On 4 April 1962, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, John XXIII addressed the participants of the XVI Congress of the Italian Confederation of Direct Farmers. He linked their gathering to the liturgical season of Passiontide and Easter, praised rural piety and sacramental practice, commended their socio‑economic demands, and situated everything under the banner of his social encyclical “Mater et Magistra,” presenting agricultural work as a “vocation and mission” within a renewed Christian social vision. This apparently devout and pastoral discourse in fact functions as a soft-launch of the conciliar revolution: a sentimental, naturalistic, socially technocratic program that instrumentalizes Christian language to prepare the demolition of the integral Catholic order.
Pastoral Sentimentalism as a Vehicle of Revolution
The entire speech is a model of what the popes before 1958 warned against: the substitution of solid, dogmatic doctrine by emotive rhetoric and socio-political messaging. It is necessary to expose how, even where orthodox phrases are retained, they are employed to serve an emerging religio humanitatis (religion of humanity), not the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
John XXIII greets the delegates as a “spectacle of faith and generosity,” situates them at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, and evokes Easter rites, retreats, confession, Holy Communion, and processions. At first glance, nothing scandalous. But this must be read in its historical and doctrinal context:
– April 1962 stands on the threshold of the so-called Second Vatican Council—already prepared by modernist and paramasonic circles condemned repeatedly by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– The same John XXIII is the inaugurator of the “aggiornamento” ideology, condemned in substance by St. Pius X in Pascendi and by the Holy Office in Lamentabili sane exitu, where the idea of adapting doctrine to modern thought, of “development” that alters content, is stigmatized as Modernism, “the synthesis of all heresies”.
– The social encyclical “Mater et Magistra” (1961), which he explicitly promotes here, introduces a shifting, sociological, and democratized understanding of social order, softening the anti-liberal intransigence of Leo XIII and Pius XI, and edging toward the condemned “reconciliation with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization” rejected in proposition 80 of the Syllabus Errorum of Pius IX.
Thus, the sweet and pious surface conceals a reorientation of the papal magisterium away from the integral, confessional, hierarchical order demanded by Quas Primas and the Syllabus, toward cooperation with secular democracy, welfare statism, and egalitarian “rights”—the first phase of the conciliar sect.
Reduction of Paschal Mysteries to Humanistic Optimism
At length, John XXIII contemplates Holy Week and Easter, describing:
“the greatness of the love of Jesus Christ for men… the blessed Passion, His sorrowful Death, up to the splendours of His Resurrection”
He evokes retreats, confession, Holy Communion, and processions. These words, considered materially, echo Catholic piety. Yet under closer scrutiny, we note decisive omissions and distortions:
– There is no mention of the absolute necessity of being in the state of sanctifying grace for Holy Communion, no warning against sacrilegious communions.
– There is no recall of the reality of mortal sin, Hell, divine judgment, or the need to submit individual and social life to the Kingship of Christ as taught authoritatively by Pius XI: that vera pax (true peace) is only possible when individuals and states recognize and obey Christ the King.
– The Cross is presented primarily as “great lesson” of sublimation and self-donation; the sacrificial, propitiatory, expiatory character of the Passion—dogmatically defined at Trent—is veiled in moralism.
The rhetoric thus shifts the center of gravity from the objective sacrifice of Christ satisfying divine justice to a psycho-ethical “school of generosity.” This modernist reduction was condemned in essence by St. Pius X, who rejected transforming dogma into mere “practical norms” or expressions of religious feeling (cf. Lamentabili propositions 26, 58, 59).
Silence here is not neutral. In a discourse placed at the heart of Christendom, addressed to thousands, on the eve of the great liturgical mysteries, the failure to affirm clearly the necessity of conversion from sin, the horror of offending God, the duty of Catholic social order, betrays the new program: a Christianity emptied of its supernatural edge, made serviceable to a naturalistic civic ethos.
Naturalistic Social Doctrine in the Name of “Mater et Magistra”
The central pivot of the speech is John XXIII’s reference to his encyclical “Mater et Magistra”:
“L’Enciclica ha, tra l’altro, affrontato con nuovo impegno i problemi della vita dei campi, per conclamare le esigenze di maggiore giustizia nei rapporti fra i settori produttivi.”
