John XXIII’s North American College Speech: Blessing the Future Conciliar Engine
The commented article presents the Latin allocution of John XXIII (11 October 1959) at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, on the centenary of its foundation, together with his concluding remarks in English. John XXIII extols the history of the College, praises the American hierarchy, clergy, and laity, emphasizes their charitable works and institutional growth, and highlights the College’s role in forming priests “imbued with Roman spirit.” He frames these developments as fruits of divine providence, links them to Marian devotion, and concludes with paternal assurances of affection, an Apostolic Benediction, and a joyful update on the cause of Elizabeth Seton. The entire discourse appears benign and “pious”, yet in reality it reveals and consolidates the orientation that will soon blossom into the conciliar revolution: a saccharine naturalism, ecclesiastical self-congratulation, and preparation of a clergy adapted to progress and Americanism rather than to the full, socially kingship-focused reign of Christ the King.
Historical and Factual Layer: The Praised “Success” as Preludio to Ruin
John XXIII’s address is situated on the eve of the so-called Second Vatican Council. In this light, its apparently harmless content becomes historically and theologically symptomatic.
Key factual elements:
– He celebrates 100 years of the North American College as an unqualified success, speaking of “flourishing” dioceses, growth of Catholic institutions, social works, and the “vigorous faith” of American Catholics.
– He extols:
– the collaboration between hierarchy and laity in the United States,
– the increase of schools, universities, charitable institutions,
– the missionary and charitable outreach beyond American borders,
– the erection of the new building on the Janiculum as a monument to zeal for priestly formation.
– He treats the College as a privileged instrument to shape priests “imbued with Roman formation,” drawing from the city of the Apostles, martyrs, and the See of Peter.
– He links the foundation to Pius IX, the name “Pontifical” to Leo XIII, the organizational refinements to Pius XI, and the new building to Pius XII, crafting a narrative of harmonious continuity culminating in his own visit.
– He adds an English coda emphasizing:
– admiration for American “unselfish devotion to charity,”
– the “flourishing condition” of the Church in the USA,
– his affection for the American hierarchy and people,
– and the progress of Elizabeth Seton’s cause as a “flower of American piety.”
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, these facts, taken together, are not neutral:
– The North American College is being confirmed as a strategic formation centre for an American hierarchy that will, within a few years, enthusiastically embrace religious liberty (Dignitatis humanae), ecumenism, and liturgical revolution, and will preside over a collapse of belief, morals, vocations, and the Most Holy Sacrifice in their dioceses.
– John XXIII’s allocution functions as a solemn benediction over precisely that episcopal class which will implement the demolition later falsely sold as “renewal.”
– What he calls “flourishing” and “progress” is, when judged by pre-1958 doctrine and subsequent empirical fruits, a prelude to apostasy: mass abandonment of the faith, desecration of churches, experimental liturgies, prostration before the world, and the near-total extinction of Catholic public life.
The allocution therefore must be read not as a harmless courthouse speech, but as part of the architecture of a paramasonic, conciliar sect preparing its cadres.
Linguistic Sugar: Sentimentalism as Veil for Doctrinal Dilution
The rhetoric of this allocution is revealing.
1. Overabundant sentimentality and flattery:
– The text is saturated with “joy,” “pleasure,” “affection,” “dear sons,” “splendid example,” “flourishing condition,” “laetandi beneque sperandi causa.”
– This sweetness disarms critical judgment and replaces the robust ascetical and doctrinal tone of the pre-modern Magisterium with a bourgeois politeness.
– True Catholic pastors (cf. St. Pius X, Pascendi; Pius IX, Quanta Cura) speak with clarity about errors, dangers, Masonic plots, liberalism, indifferentism. Here, none of that: only diplomatic compliments.
2. Absence of militant supernatural vocabulary:
– Practically no mention of:
– state of grace,
– necessity of penance as reparation for sin and for the preservation of purity in a corrupt world,
– Four Last Things (death, judgment, hell, heaven),
– the absolute obligation to profess the one true faith publicly against error.
– Instead, emphasis falls on:
– institutional expansion,
– “social action,”
– “charity” in a horizontal sense,
– admiration for organizational success.
