Pietro Roncalli, already as the newly elected John XXIII, briefly greets participants of an international Ciceronian congress in Rome (April 7, 1959). He praises their dedication to classical Latin studies, cites Cicero’s humanistic encomium of letters, laments the neglect of the humanities in favour of technocratic “calculations and machines,” and extols Cicero as a precursor of higher moral culture, whose wisdom allegedly prepared the way for the Gospel and nourished saints such as Augustine. The text culminates in a pious-sounding wish that the congress members, inspired by ancient wisdom, may prefer enduring goods to vain hopes, accompanied by a perfunctory blessing.
Humanist Panegyric as Prelude to the Conciliar Deformation of Faith
Person and Context: The Ciceronian Compliment of an Antipontiff
From the perspective of *integral Catholic doctrine ante 1958*, this allocution is not an innocuous literary courtesy. It is an early, symptomatic manifestation of what would soon explode as the conciliar revolution: the substitution of supernatural theology by *cultus humanitatis* (the cult of man), the elevation of pagan moralism to near-parity with divine Revelation, and the reduction of the Church’s voice to that of a refined chaplain of secular culture.
Key features of this brief address that demand uncompromising exposure:
– The speaker is John XXIII, inaugurator of Vatican II, whose entire public programme broke with the doctrinal intransigence of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. In light of pre-1958 teaching, his authority is gravely suspect; his allocution must therefore be weighed not as the pious gesture of a Roman Pontiff but as the early rhetoric of a man preparing the “aggiornamento” of the Faith into a humanitarian project.
– The text is saturated with humanistic optimism and a flattering exaltation of Cicero, while the unique, absolute, juridically binding sovereignty of Christ the King and His Church (Pius XI, *Quas primas*) is only alluded to in a decorative way.
– The address executes a subtle but real inversion: Christian wisdom is presented as harmoniously aligned with, almost organically issuing from, pagan humanism; the supernatural is discreetly subordinated to cultural refinement and psychological edification.
What appears is not Catholic Romanitas but a programmatic Ciceronianism: the neo-church preparing to enthrone the “dignity of man” where the Syllabus of Errors had solemnly enthroned the rights of God.
Factual Level: Selective Praise and Concealed Inversions
1. Roncalli applauds the congress for deepening the works of Cicero and transmitting that “light” to many:
“We rejoice greatly with you for the noble studies, in which you zealously and diligently engage, that you may ever more deeply investigate the works of the greatest author of Latin eloquence, and hand on to many others the light drawn from them.”
There is nothing wrong in itself with praising classical studies; the pre-conciliar popes did so often (Leo XIII, *Aeterni Patris*; Pius XI, *Divini illius magistri*). The problem lies in the proportion and theological framing:
– Christ, grace, the Cross, the Most Holy Sacrifice, the necessity of the true Faith for salvation (cf. *Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*, Council of Florence; Syllabus 15–18, 21) are absent.
– The “light” is presented as coming from Cicero’s works, not primarily from the *lumen Christi*.
– The addressees are encouraged to see themselves as carriers of this quasi-salvific cultural lumen.
2. He laments the triumph of technical mentality at the expense of humanities:
“There are many, alas, who, captivated inordinately by the marvellous progress of the arts, set aside or constrain the study of Latin and disciplines of that sort, so that, wholly devoted to calculations and plans, they may be citizens-engineers of a new age.”
This critique of technocracy is superficially sound, but:
– It remains purely naturalistic: the issue is not that souls are being diverted from God and the commandments, but that they risk becoming “cold, hard, and loveless” like machines.
– The remedy offered is aesthetic-moral cultivation, not repentance, sacramental life, or submission to the Kingship of Christ.
3. Cicero is exalted as a quasi-prophetic moral authority:
– Recognizer of God as Creator and Ruler;
– Clarifier of natural law;
– Herald of fidelity, justice, and truth;
– Praised in terms that, in this context, approximate him to a moral teacher of quasi-evangelical rank.
4. The example of St. Augustine’s youthful enthusiasm for Cicero’s lost “Hortensius” is invoked:
“That book changed my feelings… all my vain hope suddenly became worthless, and with an incredible ardour of my heart I longed for the immortality of wisdom.” (Conf. III, 4/7)
Yet:
– Augustine himself explains that Cicero’s work inflamed him for wisdom, but that only Scripture and the Church brought him to the true Wisdom, Christ. Roncalli truncates the lesson, weaponizing Augustine’s sensitivity to classical style in favour of a benign humanism, rather than Augustine’s violent rejection of pagan vanity and heresy.
