Vatican portal publishes the Latin allocution of antipope John XXIII (25 January 1960) at the first session of the Roman Synod, in which he exhorts the Roman clergy to priestly holiness, derives their dignity from the Sacrifice and the power of absolution, invokes Saints Peter and Paul, praises the Roman Catechism of Trent, and recommends deeper liturgical and scriptural devotion as the foundation of sacerdotal life. Behind a language apparently saturated with Tradition, Scripture, Trent, and Eucharistic devotion, he constructs a carefully moderated, sentimental, and selective rhetoric that prepares minds for the imminent conciliar subversion, disguising the rupture against the integral Catholic faith under the guise of continuity and “renewal.”

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The Conciliar Doppelganger: Traditional Vocabulary as Preparation for Subversion

The cited allocution is a paradigmatic example of the conciliar sect’s method: speak in venerable terms while silently altering their function and preparing their dissolution.

From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, the key problem is not in what is explicitly orthodox in isolated phrases, but in:

– what is omitted;
– what is weakened or sentimentalized;
– what is subtly reoriented toward a new ecclesiology and pastoral naturalism.

This is the perfected technique of Modernism unmasked by St. Pius X in Pascendi and by the Holy Office in Lamentabili sane exitu: preserve forms, evacuate content, and under cover of tradition, launch the revolution.

Three central axes expose the bankruptcy of this text:

1. It instrumentalizes genuine Catholic themes (sacrifice, priestly holiness, Tridentine catechism) to grant Catholic capital and credibility to the very figure who will shortly convoke the ecumenical demolition-site of Vatican II.
2. It replaces the militant supernatural clarity of the pre-1958 Magisterium with a warm, affective, non-combative spirituality, preparing clergy to accept aggiornamento instead of to resist error.
3. It is entirely silent about the real doctrinal enemies condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII: Modernism, Liberalism, false religious liberty, social apostasy, Freemasonry’s war against the Church. This silence is the loudest statement.

Selective Orthodoxy: True Phrases Bent to a New End

On the factual and doctrinal surface:

– The allocution affirms:
– the sacred character of the priesthood;
– the centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice;
– the power to forgive sins;
– the model of Christ, the teaching of St. Peter and St. Paul;
– the authority and excellence of the Roman Catechism;
– love of the liturgy.

All of this, taken in isolation and in the unchanging sense taught before 1958, is Catholic.

However, the theological fraud lies in the deployment:

– He cites Trent on the sacredness of the priesthood and the Sacrifice, yet within a few years the same conciliar revolution will:
– introduce a rite (the 1968 “ordination” and the 1969 “new mass”) that necessarily obscures or destroys precisely that sacrificial and propitiatory character defined by Trent.
– reinterpret priesthood in horizontal “service” categories, dissolving the distinctive sacrificial identity he verbally praises.
– He praises the Catechism of Trent as a sure norm, yet:
– Vatican II and the neo-church catechisms systematically contradict or relativize its doctrine on the Church, on religious liberty, on the unique necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, on the social Kingship of Christ.
– Not once does he bind the clergy in this allocution to defend, as non-negotiable, those hard edges of Trent and of the Syllabus of Errors that directly condemn what Vatican II will promote.

This is not harmless omission. It is method.

St. Pius X precisely diagnosed this tactic: Modernists speak reverently of dogma but submit it to evolution; they mouth Tradition but place living experience and historical consciousness above fixed definitions. The allocution’s “traditional” sections function as a sedative, not as a summons to dogmatic combat.

Liturgical Devotion Without Militant Doctrine: Aesthetic Cloak for Doctrinal Surrender

The speech is saturated with emotional and aesthetic appeals:

– priest at the altar bathed in supernatural light;
– beauty of liturgy and rubrics;
– moving meditation on the words “Hoc est corpus meum” and “Hoc facite in meam commemorationem”;
– pious desire that priests celebrate with fervour, humility, recollection.

All of this, in itself, belongs to authentic Catholic piety.

But observe the structural perversion:

– There is:
– no mention of the need to anathematize heresy;
– no recall of the binding condemnations of Lamentabili, Pascendi, the Oath against Modernism;
– no explicit warning against Liberalism, secularism, religious indifferentism, condemned so vigorously by Pius IX in the Syllabus;
– no affirmation of the absolute right of Christ to reign socially over states, as Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas;
– no denunciation of Freemasonry and its sects, which Pius IX clearly identifies as the organized “synagogue of Satan” warring against the Church.

