On 16 February 1959, John XXIII delivered a short Latin radio message from the Vatican to the Catholics of Japan, marking the beginning of Vatican Radio broadcasts in Japanese. He greets the hierarchy and faithful, praises Japanese cultural virtues, urges that their Christian faith shine through kindness and moral integrity, and invokes Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary to bless Japan with light, protection, and prosperity. Behind this seemingly devout salutation, however, stands the inaugural stylistic matrix of the conciliar revolution: sentimental humanism, diplomatic flattery, and the quiet displacement of the Kingship of Christ and the rights of the one true Church by a soft-focus admiration of natural virtue and national culture.
The Pious Veneer of Apostasy: John XXIII’s Japanese Message as Proto-Conciliar Manifesto
Direct Assault on the Papal Office: Why John XXIII Cannot Speak for the Catholic Church
The text comes not from the Catholic Magisterium, but from the newly enthroned antipope John XXIII, the first in the line of usurpers culminating in Leo XIV and the current paramasonic occupation of Rome. This is not a minor biographical label; it is the decisive hermeneutical key.
Before any detailed reading, one principle must be recalled: *Roma locuta, causa finita* (“Rome has spoken, the case is closed) holds only where there is Rome—i.e., where there is a true Vicar of Christ, teaching in continuity with the perennial magisterium. The man who, within months, convoked the so‑called “pastoral” council that would enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man, had already in such texts revealed a mentality irreconcilable with the doctrinal firmness of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
The message, though brief, bears all the embryonic traits of that deviation:
– Replacing the note of militancy with mellifluous optimism.
– Extolling natural culture without clearly subordinating it to the order of grace and the obligation of conversion.
– Presenting the Church’s mission in categories that can be harmonized with pluralism.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this address is not an innocent courtesy; it is the polite, inaugural whisper of the coming apostasy.
Factual Level: Selective Truths Bent Toward a New Agenda
The essential elements of the message, in paraphrase:
– John XXIII rejoices that Vatican Radio can now speak in Japanese, addressing “beloved bishops, priests, religious, virgins, and faithful.”
– He imparts a blessing, wishing them peace, joy of the Holy Ghost, and perseverance.
– He exhorts Japanese Catholics to be witnesses of Christ in their islands, so that their faith may shine through “kind” speech and “spotless” moral conduct, citing Philippians: whatever is true, honorable, just, etc., they should think upon and practice.
– He praises the Japanese nation for its ancient humanitas, courage, patient endurance of trials, and artistic refinement.
– He assures them of his prayers for Japan, invoking Christ as “Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae” and asking that Japanese be illumined, inclined to the Gospel, protected from evils, and endowed with temporal and spiritual goods.
On its surface, every line appears orthodox; there is explicit mention of Christ, the Gospel, grace, the Blessed Virgin. Yet this is precisely how Modernism operates: never by frontal denial at first, but by selective emphasis, displacement, and calculated silence. *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* had already unmasked this method: preserving formulas while pouring into them a new, naturalistic meaning and carefully omitting the hard edges of exclusive truth and obligatory conversion.
Three symptomatic factual omissions define this message:
– No clear assertion that salvation is found only in the Catholic Church and her sacraments.
– No insistence on the public, social reign of Christ over Japan, its rulers, its laws (directly contradicting the spirit of Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*).
– No denunciation of dominant false religions (Shintoism, Buddhism) as objectively idolatrous and incapable of salvation apart from conversion—despite the constant teaching reaffirmed in the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) and in the pre-conciliar condemnation of religious indifferentism.
Where Pius XI locates peace solely in the *Regnum Christi*, demanding that states publicly recognize Christ the King, John XXIII speaks of blessings over Japan in a manner that easily integrates into a pluralist, religiously relativistic framework. This is not accidental politeness; it is programmatic.
Linguistic Level: Sentimental Humanism and Cultural Flattery as Tools of Dilution
The rhetoric is revealing.
1. Excessive affectivity:
John XXIII: “Os nostrum patet ad vos, Japonienses, cor nostrum dilatatum est” – “Our mouth is opened to you, Japanese, our heart is enlarged.”
– This affective inflation, while not sinful per se, becomes problematic when it replaces the grave, paternal tone of a true Pontiff calling souls from darkness to light. St. Pius X wrote with tears, but those tears were joined to surgical doctrinal clarity and condemnation of error. Here, sweetness is detached from militancy.
2. Cultural adulation without supernatural subordination:
He calls Japan “inclita” for “ancient humanitas,” bravery, quiet endurance, artistic splendour.
