In this allocution of 25 January 1960, John XXIII addresses the opening phase of the Roman Synod, invoking Saints Peter and Paul, extolling the sacredness of the priestly office, and urging clergy to holiness through attachment to the altar, the Roman Catechism, and the liturgy. With unctuous rhetoric about sanctity, sacrifice, and Marian-Tridentine piety, he seeks to present his Roman Synod as renewal in continuity with Trent and the Fathers, while carefully avoiding any concrete denunciation of contemporary doctrinal subversion or the nascent conciliar revolution. This apparently pious exhortation is in reality a strategic veil: a luminous preface to darkness, preparing minds and structures for the self-destruction of Catholic Rome under the banner of “holiness.”
The Synthetic Piety of John XXIII as Preludium to Apostasy
Devout Language as a Mask for Institutional Subversion
On the factual surface, this speech appears orthodox, almost edifying. John XXIII:
– Venerates St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. Peter and St. Paul.
– Praises the Lateran Archbasilica as the cathedral of the Roman Diocese.
– Speaks of the priest as a sacred person, bound to the altar and the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Commends the Catechism of the Council of Trent.
– Exhorts priests to holiness, separation from worldly affairs, and love of the liturgy.
This is the bait: a careful orchestration of traditional vocabulary designed to lull the clergy of Rome into perceiving the coming “renewal” as simple intensification of perennial doctrine. Yet precisely here lies the fundamental perversion: a pious discourse severed from the real doctrinal and disciplinary crisis that was already poisoning the Church, and instrumentalized to prepare submission to the looming conciliar program.
The speech must therefore be read not as isolated rhetoric, but as the psychological pre-programming for the Second Vatican Council and the conciliar sect’s inversion of Catholic priesthood and worship.
Factual Level: The Selective Use of Tradition Against Tradition
1. Apparent praise of Trent and the Roman Catechism
John XXIII repeatedly invokes the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism:
“Cupimus potius e duobus fontibus evangelicam et ecclesiastica doctrinam… haurire: hoc est e Sanctorum Petri et Pauli epistulis, atque ex praeceptis decretisque Tridentinae Synodi, quae Catechismus Romanus… tam luculenter sapienterque illustravit.”
He even cites Bishop Valier’s affirmation that the Roman Catechism is “divinitus datum Ecclesiae.”
At first glance, this is apparently irreproachable and even laudable. But examined in its historical and teleological context, it is a calculated misuse of authority:
– The same man who here exalts Trent convokes within two years a council that will systematically relativize Trent’s doctrinal clarity on the Most Holy Sacrifice, ecclesiology, religious liberty, and the social kingship of Christ.
– By coating his language in Tridentine perfume, he neutralizes vigilance. Priests are told: your “renewal” is nothing but Trent lived better. In reality, Trent becomes a museum exhibit—cited, not obeyed; honored, then buried.
This contradiction stands against the pre-1958 magisterium’s insistence on the immutability and binding force of previous dogmatic definitions. Pius IX in the Syllabus explicitly condemns the notion that the Church’s dogmatic authority can be relativized by new philosophy or modern “needs” (cf. Syllabus, 4–5, 80). Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi anathematizes precisely the Modernist tactic of affirming formulas while emptying them from within.
Here, the formula is honored; its content is prepared for silent evacuation.
2. Silence on Modernism as the decisive fact
By 1960, the doctrinal and moral corruption denounced by St. Pius X as *Modernismus, omnium haeresum collectum* (“Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies”) had deeply penetrated seminaries, universities, and episcopates. The Holy Office files, the condemnations of Lamentabili (1907) and Pascendi (1907), the Oath against Modernism (1910) were all in force.
Yet John XXIII, addressing the Roman clergy at a time of accelerando subversion, utters not one clear warning against:
– Modernist exegesis condemned in Lamentabili (propositions on Scripture as myth, dogma as evolving interpretation).
– The denial of the Church’s exclusive truth (Syllabus, 15–18, 21).
– The growing cult of religious liberty and laicism (Syllabus, 55, 77–80).
– Secret societies and paramasonic currents, repeatedly condemned by the pre-1958 pontiffs and explicitly identified as architects of the persecution and destabilization of the Church.
