The Latin allocution of John XXIII of 14 December 1959, delivered in secret consistory, announces the creation of new “cardinals,” surveys the first year of his reign, exalts international visits and sentimental devotions, laments social and geopolitical problems, and presents with great optimism the coming Roman Synod and the planned “Ecumenical Council” as instruments for the renewal and “youth” of the Church. It is precisely in this apparently serene, pastoral discourse that one perceives the programmatic shift from the Catholic Church of Christ the King to a conciliatory humanistic association preparing the conciliar revolution.
Programmatic Humanism in the First Consistory of John XXIII
Substitution of the Catholic Church with a Universalist Human Fraternity
On the factual level, this allocution is not an innocuous ceremonial text. It is the early self-revelation of the man who inaugurated the line of usurpers and the conciliar upheaval.
Key elements, in summary:
– He convenes the consistory to add new “cardinals,” with clear geopolitical distribution, to show that the “Catholic Church” pertains to all peoples, emphasizing breadth and inclusivity rather than doctrinal unity.
– He delights in mass pilgrimages, emotional manifestations of attachment to his person, and liturgical spectacles; he glorifies public pageants such as processions and veneration of relics, as if quantity and enthusiasm were guarantees of supernatural fidelity.
– He gives notable prominence to visits of heads of state (including the president of the United States) and praises their “sincere will” for peace and prosperity.
– He deplores natural disasters, economic misery, migration and refugees, and the lack of religious liberty in certain regimes, especially Communist-ruled territories and China.
– He announces with unrestrained optimism:
– the Roman Synod,
– and above all the preparation of an Ecumenical Council, which “will” bring augmentation of spiritual life, new growth of the profession of the faith, and moral renewal.
– He concludes by hymning the “youth” of the Church and immediately proceeds to the creation and publication of new “cardinals,” including figures who will become principal architects of the conciliar and post-conciliar mutation (e.g. Augustin Bea).
Already here, every decisive accent is shifted:
from the supernatural Kingship of Christ to the myth of a “young,” worldly-adapted church;
from the primacy of dogma and the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* to sentimental religiosity, diplomatic recognition, and social concerns;
from vigilance against error to preparation of a “council” deliberately opened to the world that Pius IX and St. Pius X had unmasked as imbued with liberalism and Modernism.
Sentimental Devotions as Smoke Screen for Doctrinal Disarmament
The text is drenched in sugary devotional language: pilgrimages, songs, relics, hours of adoration, references to St. Pius X, St. John Mary Vianney, Marian congresses. This is not accidental decor; it is psychological preparation.
– John XXIII enumerates with complacency:
– crowds visiting Rome to “see the successor of Peter” and express to him “faith, ardent love, and obedience”;
– solemn acts around relics of St. Pius X and John Bosco;
– Eucharistic processions and hours of adoration;
– the missionary enthusiasm of numerous religious leaving for distant lands.
All of this, taken materially, could be Catholic. But in this allocution:
– These elements are not ordered openly and firmly to the defense of the Catholic faith against error, as pre-1958 popes consistently did.
– There is no doctrinal edge, no forceful reiteration of the exclusive truth of the Catholic religion, no explicit condemnation of contemporary heresies afflicting theology, Scripture, liturgy, and morals.
– The saints are instrumentalized as decorative legitimization for an entirely different agenda.
Compare:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that the calamities of the world come because “very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their lives” and solemnly commands the public social reign of Christ the King as the only remedy.
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors* anathematizes religious indifferentism, liberalism, and the attempt to subject the Church to the modern state.
– St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici gregis* and *Lamentabili sane* denounces Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies, and he binds consciences under pain of excommunication to reject its propositions.
John XXIII, instead:
– Floods the discourse with affective language, but:
– does not name Modernism;
– does not invoke the binding force of the *Syllabus*;
– does not recall *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili* as living norms to be applied;
– does not warn pilgrims or clergy about doctrinal perils inside the Church’s visible structures.
This silence is not neutral. It is a calculated omission. Given the context of the 1950s—pervasive neo-modernist theology, biblical criticism, liturgical subversion, democratic and ecumenical contamination—such silence equals connivance.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent is perceived to consent). The allocution uses devotions as incense to obscure the demolition of doctrinal vigilance. That is the psychological method of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X: keeping words and gestures of piety while gutting their doctrinal content.
Diplomatic Naturalism and the Cult of “Peace” without Christ the King
A crucial passage: John XXIII highlights visits of “supreme rulers of nations,” especially the president of the United States, praising their desire for peace and prosperity. He then adds only the faint formula that true, lasting peace must not reject “the rights of God.”
