The text is a brief allocution of John XXIII to the superiors and members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) gathered in Rome for their General Chapter in February 1963. He flatters their growth, exhorts them to revise their Rule and Constitutions to adapt them to “the needs of the times,” warns (in words) not to bend to worldly spirit while in practice urging aggiornamento, presents Saint Alphonsus as a flexible legislative model, and links their renewal to the spirit of the ongoing Vatican II, asking for prayers and sacrifices for the Council. In essence, this address is a polished manifesto of the nascent conciliar program: using the language of fidelity to disguise the systematic re-engineering of religious life and doctrine according to the demands of the world.
Allocutio as Manifesto of Adaptation: How Conciliar Rhetoric Subverts Religious Life
Using Saint Alphonsus as a Banner for the Conciliar Revolution
John XXIII presents himself as benignly encouraging the Redemptorists to fidelity:
“Quod negotium permagnam requirit prudentiam, cum ea, quae primaria sunt in vita religiosa vobisque peculiariter proposita, sancte servanda sint; ea autem, quae rerum vicissitudinibus sunt obnoxia, apte ad ea, quae haec postulat aetas, accommodanda.”
English: “This task requires great prudence, since those things which are primary in religious life and proposed to you in a particular way must be kept holy; but those things subject to the vicissitudes of events must be fittingly adapted to what this age requires.”
Here is the essential duplicity:
– On one side: a seemingly Catholic distinction between immutable essentials and mutable accidentals.
– On the other: the fatal, undefined clause: “*ad ea, quae haec postulat aetas, accommodanda*” (“adapted to what this age demands”).
Before 1958, the Magisterium never surrendered the Church’s inner law of religious life to the vague imperatives of “this age.” Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII consistently insist that:
– The Church forms the age, not the age the Church.
– Religious rules are organs of sanctity, not laboratories for democratic experimentation.
– True reform means deeper fidelity to the saints’ mind, not accommodation to secular mentality.
Pius XI in Quas primas teaches that peace and order flow only when individuals and nations submit to the reign of Christ the King, not when the Church bends to “modern civilization.” Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum condemns the notion that the Church must reconcile herself with liberalism and modernity (prop. 80). The allocution of John XXIII moves in the contrary direction: it tacitly enthrones the “needs of the times” as a normative criterion.
This is already the conciliar inversion: instead of the age kneeling to Christ the King and His unchanging law, the “Church of the New Advent” listens to the age as quasi-magister.
Linguistic Sugar-Coating: Soft Vocabulary Masking a Program of Dismantling
The text’s rhetoric is smooth, paternal, and apparently pious. Precisely therein lies its toxicity.
Key elements of the linguistic strategy:
– Constant flattering: “laudabili vigore,” “feliciter consecuti,” “gratiam vobis habet Ecclesia.”
– Harmless spiritual slogans: “aemulandi charismata meliora,” “Accipe librum et devora illum.”
– Gentle talk of “prudence,” “greater effectiveness,” “sweet fruit” of the Rule.
But examine where the pivot lies:
“Si ergo Regula et Constitutiones vestrae retractantur, id propterea fit, quo maior efficientia ipsis tribuatur.”
English: “If, therefore, your Rule and Constitutions are revised, this is done in order that greater efficacy may be given to them.”
“Greater efficacy” according to what standard?
– Not the perennial canonical and ascetical tradition.
– Not the harsh, supernatural realism of penance, enclosure, separation from the world.
– But the undefined criterion hidden earlier: “*quae haec postulat aetas*” – “what this age demands.”
This is modernist technique:
– Never state doctrine outright.
– Introduce a sliding phrase (needs of the times, pastoral needs, signs of the times).
– Wrap it with Catholic-sounding cautions so no precise heresy can be pinned on a single line, while the practical effect is revolutionary.
Pius X in Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili sane exitu unmasks precisely this methodology: doctrines and structures are allegedly preserved “in principle,” but their meaning, application, and internal configuration are silently transformed in the name of life, history, and adaptation. The allocution is a textbook of this method.
