In this address of 14 November 1960 in St Peter’s Basilica, John XXIII opens the work of the preparatory commissions for what would become Vatican II. He invokes previous ecumenical councils as inspirations, praises the universal enthusiasm provoked by the announcement of the council, and proposes the central aim not as condemning errors or defining dogma, but as “updating” and presenting the faith with new clarity for the modern world. He insists that the Church must read the “signs of the times,” avoid pessimism about contemporary humanity, and radiate confidence, unity, and openness, including a disposition toward separated communities who allegedly “desire a return” to apostolic foundations. The address frames the coming council as a universally hopeful, pastoral endeavour marked by optimism about history and “dialogue,” more concerned with renewing methods and discipline than with dogmatic confrontation.

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Programmatic Surrender: John XXIII’s 1960 Allocution as Blueprint of Conciliar Apostasy

Foundational Inversion: From Defense of the Faith to Accommodation of the World

At the heart of this allocution lies a decisive shift of principle.

Where all true Ecumenical Councils—Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Trent, Vatican I—were convoked primarily:

– to condemn concrete, named heresies;
– to define dogma more precisely against corrosive errors;
– to safeguard the supernatural order of grace, sacraments, and the visible authority of the Church;

John XXIII openly disavows this orientation for his projected assembly.

He explicitly contrasts previous councils, convened to “repel” heresy and safeguard the integrity of faith, with his new project, which is no longer to investigate and define revealed truths, but to give “new vigor and clarity” to Christian thinking and living in the modern world. The supernatural end—salvation from sin, condemnation of error, defense against heresy—is displaced by a vague, horizontal “renewal” and pastoral aggiornamento.

This is the constitutive betrayal.

– Pius XI clearly teaches that peace and order for men and nations are possible only under the social kingship of Christ and the full authority of His Church; peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (Quas Primas).
– Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemns the liberal thesis that the Church must adapt to “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” (proposition 80).
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns precisely the modernist scheme John XXIII here inaugurates: transforming doctrine’s defense into “updating” language and structures according to contemporary mentality.

Yet John XXIII’s entire tone and program embody the condemned mentality:
aggiornare, soften, reassure, avoid menace, invite the world’s approval.

By defining from the outset a “pastoral” council that deliberately puts aside the primary end of condemning present errors—errors more widespread and virulent than Arianism or Protestantism—this allocution constitutes not renewal but a programmatic abdication of the Church’s divinely mandated office: docere, regere, sanctificare (to teach, to rule, to sanctify).

Optimistic Naturalism: The Cult of History Against the Sense of Sin

A striking mark of this speech is its rhetorical optimism about the “present times,” in deliberate contrast to those whom John XXIII caricatures as exaggerating the evils of the age. Instead of beginning from:

– original sin;
– the reality of widespread apostasy;
– the advance of Naturalism, Freemasonry, Socialism, Communism, and liberalism condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X;

John XXIII insists that one must not speak as if “darkness” has fallen upon the earth, nor lament too much. He encourages “great courage,” because, he says, Christ has not left the world, and the Church remains His mystical Body. This is superficially true, but weaponized to suppress an honest diagnosis of the crisis.

This rhetorical operation has several pernicious consequences:

1. It neutralizes the prophetic gravity of prior Magisterium:
– The Syllabus exposes the “synagogue of Satan” of secret societies warring against the Church; Leo XIII and St. Pius X unmask the systematic subversion of doctrine, states, education, and marriage.
– Lamentabili and Pascendi unmask Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies” and describe the very mentality John XXIII adopts: historicism, trust in “progress,” revision of forms to make doctrine “accessible.”
John XXIII does not recall these solemn warnings. He silences them.

2. It shifts the axis from supernatural warfare to psychological atmosphere:
Instead of contrition, penance, doctrinal clarity, and anathema against present heresies, he proposes encouragement of modern man, soothing words, and an image of a Church that must appear attractive to the world.

3. It prepares justification for changing language, discipline, and practical orientation according to the very “modern civilization” solemnly rejected by Pius IX (Syllabus, 80) and refuted by Pius XI in Quas Primas as the source of social ruin.

This is not pastoral realism; it is naturalistic optimism, a refusal to see that modern states, laws, culture, and philosophy have been erected on the systematic denial of Christ’s rights and the Church’s authority.

Ecclesiology Dissolved: From Militans Ecclesia to Vague “Catholic Family”

The allocution speaks repeatedly of:

– the “catholic family”;
– the baptized belonging not as marked individuals but as members of a human “society”;
– the Church as universal family in which we are “brothers.”

This vocabulary, detached from the hard lines of dogma and discipline, lays the foundation for the conciliar sect’s later ideological slogans: “People of God,” “universal fraternity,” and finally the idolatrous cult of “human fraternity.”

However, integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958 is unambiguous:

– Membership in the Church requires:
– valid baptism;
– profession of the true faith;
– submission to the legitimate hierarchy.
– A heretic, especially a manifest one, is not a member of the Church and cannot be its head (as St. Robert Bellarmine and classical theologians affirm, see Defense of Sedevacantism file).
– The Church is essentially a societas perfecta, visible, with defined faith, sacraments, and hierarchy, distinct from and superior to the state (Syllabus, Quanta Cura, numerous papal acts).

John XXIII’s allocution subtly dissolves these lines:

– He speaks of all baptized as belonging to the “catholic family,” without distinguishing those who persist obstinately in heresy or schism.
– He alludes benignly to “Christian communities” separated from Catholic unity, emphasizing their supposed desire to “return” to the apostolic foundation, but he refuses to restate the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church in its traditional, exclusive sense.

This silence is crucial.

By refusing to reaffirm the dogmatic boundaries of the Church while at the same time framing the council as a response to separated groups and modern humanity, John XXIII prepares the later explosion of:

– false ecumenism;
– recognition of heretical and schismatic communities as “sister churches”;
– doctrinal indifferentism, condemned explicitly in Syllabus propositions 15–18.

The allocution’s sentimental talk of unity, detached from clear calls to conversion and abjuration of errors, is not charity; it is a preparatory capitulation.

Linguistic Symptoms: Pastoralism as Mask of Doctrinal Evasion

On the linguistic level, the text is a classic specimen of modernist rhetoric.

1. Vague exaltations:
The allocution is saturated with lofty but imprecise phrases: “new vigor,” “clarity,” “joyful hope,” “serene confidence,” “great enterprise,” “splendid beauty of the Church.” It rarely descends to concrete mention of:

– specific dogmas under attack (Real Presence, sacrificial character of the Mass, papal primacy, Christ’s kingship, etc.);
– concrete errors infecting clergy and laity: Modernism, existentialism, Communism, neo-Malthusianism, liturgical abuses.

This intentional vagueness is itself a method condemned by St. Pius X: modernists “speak in a thousand modes” so that each finds his own meaning; they avoid precise formulations that could bind them.

2. Silence as doctrinal strategy:
The most damning aspect of the allocution is what is not said.

– No denunciation of the errors specifically condemned only a few decades earlier by St. Pius X.
– No affirmation that the council will attend to crushing Modernism within the clergy.
– No recall of the solemn condemnations of liberalism, religious freedom, the separation of Church and state, and the Masonic agenda of a purely naturalistic world order, all collected in the Syllabus.
– No insistence on the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice offered according to the received Roman rite; no warning against liturgical experimentation.
– No proclamation of the absolute obligation of states to recognize Christ the King and submit positive law to divine law, central to Quas Primas.

In the face of an unprecedented offensive of naturalistic and Masonic forces against the Church and Christian society, this silence is not benign. It is complicity.

3. Pastoral anti-doctrine:
John XXIII adopts a “soothing” paternal style which, while formally pious, functionally anesthetizes vigilance. References to Scripture (e.g., “Ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus”) are used not to strengthen the duty of combat but to calm any zeal for doctrinal confrontation.

This rhetoric encourages precisely that state of naive openness through which the conciliar revolution would be smuggled into the structures occupying the Vatican.

Preparation for Ecumenism and Religious Liberty: Seeds of Systemic Betrayal

The allocution is already permeated with two lines that will become the pillars of post-conciliar apostasy:

1. Ecumenism:
– He notes with satisfaction that the announcement of the council has aroused interest among those “separated” from the Church.
– He speaks of a special commission to respond with “respect” to non-Catholics who inquire about the council’s work.
– He cites Christ’s “ut unum sint” in a way that anticipates treating non-Catholic communities not as rebels called to conversion, but as dialogue partners.

Yet Pius IX and Leo XIII made clear:

– Unity is only in the return of separated communities to the one true Church.
– Any notion of unity that respects their erroneous doctrines or structures contradicts divine revelation.

The allocution never recalls this doctrinal requirement. It replaces the imperative convertantur (“let them be converted”) with the ambiguous hope that “all who bear the name of Christian may one day be able to come into that unity” without specifying that this unity is juridical and dogmatic under the Roman Pontiff and traditional faith.

This omission opens directly into the later “ecumenical movement” of the conciliar sect, condemned in principle by prior papal teaching and realized through interreligious syncretism and recognition of heretical bodies.

2. Religious liberty and reconciliation with modern states:
– He hints that the council will help clarify principles for civil, political, social order.
– He speaks of the “rights and duties” of nations and human society in terms that echo the liberal vocabulary later codified in the conciliar sect’s documents.

Pius IX’s Syllabus unequivocally condemns:

– the separation of Church and state (55);
– religious indifferentism (15–18);
– the thesis that liberty for all cults and public expression of all opinions is advantageous (79);
– the reconciliation of the Roman Pontiff with “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” (80).

John XXIII’s allocution consciously turns toward what the Syllabus condemns; he glorifies precisely the aspiration “to reconcile” the Church with the modern order, without restating the necessary subordination of every state to Christ’s law defined in Quas Primas.

This is not accidental; it is the program.