But:
– There is no clear proclamation that peace is only possible under the public Kingship of Christ and subjection of states to His law, as Pius XI taught in *Quas Primas*: peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ, or no peace.
– There is no public doctrinal reminder that non-Catholic states, liberal regimes, and masonic systems are objectively in rebellion against Christ and against His Church, as pre-conciliar Magisterium constantly reaffirmed (e.g. condemnations of Freemasonry, laicism, separation of Church and state).
– The allocution instead radiates satisfaction at being recognized as a moral interlocutor among others within the international order.
This is the embryo of conciliar naturalism:
– “Peace,” “prosperity,” “cooperation between peoples” are advanced as quasi-autonomous goods, detached from explicit and exclusive submission to the Catholic faith.
– The language matches what Pius IX condemned: the idea that the Church should reconcile with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization understood as religiously neutral (Syllabus, proposition 80).
Thus, under the veil of pious formulas, we see:
The displacement of the Catholic doctrine of Christ’s social Kingship by a vague theistic humanism made palatable to secular powers.
Social Misery: Diagnosed Materially, Not Theologically
John XXIII mentions:
– injustices in distribution of wealth,
– obstacles raised by egoism,
– underdeveloped peoples needing assistance,
– refugees, exiles, and other afflictions.
He insists that remedies are to be found not in “fallacious doctrines” or anti-natalist methods, but in better distribution of temporal goods according to “God’s command and justice.”
While this retains some correct moral intuition, the approach is characteristically horizontal:
– The concrete reference point is economic and humanitarian; there is no robust articulation of:
– the necessity of states recognizing the Catholic Church as the one true Church;
– the obligation of rulers and institutions to submit their laws to the natural and divine law guarded by the Church;
– the immediate connection between social dissolution and doctrinal apostasy, liberal constitutions, secular schools, and rejection of the Church’s rights (all condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII).
– There is no warning that social injustice flows from sin, heresy, and organized rebellion (especially masonic) against the Church.
Here appears the conciliar mentality in germ:
– structural and humanitarian discourse,
– minimal supernatural analysis,
– no direct attack on the ideological roots of the catastrophe: liberalism, socialism, laicism, Modernism.
Silence again speaks. The allocution does not recall the solemn condemnations of the secret societies whose influence Pius IX explicitly identified as the engine of persecution and doctrinal subversion. Instead, John XXIII chooses a conciliatory diplomatic tone – the antithesis of pre-1958 clarity.
Selective Compassion and the Liberal Concept of “Religious Freedom”
The text laments especially those Catholics who cannot “freely and publicly” profess and live their religion; he mentions nations where fundamental rights of liberty and conscience are trampled, with special emphasis on China.
On the surface, this seems orthodox. Yet:
– The language merges Catholic claims with generic “human rights” rhetoric.
– It does not reaffirm that:
– error has no rights,
– the only true right is the liberty of the true Church,
– and all “religious liberty” contrary to the kingship of Christ and the exclusive claim of the Catholic Church is condemned (Syllabus, propositions 15, 77-79).
– It is a one-sided complaint against persecuting regimes (Communism) without at the same time condemning liberal and Masonic regimes that, under a mask of “freedom,” structurally exclude the true religion from public law.
This anticipates the doctrinal perversion which will explode at Vatican II’s declaration on “religious freedom,” overturning the constant teaching of the Magisterium. The allocution’s omissions are the ideological preparation: persecution is denounced not in terms of insult to the rights of Christ and His Church, but in terms consonant with the language of secular liberalism.
Modernist Praise of “Youthful” Church against Immutable Tradition
One of the most revealing lines: John XXIII, after describing preparations for the Roman Synod and the future Council, exclaims that all this proves that the Church “still flourishes with youth.”
This formula is not innocent.
The integral Catholic faith teaches:
– The Church is indefectible and holy, not because she adapts herself to each age according to the spirit of the world, but because she remains unchangeably faithful to the deposit of faith entrusted to her once and for all.
– St. Pius X condemned as Modernism the notion that dogma and ecclesial institutions must evolve to keep pace with the needs of modern consciousness, branding it as corruption of doctrine.
John XXIII:
– links the idea of “youth” precisely with:
– new synodal and conciliar initiatives,
– opening to new “developments,”
– a programmatic optimism toward the world and its expectations.
In effect, he signals a shift from:
– *Ecclesia semper eadem* (the Church always the same),
to
– *Ecclesia iuvenescens* according to the modern age.
This is the psychology of doctrinal evolution:
– the old is quietly presented as incomplete,
– the new procedures (synod, new council) are implicitly credited with bringing a fuller, more adapted form of the Church.
