The document under consideration is an apostolic letter of John XXIII, dated 23 May 1959, entitled “Potiora inter,” by which he declares the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated as “Nuestra Señora de El Soto” at Iruz to be solemnly crowned and confirms/constitutes her as principal heavenly Patroness of the region of Toranzo (thirty localities in the Diocese of Santander). The text exalts the Marian shrine’s antiquity, its association with the Franciscan and then Discalced Carmelite communities, recounts its desecration during the Spanish Civil War and subsequent restoration, and then, appealing to local devotion, grants liturgical patronal status and authorizes a canonical coronation carried out in his name by the local ordinary.
In reality, this apparently pious gesture is a calculated use of Marian devotion as a sentimental facade to legitimize the nascent conciliar revolution and its usurper.
Marian Ornament as Cover for an Emerging Counter-Magisterium
The Latin text is externally traditional: “Ad perpetuam rei memoriam,” enumeration of local devotions, mention of sacrilegious profanation by the enemies of the faith, a formal juridical act of patronage and coronation, concluded with solemn nullification of contrary attempts. Precisely this conventional shell exposes the deeper problem: a paramagisterial structure, already preparing the Second Vatican Council and the dismantling of integral doctrine, cloaks itself in Marian piety in order to anesthetize vigilance and secure affective obedience.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic theology prior to 1958, several points stand out:
– John XXIII ascended through a conclave and hierarchy already deeply penetrated by condemned liberalism and Modernism (cf. Pius IX, Syllabus Errorum, especially 77–80; Pius X, Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi). The same milieu that promoted aggiornamento, religious liberty, and ecumenism contrary to Quanta Cura, Syllabus, and Quas Primas cannot simultaneously be received as a reliable organ and guardian of Marian cult.
– The letter’s strictly devotional content is being leveraged to maintain exterior continuity while internally preparing doctrinal rupture. This strategy corresponds precisely to the modernist method condemned by St. Pius X: retain formulas, change content; use pious language to disarm the faithful while introducing a new religion.
Thus the core thesis: beneath its gentle Latin and apparently orthodox Marian devotion, this act functions as part of a broader program to bind Catholic hearts to an authority already deviating from the integral Faith, substituting juridical form for theological substance.
Instrumentalizing Local Piety While the Foundations Are Undermined
On the factual level, the letter presents itself as a response to the petition of the local “bishop” of Santander, José Eguino Trecu, Carmelites, authorities, and faithful to:
“renuntiaremus” the Blessed Virgin under this title as heavenly Patroness of the Toranzo valley and to permit that her image be crowned in the name and authority of John XXIII.
Key elements:
– Emphasis on:
– The “ancient” veneration.
– Miracles or graces “interdum prodigiali modo”.
– The shrine’s endurance through the Spanish Civil War and subsequent restoration.
– Legal effect:
– Constitution/confirmation as principal patroness.
– Granting of liturgical privileges.
– Mandate for canonical coronation “Nostro nomine et auctoritate.”
None of this is objectionable in itself if issued by a Catholic pontiff faithful to Tradition. The Church has always approved:
– Local Marian titles.
– Patronages adapted to peoples.
– Canonical coronations as recognition of public, orthodox cult.
But here this otherwise legitimate structure is operated by a hierarchy which, within a few years, would promulgate a council and reforms contradicting:
– The social kingship of Christ (Pius XI, Quas Primas).
– The condemnation of religious indifferentism (Pius IX, Syllabus, 15–18, 77–80).
– The immutability of dogma (Vatican I, Dei Filius).
– The Catholic doctrine on the Church’s uniqueness and necessity (Unam Sanctam; tradition codified against “ecumenism”).
The shrine is extolled as a “pietatis domicilium” while in Rome the same regime prepares:
– Collegiality and democratization of authority.
– A liturgical revolution culminating in the destruction of the Roman rite.
– Ecumenical experiments that relativize Marian prerogatives and the one true Church.
The contradiction is flagrant: the letter pretends to strengthen Marian devotion in Spain, a land sanctified by martyrs against Islam, liberalism, and communism, at the very moment its authors are ideologically aligned with precisely those currents condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Soft Rhetoric, Absent Militant Faith: The Linguistic Mask
The linguistic register is instructive. The text is decorous, gentle, affectively warm:
– Frequent references to “pietas,” “ornamentum,” “singulari quodam invitamento,” “superna munera.”
– The desecration in the Civil War is briefly mentioned as “foede deturpatum manu sacrilega violatumque,” yet there is no doctrinal denunciation of the anti-Catholic, Masonic, Marxist ideology that wrought that sacrilege.
