This Latin allocution of Antipope John XXIII at the Pontifical Gregorian University (18 January 1959) is a self-congratulatory eulogy of the institution as “Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana,” praising its global reach, its multiplication of disciplines, its governing role in forming clergy, and linking it to Gregory XIII, Trent, and the Jesuit educational ideal; it exalts academic expansion, institutional prestige, and the supposed continuity of Roman authority while omitting any real mention of the integral combat against heresy and Modernism that defined pre-1958 Catholicism. In reality, the text is an ideological overture: a carefully staged manifesto of a new, humanistic, academic religion that instrumentalizes the names of Trent and Gregory XIII to prepare the conciliar revolution and to neutralize the true doctrinal mission of the Church.
John XXIII’s Gregorian Panegyric as Manifesto of the Conciliar Revolution
Usurped Petrine Authority as the Premise of Institutional Self-Glorification
Already in this allocution we see the operative principle of the conciliar sect: the antichristic occupation of Catholic forms to pour in a contrary content.
John XXIII speaks from the occupied See, addressing the Gregorian as Pontifical, under the feast of the Chair of St. Peter. His central axis is not the uncompromising dogmatic authority of the Roman Pontiff in defense of revealed truth, but the institutional prestige of a university system that he depicts as the privileged channel of magisterial influence. He insists that teaching must conform to the “doctrina docentis Ecclesiae” “eodem sensu eademque significatione” – borrowing the formula of Vatican I and St. Vincent of Lérins – and then, in historical reality, immediately uses the Gregorian and similar centers as engines of aggiornamento, the very opposite of *eodem sensu eademque sententia* (“in the same sense and same meaning”).
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the root problem is not rhetorical excess; it is usurpation. When a public manifest heretic occupies the Roman See, he cannot be head of the Church. This is not a novelty but precisely the doctrine recalled by pre-conciliar theologians and canonists:
– St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a manifest heretic is no member of the Church and therefore cannot be head of the Church; by that fact he loses all jurisdiction.
– Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code declares all ecclesiastical offices vacant “by the fact itself and without any declaration” in case of public defection from the faith.
– The bull *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV declares null any “elevation” of one who has defected from the Catholic faith.
The allocution rests entirely on the assumption that John XXIII is the true Pontiff, and that the Gregorian is the faithful prolongation of Trent and Gregory XIII. This foundational lie corrupts the entire text. A pseudo-pontiff, preparing a pseudo-council, flatters a pseudo-academia as the spearhead of his aggiornamento while cloaking himself in the vocabulary of authority. *Persona est argumentum*: the person is the refutation.
From Supernatural Mission to Academic Myth: Factual and Historical Distortions
On the factual level, the allocution constructs an edifying historical narrative:
– Invocation of the Chair of St. Peter and the power of “ligandi atque solvendi.”
– Praise of the Gregorian as the authentic continuation of Gregory XIII’s post-Tridentine renewal.
– Emphasis on the expansion of faculties: theology, philosophy, canon law, biblical studies, Oriental studies, history, missions, social sciences.
– Celebration of the international composition of the student body as visible sign of universality.
These elements, torn from their doctrinal context, become instruments of deceit.
1. Gregory XIII and the post-Tridentine universities oriented everything toward dogmatic clarity, anti-heresy militancy, and strict defense of the faith against Protestantism. Their raison d’être was defined by Trent’s anathemas and reform decrees; they were arsenals of doctrinal war, not laboratories of dialogue.
2. John XXIII’s allocution, however, is void of any reference to:
– Condemnations of Liberalism and Modernism (Pius IX’s *Syllabus*, Leo XIII, St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*).
– The mortal danger of Modernist exegesis and philosophy.
– The duty to anathematize contemporary errors.
– The unique necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.
– The duty of states to recognize Christ’s social kingship as insisted by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*.
Instead, he exalts the Gregorian as a grand, peaceful, international campus. The term “Pontificia” is treated primarily as an honorific link to the Petrine chair, not as the juridical expression of the right and duty to condemn, bind, and cast out heresy. This is more than omission; it is inversion. The Gregorian is praised precisely in those dimensions – multiplicity of disciplines, international influence, academic prestige – that the conciliar sect will exploit to dissolve the pre-1958 doctrinal ramparts.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Soft Humanism in the Place of Dogmatic War
The rhetoric of the allocution is varnished, paternal, and sentimental: “alma mater,” “laeta iuvenum agmina,” “lampades ardeant atque luceant.” It abounds in:
– institutional flattery;
– emotive images of youth flowing from all nations;
– benign admiration of scientific achievements (e.g. Angelo Secchi);
– phrases about combining knowledge and piety, doctrine and holiness.
What is absent and therefore indicting:
– No mention of *Modernismus* as “omnium haeresum collectum” (“the synthesis of all heresies”) condemned by St. Pius X.
– No invocation of the binding force of prior condemnations on the very milieu John XXIII is praising.