Such rhetoric is in open tension with the condemnations crystallized in *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi*, which explicitly reject the thesis that dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy are results of historical evolution of Christian consciousness.
The allocution’s praise of “youth” and “newness” in structural and pastoral terms, severed from strong reiteration of immutable doctrine, reveals the Modernist method:
subtiliter mutare sensum dum verba retinentur (subtly changing the meaning while words are retained).
The “Ecumenical Council” Announced as Engine of Mutation
Central pivot of the allocution: preparation of an “Oecumenical Council” is well advanced; he predicts that when it takes place it will:
– increase the spiritual life of the Church,
– give the profession of Catholic faith new growth,
– cause morals to flourish anew.
Here the mask drops.
Measured against pre-1958 doctrine:
– An ecumenical council is not summoned to satisfy the world or to cultivate optimism, but to:
– define dogma,
– condemn errors,
– correct abuses,
– defend the flock against wolves.
– The Church’s constitution and faith are already complete in essence; councils explicate and defend, they do not “modernize” or reconcile with condemned errors.
Yet in this speech:
– No mention of condemnations is made.
– No principal errors to be anathematized are enumerated.
– Everything is framed in conciliatory, pastoral, “aggiornamento” terms, predisposing minds to a council that will:
– avoid anathemas,
– lift previous condemnations in practice,
– embrace ecumenism,
– accept religious liberty,
– transplant anthropocentric language into the heart of what will become the conciliar sect.
Thus the allocution is a programmatic manifesto: the council is pre-announced not as a fortress against liberal and modernist errors but as a friendly bridge to the modern world – i.e. the direct negation of Pius IX’s Syllabus and St. Pius X’s anathemas.
The irony—and duplicity—is grave:
– John XXIII claims continuity with predecessors while removing the teeth from their doctrinal arsenal.
– He presents the forthcoming council as a serene flowering, not as a necessary defense.
– In reality, that council, convoked by a usurper, becomes the constitutive act of the neo-church, the “abomination of desolation” occupying holy places with a counterfeit magisterium.
Cardinal-Makers of the Conciliar Revolution: Augustin Bea and Company
The second part of the allocution publishes the names of eight new “cardinals,” including:
– Augustin Bea,
– Arcadio Larraona,
– Albert Gregory Meyer,
– et al.
From the perspective of pre-1958 doctrine and the historical record (fully verifiable from reliable sources: AAS, council documentation, public writings):
– Augustin Bea will become a principal architect of:
– the conciliar “ecumenism” that systematically contradicts the Syllabus of Pius IX,
– the betrayal of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus in practice,
– the dangerous opening to Judaism and Protestantism devoid of calls to conversion.
– Several other names correspond to figures who supported or implemented:
– liturgical corruption that culminated in the destruction of the Roman rite and its replacement with assemblies that eclipse the *Most Holy Sacrifice*;
– doctrinal dilution in dialogue with Protestants and schismatics;
– the penetration of liberal and modernist principles into the official discourse of the conciliar sect.
John XXIII’s praise of their “virtue, wisdom, and prudence in governing affairs” becomes, in hindsight, the self-indictment of his design:
He constructs, by deliberate selection, a college capable of rubber-stamping and executing the conciliar revolution, ensuring succession within the paramasonic structure that will hold the Vatican.
Measured by traditional canonical and theological principles (Bellarmine, Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, the teaching summarized in the Defense of Sedevacantism file and in canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code):
– A manifest promoter of doctrines and policies long condemned by the Church cannot be regarded as a legitimate pope.
– The creation of a college formed to propagate such novelties shows an intention not to guard but to subvert the deposit of faith.
– *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV affirms that the promotion of a heretic to the papacy or to ecclesiastical dignities is null and void.
This consistory is therefore not a moment of Catholic vitality, but a foundational act of the new anti-hierarchical order:
– new “cardinals” for the new religion.
Linguistic Tactics: Sentimentalism, Vagueness, and Diplomatic Fog
The theological bankruptcy of the allocution is mirrored in its rhetoric.
Characteristic features:
– Overflowing sentimentalism:
– “great joy,” “paternal heart,” “dearest sons,” “sweetest homeland,” “pious crowds.”
– Vague generalities:
– constant references to “peace,” “prosperity,” “fraternal help,” without identifying enemies of the faith by name or doctrine.
– Absence of precise dogmatic formulations:
– the speech never reaffirms, in sharp pre-conciliar language, exclusive Catholic claims against Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, Freemasonry, socialism, liberalism.
– Bureaucratic optimism:
– synods and councils are presented as technical upgrades that will almost automatically generate “renewal,” with no warning against heterodox agendas.
