The cited article reports a Latin allocution of antipope John XXIII (11 October 1959), addressed to past and present alumni of the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, on the centenary of its juridical re-foundation by Pius IX. John XXIII flatters the assembled German-speaking hierarchy and clergy, praises the fruits of the college for Church and civil society, exhorts continuity with its traditions, and imparts his “Apostolic Blessing” as a pledge of divine favour. Behind the ornate courtesies and historical references stands a self-legitimating manifesto of the coming conciliar revolution, cloaked in sentimental rhetoric and severed from the integral Catholic doctrine it pretends to honour.

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Sentimental Courtesies as a Veil for a Usurped Authority

At the factual level, the allocution appears brief and innocuous: words of congratulations, remembrance of Pius IX’s act, and exhortations to virtue, learning, and charity. Yet even in this compressed text the fundamental problem is objective: Roncalli speaks and acts as Supreme Pontiff while lacking both orthodoxy and, consequently, any right to Peter’s office.

From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, certain principles are non-negotiable:

– Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) and the unique, exclusive authority of the Roman Pontiff as defined by the constant Magisterium.
– A manifest heretic, or one publicly favouring condemned errors, cannot be head of the Church he does not belong to. This is the explicit theological doctrine synthesized by St Robert Bellarmine and reflected juridically in canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, which states that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office ipso facto.
– The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX and the anti-modernist magisterium culminating in St Pius X’s Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi condemn the liberal, historicist, and modernist principles that Roncalli had long exhibited sympathy for as nuncio and as a theologian of “aggiornamento.”

Thus the allocution is not a benign papal exhortation but the public exercise of a usurped authority: a paramasonic program wrapped in the vocabulary of continuity. The invocation of Pius IX—author of the Syllabus that anathematized liberal Catholicism and masonic “progress”—by the very man who would soon convoke Vatican II against that Syllabus is a calculated act of symbolic inversion.

Naturalistic Praise and the Eclipse of Supernatural Mission

John XXIII extols the college because from it has arisen, in his words, a “rich harvest” of bishops and priests who have contributed to:

– the “stability of the Kingdom of God,”
– the “progress and honour” of the Catholic name,
– and explicitly also to “civil society.”

On the surface, such phrases are compatible with Catholic tradition. However, measured by pre-1958 doctrine and by the concrete historical context, several grave distortions emerge.

1. The emphasis on “fruits” includes without distinction contributions to “civil progress” and national prestige, as if ecclesiastical excellence is coextensive with cultural or political utility. This is precisely the naturalistic drift condemned by Pius XI in Quas primas, where he identifies as the root of modern calamities the eviction of Christ’s social Kingship and the attempt to construct public life on human autonomy rather than on the reign of Christ the King.

2. There is no explicit mention of:
– the need to defend the Syllabus of Pius IX against Liberalism;
– the necessity of militantly opposing socialism, Freemasonry, and secularism which Pius IX and Leo XIII repeatedly branded as mortal enemies of the Church;
– the obligation of clergy to guard the flock from doctrinal novelties, modernist exegesis, and false irenicism.

Instead, John XXIII speaks in a soft, irenic register: congratulatory, horizontal, sociable. The silence is more eloquent than his words. In the decade when neo-modernism was penetrating seminaries and theological faculties, when the enemies condemned by Pius IX openly boasted of infiltrating Church structures, Roncalli chooses to celebrate pleasing memories, “serene joy,” and collegiate prestige. This is not pastoral prudence; it is abdication of the supernatural office of guarding the deposit of faith.

Silentium de maximis accusat (silence about the greatest matters is incriminating). To address the elite clergy of German-speaking lands—who would become leading agents of the conciliar revolution—without a single doctrinal warning, without reaffirming the anti-liberal condemnations of his predecessors, exhibits a different religion: one that de facto relativizes dogma for the sake of ecclesiastical diplomacy and bourgeois respectability.

Language of Self-Celebration: Clerical Humanism Without the Cross

The linguistic register of the allocution is revealing:

– Constant flattery: the group is a “most pleasing crown,” their history is a “rich harvest,” their alumni are adorned with “religion, wisdom, magnanimity.”
– Appeals to honour, decorum, pleasant remembrance, humanitas, and charming hospitality.
– Aesthetic spiritualism: the college should reflect “the image of the eternal home” in terms of light, joy, and delightful memories.

Almost entirely absent are:

– explicit mention of sin, hell, punishment, or error;
– any call to combat heresy or defend the faith against modernist contagion;
– reference to the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory, or to the state of grace as condition of fruitfulness.

