In this allocution of 26 May 1962, John XXIII addresses participants of an international meeting on vocations to the priesthood, praising their efforts, insisting on prayer for holy and industrious clergy, and exhorting to form seminarians through good family, parish, and ecclesiastical examples. He commends discipline, piety, chastity, and pastoral dedication, proposing his own childhood attraction to the priesthood as an edifying anecdote, and concludes with encouragement and a “Vicarius Christi” tone, blessing the work of fostering priestly vocations.
This apparently pious discourse, issuing from the architect of the conciliar revolution, is a paradigmatic mask of the new religion: a sentimental, selectively supernatural varnish concealing the planned demolition of the Catholic priesthood and the usurpation of Christ’s Kingship by a paramasonic, anthropocentric cult.
Allocution as Mask: Pious Vocabulary in the Service of Revolution
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this speech must be read not as an isolated text, but as one stone in the foundation of the conciliar sect erected by John XXIII. Its rhetoric about “holy,” “wise,” and “active” priests is deployed precisely as the machinery is being prepared to dissolve the Catholic priesthood through a new ecclesiology, a new liturgy, and a new anthropology.
Several fundamental facts, verifiable in the historical record, frame this allocution:
– John XXIII convoked Vatican II (Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, 1961.12.25), inaugurating the doctrinal novelties later condemned in substance by the pre-conciliar Magisterium: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality improperly understood, and the relativization of the exclusive rights of Christ the King.
– Under his authority, the preparatory schemas faithfully expressing traditional doctrine were methodically sidelined, opening the way to Modernist and liberal currents.
– This allocution occurs in May 1962, in direct proximity to the Council’s opening, while the same regime would soon produce the deformation of seminaries, the new rites of ordination (1968), and the collapse of vocations.
Thus the praise of priestly sanctity here functions analogously to the rhetoric unmasked by St. Pius X in Pascendi: words retained, substance transformed. The speech must be dissected on several levels.
Softened Language Replacing Militant Catholic Supernaturalism
The allocution uses apparently edifying expressions: prayer for vocations, sanctity, the example of priests, the family and parish nourishing vocations, the dangers of activism. Yet its tone and omissions expose the new orientation.
1. Linguistic anesthesia:
– The vocabulary is affective, paternal, optimistic: “spectacle… impellat ad spem bonam,” “iucunda commemorare,” encouragements “ne animus vester concidat.”
– There is deliberate avoidance of any robust doctrinal clarity about the crisis of faith, the snares of heresy, or the infiltration of enemies within the Church—precisely what St. Pius X and Pius XI denounced with virile precision.
Compare:
– St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu unmasks Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” commanding its extirpation, not gentle coexistence.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas proclaims that “the plague” of laicism and apostasy is the removal of Christ and His law from public and private life, insisting on the public Kingship of Christ as the only remedy.
In this allocution, there is no echo of the royal rights of Our Lord over nations and seminaries, no denunciation of the ideological and masonic forces Pius IX explicitly exposed in the Syllabus and in his condemnations of the sects. Such silence is not neutral; it is complicity.
2. Euphemistic treatment of difficulties:
John XXIII admits “non exiguae difficultates,” but immediately neutralizes them: no “plorandum,” no “inanes querimonias,” only optimism and trust. On the surface this sounds virtuous; in context, it prepares acceptance of structural subversion:
– The real danger in 1962 is not discouragement; it is the triumph of Modernist theology in seminaries, the relativization of scholastic doctrine, and the planned recasting of the priest from sacrificing mediator to social functionary.
By refusing to name the doctrinal enemy, the allocution in practice disarms those responsible for vocations.
Naturalistic Reduction of the Priestly Ideal
John XXIII repeatedly urges prayer for “sanctos… sapientiae plenos atque actuosos” priests. This phrase is revealing.
1. “Holy, wise, and active” severed from sacrificial identity:
While he briefly lists essential priestly duties—offering the Sacrifice, preaching, administering sacraments, assisting the dying, teaching the ignorant—he:
– Avoids any explicit affirmation of the priest as alter Christus uniquely ordained to offer the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead.
– Does not once allude to the Most Holy Sacrifice in its propitiatory character as solemnly taught by Trent (Session XXII, can. 3: whoever says the Mass is only a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving is anathema).
– Does not confront the already active liturgical agitation, instead speaking in generic, irenic terms about “external works” and warning against activism only in a mild, psychological register.
Thus the priest is praised more as a balanced, disciplined, industrious functionary than as a sacrificial victim configured to Calvary. This is entirely consonant with the later post-conciliar concept of the “presider,” community animator, and bureaucrat of dialogue.
2. Psychologized sanctity:
He warns against “corrupti huius saeculi afflatus,” but only in vague moral terms, and against small “less right impulses,” compared to weeds. Nowhere:
– The explicit mention of grave doctrinal perversion.
– The demand for unflinching rejection of Modernist literature condemned by St. Pius X’s Lamentabili.
– The insistence that seminaries must be bastions of Thomistic doctrine, as ordered by Leo XIII (Aeterni Patris) and reaffirmed by Pius X and Pius XI.
