John XXIII’s allocution of 7 December 1962, given at the close of the first session of Vatican II in St Peter’s Basilica, is a brief self-congratulatory address to the assembled council fathers. He praises their participation, speaks of “charity in truth” governing the sessions, extols the “spectacle” of the worldwide episcopate gathered in unity, recalls with emotion the torchlight event in St Peter’s Square, entrusts the work to the Immaculate Virgin, and defines the aim of the Council as that the Gospel be better known and ever more deeply permeate “every area of civil culture.” In one sentence: this soft, sentimental, theatrical monologue is the manifesto of a new, horizontal religion in which the Church adores its own visibility and prepares the replacement of the reign of Christ the King with the cult of conciliar man.
Sentimental Enthronement of Conciliar Self-Worship
Naturalistic “Spectacle” in Place of the Militant Church
Already in n. 6–8 the entire orientation is betrayed. John XXIII rejoices that:
“a fitting subject for congratulation is the spectacle which in this vast assembly the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church has presented to the world.”
The English sense here is clear: he delights in the “spectacle” of a global episcopal gathering, an “impressive procession” in pomp, lights, and human enthusiasm. The Church is displayed as a show before the world. The allocution circles obsessively around:
– visibility,
– crowds,
– pageantry,
– the emotional impression made on “the world.”
The supernatural notes of the Church (*una, sancta, catholica, apostolica*) are invoked as decorative labels to sanctify precisely what the pre-1958 Magisterium warned against: a purely externalist, sociological, media-ready image of the Church.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is a frontal inversion.
– The Church is not instituted to offer “spectacles” to the world, but to wage war against the world, the flesh, and the devil; to crush error; to convert nations; to subject human society to the sweet but objective yoke of Christ the King. Pius XI states plainly that true peace comes only when individuals and states recognize and obey the reign of Christ: *“peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”* (Quas Primas, 1925).
– Pius IX, in the *Syllabus Errorum* (1864), condemns as pernicious the liberal idea of the Church adjusted to “modern civilization” and reduced to an edifying, non-governing moral force (esp. propositions 39–40, 55, 77–80). Yet John XXIII’s rhetoric here is precisely that of a Church eager to display herself as a reconciled partner of the world’s progress.
The allocution says nothing of:
– the necessity of the *state of grace*,
– the horror of mortal sin,
– hell, judgment, or penance,
– the unique saving necessity of the Catholic Church against condemned errors,
– the kingly rights of Our Lord over nations and their laws.
Instead, there is theatrical, sugary delight in a torchlit “meeting” between “Father and sons,” as if the essence of Catholicity were an emotionally moving assembly. This is not accidental style; it is the lex orandi of the nascent conciliar sect: the Church exists to be seen, applauded, photographed, and sentimentalized, no longer to command in Christ’s name.
The Rhetoric of Self-Celebration and the Eclipse of the Supernatural
On the linguistic level, several features expose the new religion implicit in this speech:
1. Constant auto-referentiality:
– The subject is “we,” “you,” “our assembly,” “our spectacle,” “our joy.”
– The allocution glorifies the meeting itself more than Christ crucified.
– The Council becomes a quasi-sacramental event whose mere occurrence is presented as a grace to the world.
2. Emotionalism and vague benevolence:
– “Singular joy,” “sweetest prayer,” “flame shining,” “pious and festive gathering,” “how good and pleasant for brothers to dwell together.”
– No milites Christi, no Church militant, no denunciation of the enemies of Christ so heavily unmasked by Pius IX and St Pius X (Freemasonry, liberalism, modernism, naturalism).
– This vocabulary deliberately disarms; it dissolves militancy in syrup.
3. Bureaucratic and theatrical description of the episcopate:
– The bishops are praised for “directing, writing, speaking, giving advice” (n. 4) and for their “spectacle.”
– There is no stress on their duty to guard the deposit of faith against error in the spirit of *Lamentabili sane exitu* (1907) and *Pascendi*, where St Pius X expressly condemns those who “in the name of historical method” undermine dogma.
Silence is the loudest word here. The speech is delivered in 1962: communism enslaves nations; laicism razes Christian order; heresy and unbelief ravage souls; the moral revolution stands at the door. Yet John XXIII, at the helm of what he calls an Ecumenical Council, says nothing about:
– the intrinsic evil of socialism and communism (so firmly taught by previous popes),
– the sects denounced as the “synagogue of Satan” (Pius IX),
– the ongoing modernist infiltration condemned by St Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
This studied silence is not neutrality. It is complicity. *Tacere est consentire* (to be silent is to consent) when the shepherd refuses to name the wolves.