This rhetoric corresponds exactly to that “cult of man,” moralistic optimism, and superficial kindness which would become the trademark of the conciliar sect. The vocabulary of self-congratulation replaces the traditional ascetical and militant perspective: the Church as Ecclesia militans, called to combat the “synagogue of Satan” (language used explicitly by Pius IX concerning Freemasonry in the Syllabus context), is exchanged for a comfortable club of well-educated clergy who enjoy honourable standing in civil society.

The allocution’s most theologically crafted phrase—borrowed paraphrastically from the Augustinian ideal “to burn and to shine” (to act and to love)—is reduced to a generic exhortation: be learned, be virtuous, be kind, be hospitable. All good in themselves, yet here detached from the concrete battle against the modern errors solemnly condemned right up to 1958. This is not accidental. It is the stylistic mask of a project that will soon present itself as aggiornamento: the mutation of supernatural militancy into humanistic benevolence.

Abuse of Continuity: Invoking Pius IX Against Pius IX

John XXIII builds the moral authority of his address upon the act of Pius IX, who in 1859 gave the college its juridical form. This appeal is inherently duplicitous.

Pius IX’s pontificate is doctrinally defined by:

– the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,
– the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which condemns:
– religious liberty as a subjective right to choose any religion (props. 15-18),
– the separation of Church and State (prop. 55),
– the subordination of the Church to civil power (props. 19-21, 41-44),
– the assimilation of Catholicism to modern liberal principles (prop. 80),
– the vigorous denunciation of Freemasonry and secret societies as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan” warring against Christ and His Church.

Roncalli, however:

– omits all reference to this doctrinal heritage;
– avoids any mention of the social Kingship of Christ so strongly reaffirmed by Pius XI’s Quas primas in continuity with Pius IX;
– flatters an episcopate which, in large part, would embrace precisely those liberal, ecumenical, and modernist positions anathematized in the Syllabus.

Thus, the allocution manipulates the memory of Pius IX as a merely administrative benefactor of a national college, while tacitly repudiating the doctrinal architecture that gave that college its raison d’être. This is symptomatic of the future “hermeneutic of continuity”: an outward citation of past authorities to conceal substantial contradiction.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”) has its counterpart here: lex celebrandi, lex deludendi—the law of selective celebration becomes the law of deception.

Theological Inconsistency: “Apostolic Blessing” from a Non-Apostolic Source

The allocution culminates in the bestowal of an “Apostolic Blessing.” Evaluated according to pre-1958 theology, this act is void and sacrilegious for two converging reasons:

1. A manifest adherent or promoter of modernist errors cannot be a true Pope. The doctrinal synthesis of Bellarmine (as cited in reliable theological tradition) makes clear: a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope ipso facto, since he ceases to be a member of the Church. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code supports the principle that public defection from the faith causes tacit resignation of office without need of further declaration.
2. John XXIII’s subsequent activity—convocation of the Second Vatican Council; selection and promotion of notorious modernists; initiation of ecumenical and religious liberty trajectories explicitly rejected by prior magisterium—confirms in history what the theological principles indicate: his “Apostolic” authority is counterfeit.

Therefore, his blessing is an empty gesture of a private person, used as an instrument to bind the Teutonic College to the coming conciliar program. Far from conveying supernatural favour, it functions as a ritual annexation of that institution into the emergent neo-church, the “Church of the New Advent” which usurps Catholic language to subvert Catholic doctrine.

Omissions that Unmask: No Warning Against Modernism and Liberalism

Measured against Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi (Pius X, 1907), the allocution’s omissions are devastating.

St Pius X condemned:

– the reduction of dogma to historical experiences and mutable symbols,
– the democratization of doctrine by the “faithful consciousness,”
– the naturalistic reinterpretation of Revelation and miracles,
– the separation of the Magisterium from its divine, absolute authority.

Pius X so judged modernism the “synthesis of all heresies” that he mandated the anti-modernist oath precisely for clergy, professors, and seminarians—the environment to which the Teutonic College belongs.

In 1959, a speaker truly standing in the Chair of Peter, addressing German clergy at a decisive historical moment, would necessarily:

– reaffirm the anti-modernist oath;
– warn against the new exegesis that denies the inerrancy of Scripture, the historicity of the Gospels, and the divinity and kingship of Christ (errors explicitly listed in Lamentabili);
– condemn the liberal theology already arising in Germany and Central Europe, the seeds of which would soon explode at Vatican II.

John XXIII does none of this. He speaks as if the battle lines drawn by his predecessors did not exist. This deliberate silence functions as a de facto revocation of the pre-1958 magisterial stance, not by formal definition (which would expose its heresy), but by pastoral practice: the Church’s enemies are no longer to be denounced but invited to dialogue.