– The tone is pastoral-aesthetic rather than doctrinal-militant.
What is missing is more revealing than what is said:
– No reminder that Mary is *Regina* because her Son is *Rex universorum* whose public social reign over nations is obligatory (Pius XI, Quas Primas: peace only in the Kingdom of Christ).
– No call to restore Catholic civil order in Spain; no condemnation of laicism, despite the Syllabus and Quas Primas identifying secularism as a “plague.”
– No link between Marian patronage and the duty of states and peoples to confess the Catholic religion as the only true one (Syllabus 21, 77; Quanta Cura).
– No exhortation to frequent the sacraments, remain in the state of grace, fear judgment and hell, or combat heresy. Silence here is not accidental—it is systematic.
This mild, almost touristic exaltation of a shrine is the language of a Church already adapting to the “dignity of the human person” ideology and “dialogue,” rather than forming militant confessors. The omission of clear supernatural and eschatological accents—sin, conversion, divine justice—signifies a shift from *militia Christi* to sentimental Marianism, useful to pacify consciences, not to arm them.
Theological Displacement: Marian Patronage Without Christ’s Kingship
Authentic Catholic doctrine, as articulated consistently before 1958, places Marian devotion strictly within:
– The absolute uniqueness of Christ as King and Lawgiver (Quas Primas).
– The exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the Ark of Salvation (Unam Sanctam; Syllabus 15–18, 21).
– The fight against infidelity, heresy, and secular apostasy.
In contrast, the apostolic letter:
– Treats patronage as a primarily liturgical-juridical gesture determined by local wishes.
– Avoids reaffirming the integral doctrinal framework that gives Marian patronage its real meaning: a standard for a Catholic people publicly ordered to Christ.
The effect is to separate Marian cult from the full doctrinal armature of the Faith, turning Our Lady into:
– A symbol of regional identity.
– A dispenser of unspecified “graces.”
– A decorative guarantee of continuity for a new regime.
This is precisely the dynamic condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi: the external forms retained, the doctrinal content evacuated or relativized. Marian piety is tolerated—indeed, amplified—but abstracted from the hard, exclusive claims of the Faith: one true Church, one necessary baptism, one objective moral law, one kingship of Christ binding on states.
In such use, Our Lady is instrumentalized against her own Son’s rights, invoked to bless a conciliar trajectory that will soon enthrone religious liberty and ecumenical relativism; she is made patroness of a region whose “official” shepherds will collaborate in the post-conciliar dissolution.
The Symptom of a Deeper Revolution: Continuity of Forms, Rupture of Substance
This letter must be read as symptom, not isolated datum.
1. Factual continuity:
– Latin chancery style.
– Canonical coronation through the diocesan ordinary.
– Recognition of miracles and graces.
– Invocation of “Beatam Mariam Virginem.”
2. Substantive rupture (already implicit in the author and his program):
– John XXIII had announced an ecumenical council aimed at “updating” the Church, praising modern liberties previously condemned.
– The same regime would promote the hermeneutic directly contrary to Syllabus and Quas Primas: reconciliation of the Church with “modern civilization” (explicitly condemned in Syllabus 80).
– The entire conciliar sect’s Marian policy would later:
– Muffle the militant titles (e.g. “Exterminatrix of all heresies”).
– Shift to “dialogue” with heretics and infidels whom pre-1958 doctrine contra-indicated as outside salvation unless converted.
Thus, *Potiora inter* is part of a carefully orchestrated continuity-of-gestures strategy: maintain coronations, devotions, regional patronages, processions—while the doctrinal edifice is quietly inverted.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“The law of prayer [is] the law of belief”) is subverted: the external orandi is kept in appearance, but the internal credendi is being refashioned. The faithful attached to Nuestra Señora de El Soto are thereby attached emotionally to the person and structure that will soon betray the Faith.
Selective Memory: The Civil War, Masonic Sects, and the Condemned Enemies
The article briefly notes that during the Spanish Civil War the image was:
“foede … deturpatum manu sacrilega violatumque; rebus vero compositis, religionis studium vicisse impietatem idque sollerter refecisse.”
(“shamefully disfigured and violated by a sacrilegious hand; but when matters were settled, religious zeal triumphed over impiety and diligently restored it.”)
But:
– No mention of the ideologies behind that sacrilege: socialism, communism, Freemasonry—precisely those sects Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI had denounced as the “synagogue of Satan” and principal enemies of the Church.
– No warning that these same forces, condemned in the Syllabus and subsequent encyclicals, continued to infiltrate political structures and even ecclesiastical ranks.