Substituting Conciliar Parliamentarianism for the Teaching Church
John XXIII presents the gathered bishops as if the voice of “all Catholics” were mystically expressed through their discussions:
“through you… the voice of all Catholics has in a certain way been heard by us, they who from every part of the world have turned their eyes to this assembly with so much hope and expectation.”
This phrase encapsulates the conciliar sect’s core deformation:
– The source of doctrine is no longer, in practice, the objective deposit of faith guarded by the Roman Pontiff as universal teacher speaking with divine authority, but the expectations, “hopes” and sentiments of the “people of God” mirrored by a parliamentary body.
– The Council is implicitly portrayed as a listening process, a consultation reflecting the world’s expectations.
Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine excludes such democratization. The Magisterium does not “hear the voice of Catholics” as a doctrinal norm; rather, the faithful must hear and obey the Magisterium, which in turn is bound strictly and irrevocably to the deposit once delivered to the saints (*depositum custodi* – guard the deposit; 1 Tim 6:20). St Pius X, in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, explicitly condemns the notion that dogma arises from “religious consciousness” of the community.
The allocution’s rhetoric is therefore a subtle but real inversion:
– It caresses the illusion that the Church’s authority emanates “from below,” from the people’s expectations and emotional adhesion to the conciliar event.
– It thereby lays the groundwork for the later cult of “synodality,” in which truth is no longer received from God through a divinely assisted hierarchy faithful to tradition, but is “discerned” by assemblies that mirror the world’s evolution.
This is why John XXIII can speak of “charity in truth” reigning in the meetings while suppressing any mention of dogmatic anathema, of the condemnations of the Syllabus, of the duty to reject errors wholesale. *Caritas in veritate* in Catholic sense means, above all, charity toward God in confessing and defending His revealed truth against contradiction. Here, however, “charity in truth” becomes a euphemism for courteous, unthreatening dialogue.
Horizontalized Mission: The Gospel as Decoration of Human Culture
The heart of the allocution is n. 11–12, where the “aim of the Council” is defined. John XXIII affirms that their ministry has no other purpose than:
“that the Gospel of Christ be more and more known by the people of our time, joyfully put into practice, and that it penetrate with secure step every area of civil culture.”
At first glance this seems benign. Yet, read in continuity with what he omits and in light of the condemned propositions of modernism and liberal liberalism, the poison becomes evident.
1. The Gospel is reduced to a leaven “penetrating civil culture.”
– There is no assertion of the juridical, social reign of Christ the King over states, laws, institutions.
– Pius XI’s Quas Primas insists that rulers and nations must “publicly honor Christ and submit to Him,” and condemns the secularist apostasy that pretends to keep religion private. John XXIII shifts from supernatural Kingship to cultural ambience.
– This prepares explicitly the later cult of “religious freedom” and the neutral state, directly condemned in the *Syllabus* (propositions 55, 77–80).
2. “People of our time” and “civilization” are the implicit measure.
– The language suggests that the immutable Gospel must be adapted, made palatable, inserted gently into modern culture, instead of demanding from modern culture submission, correction, and, where necessary, open condemnation.
– This is the language of *aggiornamento*, the aggiornamento that St Pius X foresaw and anathematized: the reshaping of doctrine into a function of historical context.
3. No assertion that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
– The allocution refuses to confess clearly that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is the only ark of salvation, as taught infallibly by the perennial Magisterium (e.g., the Council of Florence, Boniface VIII, and the consistent teaching reiterated up to Pius XII).
– Instead, it harmonizes with the pseudo-ecumenical ideology of the conciliar sect: the Church as a big tent of dialogue, a sacrament of vague unity, where the central task is not to convert but to accompany.
Thus, even where John XXIII uses traditional words, he evacuates their content and reorients them. *Verba manent, sensus mutatur* (the words remain, the meaning is changed). That is precisely the modernist method condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: keeping formulas while injecting new, naturalistic content.
The Myth of Conciliar Unity vs. the Reality of Doctrinal Subversion
The allocution indulges in repeated praise of unity:
“Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!”
He applies the psalm to the conciliar assembly as if the mere gathering of bishops in outward courtesy were proof of supernatural concord. But Catholic unity is unity in one Lord, one faith, one baptism – unity in defined dogma, sacraments, and submission to the perennial Magisterium.