Instead, he speaks in generic, sentimental exhortations about priestly holiness, without naming demonic errors tearing the Church from within. This brutal omission is itself indictment: when wolves devour the flock, the shepherd who confines himself to soft discourse on “virtue” without denouncing the wolves, becomes their accomplice.
3. The Roman Synod as laboratory
He praises the preparatory norms of the Synod:
“Considerationi Nostrae ac vestrae ea proposita sunt, quae… in praecepta et normas tam prudenti luculentoque consilio redacta sunt…”
The Roman Synod (1960) functioned as a testing ground for the methods, rhetoric, and structural mentality that would culminate in the Second Vatican Council. By clothing this in the language of discipline, pastoral zeal, and social benefit, John XXIII disarms resistance to the coming revolution, precisely in the Diocese of Rome, which should have been the citadel of doctrinal intransigence.
This is the pattern: apparent fidelity to form, in order to invert substance.
Linguistic Level: Sentimental Clericalism Without Supernatural Combat
The vocabulary of the allocution is smooth, devout, but anesthetizing. Several traits stand out:
1. Pious inflation instead of dogmatic precision
He uses copious affective terms: “Venerabiles Fratres ac dilecti filii,” “sacrum sacerdotum munus,” “vita sancta,” “suavitas,” “ineffabilia gaudia.” This style is not evil in itself; the Church has always employed affectionate fatherly tones. But here it replaces, rather than accompanies, the virile clarity of supernatural combat.
Conspicuously absent are words and themes central to pre-1958 papal teaching in moments of crisis:
– “Error,” “heresy,” “Modernism,” “condemnation,” “anathema,” “masonic sects,” “false liberty,” “indifferentism,” “social reign of Christ the King.”
– No integration of the vigorous condemnations of the Syllabus or of Lamentabili; no insistence on the duty to reject liberal principles hostile to the Church.
2. Pastoralism as neutralization
The allocution wraps everything into a “pastoral” horizon, anticipating the very poison of the council: the reduction of the Church’s magisterial and judicial office to sentimental exhortation. Priestly holiness is presented almost exclusively in ascetical-moral terms, without emphasizing the priest as doctrinal sentinel bound to denounce public errors, heresies, and false worship.
From an integral Catholic perspective, this omission is grave. The priest is:
– Not only a man of “nice liturgy,” but a guardian of dogma, called to refute error publicly.
– Bound by divine and canonical law to oppose false religious liberty, laicism, and syncretism.
– Obliged to uphold the absolute rights of Christ the King over states, as Pius XI clearly states: peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (cf. Quas Primas).
None of this appears with real force. Where pre-1958 pontiffs unsheathed the sword of doctrine, John XXIII offers soft-focus rhetoric. This verbal anesthesia is a sign of mutation.
3. Controlled traditionalism as rhetorical strategy
Characteristic is the carefully curated traditional repertoire:
– He invokes the Roman Catechism, Trent, St. Thomas, Malachias, St. Peter, St. Paul, the Breviary, the liturgy.
– He insists the priest must be holy, live the liturgy, avoid worldliness.
All this is formally correct. But because it is de-contextualized from the contemporary doctrinal war, it functions as controlled opposition within language: tradition becomes a decorative façade behind which an entirely new orientation will be introduced.
This is the Modernist method condemned by Pius X: maintain the words, change the meaning (*eadem verba, aliter sensa*). John XXIII’s speech is a textbook case: one can search in vain for substantive engagement with the doctrinal battles that defined the pontificates of Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII.
Theological Level: Holiness without Dogmatic Militia
1. Partial truth: priestly sacredness and the Sacrifice
Some affirmations are objectively in line with Catholic doctrine:
– The priest as consecrated to offer the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary.
– The bond between priestly holiness and the dignity of the altar.
– The usefulness of the Roman Catechism.
– The centrality of the canonical text of the Mass, the Breviary, and ritual.
He states:
“Primum praecipuumque munus, sacerdoti creditum, id postulati ut se ipse hostiam immaculatam offerat ad humani generis Redemptionem… De hac sacerdotis coniunctione cum Christo, qua idem Crucis Sacrificium in ara iteratur, Tridentina Synodus haec admonet: ‘Divina res [est] tam sancti sacerdotii ministerium’.”
And he correctly underlines that sinful, worldly priests contradict the Sacrifice they offer.
These points, taken materially, are Catholic. But here they are weaponized in another direction.