– This silence is not accidental; it is the classic move of early Modernism: replacing *militia Christi* with religiously tinged optimism.
3. Diplomatic “Romanitas” as empty symbol:
– John XXIII insists that living in Rome will instill a “sense of the Church” and “genuine priestly dignity.”
– But the concrete content of this *sensus Ecclesiae* is never defined in terms of dogmatic intransigence or the condemnation of liberal errors. It is sentimental and cultural: Rome as “center,” as “beautiful city,” as “example of human culture.”
– This reduces *Romanitas* to aesthetics and prestige, detaching it from its doctrinal backbone expressed, for example, in Pius IX’s Syllabus, Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*, and St. Pius X’s anti-modernist legislation.
The linguistic field is the field of Modernism’s advance: emotional, diplomatic, irenic, allergic to anathema, comfortable with “progress.”
Theological Diagnosis: Systematic Omissions as Mark of the Conciliar Spirit
Measured against unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, the allocution is most culpable in its silences and one-sided emphases.
1. No Affirmation of the Social Kingship of Christ
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches with divine clarity that:
– Christ must reign over individuals, families, and states.
– Public authority must submit to Christ and His Church.
– Secular liberalism and laicism are a “plague,” a public apostasy to be condemned and resisted.
The United States, whose clergy are being praised and “confirmed” here, is:
– constitutionally indifferentist,
– founded on religious liberty condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, prop. 15–18, 77–80),
– structured on the exclusion of the only true religion from public law.
Yet John XXIII:
– praises American Catholicism as a “splendid example” of collaboration with such a system,
– never recalls that the State must recognize Christ the King,
– never warns that coexistence with liberalism is tolerated at best, never ideal,
– never exhorts American bishops to strive for the public recognition of the true religion.
This is a theological betrayal by omission. When a Roman pontiff—or, in this case, the initiator of the conciliar line of usurpers—speaks in such a solemn context and refuses to recall the condemned liberal principles undermining Catholic life, he effectively relativizes those condemnations. This is the proto–“hermeneutic of continuity,” i.e. practical denial of the Syllabus and *Quas Primas* in polite silence.
2. Americanism and Naturalistic “Charity” without Dogma
Leo XIII condemned “Americanism” as a grave error: the exaltation of natural virtues, activism, and social engagement while sidelining strict dogmatic fidelity, religious vows, and submission to ecclesiastical authority.
In this allocution we find precisely:
– Exaltation of:
– charitable works,
– social initiatives,
– “hilarious givers” (2 Cor 9:7–8),
– organizational success.
– Absence of:
– denunciation of doctrinal indifferentism,
– warning against the cult of activism without interior life,
– insistence that all works are worthless without integral, exclusive adherence to Catholic dogma.
“Charity” is praised, but charity severed from dogmatic intransigence and from the obligation to oppose false religions sinks into a philanthropic humanitarianism. This anticipates the post-conciliar *cultus hominis* in which so-called “Love” and “dialogue” overshadow the obligation of conversion and the condemnation of error.
3. Priestly Formation: Roman in Form, Modernist in Intent
John XXIII underlines the strategic importance of forming priests in Rome, at the “head of the Catholic cause,” surrounded by the memory of Peter and the martyrs. He is objectively correct that priestly formation is decisive.
Yet:
– He does not once mention:
– guarding against Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili sane,
– the Anti-Modernist Oath (then still in force),
– the duty of priests to combat liberalism, socialism, naturalism, Freemasonry (explicitly unmasked by Pius IX and Leo XIII).
– He speaks abstractly of:
– “higher studies,”
– “perfect human culture,”
– “sense of the Church.”
The omission is damning:
– In 1959, Modernism was not dead; it was entrenched in seminaries, biblical institutes, theological faculties.
– Rome itself housed theologians who questioned inspiration, miracles, dogmatic fixity—all propositions condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu.
– A truly Catholic pastor would recall:
– that seminarians must be thoroughly formed against those errors,
– that fidelity to pre-existing definitions is non-negotiable,
– that no “progress” or “historical development” can overturn or relativize dogma (*semel tradita fides*, the faith once delivered, cf. Jude 3).