He then lists:
“adequate public services in rural areas; gradual and harmonious economic development; appropriate economic policy on taxes, loans, and social insurance; price protection and income integration; full adjustment of agricultural structures.”
Here we reach the key problem.
1. The speech frames the Church as partner and inspirer of detailed socio-economic engineering, echoing technocratic welfare-state logic.
2. All legitimate demands for justice become absorbed into a secular, parliamentary, “rights”-based discourse, implicitly accepting the liberal-democratic order condemned by the Syllabus and by Leo XIII wherever it detaches law from Christ’s authority.
3. There is no reminder that:
– The State, as Pius IX reasserts, is not the “origin and source of all rights” (error 39).
– Civil law must submit to divine and natural law (Quas Primas; Syllabus 56).
– The first duty of rulers is to publicly honour and serve the true religion (Quas Primas; Syllabus 77–80).
Instead, John XXIII moves freely within the conceptual universe of modern social democracy. The categories of the speech are horizontal: productive sectors, services, fiscal policy, social insurance. All these elements can be legitimate material for Catholic reflection, but only subordinated to the regnum Christi (reign of Christ) and the exclusive rights of the one true Church. That subordination is exactly what is missing.
By divorcing social doctrine from the intransigent framework of the Syllabus and Quas Primas, the discourse effectively introduces the very errors they condemned: laicismus, religious indifferentism in the public sphere, and the dilution of Catholic claims to mere “ethical inspiration” within pluralist systems.
The Human Person as “Center” without Christ the King
John XXIII insists:
“Soggetto dell’agricoltura, come di tutta la vita sociale, è la persona umana, redenta da Cristo e in cammino verso la vita eterna.”
On its face, to affirm that the human person is redeemed by Christ and ordered to eternal life is true. But the formulation—and especially its usage in post-1962—anticipates the anthropocentric inversion of the conciliar sect.
– The consistent pre-1958 Magisterium teaches that all things—individuals, families, States—exist for the glory of God and the social Kingship of Our Lord.
– Pius XI and Leo XIII insist that public life must be governed by Christ’s law; “the kingdom of Christ on earth” is the Church, a visible, hierarchical, supernatural society, which commands states to recognize its rights.
– Against this, the emerging language in John XXIII places “the human person” as the decisive subject and measure, paving the way for the cult of man solemnized by the usurpers of the “Church of the New Advent.”
The speech couches this in pious imagery:
“In agricultural work the human person finds incentives for affirmation, development, enrichment, expansion also on the plane of spiritual values. It is therefore work to be conceived and lived as a vocation and mission.”
Under integral Catholic doctrine, any honest state in life is indeed a vocation and can be an occasion of sanctification. But here this vocabulary is instrumentalized to ennoble a purely natural order: “affirmation,” “development,” “enrichment,” “expansion” are left ambiguous, resonant with the very self-realization ideologies condemned by St. Pius X as modernist vitalism.
This anthropocentric language, severed from the Kingship of Christ and the submission of temporal order to the Church, is the seed of the subsequent doctrinal collapse: the “dignity of the human person” reinterpreted against the exclusive claims of the true religion, feeding the errors of false religious liberty and false ecumenism.
Linguistic Sugar-Coating and the Cultivation of Illusion
On the linguistic level, the address is saturated with sentimental diminutives and affective pathos: “diletti figli e figlie,” “cuore aperto,” “paterno e amplissimo,” “soavità,” “mistiche fulgori.” This is not innocent style; it is a rhetorical technique.
– The emotional tone disarms critical vigilance, making the audience receptive to shifts in doctrine and outlook.
– The speech repeatedly affirms that “the Church is close” to their economic and social concerns, but “Church” is already being subtly redefined to mean a benevolent, dialoguing, socio-technical counselor, not the militant, dogmatically intransigent societas perfecta taught by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– Hard truths (mortal sin, necessity of public Catholic confession by the State, condemnation of revolutionary syndicalism, freemasonry, socialism) are not merely underplayed—they are absent.