– No application of the pre-1958 Magisterium’s solemn warnings about secret societies, liberalism, and separation of Church and State.
This cultivated amnesia aligns with the conciliar sect’s project:
– Convert bloody persecution into a generic narrative of “impiety overcome by devotion,”
– while entering into practical and doctrinal reconciliation with precisely those liberal and Masonic principles.
The shrine’s suffering is reduced to a sentimental anecdote to heighten the pathos of coronation, instead of being used as a thunderous call to reject the errors condemned by the Syllabus and Pascendi.
Jurisdictional Formalism Without Doctrinal Legitimacy
The letter closes with the traditional assertion of binding force:
“praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere… irritumque ex nunc et inane fieri, si quidquam secus…”
(“that these present Letters remain firm, valid and efficacious forever… and that anything attempted to the contrary be null and void.”)
Here the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican:
– Mimics traditional canonical solemnity,
– claiming plenitudo potestatis to regulate Marian cult and assign patronages.
However, according to the pre-1958 doctrinal principles:
– A manifest heretic or one who openly aligns with condemned errors cannot be head of the Church nor wield jurisdiction in it, as Catholic theologians such as St. Robert Bellarmine, and canonists interpreting Canon 188 §4 of the 1917 Code, explain: public defection from the Faith vacates office.
– Pius IX’s teaching in the Syllabus and Leo XIII’s in their anti-Masonic and anti-liberal documents bind the faithful to reject liberal “reconciliation” with modern errors; an authority that moves systematically in the opposite direction reveals itself as morally and doctrinally unreliable.
Thus the problem is not Marian patronage in itself, but the usurping structure’s use of legitimate-sounding canonical language to maintain obedience while subverting the content of the Faith. Juridical form detached from orthodoxy is an empty shell; Marian coronations performed in the name of an antichristian program cannot oblige consciences to receive its authors as Catholic shepherds.
Empty Devotion: Sentimental Marianism Without Call to Holiness and Combat
Perhaps the gravest theological deficiency of the text is its refusal to connect Marian devotion with:
– Conversion from sin.
– Fidelity to the integral Faith.
– Militant confession of Christ’s Kingship in public life.
– Condemnation of heresy and modernist apostasy.
Instead, the faithful are gently encouraged to:
– Love this “pious Mother.”
– Honour her shrine.
– Celebrate a patronal feast.
What is absent:
– No insistence on the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory and central (Quo Primum, Tridentine doctrine).
– No reminder of the need to remain in the state of grace under pain of eternal damnation.
– No denunciation of indifferentism, which Pius IX and Pius X stigmatized as a deadly error.
– No warning against the encroaching reforms and ideas that will soon devastate catechesis, worship, and morals.
This is the classic pattern of the conciliar sect: drown the faithful in soft piety, processions, crowns, songs—while carefully omitting uncomfortable dogmatic affirmations. Such Marianism, detached from doctrinal intransigence, is not the Marian spirit of the Fathers and of Trent, but a counterfeit designed to habituate souls to obedience to a new religion.
Conclusion: Behind the Crown, the Program of Subversion
Seen with integral Catholic clarity:
– The letter “Potiora inter” does not scandalize by explicit heresy; its danger lies in being anodyne.
– It offers an illusion of continuity:
– Latin,
– Marian title,
– canonical coronation,
– patronage.
– Meanwhile, it avoids:
– The full doctrinal framework of Christ the King and the unique rights of the Catholic Church.
– Any robust condemnation of liberalism, secularism, and the Masonic forces ravaging Spain and the world.
– Any call to doctrinal fortitude in the face of approaching conciliar innovations.
This is precisely how revolutions in the Church are effected: not first by denying Marian devotion, but by exploiting it. Crowns, shrines, and sweet formulas become props in a theater where the audience believes itself to be in the same Catholic edifice, while backstage the pillars are being replaced.
True fidelity to the Blessed Virgin, “Nuestra Señora de El Soto” included, demands the opposite:
– Return to the doctrinal intransigence of the pre-1958 Magisterium.
– Rejection of modernist novelties: evolution of dogma, religious liberty, false ecumenism, cult of man.
– Refusal to allow Marian devotion to be hijacked as sentimental endorsement of a conciliar sect that dismantles the Kingship of her Son.
Non possumus: no crown, however piously described, can sanctify a program of doctrinal erosion. The faithful must learn again that Mary is not the mascot of aggiornamento, but the Mother and Queen of those who “keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus Christ” in its integral, immutable Catholic sense.
Source:
Potiora Inter (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025