This style contrasts violently with:
– Pius IX’s sharp condemnations in the Syllabus;
– Leo XIII’s doctrinal clarity on Church and state;
– St. Pius X’s merciless exposure of Modernism.
The new language is the instrument of new doctrine:
lex orandi, lex credendi, lex loquendi – change the way you speak, and you change what is believed.
Omissions that Condemn: Silence on Modernism, Freemasonry, and Internal Apostasy
The most devastating accusation against this allocution is what it does not say.
In 1959:
– Modernist exegesis, theology, and liturgical agitation were rampant in Europe and North America.
– The infiltration and influence of masonic and para-masonic currents were evident in politics and in churchly milieus.
– Previous popes had explicitly named, condemned, and sanctioned these tendencies.
Yet John XXIII:
– does not mention Modernism;
– does not recall *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili*;
– does not mention the masonic sects that Pius IX called the “synagogue of Satan” and primary enemies of the Church;
– does not warn against liberal, democratic idols condemned by the Syllabus;
– does not expose the internal fifth column in seminaries, universities, and chanceries.
Instead, he:
– embraces a tone of universal benevolence;
– praises rulers, societies, and clergy without discriminating between fidelity and complicity with error;
– uses sentimental piety as a veil over the refusal to exercise the office of vigilant guardian.
Given the data of integral pre-1958 doctrine, this is not mere negligence; it is the methodical abandonment of the papal duty.
From Christocentric Hierarchy to Conciliar Collegiality
The allocution repeatedly underscores:
– the wide international composition of the “cardinalate”;
– the collaboration of the “vast college” in governance;
– future synodal and conciliar structures as privileged ways forward.
Subtext:
– Enhancement of a quasi-parliamentary image of governance;
– Psychological preparation for “collegiality,” later doctrinally deformed into practical democratization and depersonalization of authority.
Traditional Catholic doctrine:
– The Roman Pontiff, as successor of Peter, holds full, supreme, and immediate jurisdiction over the universal Church.
– Cardinals, bishops, councils assist; they do not dilute or condition this authority.
– Any appearance of transforming the Church into a permanent assembly or process is foreign to her divine constitution.
In John XXIII’s presentation:
– The corpus of “cardinals” from all nations and the future council become signs of a horizontally conceived “catholicity”:
– no longer grounded above all in unity of faith and submission to Roman dogmatic authority,
– but in representation, dialogue, and engagement with humanity.
This is the embryonic “synodal” ideology of the neo-church:
– a parody of ecclesiology,
– where structures and processes overshadow the immutable depositum fidei.
Integral Catholic Judgment: Theological and Spiritual Bankruptcy Revealed
Examined under the light of unchangeable Catholic teaching before 1958, this allocution must be judged with sobriety and without illusions.
1. On doctrine:
– It contains no explicit formal heresy in isolated phrases;
– But it systematically omits dogmatic clarity where prior magisterium demanded it;
– It anticipates and endorses, at the level of mentality, the precisely condemned tendencies: reconciliation with liberalism, optimism toward error, doctrinal evolutionism.
2. On pastoral governance:
– It replaces vigilance with sentiment.
– It replaces condemnation of falsehood with diplomatic courtesy.
– It prefers human approval and international prestige over forthright proclamation of Christ’s Kingship.
3. On ecclesial structures:
– It uses the consistory to install key agents of conciliar subversion.
– It launches the project of a “council” aligned with Modernist aspirations, not with the spirit of Trent or Vatican I.
4. On spiritual message:
– It speaks abundantly of joys, meetings, visits, and ceremonies;
– It barely mentions:
– sin,
– need for penance,
– danger of heresy,
– judgment,
– hell,
– the absolute necessity of state and society submitting to the law of Christ the King.
– This silence—precisely where previous popes raised their voice—is spiritual betrayal.
In sum:
This 1959 allocution is not a harmless ceremonial text but an inaugural monument of the conciliar sect’s mentality: sweet in tone, devout in appearance, yet poisoned in its omissions, its humanistic optimism, and its preparation of a council and a hierarchy destined to dethrone the social reign of Christ and dissolve the Roman Catholic Church into a paramasonic “Church of the New Advent.”
Against this program, the only Catholic response—according to the immutable Magisterium of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI—is:
– to hold fast to the pre-1958 doctrine in its integral sense;
– to reject any “council,” “magisterium,” or structure that contradicts it in fact or in method;
– to discern in such allocutions not pastoral benignity, but the unveiling of a project of apostasy masked by sentimental piety and ceremonial splendour.
Source:
Consistorium secretum, Allocutio SS.mi Domini Nostri, die XIV mensis Decembris anno 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025