Such silence is grave. Pius IX explicitly exposed the Masonic and liberal sects as the engines of social subversion and persecution of the Church, urging bishops to warn the faithful openly. St. Pius X commanded pastors to unmask Modernism and its sociological redefinitions. John XXIII, speaking to a national socio-professional organization—an obvious object of penetration by political and masonic interests—offers no warning. Not one word against the secret societies whose plots against agrarian populations and Catholic order had been denounced throughout the 19th century. This is not pastoral prudence; it is abdication.
Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who keeps silent seems to consent). The omission functions as tacit legitimation of a new alliance between the structures occupying the Vatican and the errors previously condemned.
Subordination of Supernatural Realities to Welfare-State Paradigms
In another passage, John XXIII says it is necessary to strive for “more profound justice and equity” and immediately adds:
“This is the very clear teaching of Christian doctrine; but at the same time it is necessary to keep in mind that only faith and love of God can temper recurring difficulties, also of economic order, and infuse energy to continue daily efforts.”
Here, supernatural virtues are presented mainly as psychological stabilizers within socio-economic processes:
– Faith and charity are invoked to “temper difficulties” and “infuse energy” for daily labour—language of resilience and productivity, not of penance and reparation.
– The order is reversed: instead of the temporal order being judged and commanded by the supernatural end, the supernatural is drafted to support temporal projects.
This is precisely the dynamic censured by Pius XI when he condemns laicism and insists that all aspects of social and political life must be explicitly subjected to Christ the King, or else public life degenerates. The speech never confronts the secular State with its obligation to recognize the true religion; “justice” and “equity” remain content-free, ready to be filled by the democratic consensus of the day.
The transition to the neo-church’s language of “human rights,” “solidarity,” and “integral development”—divorced from the obligation of States to be Catholic—is already operative. It is a cloak for the practical acceptance of the condemned thesis 55 of the Syllabus (“The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”) and for the later erection of religious liberty as an idol.
Symptom of Systemic Apostasy: From Intransigence to Conciliar Humanism
This discourse, taken alone, might seem merely “pastoral,” even traditionally pious in some formulations. But Catholic judgment must be ex toto contextu:
– John XXIII convoked the council that opened the floodgates to all the errors anathematized by Pius IX and St. Pius X: doctrinal evolutionism, ecumenism with heretics and infidels, democratic ecclesiology, religious liberty, and liturgical devastation.
– The same regime that extols rural piety here will, within a few years, preside over the demolition of the Roman Rite, the abandonment of Latin, the profanation of sanctuaries, and the enthronement of man at the center of worship.
– The sentimental and socio-political language of this speech is continuous with that transformation: it prepares consciences to accept Christianity as moral inspiration for social agendas, not as the unique supernatural Ark of Salvation commanding all nations.
By 1907, St. Pius X had already foreseen this pattern: modernists, he taught, maintain Catholic vocabulary while emptying it of content, submitting dogma to the demands of life and history. In Lamentabili, he condemns the proposition that dogmas are “interpretations of religious facts” evolving with consciousness. John XXIII’s discourse is a polished, pastoralized articulation of this tendency: the Paschal mysteries are primarily “lessons” for social duty; the encyclical is “like a flame of doctrine and purpose of charity and fraternity… for the spiritual and material good of all the children of God.” The accent falls on fraternity and material improvement, in a register not far from the humanitarian projects of the very secret societies that Pius IX identified as the “synagogue of Satan.”
The contrast with the integral doctrine of the pre-1958 Magisterium is stark:
– Pius IX: uncompromising rejection of liberalism, naturalism, indifferentism; insistence on the rights of the Church, condemnation of separation of Church and State.
– Leo XIII and Pius XI: affirmation of Christ’s social Kingship, denunciation of secularization, insistence that rulers and nations must publicly recognize and obey Christ and His Church.
– St. Pius X: war to the death against Modernism; condemnation of doctrinal evolutionism; insistence on the subordination of all pastoral and social initiatives to immutable dogma.