– There is no reminder that these natural splendours are, without supernatural faith and baptism, insufficient and often allied to idolatrous cults.
– The Syllabus of Errors explicitly rejects the notion that human society can be morally ordered while ignoring the rights of the true Church and the Kingship of Christ. Yet the message flatters national qualities without binding them explicitly to submission to Christ and His one Church.
3. Moralism instead of sacramental realism:
The exhortation is reduced to being better witnesses through “kind speech” and “absolute uprightness of works.”
– No emphasis on the *Most Holy Sacrifice*, Confession, state of grace, avoidance of occasions of sin.
– Silence on the Four Last Things—death, judgment, hell, heaven—precisely what a missionary address to a small Catholic minority in a pagan society should underline.
This choice of words and omissions reveals a shift from *lex orandi, lex credendi* toward *lex blandienti*: a law of flattery and humanitarian optimism. The style already anticipates the “dialogue,” “esteem,” and “fraternity” vocabulary with which the conciliar sect would enthrone man at the center of religion.
Theological Level: Subtle Subversion of Exclusive Catholic Doctrine
Let us confront the message with magisterial doctrine prior to 1958, which, as the only legitimate norm, judges this text.
1. On the necessity of the Catholic Church:
– Pius IX (Syllabus, proposition 15-18) condemns:
– “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which guided by the light of reason he shall consider true.”
– “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.”
– The missionaries in Japan shed blood precisely because they proclaimed: outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, and pagan cults are to be abandoned, not honored.
In the radio message:
– There is no explicit affirmation that Japan must become Catholic.
– Christ is invoked, yes, but in language that can be read as blessing the nation as such, without clear demand for public conversion.
– The prayer that the Japanese be inclined to embrace the “riches” of the Gospel remains veiled, not accompanied by the doctrinal assertion that their age-old religions are false and must be rejected.
This is the germ of conciliar “religious liberty” and “respect for other religions”: Christ’s name used, but the sword of His exclusive truth carefully kept in its sheath.
2. On the Social Kingship of Christ:
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that:
– Peace among nations will not come until they recognize the reign of Christ the King publicly.
– States have a duty to conform laws, education, and public life to the law of Christ.
In this 1959 message:
– No call for Japan’s laws, emperor, and public order to recognize Christ and His Church.
– Only a generic desire for blessings, protection, prosperity. This aligns more with a benevolent chaplaincy to nations than with the authoritative voice of Christ’s Vicar demanding their submission to the *sol iustitiae*.
Thus, while the text quotes “O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae,” it refuses the political and juridical consequences of this title. It is a devout-sounding mutilation of *Quas Primas*.
3. On missionary clarity:
Prior Popes (e.g., Pius XI, *Rerum Ecclesiae*; Pius XII in addresses to missionaries) insist on:
– The duty to convert infidels.
– The incompatibility of pagan worship with the First Commandment.
Here:
– John XXIII praises the nation’s virtues, but omits any denunciation of idolatry.
– The Gospel is presented as “pias divitias amplectendas,” pious riches to be embraced, almost as an optional enrichment of an already respectable civilization.
This is the theology of “completion” later applied to Judaism and other religions: Catholicism as a noble plus, not the absolute necessity and sole ark of salvation.
4. On Modernist method:
St. Pius X in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* condemns:
– The reduction of dogma to subjective experience.
– The adaptation of language to please modern sensibilities and hide supernatural absolutes.
This message:
– Showcases precisely the adaptation: a new tone designed not to offend, to appear “open,” “benevolent,” to coexist with pluralism.
– Does not yet proclaim heretical theses outright, but trains minds into a sentimental and diplomatic stance incompatible with the militancy of the pre-conciliar Church.
The crime is not in any single explicit line; it is in the ensemble, in the method: *per aperturas blandas*, through gentle openings, the foundations are undermined.
Symptomatic Level: Proto-Conciliar DNA and the Coming Conciliar Sect
The 1959 message to Japanese Catholics is emblematic for four reasons.
1. Early exercise in “dialogue”:
– Rather than issuing a clarion missionary call, it prioritizes reassurance, shared goodwill, and admiration.
– This is the psycho-spiritual conditioning that will culminate in Vatican II’s abandonment of the Church’s claim to exclusivity in the public forum, and in the later idolatrous gestures of the conciliar sect (prayer meetings of Assisi, syncretistic rites, cult of man in the name of “peace”).