Instead, we have a spirituality of priestly interior life carefully detached from its dogmatic and social militancy. This corresponds exactly to the Modernist and Liberal strategy: tolerate “devotion” provided it is no longer the engine of confessional states, anti-heresy vigilance, and condemnation of error.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) is weaponized here inversely: by softening the tone and isolating piety from doctrinal war, the clergy are gently led to accept a future soft doctrine matching this soft liturgical rhetoric.

This is the connective tissue between this 1960 allocution and the subsequent liturgical devastation: not direct attack yet, but anesthesia.

Silence on the Kingship of Christ and the Social Order: A Betrayal by Omission

Measured against Pius XI’s Quas Primas, the allocution is gravely deficient.

Pius XI solemnly teaches:

– peace and order are impossible until individuals and states recognize and publicly submit to the reign of Christ the King;
– the Church must demand full liberty and public honour for Christ and His law;
– secularist laicism and relegation of religion to private devotion are a “plague.”

Now compare:

– John XXIII speaks of:
– “religion” and even “social progress” in bland terms;
– moral example of priests;
– pastoral encouragement.

But he does not:

– insist that priests form the faithful to fight the political and legal apostasy of nations;
– bind them to oppose, in the name of Christ the King, the liberal state that separates Church and State, condemned in proposition 55 of the Syllabus;
– remind them that civil authority must be ordered by the divine law and that laws contrary to the Church’s rights are null, as Pius IX expressly declares.

This silence is not neutral; it is complicity. It habituates the clergy to a purely interior, privatized understanding of holiness and ministry, compatible with the liberal order and thus perfectly suited to the conciliar sect’s religion of “human dignity” and “dialogue.”

When a shepherd speaks at length of sanctity but never arms his clergy against the reigning errors solemnly condemned by his predecessors, he shows that his “holiness” discourse is a controlled and safely depoliticized version: pious, decorous, harmless to the world’s revolt against Christ.

Salus animarum suprema lex (the salvation of souls is the supreme law) is evacuated when the publicly reigning errors that damn souls go unmentioned.

Scripture and Trent Cited, but the Anti-Modernist Magisterium Erased

The allocution presents itself as rooted in:

– St. Peter and St. Paul;
– the Epistle to the Hebrews;
– 1 Peter 2 on the “spiritual house” and “holy priesthood”;
– Trent’s teaching on the priesthood;
– St. Thomas on sacramental character.

All of these sources, rightly read, are deadly weapons against Modernism and Liberalism.

Yet the allocution:

– never mentions:
– the Oath against Modernism (Pius X);
– the condemnation of Modernist exegesis and relativism in Lamentabili;
– Pascendi’s identification of Modernism as the “synthesis of all heresies”;
– the obligation to submit intellect and will to the doctrinal decrees of Roman Congregations;
– never commands priests to reject and denounce:
– the false principle that “truth changes with man” (Lamentabili condemns precisely this);
– the errors of the “living tradition” notion that Vatican II and its theologians will propagate;
– the democratization of doctrine by the “people of God,” formally prefigured by the idea that the teaching Church must ratify the listening Church.

By omitting these concrete anti-Modernist reference points, the allocution creates an appearance of fidelity while silently abrogating the defensive wall built by pre-1958 Popes.

This is classic fraus legis (fraud against the law): preserve the letter of safe topics, betray the spirit by selective muteness where the danger lies.

From Holy Priesthood to Pastoral Functionary: The Seed of Horizontalism

The allocution repeatedly underlines:

– the sacredness of the priest;
– his union with Christ in the Sacrifice;
– his obligation to personal holiness.

Yet pay attention to several features:

1. The priest is continually described in emotive terms: his “gentle character,” “urbanity,” “beautiful example,” contact with families, consolation, human virtues. There is hardly a word about:
– dogmatic preaching against error;
– use of canonical discipline;
– the priest as guardian of orthodoxy and warrior against heresy.
2. The vision of holiness is nearly entirely ascetical-moral and liturgical-aesthetic; the explicitly doctrinal and combative dimensions, so central to Trent and to St. Pius X, are bracketed.

This gently facilitates the post-1962 transformation of the priest:

– from alter Christus immolating the propitiatory Sacrifice and judging sins,
– into a “presider,” “animator,” and “servant of the community,” whose primary note is relational, not sacrificial and doctrinal.