The priestly holiness described here can be read as moralistic and sentimental, compatible with the future conciliar sect: externally devout, interiorly emptied of dogmatic militancy.
Strategic Silence on Modernism, Masonic Subversion, and Public Kingship of Christ
The most damning element of this allocution is not what it states, but what it silences at a decisive historical hour.
1. Silence on Modernism, despite solemn condemnations:
– St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane exitu imposed grave obligations on bishops and seminary rectors to extirpate Modernist doctrines, to vigilantly censor books, to remove infected professors, to form clergy in scholastic philosophy and theology.
– The allocution to vocation formators in 1962, given by the very man responsible for re-opening the doors to those errors, omits any reference to these binding norms and condemnations.
This omission is not accidental. It facilitates exactly what Pius X foresaw: Modernists remaining inside, changing language, infiltrating seminaries, and from within re-shaping doctrine in an evolutionary sense. John XXIII’s gentle, generalized exhortations function as a smokescreen behind which the doctrinal revolution advances.
2. Silence on the Syllabus and Christ the King:
Pius IX’s Syllabus and Pius XI’s Quas Primas demand:
– Rejection of religious indifferentism and the “civil liberty of all forms of worship” as leading to the “pest of indifferentism.”
– Affirmation that states and societies owe public worship and obedience to Christ the King; separation of Church and State is condemned.
In 1962, the enemies of Christ’s Kingship were actively working for the “religious liberty” that would be proclaimed by the conciliar sect at Vatican II. Addressing those who form future priests, John XXIII:
– Does not remind them that they must be uncompromising heralds of the exclusive rights of Christ the King in public life.
– Does not arm them against liberalism and human rights ideology condemned by pre-1958 popes.
– Prepares, by omission, docile instruments who will accept the conciliar betrayal of Christ’s social Kingship.
Silence here is complicity: qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent).
3. Silence on the “enemies within”:
St. Pius X warned that “the enemies of the Church are found in her very bosom.” Pius IX denounced the masonic sects as the “synagogue of Satan” waging organized war on the Church.
John XXIII, speaking to those responsible for discerning vocations:
– Says nothing about screening out doctrinal deviants, liberals, and Modernists.
– Says nothing about rooting seminary life in anti-liberal, anti-modernist papal teaching.
– Creates a climate where anyone calling out these enemies would be branded negative or “plorans.”
Thus the allocution is not simply incomplete; it is structured to disable resistance.
Self-Referential Anecdote and the Cult of Personality
John XXIII introduces his own vocation story:
He recounts that no one explicitly pushed him; the piety of his family and priests impressed him, so from youth he held a “celsissima opinio” of the priesthood.
On the surface this is harmless. Yet in context:
– He presents himself implicitly as model: his vocation as spontaneous, almost naturally arising from a warm Catholic environment.
– He omits any strong emphasis on rigorous doctrinal formation, ecclesiastical discipline, or spiritual warfare as essential to priestly identity.
This sentimental autobiographism foreshadows the cult of conciliar personalities: the authority of subjective experience and “pastoral style” over the objective doctrinal continuity guarded by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Moreover, he calls himself “humilis Vicarius Christi” within the allocution—language which, from an antipope heading the conciliar revolution, becomes an usurpation of a title inseparably bound to guarding the deposit of faith, not altering it.
Instrumentalizing Vocations to Serve the Conciliar Program
A key line reveals the underlying strategy: the meeting is convened across all nations to address questions affecting priestly vocations “ex quibus prospera Ecclesiae incrementa pendent quam maxime” — upon which depend the prosperous growth of the Church.
But what “Church” and what “growth” are in fact intended in 1962?
1. Shift in ecclesial self-understanding:
– The conciliar sect will soon redefine the Church’s relation to false religions, soften the dogma of “no salvation outside the Church,” promote the illusion of a broader “People of God,” and adapt to modern “values.”
– Vocations are sought not to reinforce the Church Militant, guardian of dogma and moral law, but to staff a new, humanistic, dialogical organization.
Because the allocution never grounds priestly identity explicitly in:
– The immutable deposit of faith.
– The anti-modernist oath (still in force at that time).
– The obligation to combat error and protect the flock from wolves.
…it channels the generous zeal of youth toward a structure that is already being repurposed. This is spiritual fraud: invoking traditional vocabulary of priestly holiness to draft soldiers for a different army.
2. Misleading focus on psychological optimism:
He warns against fear and “inanes querimonias,” suggesting that lament over the crisis is unhelpful. But the true pastors before 1958 repeatedly sounded the alarm:
– Against liberalism (Gregory XVI, Pius IX).
– Against rationalism, indifferentism, socialism.
– Against Modernism’s infiltration (Pius X).
– Against laicism and the dethronement of Christ (Pius XI).
By dismissing grave concerns as unproductive “complaints,” the allocution delegitimizes precisely the lucid Catholic reaction demanded by previous Magisterium. It encourages a sentimental “hope” detached from the conditions set by God and the Church.
