John XXIII’s speech to the Redemptorist superiors (8 February 1963) flatters the congregation for its growth, urges the revision of its Rule and Constitutions “in view of current needs,” insists this be done without “bending to the world,” exhorts fidelity to St. Alphonsus, praises Redemptorist missions, and asks their prayers and sacrifices for the ongoing Second Vatican Council. It is a short, apparently pious allocution, presenting John XXIII as benign guardian of religious life and of the spirit of St. Alphonsus. In reality, it is an ideological programmatic piece: a controlled demolition manual for traditional religious life, cloaked in sentimental rhetoric, placed at the service of the conciliar revolution and the nascent neo-church.
Selective Praise as a Vehicle for Subversion of Religious Life
At first glance, this allocution seems harmlessly devotional. John XXIII commends the congregation for serving the Church, speaks of gratitude to God, and urges love of the Rule:
“If therefore your Rule and Constitutions are revised, this is done to give them greater efficacy… You must love and follow them as a sure indication of the way you must walk.”
Yet the entire text is structured around one critical axis: the “revision” (*recognoscere*) of the Rule and Constitutions “ratione habita necessitatum et adiunctorum… quae haec tempora induxerunt” – “taking into account the needs and circumstances which these times have introduced.” In other words, precisely what Pius IX and St. Pius X repeatedly unmasked as the modernist pretext: to bend divine law and religious discipline to the mutable “signs of the times.”
The crucial sleight of hand:
– He verbally concedes that the primary elements of religious life must be “holy kept.”
– He immediately opens the door for adaptation by appealing to “circumstances of our time.”
– He formally warns not to conform to the world (“non… leges… ad saeculi fluxas et inanes rationes flectantur”) but simultaneously installs the world as the determining horizon of revision.
This double move is the classic modernist dialectic already condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium:
– St. Pius X in Pascendi exposes the tactic of maintaining formulas while changing their meaning through adaptation to contemporary mentality.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns (prop. 5, 58, 80) the idea of indefinite progress of doctrine and reconciliation with liberal “modern civilization.”
Here, John XXIII speaks the reassuring language of fidelity while injecting the operative principle of evolution: the Rule must be reworked under the influence of contemporary conditions and under the shadow of Vatican II. The fruit in history is indisputable and verifiable: catastrophic dilution of Redemptorist life, abandonment of robust mission preaching and moral theology of St. Alphonsus, widespread embrace of the neo-church’s errors. The speech functions as a benediction over that process.
From Supernatural Mission to Conciliar Instrumentalization
On the factual level, several key elements reveal the underlying program:
1. John XXIII praises the congregation’s expansion and effectiveness.
2. He frames the General Chapter as chiefly an occasion to revise the Rule and Constitutions.
3. He defines the purpose of revision as enhancing “efficiency” and “adapting” to the age.
4. He asks them explicitly to offer prayers and penitential “cruciatus” for the success of the Second Vatican Council.
This is not accidental. It is the integration of a once authentically Catholic institute into the machinery of the conciliar experiment. The Redemptorists are summoned:
– not primarily to defend the immutability of Catholic doctrine;
– not to combat liberalism, naturalism, socialism, Freemasonry as condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus;
– not to intensify preaching on sin, hell, repentance, the necessity of the sacraments, the Kingship of Christ as articulated in Pius XI’s Quas Primas;
but to spiritually underwrite Vatican II, the same council that would enthrone:
– religious liberty against the doctrine reaffirmed in the Syllabus;
– false ecumenism against the axiom *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*;
– the cult of man and collegial democratization against the monarchic, divine constitution of the Church.
Silence is decisive here. There is no mention of:
– the gravity of modernist heresies repeatedly condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi;
– the Masonic assault on the Church denounced by Pius IX and Leo XIII;
– Communism and atheistic materialism as intrinsically diabolical systems;
– the urgency of conversion to the one true Church.
Instead, the allocution’s axis is: pious words + structural adaptation + support for the council that will introduce condemned principles into the “official” structures. The Redemptorists are thereby led away from their founder and into the service of the conciliar sect.