Instead, John XXIII’s tone and content encourage precisely the milieu in which dogma becomes silently subject to adaptation. This is the spiritual seedbed of the conciliar sect: priests trained to love “Rome” sentimentally, while internally realigned to the world.
4. Glorification of Institution Instead of Call to Conversion
The speech abounds in praise for:
– the College’s buildings,
– its “solid structures,”
– its honorable alumni (including many later promoters of the conciliar revolution),
– the growth of dioceses and universities,
– the external prestige of American Catholicism.
Notice what is systematically absent:
– Call to:
– deep conversion,
– severe penance,
– separation from the world (*non conformari huic saeculo* – “be not conformed to this world”).
– Warning against:
– cinema, press, mass culture,
– moral corruption,
– doctrinal subversion in universities and seminaries.
– Emphasis on:
– Eucharistic Sacrifice as propitiatory,
– necessity of frequent confession rightly understood,
– hell and eternal loss for those who betray the priestly vocation.
This euphoric institutional triumphalism is radically at odds with Popes who, even when praising works, never ceased to warn against liberal, Masonic, and modernist poison. Compare Pius IX’s identification of secret societies and liberal regimes as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan” or St. Pius X’s unwavering insistence that Modernism is the “synthesis of all heresies.” John XXIII: silence. This silence is not ignorance; it is choice.
5. Early Canonization Politics: Elizabeth Seton as Symbol
The English section culminates in the joyful news that the cause of Elizabeth Seton is moving forward.
– The intention is transparent:
– Give Americans a “flower” of national piety,
– cement emotional union between American hierarchy and the Roman structures,
– baptize Americanism with a canonized emblem.
– Canonization, in Catholic understanding, is a solemn confirmation of heroic virtue and sound doctrine.
– In the context of the conciliar trajectory, these causes are frequently exploited as pastoral policy tools; the process is politicized and used to endorse a given ecclesial ideology.
Here, the allocution:
– uses a cause-in-progress as a diplomatic instrument,
– reducing the supernatural seriousness of sanctity to a psychological reward for institutional loyalty.
And this foreshadows the post-1958 abuse of “canonizations” by antipopes of the conciliar sect to beatify their own revolution and its icons.
Symptomatic Level: The Allocution as Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect
From the perspective of unchanging pre-1958 Catholic teaching, this text reveals characteristic marks of the conciliar apostasy:
Substitution of Supernatural Combat with Optimistic Progress
– No indication that the Church on earth is *Ecclesia militans*—the Church militant—waging war against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
– Replaced by:
– “growth,”
– amicable collaboration,
– cultural respectability.
In direct contrast:
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus, unmasks the liberal thesis that the Church must reconcile herself with “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” as an error (prop. 80).
– Here, John XXIII’s tone and content practically embrace exactly that reconciliation: praise for American liberal collaboration, absence of reproach, rhetorical integration into the narrative of Providence.
Ecclesial Democratization and Flattery of the Masses
By idealizing “loyal collaboration” between hierarchy and people, and glorifying the laity mainly for activism and charity, the allocution:
– anticipates the democratic, horizontal mentality of the neo-church,
– where authority becomes pastoral sentimentality rather than juridical and dogmatic guardianship,
– where “the People of God” become a rhetorical battering ram against the immutable doctrinal and disciplinary edifice.
Integral Catholic doctrine holds:
– Authority in the Church is hierarchical, from Christ through Peter and bishops.
– The faithful are to receive, not co-create, doctrine.
– “Democratization” of the Church is incompatible with her divine constitution.
This allocution slides, gently but clearly, toward a notion of Church as a harmonious collective of pastors and people mutually building “projects” and “institutions,” rather than a militant society enforcing the reign of Christ the King and condemning the errors of the age.
Rome as Occupied Symbol: From Citadel of Truth to Stage of Conciliar Consensus
John XXIII poetically invokes:
– the martyrdoms,
– the tomb of Peter,
– the greatness of ancient Rome and its universal reach.
But:
– He weaponizes this symbolism against its own substance.
– The same Roman “center” he celebrates is precisely what he will shortly pervert by convoking the council that unleashes:
– false ecumenism,
– the cult of religious liberty,
– liturgical profanation,
– practical abolition of the Syllabus and anti-modernist discipline.