– No warning against the already active theological subversion in Roman universities in the 1950s (Nouvelle théologie, historical-critical deconstruction of Scripture, relativization of dogma).
The tone is bureaucratically devout and rhetorically pious but fundamentally horizontal. The repeated emphasis on “universitas,” “varietas disciplinarum,” statistics and geography as “gemini oculi historiae” reveals the naturalistic lens: history, numbers, and institutional breadth supplant the supernatural logic of election, orthodoxy, and the narrow way.
Such stylistic choices are not accidental. They are the literary clothing of Modernism: a “Christian” humanitarianism baptizing academic expansion while evacuating the content of militantly supernatural doctrine.
Theological Subversion Behind Traditional Phrases
The allocution occasionally touches formulas that, in Catholic doctrine, are of decisive weight, but he empties them of their force by refusing their practical application.
1. Appeal to “eodem sensu eademque litterarum significatione”
– The phrase echoes Vatican I and St. Vincent: dogma must be held in the same sense and the same meaning.
– Yet John XXIII is precisely the one who, in reality, inaugurates a regime in which doctrine is rephrased, “developed,” and practically inverted under the pretext of pastoral renewal.
– The Gregorian, lauded here, becomes an institutional channel for the hermeneutic whereby condemned errors are reintroduced as legitimate theological options.
2. Praise of harmony between disciplines and faith
– True Catholic teaching (e.g. Pius IX, St. Pius X) demands that philosophy and exegesis submit to revelation and the Magisterium, not judge them.
– *Lamentabili sane* explicitly condemns the thesis that ecclesiastical authority cannot define the sense of Scripture or that exegesis may correct the Church.
– John XXIII praises the Gregorian’s broadened programs, including biblical and historical sciences, without a syllable recalling these binding condemnations; in context, this silence functions as tacit permission for precisely what pre-1958 popes anathematized.
3. The “universal” student body as Pentecostal sign
– He compares the international composition to a kind of Pentecost fire.
– But Pentecost’s mark is not mere plurality of languages; it is unanimity in Catholic faith and submission to the Apostles.
– The post-1958 evolution of such institutions shows the real trajectory: multiplicity of nations and tongues becomes pretext for relativizing dogma and promoting ecumenism, religious liberty, and dialogue with error—all condemned in the *Syllabus*, *Quanta Cura*, and *Quas Primas*.
Thus, under a cosmetic veneer of continuity, the allocution outlines the model of a university that will be the cradle of the conciliar agenda: an institution claiming loyalty to papal authority while systematically absorbing, and then teaching, positions explicitly condemned by that same pre-1958 authority.
Systematic Omissions: Silence as a Mark of Apostasy
The gravest theological indictment of this text is its silences. From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, deliberate silence about what must be affirmed is already a betrayal.
Crucial omissions:
– No reference to the condemnation of Modernism (1907) and the anti-modernist oath (1910), still formally in force in 1959.
– No reminder that professors of sacred disciplines are bound to teach in strict adherence to previous condemnations.
– No allusion to the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Church, no “outside the Church no salvation,” no warning against Protestantism, Communism, or the modernist infiltration which St. Pius X explicitly unmasked as coming from “enemies within.”
– No insistence on the duty of Catholic states and institutions to submit to the reign of Christ the King in public law, against laicism and religious indifferentism, as proclaimed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*.
– No word about hell, judgment, sin, state of grace, sacramental life as the indispensable foundation of priestly formation.
This allocution reduces the Gregorian’s mission to a polished triad:
– academic excellence,
– institutional loyalty to the “pontifical” brand,
– cultivation of morally decent, cultured clergy as “lampades.”
But if the lamp is not doctrinally pure and anti-modernist, it is darkness. The omission of Combat — against heresy, against Liberalism, against Modernism — is not a neutral silence; it is the betrayal diagnosed by St. Pius X: those who speak much of charity and adaptation while suppressing the anathema.
The Gregorian as Matrix of the Neo-Church
Symptomatically, every element exalted here blossoms, under the conciliar sect, into concrete apostasy:
– The “universal” presence of students from all nations becomes a laboratory of false ecumenism, religious relativism, and interreligious dialogue—positions explicitly rejected by pre-1958 Magisterium.
– The expanded disciplines (especially biblical studies, history, “social” sciences) become the vehicles for historical-critical methods that deny the inerrancy of Scripture and the supernatural character of dogma, condemned line by line in *Lamentabili sane*.
– The Jesuit direction, so flatteringly praised, mutates into a vanguard of doctrinal dissolution, liberation theology, and moral subversion, aided and ratified by the same conciliar structures born under John XXIII.
– The appeal to “pastoral” formation and social relevance preludes the transformation of the priest from sacrificer of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* into a social worker, community animator, and dialogue facilitator.
What John XXIII omits is exactly what the Gregorian (and similar centers) were already in the process of abandoning: the strict Thomistic, anti-modernist, dogmatically precise formation mandated by Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII. Instead, he gives public pontifical benediction to an institution silently transitioning to a new religion. This allocution is therefore symptomatic: an “orthodox-looking” authorization for the very environment that will produce the theologians of Vatican II and of the Church of the New Advent.