Language of Piety as Camouflage for Controlled Adaptation
The linguistic texture of the allocution is significant. On the surface:
– Warm, paternal tone: “dilecti filii.”
– Traditional citations: Apocalypse, 1 Corinthians, Thomas à Kempis.
– References to St. Alphonsus, to mutual charity, to spiritual joy in community.
Yet this vocabulary of devotion serves to sanitize a precise ideological direction:
1. The term “efficientia” (efficacy) is telling. Rules are to be revised so as to increase institutional “effectiveness” under new circumstances, not to deepen intrinsic conformity to the Cross. This managerial lexicon anticipates the post-conciliar corporate refashioning of religious institutes.
2. He speaks of the Rule as sometimes “asperior” (more severe), saying that if one opens the “hard shell,” one will find sweet fruit. But in context of a call to revision, this risks functioning as a subtle critique of “rigidity,” preparing to soften the “cortex” in practice.
3. The repeated insistence on obedience to the Rule is paradoxical: he calls for fidelity immediately after urging its reworking according to the age. Thus, once modified under conciliar influence, obedience will be redirected—not to the immutable mind of the Founder and the Church—but to an updated text shaped by modernist assumptions.
This is the core modernist maneuver already condemned by St. Pius X: maintain the façade of continuity (“Rule,” “St. Alphonsus,” “tradition”) while suffusing the content with adaptationist principles. *Verba manent, res mutantur* (the words remain, the realities are changed).
Systematic Omission of the Kingship and Rights of Christ
In an address to a missionary congregation whose raison d’être is to preach the Most Holy Redeemer—St. Alphonsus’s spiritual sons—one expects a clear reaffirmation of:
– the absolute necessity of conversion to the Catholic Church;
– the fear of hell and urgency of penance;
– the social reign of Christ the King over individuals and nations, as demanded by Pius XI’s Quas Primas;
– the duty to combat liberalism, indifferentism, and the errors enumerated by Pius IX in the Syllabus.
Instead, John XXIII’s allocution is:
– entirely devoid of doctrinal warfare language;
– entirely devoid of any mention of condemned modern errors;
– entirely devoid of the obligations of states and nations to publicly acknowledge Christ.
He commends Redemptorist missions, yes, but abstractly, without clarifying that:
– only the Catholic faith saves;
– the preaching must attack religious freedom, false ecumenism, and modernism;
– compromise with the world is treason.
This silence is lethal. Pius XI explicitly taught that the crisis of the world arises because “many have expelled Jesus Christ and His holy law from their lives” and that peace will not come until individuals and states recognize His reign (*Quas Primas*). Pius IX condemned as an error that the Church must reconcile herself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization (Syllabus, prop. 80). Here, by contrast, John XXIII frames adaptation to “our times” as legitimate and desired, under the sign of the council that will encode those very condemned notions. The allocution’s omissions indict it more loudly than its phrases.
Appropriation and Neutralization of St. Alphonsus
One of the gravest aspects of the speech is the attempt to conscript St. Alphonsus Liguori into the conciliar project.
John XXIII calls the Rule a “thesaurus” in which the mind and piety of St. Alphonsus are preserved, and affirms that through it he “sweetly” exhorts, encourages, restrains. This is accurate in itself: the authentic Redemptorist Rule reflects the founder’s fierce zeal for souls, moral rigor grounded in charity, Marian devotion, Eucharistic piety, and an uncompromising insistence on salvation through the Catholic faith.
But in the immediate context, he situates this “thesaurus” within a process of revision aligned with Vatican II. Historically verifiable outcome:
– Post-conciliar Redemptorist constitutions and praxis moved substantially away from the Alphonsian spirit:
– relativization of mission preaching;
– softening of moral theology in line with situational ethics and personalism;
– embrace of ecumenical and religious liberty principles alien to St. Alphonsus and condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
Thus the allocution performs a rhetorical expropriation: invoke St. Alphonsus to bless an evolutionary process that in fact contradicts his doctrine. This is precisely what St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi: interpreting founders and dogmas as historical expressions to be “updated” by religious consciousness.