Theological Peril: Exalting Adaptation over Immutable Asceticism
John XXIII pretends to guard against secularization:
“Liquet autem id minime ita fieri debere, ut leges huiusmodi ad saeculi fluxas et inanes rationes fiectantur, sed ut saeculum, id est ‘vetus homo’, facilius possit ad sanctimoniam adipiscendam adduci.”
English: “It is clear that this must by no means be done in such a way that such laws are bent to the fickle and vain ways of the world, but so that the world, that is, the ‘old man,’ may more easily be led to attain holiness.”
Superficially orthodox. But:
– He has already accepted that the Rule is to be recast in view of “this age.”
– He gives no objective criteria (Council of Trent, prior constitutions, papal decrees, canon law) as boundaries.
– He never once explicitly invokes the central aim of religious life as taught consistently before: flight from the world, death to self, public witness of the rights of God and Christ the King against secularism.
Compare how pre-1958 teaching speaks:
– Religious are to be a constant contradiction to the world, not “more accessible” through diminished austerity.
– Rules are tested by their conformity to the Cross, not to psychological comfort or sociological “efficacy.”
When John XXIII celebrates “greater efficiency” and speaks of harshness of the code mainly in terms of peeling a “hard shell” to find “sweet fruit,” the direction is clear: the coming decades of devastation to religious life (abandonment of habits, cloister, common prayer, strong penances) are the coherent unfolding of this principle.
The allocution is not neutral; it is programmatic. It supplies theological cover for the dilution of religious observance under a false conscience of pastoral usefulness.
Replacing the Supernatural Combat with Conciliar Optimism
The Redemptorists’ specific charism, in Catholic doctrine, is:
– Preaching missions with doctrinal clarity.
– Terrifying sinners with the reality of hell.
– Leading souls to confession, contrition, and amendment.
– Defending moral theology against laxism while avoiding rigorist deviations.
The allocution reduces this to a generic, horizontalized encouragement:
“Congregationis vestrae est sacris missionibus populum ad impensiorem vitam christianam accendere; quod munus, e S. Alfonsi sententia, illius tam proprium est, ut, eo ablato, Institutum ipsam causam, cur exstet, amittat.”
There is no mention of:
– The horror of mortal sin.
– The reality of eternal damnation.
– The necessity of the state of grace and sacramental confession.
– The uncompromising preaching of Catholic dogma against error.
– The kingship of Christ over societies, condemned liberalism, or the war of Freemasonry against the Church (unmasked by Pius IX).
Everything is washed into a soft “impensior vita christiana.” The silence is thunderous.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is not a minor stylistic choice. Silence about the last ends, about judgment, about hell, about submission of nations to Christ the King, in an address to preachers of missions, is itself a sign of apostasy. Pius XI’s Quas primas insists that public denial of Christ’s rights and the secularization of law is the root of modern misery. John XXIII, speaking in 1963, in the midst of this apostasy, says nothing of it; he speaks as if the central challenge is organizational adaptation and gentle encouragement.
This naturalistic, optimistic void is characteristic of the conciliar sect: evil is structural, pastoral, psychological—but never heresy; never rebellion against divine law; never the revolt of liberalism and masonry so powerfully condemned by the true popes.
Vatican II as the Hidden Dogma: Total Submission Demanded
The most revealing moment comes when John XXIII fastens the Redemptorists’ identity to his Council:
“Hic denique coetus vester peculiaris eo tempore celebratur, quo amplissimus et universalis Coetus coactus est, Concilium dicimus Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum. Ut filios Ecclesiae, ex instituto a maioribus recepto, Petrianae Cathedrae penitus deditos, vos omnes universos rogamus, ut, enixas preces ad Deum fundendo et voluntarios cruciatus suscipiendo, divina auxilia tanti momenti Conventui impetrare studeatis.”
English: “This special gathering of yours is held at the time when a very large and universal assembly has been convened, we mean the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. As sons of the Church, thoroughly dedicated to the Chair of Peter according to the institution received from your elders, we ask all of you to strive, by earnest prayers to God and by voluntary sufferings, to obtain divine help for this assembly of such great importance.”
