John XXIII’s allocution to the superiors and members of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), delivered on 25 September 1961, outwardly praises their fidelity to Rome, their attachment to their founder, their vocation of preaching, study, missions, youth formation, and publishing, and exhorts them to unite “nova et vetera” (new and old) in their life and apostolate in order to respond to “the needs of the times” and to aid the Apostolic See. Behind this apparently pious rhetoric, the speech functions as a programmatic attempt to conscript a historic doctrinal Order into the conciliar revolution, to subordinate Thomistic preaching to aggiornamento, and to prepare the mutilation of the Order into an instrument of Modernism.
Perverting the Dominican Vocation into an Engine of Modernist Apostasy
Programmatic Context: The Usurper’s Flattery as a Weapon Against Tradition
We are in 1961: on the eve of the so‑called Second Vatican Council, under the first public usurper of the Petrine authority, John XXIII, whose entire pontificate-in-appearance prepared the systematic demolition of Catholic doctrine. This allocution must be read as a tactical document: an apparently “traditional” text using Dominican vocabulary to neutralize Dominican resistance.
Key elements in the text:
– Exaltation of the Dominicans as “special sons” of the Apostolic See, emphasizing their historical obedience.
– Praise of their poverty, preaching, study, and fidelity, presented as still intact “incorruptam usque ad hodiernum diem”.
– Central watchword: harmonizing “nova et vetera” and “ad aptiores diffundendi Evangelii rationes”.
– Insistence that all their works (study, missions, youth education, publishing) serve the expansion of their preaching in the contemporary world.
– A tone of paternal benevolence, masking a revolutionary program: to make the Order collaborate in reshaping doctrine and pastoral practice according to the coming conciliar principles.
Already here the essential perversity appears: a deliberate conflation of genuine development—*eodem sensu eademque sententia* (in the same sense and the same judgment)—with the Modernist evolution condemned by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*. The allocution performs precisely what the anti-modernist Magisterium forbade: using traditional slogans to smuggle in a new religion.
Systematic Inversion on the Factual Level: From Guardians of Doctrine to Tools of Adaptation
1. The allocution repeatedly glorifies the Dominican bond with the Roman See, citing Honorius III and early papal mandates. It says in substance: “Your distinctive glory is adherence to the Holy Roman Church and service to the Pope as to Peter himself.”
– This is true historically only if “Roman See” is understood as the See of the true Vicars of Christ, teaching the perennial faith.
– By 1961, the man speaking is preparing a council that will:
– Introduce religious liberty condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, propositions 15, 77–80).
– Open to false ecumenism and latitudinarianism condemned by the same Syllabus (15–18).
– Undermine the exclusive social kingship of Christ proclaimed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*.
– Dismantle the anti-modernist disciplinary bulwark erected by St. Pius X (*Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*, Oath against Modernism).
Therefore, the appeal to historic obedience is a manipulative misappropriation: he claims the prestige of the old Roman See to compel the Order to submit to an entirely different project—the conciliar sect. This is moral fraud under a pious mask.
2. John XXIII applauds the General Chapter of Bologna and its efforts to adapt structures to “nova temporum rerumque adiuncta,” to new circumstances, praising the harmony of “new offices and counsels” with ancient heritage.
– The formula is intentionally elastic. No doctrinal criterion is stated.
– He cites Matthew 13:52, the “householder who brings forth from his treasure new and old,” as if this biblical text legitimated a synthesis of Catholic dogma with modern errors.
– Yet, the pre‑1958 Magisterium explicitly condemned the Modernist abuse of development and of “new” exegesis and theology:
– *Lamentabili* 64–65 condemns the demand to “reform” doctrine on God, creation, revelation, Christ, redemption to fit modern science.
– *Pascendi* brands as Modernists those who invoke “vital evolution” of dogma and a “living tradition” against fixed dogmatic definitions.
Here the allocution is a textbook case of that condemned tactic: it uses an orthodox scriptural phrase to sanctify undefined “novelties”, without reaffirming their necessary identity with prior dogma *in the same sense*. The omission is deliberate and damning.
3. The speech glorifies Dominican study, publishing, and engagement with “the difficulties and demands” of contemporary man, presenting it as intrinsic to their charism.
– Historically, the Dominican vocation is to preach divine truth, refute heresy, defend the faith, formed by the *Summa* of St. Thomas, subordinated strictly to the defined teaching of the Church.
– The allocution never mentions:
– The duty to combat Modernism by name.
– The binding force of *Pascendi*, *Lamentabili*, the anti-modernist oath.
– The Syllabus of Errors and its rejection of religious indifferentism, liberalism, and rationalism.
– The obligation to defend the public rights of Christ the King as taught in *Quas Primas*.