Authentic Catholic principle: *lex orandi, lex credendi* rightly understood implies immutability in faith and cult, not their subjection to Zeitgeist. To remodel the Rule under conciliar categories is to falsify the founder’s charism, however many pious quotes are sprinkled on top.
Instrumentalizing Obedience for Modernist Ends
A key line states that if anyone is uncertain what to do, “Regulam teneat, tuto gradu procedet” – “let him hold to the Rule, he will proceed safely.” True, when the Rule is Catholic and uncorrupted. But placed within an exhortation to revise the Rule according to “circumstances of the times,” this becomes dangerous:
– Once the constitutions are rewritten in the conciliar spirit—ecumenism, aggiornamento, pastoral relativism—then obedience to the “Rule” is obedience to its corruption.
– The allocution conditions the religious to identify fidelity to the modified text with fidelity to God’s will.
This is the same maneuver seen across religious institutes in the 1960s–70s:
– central authorities, loyal to the conciliar sect, revise texts;
– members are told that holiness lies in obedience to these texts;
– those who resist innovations are painted as disobedient to the very Rule that has been hijacked.
The true pre-1958 Magisterium never taught blind obedience to corrupted authority or to norms that contradict the deposit of faith. Canonists and theologians consistently held that laws contrary to divine or ecclesiastical tradition lack binding force. *Lex iniusta non est lex* (an unjust law is not law). John XXIII here lays psychological and rhetorical groundwork for the opposite in the emerging neo-church: obedience as a tool of self-destruction of religious life.
Glorifying Vatican II While Refusing to Name Its Doctrinal Stakes
John XXIII concludes by linking the Redemptorist Chapter to the “amplissimus et universalis Coetus… Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum,” and begs prayers and voluntary sufferings (“voluntarios cruciatus”) to obtain divine aid for it.
Notable:
– He calls them “filios Ecclesiae… Petrianae Cathedrae penitus deditos,” demanding unquestioned adhesion to his program.
– Yet nowhere does he state that the Council must:
– reaffirm the condemnations of modernism and liberalism;
– confirm the exclusivity of salvation in the Catholic Church;
– uphold the social Kingship of Christ against secularism;
– crush Freemasonry and naturalistic humanitarianism.
Instead, he presupposes Vatican II as a self-evident good, deserving the sacrifices of religious, without doctrinal specification. This vagueness masks the true stakes: the Council would, in fact, affirm principles explicitly proscribed by Pius IX and St. Pius X and opposed to Pius XI’s Quas Primas.
Given what we now verifiably know:
– Dignitatis Humanae contradicts the perennial doctrine on the duty of states toward the true religion taught by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII.
– Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio enshrine religious indifferentism and false ecumenism, condemned in advance by the Syllabus and by Mortalium Animos of Pius XI.
– The spirit of collegiality and democratization undermines the divinely instituted monarchical structure of the Church.
John XXIII’s allocution thus conscripts the Redemptorists into collaboration with a project that, measured by the pre-1958 Magisterium (our binding criterion), is doctrinally illegitimate. His request for prayers and sacrifices is not neutral piety; it is a demand for spiritual complicity in the conciliar revolution.
Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Method: Soft Words, Hard Treason
This allocution is a paradigmatic micro-text of the conciliar sect’s operational style:
1. Sentimental flattery:
– “Causa laetitiae non parvae…”
– Joyful praise, affectionate address, anecdote about a Redemptorist confessor in the Roman Seminary.
2. Traditional décor:
– Biblical citations (1 Corinthians, Apocalypse).
– Thomas à Kempis.
– St. Alphonsus.
3. Strategic vagueness:
– “Needs of the times.”
– “Greater efficacy.”
– No concrete denunciation of the reigning errors.
4. Structural directives:
– Revise constitutions.
– Align with Vatican II.
– Bind consciences to updated norms.