Historical Manipulation: Misuse of Councils Against Their Own Spirit

John XXIII appeals to the history of twenty prior councils and especially to Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Trent, and Vatican I.

But his use is deceptive.

– He briefly recalls how those councils confronted heresies, defined Christological truths, restored discipline, and clarified papal primacy and infallibility.
– Then he pivots to claim that “in our time” the problem is different: not this or that doctrinal point, but the need to give Christian life and thought “new vigor and clarity.”

This is a sleight of hand.

If anything, the 20th century—with Modernism, atheistic Communism, evolutionist naturalism, denial of miracles, biblical criticism, liturgical subversion, and apostasy among clergy—demanded a council more like Trent and Vatican I, not less.

To claim that now is the moment to set aside:

– dogmatic anathemas,
– precise condemnations,
– rigorous discipline;

and replace them with an optimistic pastoral re-presentation is to falsify the very lesson of those councils.

True councils wielded the anathema as an act of charity, protecting souls and manifesting the rights of Christ the King. John XXIII’s allocution disarms the Church before the enemy; he invokes the councils to neutralize their example.

Systemic Outcome: From Allocution to Conciliar Sect

This address, read retrospectively in light of the subsequent catastrophe, reveals itself as the manifesto of what would become the conciliar sect, the abominatio desolationis standing in the holy place:

– A paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican;
– employing Catholic words to preach a new gospel of human dignity, religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and liturgical deformation;
– promoting a “new theology” condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium;
– enacting rituals and ordinations whose validity is gravely in doubt;
– manufacturing pseudo-“saints” who embody modernist doctrines and interreligious relativism.

From the standpoint of unchanging Catholic doctrine:

– A manifest and obstinate promoter of condemned errors cannot be head of the Church; a manifest heretic ceases ipso facto to be Pope (St. Robert Bellarmine, as cited in Defense of Sedevacantism).
– A “council” convoked on principles contrary to prior dogmatic teaching, drafted and steered by theologians infected with condemned Modernism, and promulgating texts that contradict the Syllabus, Quas Primas, Mortalium Animos, Pascendi, cannot bind the faithful and cannot be an organ of the infallible Magisterium.

This allocution exposes:

– not the holiness of a pontifical spirit,
– but the mentality of one who, by language, omissions, and program, aligns with errors solemnly proscribed.

The entire post-1958 structure, crowned today by the usurper antipope Leo XIV and his predecessors, finds here its prenatal form: sentimentalist, irenic, allergic to condemnation, in love with “modern civilization,” and ashamed of the militant, dogmatic Church of all ages.

Gravest Silence: No Call to Penance, No Defense of the Holy Sacrifice

The allocution, despite its length, contains almost no:

– call to penance and conversion from sin;
– emphasis on the necessity of the state of grace, the Four Last Things, the reality of hell;
– insistence on the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory offering for sins, as the heart of the Church’s life;
– condemnation of profanation, sacrilege, or doctrinal corruption.

In an age of mass apostasy, impurity, blasphemy, and political persecution of the Church, such silence is damning.

Integral Catholic faith recognizes that such omissions, when systematic and programmatic, are not neutral. Silence on essentials, combined with verbosity on accommodation, betrays a new religion, naturalistic and anthropocentric, which will inevitably seek:

– to dilute the Holy Mass into a communal meal;
– to reduce the Church to an NGO of dialogue and humanitarianism;
– to subjugate dogma to changing “pastoral needs.”

The allocution is the theological and rhetorical embryo of this deformation.

Conclusion: A Speech That Announced the Eclipse of Rome

Measured by the unchanging Magisterium before 1958:

– by the Syllabus of Errors,
– by Quas Primas,
– by Lamentabili and Pascendi,
– by the solemn teaching of Trent and Vatican I,

this allocution is not a harmless ceremonial address. It is a declaration of discontinuity, an insult to the heroic Councils it superficially praises, and a conscious choice to reject the only Catholic response to modern errors: doctrinal clarity, condemnation of heresy, social reign of Christ, and restoration of discipline.

Instead, it offers:

– flattering optimism about “modern man”;
– evasion of specific contemporary heresies;
– embryonic ecumenism without conversion;
– a naturalistic vision of human society governed by vague rights and “peace,” rather than subjection to Christ the King.

This speech thus stands as one of the initial public acts by which the Roman See, in its visible administration, passed into the hands of men imbued with the errors of Modernism and liberalism, preparing the way for the conciliar sect that continues to deceive many under Catholic names.

The only Catholic response is:

– to adhere firmly to the doctrines, condemnations, and sacramental life as taught and guarded before 1958;
– to reject the anti-council’s principles at their root, as already revealed in this allocution;
– to implore God for the full restoration of the visible Church in accordance with the immutable Tradition, where the Most Holy Sacrifice is offered in truth, where doctrine is professed without compromise, and where Christ reigns publicly over souls, families, and nations.

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Source:
Allocutio ad concilia coetusque Concilio Vaticano II apparando (d. 14 m. Novembris, A.D. MCMLX)   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025