This silence, in 1961, is not neutral; it is a programmatic repudiation of the integral anti-modernist mission of the Order. To praise Dominican study while silently cutting it away from its doctrinal anchors is to sharpen the knife that will be turned against the faith.
Linguistic Mask: Soft Piety Covering Revolution
The tone is emblematic of conciliar rhetoric: affectionate, irenic, sentimental, steeped in historical allusions and biblical citations—precisely to avoid saying the one thing that Catholic doctrine demands: that all “new” forms must submit absolutely to previously defined truth.
Notice the key rhetorical features:
– Excessive flattery: Dominicans are “special sons,” the Pope’s house their “own home,” the Order’s glory “incorrupt” to this day. This is psychological seduction: “you are so faithful”—therefore you will, of course, follow us into aggiornamento.
– Generic supernatural vocabulary without concrete dogmatic edges:
– Grace and Our Lady are fleetingly invoked at the end, as decorative appendices to an essentially organizational and adaptive discourse.
– The Most Holy Sacrifice, the need for the state of grace, judgment, hell, the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) are completely absent.
– The central watchword is “new and old,” “reform in the newness of mind,” “adaptation to today’s apostolate,” “finding more suitable ways to spread the Gospel.”
This carefully chosen vagueness is not accidental. It is the hallmark of Modernism exposed by St. Pius X: keeping pious phraseology while injecting a new meaning. The speech is a catechism of *ambiguity as method*. *Ambiguitas est mater erroris* (ambiguity is the mother of error).
Theological Betrayal: Misusing Scripture Against the Immutable Deposit
The allocution’s core theological move is to hijack biblical texts to justify adaptation, while omitting their traditional doctrinal interpretation.
1. “Nova et vetera” (Mt 13:52):
– Traditionally: the Church draws always from Scripture and Tradition, applying the same revealed truths to new circumstances, but never changing their sense.
– John XXIII uses it to praise the insertion of “new offices and counsels” and “new studies and plans” without specifying their doctrinal boundaries—exactly the Modernist pattern of doctrinal evolution condemned in *Lamentabili* 58 and 64.
2. “Reformamini in novitate sensus vestri” (Rom 12:2):
– The Apostle commands interior moral conversion, nonconformity to the world, discernment of God’s will.
– John XXIII subtly repurposes this to justify outward institutional and pastoral “renewal” in response to “our age” and its needs.
– This is a perversion: replacing *metanoia* (conversion from the world) with aggiornamento (conformity to the world) under a biblical slogan.
3. “Euntes ergo, docete omnes gentes” (Mt 28:19) and “Praedicate Evangelium omni creaturae” (Mk 16:15):
– The authentic mandate: preach, baptize, teach all that Christ commanded, demanding submission of minds and nations to Christ the King.
– The allocution applauds missionary effort and preaching, but never mentions:
– The obligation to convert heretics, schismatics, and infidels to the one true Church.
– The condemnation of indifferentist ecumenism (*Syllabus* 15–18).
– The duty of states to recognize the Catholic religion exclusively (*Syllabus* 77; *Quas Primas*).
– The omission anticipates the conciliar and post-conciliar reduction of mission to dialogue and coexistence. It instrumentalizes Dominican preaching to carry a diluted, “opening” message.
4. Dominican Charism:
– The document recalls the foundational text: the Order instituted “specialiter ob praedicationem et animarum salutem.”
– Nowhere does John XXIII restate that this implies doctrinal intransigence, refutation of heresy, and subordination to fixed dogma.
– Instead, he frames it in terms of responding efficiently to “today’s difficulties and needs,” preparing the Order’s redeployment as ideological shock troops for the council’s novelties.
In sum: Scripture and Dominican sources are cited, but their traditional doctrinal teeth are extracted. This is not ignorance; it is deliberate. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent). Silence on condemned Modernist errors, at that precise historical moment, equals endorsement of those errors.
Symptomatic Dimension: Making the Dominicans Midwives of the Conciliar Sect
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the allocution reveals a fourfold strategy typical of the conciliar revolution:
1. Co-opt historical Orders with praise to neutralize resistance.
– The Order of Preachers, founded to combat heresy with theological rigor, is here transformed rhetorically into a pliable “partner” in institutional reform and pastoral adaptation.
– Post‑1961 history confirms the result:
– Leading Dominican theologians became primary architects and apologists of the conciliar and neo-modernist agenda.
– The Order’s intellectual centers turned from bastions of Thomism into laboratories of historical-critical exegesis, evolutionism of dogma, and ecumenical relativism—all condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*.
– This allocution is one of the ideological “green lights” encouraging that mutation while cloaking it with papal-sounding approval.
2. Replace anti-modernist militancy with “dialogue” and “updating.”
– Not once are Dominicans urged to defend the faithful against Modernism, indifferentism, socialism, Freemasonry, or the cult of man.