The factual architecture is therefore this: a historical Ciceronian culture is praised as quasi-redemptive; technocratic modernity is gently deplored; Christian terminology is sprinkled in; but the absolute necessity of supernatural faith and the unique mediatorship of Christ and His Church are never proclaimed as binding, exclusive, and juridically normative.
Linguistic Level: Courteous Humanism Instead of Apostolic Parresia
The rhetoric of this allocution is revealing:
– Tone: smooth, polite, urbane, with no trace of apostolic severity. No warning of error, heresy, idolatry, or the risks of pagan moralism detached from grace.
– Vocabulary: “humanity and kindness,” “cultivation of the soul,” “enduring goods,” “comfort,” “ornament,” “solace.” These are precisely the sentimental terms later exploited by the conciliar sect to replace *lex credendi* and *lex orandi* with *lex dialogandi* and *lex humanitatis*.
– Strategic omissions:
– No reference to the First Commandment in its absolute terms: “Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.”
– No assertion that pagan authors, however noble, remain outside salvific revelation and can never stand on par with the God-Man’s teaching, nor with the Magisterium.
– No mention of the Church as *societas perfecta* with exclusive divine mission (condemned by Error 19, Syllabus, when denied).
– No hint that the same “civilisation” enthroned by Cicero’s heirs produced revolutions, liberalism, freemasonry—the very forces Pius IX and Leo XIII identified with the “synagogue of Satan” and the masonic assault (see Syllabus introduction; Leo XIII, *Humanum genus*).
This choice of language is itself confessional: a refusal to speak in the precise, dogmatic, condemnatory language of the true Magisterium in favour of pliable humanistic compliments. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent is seen to consent): the silence regarding supernatural absolutes in such a setting is an implicit endorsement of religious indifferentism and an embryonic “dialogue of cultures” where the Church abdicates her judicial voice.
Theological Level: From the Kingship of Christ to the Cult of Cicero
Measured by the doctrinal standard of pre-1958 teaching, several theological distortions emerge.
1. Subtle Equalisation of Pagan Sapientia and Evangelium
Roncalli declares that, “by the most provident disposition of God,” the wisdom of the ancients, especially Greek and Latin, was as it were a dawn announcing Christ, the “sun rising from on high.” There is a partial truth here: the Fathers and earlier popes recognised certain *semina Verbi* (seeds of the Word) in natural law insights. However:
– Catholic doctrine never permits these natural glimpses to be presented as a quasi-autonomous path of light parallel to Revelation.
– Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches unequivocally that true peace and order can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ publicly acknowledged; he does not enthrone a “Ciceronian humanism” as salvific. “Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ” (Pius XI, *Quas primas*).
– Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns precisely the tendencies that Roncalli’s rhetoric flatters:
– Error 3: the idea that human reason, without reference to God, is arbiter of good and evil.
– Error 15–18: religious indifferentism and the notion that man may embrace any religion guided by reason.
– Error 55: separation of Church and State as a principle.
While Roncalli mentions God and cites Luke 1:78, he frames Cicero as a major participant in a providential moral light that leads to the Gospel. But he omits to say that without explicit acceptance of Christ and His Church, such wisdom remains impotent for salvation and can be—and was—perverted into the anti-Christian liberal order.
2. Humanistic Anthropology Without the Drama of Sin and Judgment
The allocution warns against men becoming cold, hard, devoid of love, like machines. Yet:
– There is no mention of original sin, mortal sin, hell, or Judgment.
– The “remedy” is not conversion, but immersion in classical letters, which “cultivate and adorn the soul.”
– The supernatural order is reduced to a spiritualised continuation of the best of pagan humanism. This is *naturalismus baptizatus*: baptized naturalism, condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane*.
St. Pius X brands Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies,” precisely because it dissolves the supernatural into immanent religious feeling and cultural development. This allocution’s anthropology is of that type: a man perfected by literary culture and generic elevation, not a sinner in desperate need of grace through the true sacraments.
3. Ecclesial Self-Reduction to Cultural Chaplaincy
Not once does Roncalli:
– Remind the assembly that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
– Assert the juridical authority of the Church over education in letters and morals (contrary to Pius XI, *Divini illius magistri*).