Here the mask drops:
– The Redemptorists’ fidelity to Saint Alphonsus and to their Rule is subordinated to fidelity to Vatican II.
– The Council is not presented as subject to tradition, but as the privileged event demanding prayers and sacrifices to bear fruit.
This is the inversion condemned in substance by previous magisterial teaching:
– The Magisterium exists to guard the deposit, not to create “a new springtime.”
– No council can legitimate doctrines previously condemned (religious liberty as in Dignitatis Humanae; false ecumenism; collegiality undermining papal and episcopal authority; all of which will be promulgated by the same conciliar establishment).
By demanding spiritual support for Vatican II from a congregation founded to preach repentance and defend clear moral theology, John XXIII tacitly binds their future identity to the conciliar program. And history confirms:
– Post-conciliar Redemptorists widely abandoned traditional missions, embraced lax moral teaching, aligned with ecumenism and human rights rhetoric.
– This address is one of the rhetorical mechanisms that made that betrayal appear as obedience.
The allocution thus functions as an early link in the chain enslaving religious orders to the conciliar revolution.
Neglect of the Battle Against Modernism and Freemasonry
Pre-1958 magisterial teaching—drawn from documents the conciliar sect claims to revere yet systematically ignores—clearly identifies:
– Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi).
– The sects commonly called masonic as instigators of war against the Church (Pius IX, Leo XIII).
– Religious indifferentism, liberty of cult, and secular autonomy as grave errors condemned in the Syllabus.
In this allocution:
– No warning against Modernism.
– No admonition against collaboration with secular ideologies.
– No remembrance of anti-modernist oaths, condemnations, or doctrinal clarity required of preachers of missions.
– No reference to the duty of religious to oppose liberal states that usurp rights of the Church, contrary to propositions condemned by Pius IX.
Instead we hear a gentle humanism: harmony, mutual charity, community joy, efficient adaptation.
Tacere de capitalibus veritatibus est prodere eas (to keep silence about capital truths is to betray them). In the face of cascading modernist infiltration, a true pope, faithful to Saint Pius X, would have:
– Reaffirmed the anti-modernist condemnations.
– Commanded religious to guard doctrine more strictly.
– Explicitly subordinated any revision of constitutions to pre-existing dogmatic and disciplinary decrees.
John XXIII does none of this. His omissions are not accidental; they are coherent with his public hostility to “prophets of doom” and his programmatic optimism. This is theological bankruptcy: a spiritual father who refuses to name the wolves, while inviting the sheep to rearrange the fence in accordance with the “needs” of the surrounding forest.
From Catholic Rule to Pastoral Plasticity: The Trap of “Greater Efficacy”
John XXIII praises the Rule:
“Est praeterea Regula quasi thesaurus, in quo mens et pietas S. Alfonsi… sunt reconditae… De fructu dulci, qui in harum legum codice continetur, mentionem fecimus…”
English: “Moreover, the Rule is as it were a treasure in which the mind and piety of Saint Alphonsus are stored… We have spoken of the sweet fruit contained in this code of laws…”
Yet within the same discourse he legitimizes its “revision” for efficacy and adaptation. This dialectic is the conciliar method:
– Publicly praise the tradition as “treasure.”
– Simultaneously relativize it as historically conditioned, needing updating.
– Entrust the updating to superiors already imbued with modern theological formation.
Pre-1958 doctrine on religious life insists:
– Vows and rules bind under grave obligation.
– Stability and continuity of rule are safeguards of sanctity.
– Changes must be rare, cautious, and judged by criteria of greater asceticism and separation from the world, not accommodation to it.
Here, however:
– “Greater effectiveness” is left undefined.
– The standard is implicitly pastoral success, numbers, relevance—naturalistic metrics.
This seeded the later devastation:
– Relaxation of fasting, penances, enclosure.
– Psychologization of obedience.
– Political and social activism replacing missions and catechesis.