Thus the allocution:
– dresses in venerable Roman vesture a project that will devastate the Roman heritage.
– It is a rhetorical coup: the occupiers of the Vatican cloak themselves with pre-conciliar language and Marian references in order to lead souls into the post-conciliar labyrinth.
St. Pius X in Pascendi warned that Modernists hide within the Church, speaking Catholic words while subverting their content. This speech is an example: all “good” words, and yet the decisive words—condemnation of liberalism, modernism, false religious liberty; affirmation of the absolute necessity of submission of states to Christ the King—are missing. Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent). In such a context, silence is complicity.
Consequences: Formation of the Conciliar American Episcopate
The men and mentality blessed in this allocution are precisely those who:
– would dismantle catechesis,
– close or secularize seminaries,
– tolerate or promote heresy in theology faculties,
– welcome and implement the sacrilegious new rite parodying the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– adopt religious liberty and ecumenism condemned before 1958,
– supervise an unprecedented exodus from the Church, moral collapse, and desacralization of worship.
John XXIII calls their institutional growth a “splendid example.” Pre-1958 doctrine and post-1958 facts judge him instead:
– The “splendid example” produced:
– bishops protecting predators and persecuting those attached to Catholic tradition,
– dioceses bleeding vocations and faith,
– laity instructed in indifferentism and worldliness.
– The North American College became, not a fortress of Roman orthodoxy, but one of the nurseries of conciliar ideology in the Anglophone world.
By uncritically exalting this structure and mentality, this allocution participates in the moral responsibility for the subsequent devastation.
Return to the Only Criterion: Pre-1958 Magisterium
Against the sugary rhetoric and omissions of John XXIII’s discourse, the perennial Catholic standard stands:
– Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors:
– Condemns the idea that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (prop. 15),
– Condemns religious indifferentism and equality of cults (prop. 16–18),
– Condemns separation of Church and State (prop. 55),
– Condemns reconciliation with liberalism and modern civilization understood as emancipation from Christ (prop. 80).
– Pius XI, Quas Primas:
– Asserts that peace and order in society are impossible without public recognition of Christ’s kingship.
– Denounces secularism and laicism as rebellion against this kingship.
– St. Pius X, Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi:
– Condemn any idea of evolving dogma,
– Condemn historical relativization of Scripture and dogma,
– Expose the strategy of Modernists embedding themselves within Catholic structures.
Measured by these documents, the allocution of John XXIII is gravely deficient:
– It never recalls these binding teachings.
– It tacitly validates the American liberal model.
– It canonizes a naturalistic vision of ecclesial “success.”
– It strengthens the very hierarchy that will repudiate, in practice and teaching, the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Therefore, from the integral Catholic perspective, this text is not a benign or edifying papal speech; it is an ideological instrument of that conciliar paramasonic structure which has usurped the Roman See and corrupted priestly formation, especially in the United States.
Conclusion: Unmasking the Sweet Language of Apostasy
The allocution to the North American College in 1959 is emblematic:
– externally pious,
– full of Marian and Roman references,
– venerating predecessors up to Pius XII,
– speaking of divine providence and charity.
Yet precisely by what it does not say—and by what it unconditionally praises—it:
– disguises the rejection of the Syllabus and Quas Primas,
– nourishes Americanism and ecclesial naturalism,
– avoids all combat against Modernism and liberalism,
– confirms the structures and men who will execute the conciliar dissolution of doctrine, liturgy, and morals.
The speech is thus a ceremonial anointing of the cadres of the future neo-church: a mild and smiling preface to the abomination that would soon occupy the visible institutions of Rome. Only by returning without compromise to the pre-1958 Magisterium, the integral condemnation of liberalism and Modernism, and the exclusive, public reign of Christ the King, can this sugary language be recognized for what it is: the velvet glove of ecclesial revolution.
Source:
n Pontificio Collegio Foederatarum Americae Septemtrionalis Civitatum in Urbe habita, centum impleto annorunn spatio, ex quo sacrum idem Ephebeum conditum est (die 11 m. Octobris, A. D. MCMLIX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025