2. Severing holiness from doctrinal intransigence
The speech systematically reduces holiness to:
– Personal piety.
– Observance of liturgical rubrics.
– Ascetic discipline and avoidance of secular entanglement.
– Generic charity and pastoral zeal.
Nowhere does he:
– Proclaim the duty of priests to combat the doctrinal errors condemned in Syllabus and Lamentabili.
– Affirm the exclusivity of the Catholic religion and the intrinsic evil of all non-Catholic worship.
– Warn against ecumenical irenicism or the coming reconfiguration of relations with false religions.
– Reassert the obligation of states to submit to Christ the King, as taught in Quas Primas and in direct opposition to liberal principles.
This truncation is itself a theological falsification. A priest cannot be “holy” while tolerating or collaborating with heresy, indifferentism, or a political order that dethrones Christ. Pre-1958 teaching is unambiguous:
– Pius IX condemns religious indifferentism and freedom of cult as errors (Syllabus, 15–18, 77–79).
– Pius XI insists that civil society must recognize Christ’s social kingship, and that the laicization of public order is a “plague” (Quas Primas).
– Pius X, in Pascendi and Vehementer Nos, denounces the democratization of the Church and the destruction of her hierarchical, supernatural constitution.
By expelling these dimensions from his discourse, John XXIII implicitly proposes a mutilated concept of sanctity suitable to a new, liberalized ecclesial project.
3. The manipulation of Scripture against Tradition
John XXIII’s use of Scripture is selective and sentimental:
– He cites Luke 2:49 to exhort priests to be “in the things of the Father,” yet omits the Lord’s violent exclusions of error and false worship.
– He cites Romans 8 as consolation, but never as the basis for dogmatic militancy.
– He recalls Petrine passages about the “royal priesthood” of all faithful, but does not reaffirm the unique, hierarchical, sacrificial priesthood that excludes Protestant conceptions.
This selective curation facilitates the later conciliar and post-conciliar blurring of the distinction between the ordained priesthood and the common priesthood of the faithful, contributing to the liturgical de-sacralization and sacramental devastation.
4. Absence of the Church’s right and duty to judge
The entire allocution avoids affirming:
– The Church’s divine right to judge doctrines, condemn heretics, and coerce the faithful in matters of faith and morals.
– The objective necessity of submission to defined dogma with interior assent (against Lamentabili’s condemned propositions 7, 22).
– The intrinsic sinfulness of “pluralistic” religious models.
This silence harmonizes disturbingly with the errors condemned by Pius IX and Pius X. It does not formally teach those errors here, but it habituates the Roman clergy to an irenic, non-combative mentality that will accept them later.
Symptomatic Level: An Internal Document of the Conciliar Revolution
1. The conciliar sect’s method: continuity in words, rupture in deeds
Analyzed in the light of what followed, this allocution exemplifies the operating system of the neo-church:
– Invoke Trent and the Roman Catechism, then proceed to inaugurate structures and mentalities that will render them inoperative.
– Praise the Most Holy Sacrifice, then introduce and legitimize a rite and theology that obscure the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice and elevate assembly, meal, and “people of God” as central categories.
– Exhort to priestly holiness, then systematically form “clergy” in seminaries steeped in Modernist exegesis, relativism, and pastoralism.
This duplicity corresponds precisely to what St. Pius X warned: Modernists strive to remain inside, speaking Catholic language, to change everything from within. John XXIII’s sweet allocution is a programmatic demonstration.
2. No denunciation of the enemies named by pre-1958 Popes
Compare:
– Pius IX identifies socialism, communism, secret societies, and liberal errors as engines of apostasy and explicitly connects them to masonic conspiracies.
– He calls them the “synagogue of Satan” directing war against the Church, demanding bishops defend the faithful from this contagion and leave no illusions about their aims.
– Pius XI and Pius XII likewise denounce laicism, international anti-Christian forces, and ideological subversion.
Here, by contrast, John XXIII mentions no concrete adversary, no real historical force, no ideological matrix. The priest is told only to be personally virtuous; the Church is no longer presented as *militans* against visible enemies in doctrine and in society, but as a moral-inspirational presence.
This is not accidental. It is the theological and spiritual disarmament required for the Church of the New Advent and for the paramasonic project of religious pluralism and world government in which Christ’s kingship is effectively denied.