Qui tacet, consentire videtur (“He who is silent is seen to consent”). In such a setting, silence regarding modernism is moral complicity.

Symptom of a Systemic Apostasy: The Teutonic College in the Conciliar Project

Historically (and this can be independently verified), many of those formed in precisely such Roman-German institutions became:

– prominent architects of the Rhine alliance at Vatican II,
– promoters of religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism against the Syllabus and against Quas primas,
– agents of the liturgical subversion that would lead to the destruction of the Roman rite and the establishment of a protestantised “New Mass.”

The allocution, therefore, is not an isolated gesture but a micro-manifesto:

– It canonizes an elite as naturally reliable and virtuous, without subjecting it to the strict criteria of orthodoxy and anti-modernist vigilance.
– It forges emotional loyalty between these elites and the person of John XXIII, which would later shield his conciliar initiatives from traditional scrutiny.
– It integrates national and academic prestige into the emerging conciliar framework, turning centres meant to defend the faith into laboratories of its demolition.

This is how the “conciliar sect” consolidates itself: not first by dogmatic proclamations, but by pastoral gestures, rhetorical tones, and a reorientation of honours and loyalties. The allocution exemplifies this method with chilling precision.

Christ the King vs. Bourgeois Catholicism Without the Cross

Pius XI in Quas primas teaches with crystalline clarity:

– the Kingship of Christ is universal, social, and political;
– public life, legislation, and education must submit to His law;
– the calamities of the modern world flow from the rejection of this reign.

By contrast, John XXIII’s allocution praises alumni for contributing both to the Church and to civil society, but without asserting that civil society is bound to recognize and submit to Christ’s Kingship. The implication is that Catholic clergy may serve the modern liberal order as one partner among many, without insisting on the exclusive rights of Christ and His Church. This omission aligns with the proposition condemned in the Syllabus (prop. 77-80) that Catholic religion need not be the sole religion of the State and that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself with liberalism and modern civilization understood as religiously neutral.

Thus the address prepares psychologically for the future betrayal in Dignitatis humanae and the post-conciliar cult of “human rights” severed from God’s rights. The Teutonic College is praised not as a fortress of the social reign of Christ, but as a culture-producing institution integrated into the liberal West.

This is theological bankruptcy camouflaged as courteous oratory.

Authentic Authority vs. the Neo-Church’s Counterfeit Hierarchy

Finally, it is necessary to expose the deeper ecclesiological perversion manifested here.

– The true Church, as consistently taught before 1958, is a *perfect society* founded by Christ, possessing divine authority to teach, rule, and sanctify, independent of and superior to civil power (Syllabus, props. 19, 39-44).
– The clergy are bound to transmit, intact, the deposit of faith, condemn errors, and guard the sacraments and the Most Holy Sacrifice from profanation.
– Justice and governance in the Church belong to the divinely instituted hierarchy adhering to the perennial Magisterium, not to humanist elites or national clubs.

In Roncalli’s allocution:

– Authority is exercised as benevolent flattery; no one is judged, no error is condemned, no doctrinal line is drawn.
– The hierarchy’s nobility is treated as self-evident, rooted in academic pedigree and social utility, not in demonstrable fidelity to anti-modernist doctrine.
– The “Apostolic Blessing” is extended indiscriminately, as if orthodoxy were presumed, at the dawn of the greatest doctrinal crisis since the Reformation.

This is the essence of the “neo-church”: a paramasonic structure occupying Catholic institutions, imitating Catholic gestures, but in practice inverting the role of authority—from guardian of immutable truth to facilitator of humanistic self-celebration. The allocution to the Teutonic College is a compact specimen of this inversion.

Conclusion: A Soft Voice Introducing a Hard Revolt

Once stripped of its Latin courtesy, this 1959 speech reveals:

– usurped papal authority used to bind a key Roman-German institution to a program foreign to Pius IX and Pius X;
– a naturalistic, bourgeois praise of clerical elites, with no serious reference to the war against modernism, to the exclusive truth of Catholicism, or to the social Kingship of Christ;
– the manipulative appropriation of Pius IX’s memory while suppressing his doctrinal condemnations;
– the transformation of the Petrine office into a sentimental presidency of honour, paving the way for the conciliar cataclysm.

From the standpoint of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, this allocution is not an edifying papal address but one more step in the systemic apostasy of the conciliar sect—a polished façade hiding the demolition of the Catholic order from within.

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Source:
Allocutio IV Teutonici Collegii S. Mariae de Anima iis qui nunc sunt rei qui fuerunt olim alumni, saecularia eiusdem Collegii agentibus sollemnia (die 13 m. Octobris, A. D. MCMLIX)   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025