2. Cult of culture over the Cross:
– By extolling Japanese cultural virtues without an explicit demand that they be purified and subordinated to Christ, the text foreshadows the aggiornamento mentality: every culture is “rich,” each only needs gentle illumination, not radical conversion.
– The pre-1958 Magisterium, however, consistently taught that what is true and good in pagan cultures must be rescued from error, but never left in religious coexistence.
3. Horizontalized Christianity:
– The exhortation to let faith shine through “benign” speech and good works, without proportionate emphasis on dogma, sacraments, spiritual combat, is the seed of the moralistic, NGO-style religion of the neo-church.
– The Most Holy Sacrifice is not mentioned; the supernatural order is veiled behind generic pneumatological phrases.
4. Preparation for structural apostasy:
– John XXIII would shortly convoke the council that institutionalized the errors already condemned in the Syllabus and *Pascendi*: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, man-centered pastoral programs.
– This message functions as a small-scale rehearsal: talk much of peace, blessing, goodness; never condemn, never distinguish sharply between the true Church and the world; praise natural virtue as if it were already near grace.
Thus, the message is not merely “insufficiently strong”; it is positively symptomatic of a will to mutate the papal office from guardian of unchanging truth into global chaplain of a religiously plural humanity. That will is incompatible with the Catholic Papacy; hence John XXIII’s authority is null, and his words, including this message, belong to the doctrinal desert of the conciliar sect.
Silence about Sacraments, Sin, and Judgment: The Loudest Condemnation
The gravest accusation against this text is its silence. From integral Catholic doctrine:
– The mission of the Church is to preach:
– The necessity of baptism.
– The Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory.
– The obligation of repentance.
– The possibility of eternal damnation for those who reject Christ and His Church.
In an address to Catholics living amidst entrenched paganism, a true Pope would:
– Strengthen them against syncretism.
– Warn against compromise with false cults.
– Call clearly for the conversion of their compatriots.
– Emphasize that any “virtue” detached from the true God is insufficient for salvation.
Instead, we find:
– No word on hell.
– No word on the danger of idolatry.
– No word on the unique salvific authority of the Catholic Church.
– No word on the duty of the Japanese state or leaders to recognize the Kingship of Christ.
– Only a gentle prayer that they may embrace Gospel “riches” and be granted every good.
This is not an oversight; it is a deliberate restraint. Modernism understands that the supernatural, when affirmed in its sharpness, scandalizes the world. Thus, it keeps supernatural language vague and consoling, carefully avoiding its dogmatic precision. Such self-censorship in an official message is a tacit confession of infidelity to the mandate of Christ: *“Euntes, docete omnes gentes… docentes eos servare omnia quaecumque mandavi vobis”* (“Going therefore, teach all nations… teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”).
The one who refuses to speak “all things” cannot claim to be Peter.
From John XXIII to the Present Usurpers: A Continuous Line of Betrayal
This small 1959 broadcast, issued from the Vatican but not from the Catholic Papacy, prefigures all the essential hallmarks of the post-1958 paramasonic structure:
– Replacement of dogmatic clarity with pastoral ambiguity.
– Flattery of nations and cultures instead of the call to penitence and conversion.
– De facto denial of the social Kingship of Christ, already anticipated before its doctrinal dismantling in the council.
– Adoption of a tone that aligns more with secular diplomacy and human rights discourse than with the supernatural authority of the Church.
What begins as a gentle, smiling voice to Japan ends, through its successors, in the global neo-church praising every cult, endorsing religious liberty condemned by Pius IX, enthroning “dialogue” over doctrine, and offering idolatrous spectacles. The line is continuous; the seed is here.
A genuine Catholic conscience, formed by the immutable doctrine reaffirmed in the Syllabus of Errors, *Quas Primas*, and *Lamentabili*, must therefore:
– Recognize that such texts, however pious they may sound, are not acts of the true Magisterium but manifestations of the conciliar usurpation.
– Reject the sentimental and naturalistic deformation of the Church’s missionary mandate.
– Hold fast to the unchanging Faith: one Lord, one Church, one Baptism, outside which there is no salvation, and one social order rightly subject to the sovereign reign of Christ the King.
Any other stance is complicity in the great apostasy which these honeyed words quietly inaugurated.
Source:
Nuntius Radiophonicus dato Christifidelibus Japoniae, cum primum Statio Radiophonica Urbis Vaticanae aetherias undas, certis diebus eliciendas, Japonico Sermone emittere coepit. (die XVI m. Februarii,… (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025