At that very time:
– Many of those present publicly or implicitly questioned:
– the inerrancy of Scripture,
– the uniqueness of the Catholic Church,
– the social Kingship of Christ,
– the objective gravity of contraception, divorce, religious indifferentism.
– The theological currents of nouvelle théologie, explicitly censured under Pius XII, were already steering drafting commissions.
John XXIII’s silence on these fissures, combined with his sentimental invocation of “unity,” functions as camouflage. Rather than confronting error, he blesses the process in which those errors will be smuggled into official texts.
This is not *unitas fidei* (unity of faith); it is institutional complicity. The future catastrophe of ambiguous, internally contradictory conciliar documents is pre-justified by this kind of rhetoric: as long as the assembly looks harmonious, no one must speak of betrayal.
Reversal of Authority: From Guardian of the Deposit to Master of Ceremonies
The allocution is striking for what John XXIII does not dare to say in the role he claims.
A true Roman Pontiff, at the opening and closing of council sessions, historically:
– solemnly reaffirms the dogmas menaced in his time,
– warns against specific errors and heresies,
– insists that the Council must be interpreted strictly in continuity with the previous Magisterium,
– threatens canonical penalties against those who would twist its decrees to undermine faith.
In contrast, John XXIII:
– offers congratulations and flattery,
– speaks like a host closing a successful conference,
– offers no doctrinal precision,
– expresses no fear of modernism,
– shows no awareness of the warnings of St Pius X that modernists “lurk in the very veins and heart of the Church.”
He explicitly claims that during the session he has been united to them in prayer and interior follow-up, but he never presents himself as the vigilant guardian and judge of doctrine. He acts as *primus inter pares* chairman of an ecclesial parliament, not as Vicar of Christ jealously guarding immemorial teaching.
This is why the conciliar sect can, in subsequent decades, spin Vatican II as a “new Pentecost,” an “event” whose “spirit” legitimizes every rupture: the foundational speeches themselves renounce the exercise of Petrine authority as defined by Vatican I and consistently understood before 1958.
Symptomatic Fruit: The Conciliar Sect as Abomination of Desolation
From the symptomatic perspective, this short allocution is programmatic. It reveals in embryo everything that will become visible corruption after 1965:
1. The Church replaced by an ecumenical congress:
– The allocution glorifies gathering, dialogue, and image management.
– The post-1958 structures occupying Rome become a permanent “Council” in motion: synods, assemblies, “listening processes,” all modeled on this initial theatrical self-celebration.
2. The Faith replaced by optimism:
– There is no sense of the gravity of apostasy and sin; only “great hope and expectation.”
– This is the same spirit that led John XXIII, in his opening discourse, to reject the “prophets of doom” and to refuse condemnation of errors – directly contradicting the entire pre-conciliar praxis.
3. The Kingship of Christ replaced by penetration into “civil culture”:
– Instead of demanding that nations publicly profess the Catholic faith, the conciliar sect seeks a niche within pluralism, blessing Masonic “human rights” and democratic relativism condemned unambiguously by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– The language of this allocution is perfectly compatible with – and indeed anticipates – the later apostate doctrines of “religious liberty,” “ecumenism,” and the separation of Church and State condemned in the Syllabus (55, 77–80).
4. The Teaching Church replaced by people-pleasing:
– Emphasis on what the “world expects” from this “spectacle” and “assembly.”
– When the world is made an implicit judge, supernatural truth is inevitably mutilated to earn its applause.
In this light, John XXIII’s allocution is not a harmless ceremonial address but a mask. Behind its gentle tone stands a radical shift in ecclesiological self-consciousness: from the Church as perfect and sovereign society, *societas perfecta*, endowed with divine authority to command, to a conciliatory, horizontal organization seeking relevance through visibility and emotional warmth.
Such a stance, measured strictly by the immutable Magisterium prior to 1958, is theologically and spiritually bankrupt. It refuses to wield the sword of the Word; it prefers lanterns and torches. It abandons the anathema; it hugs criminals of doctrine. It speaks of unity and charity while opening the doors to the very modernism anathematized by St Pius X. It is, in sober judgment, the rhetorical prologue to the abomination of desolation that would be enthroned in the holy place under the name of the “Church of the New Advent.”
Source:
Allocutio in XXXVI Congregatione Generali ad Patres Conciliares in Vaticana Basilica adunatos (die 7 m. Decembris, A.D. MCMLXII) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025