– Condemn the liberal-masonic environment in which such “Ciceronian” congresses often move.
Instead, the “pope” appears as benevolent patron of humanist congresses, imparting a blessing on their work so long as they seek “enduring goods.” The Church is recast as patroness of fine culture, not as the militant Ark condemning the errors of the age.
This is in direct tension with the stern papal warnings against masonic and liberal associations that presented themselves as vehicles of “progress, mutual benefit, culture” (see Syllabus and attached allocutions). Pius IX explicitly unmasks such associations as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan.” Roncalli’s allocution exhibits the opposite reflex: embrace, gently elevate, never anathematize.
4. Misuse of Augustine: From Conversion to Cultural Sentiment
Roncalli points to Augustine’s moving testimony about Cicero’s “Hortensius”:
“That book changed my affection and turned my prayers and desires to You, O Lord… all vain hope grew vile to me…”
But Augustine explicitly laments that in that book the Name of Christ was not present, and that only through Scripture and the Church did he find salvation. Roncalli omits this crucial dialectic.
By instrumentalising Augustine to endorse a general love of “ancient wisdom,” he neutralises Augustine’s role as doctor of grace, of the Church, of anti-pelagian, anti-naturalist doctrine. Augustine is reduced to a literary soul who felt inspired by Cicero, rather than the hammer of all attempts to replace Christ’s grace with human virtue.
This selective reading is emblematic of Modernist method condemned by *Lamentabili sane*:
– Proposition 61 (condemned): that no chapter of Scripture has the same meaning for critic and theologian, relativising doctrine to historical development.
Roncalli inaugurates a hermeneutic that will soon turn the Fathers into witnesses of a vague, evolving Christian consciousness instead of guardians of immutable dogma.
Symptomatic Level: Early Symptom of the Conciliar Cult of Man
When situated within the broader trajectory of Roncalli’s actions, this allocution is a minor but pure specimen of the conciliar sect’s DNA.
1. Continuity with Condemned Liberal Humanism
Pre-1958 papal teaching consistently:
– Condemned liberalism, laicism, religious indifferentism, freemasonry, and naturalism (Syllabus; *Humanum genus*; *Pascendi*; *Quas primas*).
– Affirmed that all culture, law, and education must submit to Christ the King and His Church.
Roncalli here:
– Endorses a transnational humanistic elite as bearers of light.
– Speaks of “citizens of the new age” whose danger lies only in technocracy, not apostasy.
– Approves the congress’ work without demanding subordination to Catholic truth or warning against their own possible embrace of anti-Christian ideologies.
This is precisely the “reconciliation with modern civilisation and progress” condemned as Error 80 of the Syllabus: that “the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.” Roncalli proceeds as if that condemnation never existed—indeed as if Vatican diplomacy should now sacralise what his predecessors branded as inimical to Christ.
2. Preparatory Aestheticization of the Faith
Note the internal structure:
– Cicero and classical letters: centre stage.
– The Gospel: mentioned as a serene sunrise harmoniously crowning human wisdom.
– The Cross, Sacrifice, dogma, anathema: buried in silence.
This aestheticisation—religion as high culture, Christianity as fulfilment of ideals of beauty and nobility—prepares the way for the neo-church’s liturgical revolution, where the *Most Holy Sacrifice* is replaced by a didactic table-talk, and doctrine is subordinated to “pastoral” considerations and cultural accessibility.
A Church that trains herself to speak like this to a Ciceronian congress is a Church already forgetting that her first duty is to proclaim: “He that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16), and to warn that pagan wisdom, however lofty, is nothing but “folly” before God when it rejects the scandal of the Cross (1 Cor 1–2).
3. Intellectual Elitism as Mask for Apostasy
The allocution flatters an international elite of classical scholars. They are told that:
– Their work in exploring Cicero is noble and crucial.
– They can rescue man from becoming like a machine.
– They should prefer enduring goods and so fulfil the purpose for which they were created.
What is missing is the essential: that if they do not submit intellect and will to the Catholic Faith, they remain enemies of God (cf. Heb 11:6; Trent, De Fide). Instead of calling them to faith and penitence, Roncalli blesses them as they are, validating their self-understanding as cultured benefactors of humanity.