5. Substitution of authentic mission:
– The heroic, dogmatically armed apostolate of St. Alphonsus is silently replaced by generic “missions” devoid of explicit doctrinal militancy against modern errors.
– The eschatological urgency—salvation/damnation—is muted; instead, the council becomes the focal object of sacrifice.
This pattern matches, on the symptomatic level, what St. Pius X calls Modernism: the imposition of a new religion under Catholic forms. The conciliar sect preserves phraseology while subverting meaning. John XXIII speaks of not bending laws to the world, yet he subjects them to the “circumstances of the times” and to a council engineered precisely to reconcile with that world.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterium on Religious Life
Measured against the integral Catholic teaching of prior pontiffs, several contradictions or deformations emerge:
– Leo XIII and St. Pius X emphasized that religious life must stand in stark opposition to worldly spirit, as a stable sign of the supernatural and immutable.
– Pius XII (prior to 1958) in addresses to religious communities warned against adapting constitutions under pressure of secular mentality, insisting on preservation of founders’ spirit and austere discipline.
John XXIII opens the door precisely where his predecessors had erected a wall:
– Under the guise of prudence, he elevates historical circumstances to a principle of legislative modification for religious life.
– He does not articulate the rigorous criteria that prior popes insisted on: continuity with the founder, preservation of austerity, clear doctrinal identity against worldliness.
The historically verifiable devastation of religious institutes after the council—massive defections, moral laxity, liturgical abuse, doctrinal dilution—confirms that such allocutions were not innocuous. They were preparatory acts in a systematic dismantling.
Subversion of the True Hierarchical and Doctrinal Principle
John XXIII presents himself as “Christi in terris humilis Vicarius,” soliciting Redemptorist obedience and spiritual support. From the perspective grounded exclusively in pre-1958 doctrine and law, the principle is clear:
– A true Roman Pontiff must guard the deposit of faith, condemn errors, and strengthen religious life in uncompromising opposition to liberalism and modernism.
In this allocution, however, we see:
– No mention of the war against modernism as defined by St. Pius X.
– No reaffirmation of the Syllabus.
– No demand that Redemptorists explicitly fight doctrinal novelty.
– A redirection of their charity and obedience toward Vatican II’s ambiguous aggiornamento.
Such conduct aligns not with the papal office as taught by Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus and the unanimous pre-conciliar magisterium, but with the role of a pseudo-pastor who subtly leads religious into acceptance of changes condemned by his predecessors. *Ubi mutatio fidei, ibi defectio a munere* (where there is a change of faith, there is defection from office).
Conclusion: A Pious Shell Concealing the Program of Self-Liquidation
This allocution to the Redemptorists is not a random, marginal text. It is a crystallization of the conciliar sect’s method:
– Employ Catholic language to seduce;
– legitimize constitutional and spiritual adaptation to the age;
– domesticate once-militant congregations into compliant executors of the Vatican II agenda;
– silence is maintained on modernist heresies, Masonic infiltration, the Kingship of Christ, the absolute necessity of conversion, the gravity of error.
The theological and spiritual bankruptcy lies not in any one scandalous sentence, but in the total configuration:
– the supernatural mission of an institute founded to snatch souls from hell through uncompromising preaching is quietly subordinated to a council that canonizes principles condemned by the very Magisterium that formed St. Alphonsus;
– the Rule is exalted at the very moment its revision is encouraged under worldly criteria;
– obedience and piety are weaponized to enforce a revolution in discipline and doctrine.
What presents itself as an exhortation to fidelity is, in its logic and its historical effects, an invitation to betray the Founder by “updating” him into irrelevance. Under the judgment of the unchanging Catholic faith taught before 1958, this speech stands not as a luminous guidance for religious life, but as a sugar-coated vector of apostasy within a paramasonic structure occupying the visible institutions.
Source:
Allocutio ad moderatores et sodales Congregationis Ss.mi Redemptoris, qui Generali religiosae suae communitatis Consilio Romae interfuerunt, (die 8 m. Februarii, A.D. MCMLXIII) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025