denounced by St Pius X: avoiding direct contradiction while quietly omitting the very doctrines whose silence permits the spread of heresy.
Subjection of Traditional Institutes to the Conciliar Project
A significant practical dimension: the praise for the newly formed federation of four congregations of Canons Regular and the appointment of an Abbot Primate “renuntiatus ab Apostolica Sede.”
Under pre-1958 ecclesiology, such structural moves are legitimate only if oriented to deeper fidelity to dogma, liturgy, and ascetic discipline. In the hands of Roncalli, they prefigure something else:
– Centralized guidance of formerly distinct religious families under the governance of the soon-to-be conciliar regime.
– Psychological and juridical integration of traditional institutes into a network that will, within a few years, be compelled to:
– Accept or at least coexist with a new, protestantized “Mass.”
– Swallow ecumenism condemned by the Syllabus.
– Abandon the thesis of Christ’s public kingship in favour of religious liberty and the cult of human dignity.
– Relax their observances in the name of “renewal.”
By solemnly blessing their federation without any doctrinal caveats, Roncalli effectively places them on the conveyor belt towards post-conciliar dissolution. He invokes Nicholas II and St Augustine only to march their spiritual descendants into an ecclesial structure that would betray everything those saints defended.
The contrast with Pius XI’s Quas Primas is stark. Pius XI explicitly taught that the Church must assert Christ’s sovereign rights against secularist states, and that the feast of Christ the King is instituted precisely to condemn and correct the apostasy of laicism. Roncalli, speaking in the same city only decades later, is mute on this decisive battle. Such muteness, in the face of advancing naturalism, is a betrayal of Christ’s kingship.
Conciliar Fruits Anticipated: Naturalistic “Virtue” and Horizontal Unity
The symptomatic reading—illuminated by the subsequent history of the conciliar sect—confirms the implicit program already present here:
1. Reduction of religious life to generic pursuit of “virtue,” detached from militant dogmatic identity.
2. Replacement of supernatural categories (grace, sin, judgment, hell, propitiatory Sacrifice) with safe, humanistic words: “fervour,” “charity,” “unity,” “heritage,” “memory.”
3. Structural consolidation (federations, conferences, primates) used to channel institutes into obedience to a hierarchy that will shortly promulgate:
– A protestantized “eucharistic celebration.”
– Religious liberty and ecumenism condemned by prior magisterium.
– Anthropocentric rhetoric placing human dignity at the centre instead of Christ the King.
From the standpoint of the unchanging doctrine, what appears as pious moderation is in fact the preparatory anesthetic of apostasy. Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is seen to consent): by silencing explicit anti-modernist doctrine at the very hour it was most needed, Roncalli aligns himself against the integral Catholic faith, regardless of his polished phrases.
Charity Without Dogma: A Program for Disintegration
The phrase most highlighted in the allocution—“love truth, keep unity, foster charity”—is weaponized by the conciliar mentality as a triad in which “unity” and “charity” are used to erode “truth”:
– “Unity” becomes institutional cohesion under whoever occupies the Roman See, even if he contradicts prior doctrine.
– “Charity” becomes sentimental openness to other religions and ideologies, in direct contradiction to the Syllabus and Quas Primas.
– “Truth” is left undefined, tacitly reduced to a fluid, experiential notion, precisely what St Pius X condemned as Modernist evolution of dogma.
Pre-1958 teaching, however, insists:
– There is only one true Church; outside her there is no salvation as willed by God in the order He has established.
– Religious liberty, indifferentism, and the levelling of Catholicism with false religions are condemned.
– The Church has the God-given right and duty to judge, condemn, and repress doctrines and structures opposed to Christ the King.
By refusing to articulate these truths, Roncalli’s allocution undermines them in practice. It is a subtle but real betrayal: the path to the abomination of desolation is paved with speeches that say nothing overtly heretical yet systematically omit everything salvific and combative.
Conclusion: A Gentle Voice Preparing the Ruins
Measured by the sole legitimate criterion—integral Catholic doctrine as taught by the true Magisterium before 1958—this allocution is not a harmless festive greeting. It is:
– A calculated use of historical and Augustinian references to give a traditional façade to an authority already oriented towards conciliar subversion.
– A model of modernist pastoral rhetoric: sentimental, horizontal, organizationally enthusiastic, doctrinally evasive.
– A practical instrument for binding traditional religious to obedience toward a regime that would soon attempt to invert the Church’s relation to the world, to false religions, and to secular states.
The speech’s theological bankruptcy lies precisely in its refusals: no proclamation of the social reign of Christ the King; no reaffirmation of Modernism’s condemnation; no warning against the laicist and masonic forces ravaging the Church; no insistence on the absolute necessity of the state of grace, the Most Holy Sacrifice, and separation from the world. It replaces the supernatural note of the Church with a soft, sociological encouragement, an ideological morphine before surgery on the Mystical Body.
Such is the language of the conciliar sect at its inception: suave, pious-sounding, and fatally empty of the truths that save souls and defend the Kingdom of Christ.
Source:
Ad Canonicos Regulares S. Augustini, e quattuor Congregationibus, quibus Ordo constat, feliciter mox inita foederatione, XXVI Maii 1959, Ioannes PP.XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025