Naturalistic Humanism versus the Reign of Christ the King
The entire discourse breathes a polite naturalism:
– admiration for science and progress;
– institutional self-esteem;
– a pedagogical rhetoric in which Christ’s kingship is reduced to spiritual inspiration rather than legislating sovereignty over nations and laws.
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, solemnly taught that:
– peace and order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly recognize and obey Christ the King;
– the removal of Christ and His law from public life is the root of modern calamities;
– the Church possesses by divine right freedom and independence from state control in teaching, governing, and sanctifying.
In this allocution:
– there is no echo of the necessity of public subjection of nations to Christ;
– there is no explicit denunciation of laicism and secularism as mortal sins of states;
– instead, the horizon is intra-ecclesiastical and academic, as though the crisis of the world could be answered by excellent university administration and globally networked seminaries.
This is a subtle but decisive shift: from *imperium Christi* (Christ’s objective sovereignty over all societies) to an internal, almost aesthetic “formation” of clergy who will then adapt to the secular world. This corresponds perfectly to the condemned Liberal thesis that the Church must “reconcile herself with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (condemned as error 80 in Pius IX’s *Syllabus*). The conciliar sect will later quote this reconciliation as achievement, not as condemned aberration.
Flattening Hierarchy and the Cult of Institutional Clericalism
The speech manifests a paradoxical clericalism:
– He exalts the hierarchy of academic and ecclesiastical offices, praising moderators, professors, and students.
– He cites St. Lawrence Justinian about humility and not ambitiously seeking offices, yet uses this as ornamental counsel, not as a real barrier against careerism.
– He speaks as the affectionate “Pater senex” visiting his sons, confirming the network of Pontifical universities as a family.
However, this clericalism does not serve the supernatural authority of the true Church; it serves the structures of the conciliar sect that will weaponize offices against the faith. Justice and authority indeed belong to the true Church; but here they are being transferred to a paramasonic structure that simulates Catholic hierarchy while liquidating Catholic doctrine.
The result is doubly perverse:
– Lay rebellion and anticlerical “self-judgment” will grow in reaction to this corrupted clericalism, deepening chaos.
– The faithful are deceived into obeying usurpers whose authority is void by divine law, precisely because they propagate doctrines condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Thus, the allocution is an act of counterfeit paternal authority: reinforcing loyalty to the very intellectual apparatus that will educate generations in Modernism and religious indifferentism under a Catholic label.
Pseudo-Continuity: Trent and Gregory XIII as Decorative Shells
John XXIII invokes Trent, Gregory XIII, Pius IV, St. Pius V, St. Charles Borromeo, and great Catholic institutions. This is archetypal Modernist camouflage:
– Names and symbols of Catholic orthodoxy are invoked as a rhetorical “apostolic succession” of ambiance.
– The substantive core of their teaching—anathema, anti-heresy, doctrinal clarity, discipline—is not reaffirmed, let alone enforced; it is displaced by emphasis on administrative expansion, international presence, and “openness.”
Compare:
– Gregory XIII’s support for the Roman College and national colleges aimed at producing militant clergy against Protestantism and error.
– John XXIII’s praise for similar institutions without a single explicit mention of current heresies, as if the doctrinal war had ended and only “formation” remained.
This is not continuity; it is usurpation of symbols to legitimate a revolution. *Quod bonum, felix, faustum fortunatumque sit* on his lips masks *mutatio fidei* in practice.
Conclusion: Allocution as Early Charter of the Abomination
Once stripped of its Latinity and polite devotions, this allocution is:
– a programmatic endorsement of an academic complex that will,
– under the aegis of a manifestly suspect “pontificate,”
– lead the transition from the Church of Christ to the Church of the New Advent.
Key elements of its spiritual bankruptcy:
– It refuses to situate the Gregorian within the anti-modernist, anti-liberal, doctrinally militant continuum binding all true popes before 1958.
– It preaches harmony, universality, and academic breadth while remaining silent about the precise errors devouring the Church from within.
– It instrumentalizes the Chair of Peter and the memory of Gregory XIII to consecrate an incipient aggiornamento.
– It diverts attention from the true enemy identified by St. Pius X—the internal modernist—to a comfortable myth of harmonious educational progress.
Viewed in the light of Pius IX’s *Syllabus*, St. Pius X’s *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*, and Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, this text stands condemned by omission, by subtext, and by its historical fruits. The very professors and “graduates” formed under this paradigm became the architects and executioners of the conciliar apostasy. *Ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos* (you will know them by their fruits): the allocution is the smile that precedes the demolition.
Source:
Allocutio quam habuit Summus Pontifex, in Magno Auditorio Pontifici « Universitatis Gregorianae, quo Beatissimus Pater se contulerat, Moderatorum, Docentium et Alumnorum e variis Nationibus plausu exc… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025