Thus, under a veil of reverence, the allocution opens the door to a practical repudiation of Saint Alphonsus’ rigorous, supernatural vision.
Silencing Judgment, Sin, and the State of Grace: The Most Telling Omission
Measured by the directives of the integral Catholic faith, the gravest accusation against this allocution is what it does not say:
– No explicit exhortation to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy against new theologies.
– No mention of the necessity of the state of grace for religious.
– No reference to the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell.
– No explicit defense of the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory, in an era already preparing its liturgical deformation.
– No call to wage war against modernism, despite the direct duty imposed by Saint Pius X’s anti-modernist campaign.
Religious life is not a neutral lifestyle. It exists to:
– Offer public worship to God.
– Expiate sins.
– Intercede for the Church.
– Preach uncompromisingly.
The rhetorical atmosphere of this speech is horizontal, managerial, therapeutic. It could have been authored by any polished functionary of the conciliar regime: all positivity, no battle. This betrays the pre-1958 judgments which consistently present Christian life as a warfare: Militia est vita hominis super terram (“the life of man upon earth is warfare”).
Where the supernatural combat disappears from the highest exhortations, a paramasonic structure of humanistic spirituality silently takes its place.
Symptom of the Conciliar Sect: Democratized Law, Elastic Doctrine, and Cult of the Age
This allocution, when read in light of later conciliar and post-conciliar outcomes, appears as a precise symptomatic node of a larger pathology:
1. Doctrinal Elasticity:
– The insistence on “prudently” adapting rules without clear doctrinal boundaries anticipates the entire hermeneutic whereby dogmas will be “pastorally reinterpreted.”
– The same logic underlies the acceptance of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality against prior condemnations.
2. Democratization and Horizontalism:
– By exalting the General Chapter’s role in reworking constitutions based on “needs of the times,” juridical authority is subtly horizontalized.
– This is the seed of later experiments where religious communities vote themselves out of Catholic identity in the name of aggiornamento.
3. Cult of the Age:
– “Haec aetas” becomes a quasi-revelatory reference point.
– Instead of judging the world by Christ’s reign, the conciliar establishment listens to the world as if grace arises from history itself, the very neo-modernist thesis condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
4. Fusion of Piety and Subversion:
– Invocations of Saint Alphonsus and Marian devotion are weaponized to ease acceptance of structural changes he would have abhorred.
– This is typical of the conciliar sect: use saints and devotions as decorative façades while gutting their doctrinal content.
Under an integral Catholic criterion, such a text cannot be read as a benign papal exhortation abused by later misinterpretation; it is itself an organic expression of the new theology, dressed in traditional vestments.
True Catholic Criteria versus Conciliar Pragmatism
Measured strictly by pre-1958 authority:
– The purpose of councils and revisions is to defend and clarify doctrine, not to dilute it.
– Religious rules are instruments of sanctification; their “efficiency” is gauged by fidelity to the Cross, not by sociological outcomes.
– The age’s demands are to be corrected by the Church, not enthroned as sources of criteria.
– Any speech encouraging adaptation without clear subordination to prior magisterial condemnations of liberalism and modernism is, at best, gravely imprudent, at worst, a vehicle of doctrinal sabotage.
This allocution:
– Elevates Vatican II as a salvific event needing sacrifices, without recalling that all authority is bound to the unchanging deposit.
– Legitimizes a process of constitutional mutation in religious life based on “this age,” rather than on the stable standards of the Church.
– Omits every warning that would arm Redemptorists against the very catastrophe that followed.
Therefore, from the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, this text is not a harmless historical curiosity. It is emblematic of the spiritual and theological bankruptcy of the conciliar establishment:
It dresses the cult of the age in the language of fidelity, disarms religious from their ascetical and doctrinal weapons, and subordinates an illustrious congregation to the program of Vatican II, the matrix of the ongoing apostasy.
Source:
Ad moderatores et sodales Congregationis Ss.mi Redemptoris, qui Generali religiosae suae communitatis Consilio Romae interfuerunt, d. 8 m. Februarii a. 1963, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025