John XXIII, in this speech and in his broader program, reverses the trajectory: he reconciles with “modern civilization,” disarms Catholics, and submerges them in a naturalistic sea where the supernatural is an ornament rather than the principle of judgment. This is not a mere pastoral nuance; it is the symptom and instrument of systemic apostasy.
The Pious Mask of a Paramasonic Social Project
Look more closely at one revealing thread: the Confederation of Direct Farmers and its “requests to the legislators” are welcomed and encouraged. The “Church” is presented as companion and moral guarantor of these democratic lobbying efforts.
Yet the pre-1958 popes knew and proclaimed:
– Agrarian and professional organizations are prime targets of infiltration by freemasonry, socialism, and revolutionary currents.
– Any collaboration with such forces must be conditioned on clear, public adherence to Catholic doctrine and rejection of sectarian influence.
John XXIII offers praise, not discernment; encouragement, not admonition. He kneels before the mechanism of parliamentary legislation as if it were the natural and sufficient instrument of justice, instead of recalling that:
Non est potestas nisi a Deo (there is no authority except from God), and that when civil law contradicts the divine order, it is null.
This abdication is characteristic of the paramasonic structure that will, in subsequent years, enthrone “dialogue” with the world, with false religions, with secret societies, while persecuting or marginalizing those who hold fast to the integral Catholic faith.
From Sacrifice to Consolation: Evacuation of the Cross
The discourse speaks of the Cross and suffering:
“With Jesus at one’s side, with His grace in the soul, daily duty becomes light, pain is transformed into an instrument of expiation and redemption.”
This sounds orthodox, and in itself reflects authentic Catholic ascetical teaching. But again, notice the asymmetry:
– The Cross is personalized and psychologized: “daily duty becomes light,” “peace of heart,” “serenity of character.”
– There is no denunciation of the revolutionary ideologies that stir envy and rebellion against providential inequalities, no clear condemnation of class war, no warning against secular collectivism, all explicitly reproved by prior Magisterium.
– There is no call to unite sufferings specifically with the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary offered in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the unique source of grace and propitiation.
The suffering farmer is comforted, but not armed. The discourse soothes, but does not fortify. It moralizes the Cross but does not deploy it as the banner of the Church Militant, as Pius XI did in Quas Primas when he proclaimed that the feast of Christ the King must condemn public apostasy and recall rulers to their neglected duties.
This subtle relocation of emphasis—consolation over combat, human well-being over the rights of God—is at the heart of the conciliar disaster.
Conclusion: A Mild Voice Introducing a New Religion
Seen through the lens of integral Catholic doctrine, this 1962 address is not an innocent pastoral discourse. It is a crafted piece of the pre-conciliar strategy by which John XXIII:
– Wraps modernist tendencies in traditional vocabulary and sentimental piety.
– Anchors socio-political and economic projects in a diluted “Christian humanism,” instead of in the non-negotiable Kingship of Christ and the exclusive rights of the true Church.
– Omits any robust reaffirmation of the Syllabus, Quas Primas, Pascendi, or Lamentabili, thereby tacitly repudiating the anti-liberal, anti-modernist rampart erected by the true popes.
– Softens consciences to accept the subsequent avalanche: false ecumenism, religious liberty, doctrinal evolution, democratization of the Church, and the profanation of the liturgy.
The theological and spiritual bankruptcy lies precisely here: Christ is invoked, but no longer as absolute Sovereign legislating over nations; the Cross is praised, but evacuated of its dogmatic and political consequences; the Church is named, but transmuted from the infallible, divinely constituted authority into a benevolent social chaplaincy for modern democracies.
Against this perfidious douceur, the unchanging Catholic teaching, witnessed by Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, stands as an indictment. Any discourse, however eloquent or emotional, that refuses to proclaim the public rights of Christ the King, the unique necessity of the Catholic Church, the subordination of States to divine law, and the radical incompatibility of liberal-Masonic principles with the Gospel, does not shepherd souls—it lulls them toward the precipice.
Source:
Ai partecipanti al XVI Congresso Nazionale della Confederazione dei Coltivatori Diretti, 4 aprile 1962, Giovanni XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025