That change is not in contradiction with the spirit of this allocution; it is its development. Once you educate clergy to perceive themselves chiefly as men of interior piety and pastoral presence, without hard doctrinal militancy, the road is open to the conciliar sect’s horizontally defined “ministry.”

Hermeneutics of Continuity as Cloak: How the Speech Serves the Conciliar Coup

This allocution must be read historically:

– 1960: anti-Modernist measures of St. Pius X still formally exist.
– Same John XXIII will soon:
– convene Vatican II;
– systematically neutralize the anti-Modernist ethos;
– elevate precisely the theologians previously under suspicion;
– inaugurate the “hermeneutic of continuity,” by which the most radical novelties are camouflaged as developments.

In this light, the allocution’s heavy quoting of Trent, Scripture, and the Roman Catechism is not an accident; it is an investment:

– By clothing himself in the authoritative language of real popes and real councils, John XXIII purchases the trust of clergy and faithful.
– With that trust secured, the subsequent conciliar revolution can be presented as the flowering of the very Tradition he has just invoked.

This mechanism is precisely the one unmasked by St. Pius X: Modernists “disguise themselves as lovers of the Church” while overturning her from within. The allocution is a textbook instance: no overt heresy, but careful repositioning of emphases, the strategic silence on condemned errors, the sentimental tone—all ordered to future betrayal.

Corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst) applies: the holier the vocabulary misused, the deeper the deception.

Abandonment of Militant Authority: Priestly Holiness Without Juridical Teeth

Note the almost complete absence of:

– canonical discipline;
– condemnation of dissent;
– insistence that priests teach the faithful to reject every proposition condemned by the Syllabus, Lamentabili, the decrees of the Holy Office.

Instead, the allocution:

– speaks of “paternal” tone, spiritual encouragement, inner fervour;
– recommends reading Scripture (especially Luke 12, Romans) as moral exhortation.

But the priest, according to perennial doctrine:

– is not merely exemplar, but judge, teacher, and guardian of the flock;
– must exclude wolves, denounce error, and use canonical means when needed.

Pius IX and St. Pius X both affirmed the right and duty of the Apostolic See and bishops to condemn, proscribe, and repress books, teachings, and persons that corrupt the faith.

The allocution’s silence and soft language on this front is symptomatic:

– It prefigures the conciliar sect’s abolition of effective ecclesiastical discipline against heresy.
– It anticipates the cult of “dialogue” and “accompaniment” which has replaced the exercise of authority.
– It thus assists the transformation of priestly authority into managerial facilitation—precisely the pattern now visible in the paramasonic structure occupying Rome.

A discourse on priestly holiness that refuses to include the obligation to defend dogma, condemn error, and resist the world’s apostasy is already compromised. It forms clergy unfit to resist the revolution unleashed two years later.

Why This Pious Text Cannot Be Taken at Face Value

From the standpoint of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine:

– Every true element in this allocution remains true only in that original context; its instrumentalization by an antipope and by the emerging neo-church does not invalidate Scripture or Trent, but it reveals a tactical misuse.
– The allocution is culpably deficient in:
– its silence on Modernism and Liberalism;
– its lack of explicit adherence to the anti-Modernist Magisterium;
– its failure to assert the social Kingship of Christ against secularism;
– its refusal to arm the clergy against the very trends that, at that historical moment, were visibly undermining the Church.

This is exactly how the conciliar sect operates:

– no open denial when it would shock the faithful,
– instead: carefully framed orthodox-sounding addresses that never touch the central dogmatic battlefields, thereby disarming disciplined resistance.

Measured by the standard applied by Pius X in Pascendi and in the renewal of Lamentabili—which anathematizes evolution of dogma, doctrinal relativism, subjectivist exegesis, and the subversion of Magisterium—such an agenda of softening and selective muteness is not accidental spirituality: it is complicity in the advance of Modernism.

Thus, the allocution, far from being a reliable expression of the mind of the Church, must be recognized as an early, seductive moment in the program of the Church of the New Advent: using the vocabulary of priestly holiness to lead priests away from the integral, militant, anti-liberal Catholicism demanded by the true Magisterium, and to make them docile instruments of the approaching conciliar apostasy.

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Source:
Allocutio die XXV Ianuarii A. D. MCMLX habita in prima Synodi sessione   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025