– The Syllabus of Pius IX speaks clearly of the Masonic “synagogue of Satan” subverting Church and states; St. Pius X denounces Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”
– John XXIII, in this speech, encourages an openness to “new circumstances” and “new means,” while never commanding fidelity to the anti-modernist condemnations.
– The effect: the Order’s zeal is redirected from combating heresy to implementing a new, soft religion.
3. Naturalize the idea that fidelity requires “adapting” the form of the apostolate in harmony with modern demands.
– The speech often emphasizes that “new undertakings” of the age must be compared with “the ancient ardor of holiness” and draw from it incentives to respond to new needs.
– This appears orthodox, but precisely here lies its cunning:
– The “new undertakings” are not specified: they will be, in fact, the council’s innovations in liturgy, religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, scriptural exegesis.
– The “ancient ardor” is reduced to a generic motivational resource, not a doctrinal norm that forbids those novelties.
– Thus the allocution establishes the mental habit that to be truly Dominican is to be at the forefront of pastoral and theological “renewal”—even when that “renewal” contradicts the pre‑1958 Magisterium.
4. Sacralize obedience to a counterfeit authority.
– The whole text presupposes that service to “the humble successor of Peter” is the summit of Dominican fidelity.
– Once that chair is occupied by an antipope who promotes Modernist principles, that rhetoric becomes a snare: vows of obedience weaponized to drag religious into collaboration with apostasy.
– Authentic Catholic doctrine (see theologians like Bellarmine, the teaching summarized in the dossier on manifest heretics) affirms that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, and that communion with heresy severs one from the Body.
– The allocution, by demanding affective and effective service to a revolutionary agenda under the guise of papal authority, exemplifies the abuse foreseen and doctrinally precluded by true Catholic theology.
Silences that Condemn: What Is Not Said About Preaching, Truth, and Salvation
Measured by the standard of the integral pre‑1958 Magisterium, the most damning feature of the allocution is not what it says, but what it refuses to say.
1. No mention of:
– The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as propitiatory.
– The necessity of being in the state of grace.
– The Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, hell.
– The condemnation of heresy and error.
– The Oath against Modernism, still binding in 1961.
– The duty to reject the errors catalogued in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*.
– The obligation of states to recognize the rights of Christ the King (*Quas Primas*) and of the Catholic Church (*Syllabus*).
2. Instead:
– Institutional optimism, organizational language, and appeals to effectiveness, new ways, new circumstances.
– Even the classic Dominican mission “for the salvation of souls” is reduced to a slogan, detached from its dogmatic supports, so that “salvation” can later be reinterpreted in the inclusive, ecumenical, naturalistic sense of the conciliar sect.
Such systematic silence is incompatible with a true successor of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. *Lex orandi, lex credendi*: a “papal” address of this epoch, ignoring the militant anti-modernist stance while exalting adaptation, signals not continuity but rupture.
The Order of Preachers Between Two Cities: Call to Reject the Conciliar Mandate
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, the only honest conclusion is:
– This allocution is not a harmless devotional exhortation; it is a calculated step in the transformation of the Order of Preachers into an organ of the conciliar revolution.
– The appeal to “nova et vetera” serves as a theological anesthetic, suppressing the necessary vigilance against novelty condemned by the true Magisterium.
– The effusive praise of Dominican fidelity to “the Apostolic See” is weaponized to secure obedience to a paramasonic, modernist usurpation seated in the Vatican.
Dominicans worthy of their founder and of St. Thomas are bound in conscience:
– To measure this allocution and all conciliar and post-conciliar directives against the pre‑1958 doctrinal corpus.
– To reject any “new” teaching, practice, or orientation that contradicts or dilutes:
– The exclusive truth of the Catholic Church.
– The objective necessity of conversion for heretics, schismatics, and infidels.
– The social kingship of Christ over individuals, families, and states.
– The permanence and literal sense of dogmatic definitions.
– The anti-modernist condemnations which remain binding and unretracted.
If they instead embrace aggiornamento, pseudo-ecumenism, religious liberty, liturgical and doctrinal revolution, they cease to be heirs of St. Dominic and become propagandists of the conciliar sect.
The allocution of 25 September 1961 stands, therefore, as an illustrative witness of that betrayal: a finely crafted text, clothed in traditional language, but ordered to detach souls from the immutable rock of doctrine and to attach them to the shifting sands of Modernism.
Any true son of the Church must unmask it, repudiate its implied program, and return to the uncorrupted sources honored by the real Roman Pontiffs and solemnly defended against precisely this kind of perfidious “renewal.”
Source:
Moderatoribus atque Sodalibus Ordis Fratrum Praedicatorum, qui Generali Coetui Religiosae Suae Communitatis interfuerunt, Die XXV m. Septembris a. 1961, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025