Before becoming archbishop, Gothus appears to have been inclined towards King Johan III of Sweden's more Catholic viewpoint. He was for this reason ordained by the King in a Catholic ritual with all its apparatus, and wrote the introduction to the King's "red book". As the Jesuitic tendencies grew stronger in Sweden in the 1570s, he became more wary; he refused to support the views of the King any longer, and published "Contra novas papistarum machinationes" which, although it gives proper respect to the Church fathers, polemizes against the foundation of Catholicism and the Jesuits.