Token Praise of Essential Priestly Duties as Smoke-Screen
Near the end, John XXIII enumerates what he calls the principal duties of the priest:
“altaris Sacrificium digne offerre, verbum Dei nuntiare, Sacramenta ministrare, adesse infirmis praesertim morituris, ignaros fidei erudire; cetera… posthabenda.”
Read superficially, this sounds entirely traditional; in isolation, each element is true. Yet:
1. Lack of doctrinal anchoring:
– He gives no explicit reference to the Council of Trent’s dogmatic teaching on the Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrificial character of the priesthood.
– He does not insist on the dogmatic, objective nature of the “verbum Dei,” nor on the need to teach it according to the perennial Magisterium, rejecting novelties.
Without these anchors, the same phrases can be seamlessly repurposed within the conciliar framework:
– The “Sacrifice” reinterpreted as an assembly meal.
– The “word of God” as ecumenical, experiential theology.
– The “sacraments” as community rites emptied of propitiatory and supernatural clarity.
2. Pre-emptive cover for future deviations:
By having an allocution on record emphasizing apparently orthodox duties just before Vatican II, the conciliar sect can later point back and claim continuity, while in practice introducing:
– A reformed “Mass” that dilutes the sacrificial expression.
– New rites of ordination that obscure sacrificial and sacerdotal character.
– Ecclesiology that destabilizes the notion of the one true Church.
This is precisely the hermeneutical trick: retain certain formulas verbally, while their theological context is altered. St. Pius X warned that Modernists act by “corrupting the very notion” of doctrines while conserving their names.
Symptomatic Fruit of the Conciliar Sect: Vocational Devastation
The historical fruits expose the true value of this allocution.
– After the conciliar revolution, vocations to the priesthood collapsed dramatically in country after country aligned with the neo-church; seminaries emptied, discipline dissolved, doctrinal formation disintegrated.
– Where the integral Catholic faith, the true Mass, and pre-1958 doctrine are held (and where valid orders remain), vocations, while tested by persecution, show resilience and supernatural seriousness.
Therefore:
– The smiling appeals of John XXIII did not produce holy and numerous priests; the conciliar program he initiated sterilized vocations.
– The absence, in this very speech, of warlike anti-modernist clarity is not an incidental defect; it is a structural feature of a paramasonic agenda aiming to neutralize the priesthood as guardian of dogma.
Ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos (you shall know them by their fruits). The fruits of this allocution’s theological milieu are visible, measurable, and catastrophic.
Public Kingship of Christ and the Usurpation of Authority
A final point must be underscored. John XXIII, as the first in the line of usurpers inaugurating the “abomination of desolation” in the holy place, speaks here in the tone of a benevolent ruler of a universal Church, while in fact:
– He sets in motion a Council that will refuse to solemnly reaffirm the condemnation of religious indifferentism and liberalism (cf. Syllabus), and instead advance “religious liberty” in glaring contradiction to Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– He prepares a clergy inclined to servility toward the world, to “aggiornamento,” rather than to fight for the Regnum Christi in public law and institutions, as Pius XI commands in Quas Primas, which teaches that true peace flows only from the public recognition of Christ’s reign.
By calling himself “Vicarius Christi” while facilitating teachings that deny in practice Christ’s royal and exclusive rights, he usurps an office whose essence, as Pius IX and St. Pius X demonstrate, is to resist, not to bless, liberal and masonic modernity.
The result:
– A generation of “priests” formed according to such rhetoric serves the conciliar sect, not the Catholic Church.
– Their “sacraments,” where orders are doubtful or reformed, become at best simulations; their liturgies become horizontal gatherings; their “pastoral” activity furthers the cult of man.
Conclusion: The Allocution as Elegant Camouflage of Apostasy
Every element that appears edifying in this allocution is rendered suspect and inoperative by its context, omissions, and author:
– It speaks of holiness without explicit reference to the anti-modernist struggle binding on every seminary.
– It mentions the Sacrifice without arming against the coming liturgical sabotage.
– It calls for prayer for vocations while preparing, via Vatican II and subsequent reforms, the annihilation of authentic vocations and the dissolution of the Catholic priestly identity.
– It uses gentle optimism to delegitimize lucid denunciation of apostasy and infiltration.
Measured against the immutable doctrine of the Church before 1958—as enshrined in Trent, Vatican I, the Syllabus, Lamentabili, Pascendi, Quas Primas, and the entire anti-liberal, anti-modernist Magisterium—this allocution is not a harmless exhortation, but a polished instrument of transition. It wraps the language of sanctity around a practical refusal to name and fight the doctrinal enemies denounced by true popes, thereby serving the program of the conciliar sect and its paramasonic architects.
Authentic Catholic evaluation must, therefore, strip away the sentimental veil and recognize: beneath the courteous Latin phrases stands the planned neutralization of the priesthood, the silencing of the defense of Christ’s public Kingship, and the usurpation of the authority that belonged to the guardians of the unchanging deposit of faith.
Source:
Allocutio iis qui interfuerunt primo Conventui, ex universi orbis regionibus Romae habito ad expendendas quaestiones, quae adulescentes spectant ad sacra suscipienda munera vocatos (die 26 m. Maii, A…. (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025