3. Reorientation of obedience
By presenting the Roman Synod’s norms as luminous and “prudently” prepared, and binding for clergy and people, John XXIII signals a crucial shift:
– True Catholic obedience is obedience to the perennial magisterium, which cannot contradict itself and which binds popes themselves.
– Here, obedience is subtly reoriented toward new “pastoral” norms engineered by a man who will shortly convoke a council that contradicts core elements of prior teaching on religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the relationship between Church and state.
The clergy are being conditioned: your holiness consists in docility to upcoming innovations, decoratively wrapped in references to Trent.
This is precisely what the defenders of integral Catholic doctrine cannot accept: *lex credendi* cannot be rewritten under cover of *lex orandi* and “pastoral norms.” *Non licet* (it is not permitted).
The Ignored Social Kingship of Christ: A Naturalistic Vacuum
Although this allocution focuses on priesthood, its silence on the public reign of Christ is itself denunciation.
– No mention is made of the obligation of nations to recognize and submit to Christ the King, as solemnly taught in Quas Primas.
– No condemnation is made of secularism, religious pluralism, or the thesis of the separation of Church and State, condemned in the Syllabus (55).
– Priests are not exhorted to preach the integral social doctrine that Christ’s law must inform legislation, education, and public morals.
Instead, there are vague references to “social progress” that the synodal norms will allegedly foster. This language of “social progress” detached from explicit subordination to the reign of Christ reveals a naturalistic undertone. Pius XI explicitly identifies secularist “progress” as plague; here, the same vocabulary is co-opted positively.
This is not an oversight; it is alignment with the future conciliar exaltation of human dignity and religious freedom—in contradiction to the unchanging magisterium—which will enthrone man where Christ the King must reign.
The False Ideal of a Harmless Priesthood
What kind of priest emerges as ideal in this allocution?
– A man of liturgical decorum, attached to the altar, externally devout.
– A preacher of moral exhortations and spiritual consolations.
– A functionary of “pastoral” norms devised by higher authorities.
– Gentle, detached from politics in the true sense, i.e., from asserting Christ’s regal rights over society.
– Silent on Modernism, liberalism, false ecumenism, false religions, and the errors condemned by pre-1958 popes.
This is the neutralized priest needed by the conciliar sect: externally pious, internally disarmed, incapable of resisting revolution; an ornament to the new order, not a soldier of Christ.
True Catholic doctrine, however, demands:
– A priest who proclaims with Pius IX that only the Catholic religion is true and that no man is free to choose any religion whatsoever without sin (Syllabus, 15, 21).
– A priest who rejects the proposition that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself to liberalism and modern civilization as understood in opposition to the Church (Syllabus, 80).
– A priest who submits to the unchanging doctrine of Trent concerning the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacramental priesthood, and the distinction from the common priesthood.
– A priest who opposes all Modernist attempts to evolve dogma, democratize the Church, or subordinate revelation to historical criticism (Lamentabili; Pascendi).
The allocution does not arm him for this mission; it gently leads him away from it.
Conclusion: A Luminous Shell, an Empty Core
This speech of John XXIII is not to be judged by its devout phrases alone, but by what it systematically omits and what it prepares.
– It cloaks itself in Trent, the Roman Catechism, liturgy, holiness.
– It never confronts Modernism, liberalism, false ecumenism, religious liberty, or the masonic plots explicitly condemned by its predecessors.
– It models a “pastoral” speaking that soothes and anesthetizes, replacing the precise condemnations and doctrinal intransigence of the pre-1958 magisterium.
– It conditions priests to equate holiness with uncritical docility to upcoming novelties, under the guise of deeper tradition.
Thus, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this allocution is theologically and spiritually bankrupt where it most matters: it refuses to recognize and denounce the real enemies of Christ, reduces priesthood to sacralized functionalism, and instrumentalizes Catholic language to facilitate the conciliar revolution.
No amount of citations of St. Paul or the Catechism of Trent can redeem such a strategy. The Church of Christ demands shepherds who speak clearly, condemn errors, defend dogma, and proclaim the absolute social and cultic kingship of Our Lord. This text instead inaugurates an epoch in which words are preserved while their soul is extracted—a refined betrayal prepared in the language of devotion.
Source:
Allocutio die XXV Ianuarii A. D. MCMLX habita in prima Synodi sessione (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025