This is an embryonic “dialogue” stance: no confrontation, no conditional blessing (“if you convert”), but an unconditioned confirmation of men in a state which, objectively, may be unbelieving, heretical, or masonic. This attitude in nuce reveals the conciliar sect’s later insane endorsements of interreligious “dialogue,” the “values” of false religions, and the enthronement of human rights above divine rights.
What the Allocution Does Not Say: The Loudest Indictment
In the light of the instructions of the true Magisterium, the deadly character of this text lies chiefly in its silences:
– No assertion that only the Catholic Church, founded by Christ, possesses the fullness of truth and the means of salvation (against Syllabus 21–23 if denied).
– No warning that natural virtue without supernatural faith and grace does not save; Cicero is held up as heroic, yet his ignorance of Christ is not placed under the judgment of “he who does not believe is already judged.”
– No denunciation of liberalism, masonic influence, or the anti-Christian character of «modern civilisation», although by 1959 the devastation wrought by those forces was glaring and had been meticulously unmasked by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– No call to assist at the true Most Holy Sacrifice, to frequent confession, to adore Christ truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, to obey the perennial Magisterium.
– No explicit teaching on the public Kingship of Christ over nations and cultures, explicitly taught as binding in *Quas primas*.
Silence on these is not a neutral omission in a papal discourse; it is a methodological stance. It habituates hearers to expect from “the pope” not doctrine and anathema, but polite cultural commentary and universal benedictions.
This is proto-conciliarism: the *abdicatio potestatis docendi et regendi* (abdication of the power of teaching and governing) in favour of a soft moral humanism compatible with every “separated brother,” unbeliever, and adept of the “new age.”
Consequences: From Ciceronian Compliments to the Neo-Church of the Antichrist
Seen historically, this allocution is:
– The courteous mask of an incipient revolution: the same Roncalli will convene Vatican II, open the floodgates for the hermeneutics of evolution, for collegial democratization of authority, for false ecumenism, for religious liberty against the Syllabus, for liturgical profanation.
– A microcosm of the spiritual posture whereby the occupant of the Roman See ceases to act as guardian of an immutable deposit and becomes moderator of a world-conversation about humanity, culture, and peace.
From the integral Catholic perspective, such texts are evidence that:
– The conciliar sect was already at work corrupting the papal office into a tribune of humanistic rhetoric.
– The authority claimed for such an allocution cannot be reconciled with the infallible prior Magisterium it silently contradicts; *lex orandi, lex credendi*: such speech betrays a lex credendi already adulterated.
– The only coherent fidelity is to the unbroken pre-1958 doctrine that:
– Elevates Christ the King above all nations and cultures;
– Subordinates Cicero and all pagans to the judgment of the Cross;
– Condemns the illusions of liberal-humanist progress as “pestilential.”
Where the allocution offers aesthetic consolation, the true Church offers the uncompromising summons of St. Pius X: reject Modernism, reject naturalistic reduction, submit intellect and will wholly to what God has once for all revealed, which neither evolves nor bends to the tastes of international congresses.
Return to the Immutable: Against the Ciceronian Gospel of the Conciliar Sect
The only legitimate Catholic reading of this allocution is therefore not admiration, but alarm.
– When a supposed supreme pastor speaks to the cultured elites and does not clearly affirm the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Faith, he fails in the first duty of the Papacy.
– When he elevates a pagan orator almost as co-evangelist of moral truth, he obscures the abyss between human virtue and supernatural charity.
– When he speaks of “new age” citizens without condemning the perverse principles of that age, he lends the prestige of the Roman See to the enemies of Christ.
Against such misuse of office and language, integral Catholic doctrine stands as an unbending judgment. The faithful must discern in these honeyed, “Ciceronian” lines the early whisper of that anti-gospel which will culminate in the Church of the New Advent, the paramasonic neo-church, where the cult of man is enthroned in the place of the crucified King.
Only a full, unapologetic return to the teachings of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII—on the Kingship of Christ, the rights of the Church, the evil of liberalism and Modernism, the immutability of dogma—can break the spell of such humanistic incantations and restore the supernatural clarity that Rome once offered to the nations without compromise.
Source:
Allocutio ad eos qui Romae primum Ciceronianum Conventum ex omnibus nationibus egerunt (die VII m. Aprilis, A. D. MCMLIX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025