The Latin document under review is a brief act by John XXIII conferring the title and privileges of a minor basilica on the Marian shrine of “Nuestra Señora de la Consolación” in Táriba, in the diocese of San Cristóbal in Venezuela. It praises the people’s Marian devotion, invokes the consoling intercession of the Blessed Virgin, recalls the image brought by missionaries as a focal point of piety, and solemnly decrees, with typical curial formulas, that the church be elevated to the rank of minor basilica with the attached rights and privileges.
The Basilical Mask of the Conciliar Revolution in Germ
Elevation of a Shrine as Prelude to the Usurpation
At first glance, this apostolic letter appears innocuous: a devotional, juridical act honoring the Mother of God. But in 1959 it is already the pen of John XXIII—the initiator of the conciliar upheaval—signing an ecclesiastical favor that cloaks a nascent revolution in the familiar vestments of Marian piety and sacral juridical language. The text’s apparent orthodoxy is precisely its danger: the paramasonic, future “conciliar sect” learns to speak in the idiom of Tradition while preparing to raze it.
Key elements:
– John XXIII speaks as if exercising the authority of the Roman Pontiff to grant the dignity of a minor basilica.
– The letter presents the Táriba shrine as a spiritual “principal fountain” for the diocese, centered on a miraculous image brought by early missionaries.
– It invokes the boundless maternal mediation of the Blessed Virgin for consolation in all circumstances.
– It employs peremptory canonical language to declare the act perpetual and to nullify any contrary attempt.
On the surface, nothing explicitly heretical. Yet from the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the document is a typical instance of how the future conciliar apparatus anchored itself in outwardly Catholic acts, to gain psychological and juridical recognition before unveiling its program of dogmatic demolition at Vatican II.
The rot lies not so much in what is positively stated, but in the person, context, and instrumentalization: a modus operandi of the coming abominatio desolationis (abomination of desolation).
Factual Level: Devotional Facade and Historical Context
The letter states:
“Consolation and relief the Most Blessed Virgin Mary… at all times imparts to suppliants with inexhaustible charity. Perceiving this, the inhabitants of Táriba… celebrate with pious gatherings the shrine dedicated there to the kindly Mother of God, commonly called ‘Nuestra Señora de la Consolación’…”
This is, in itself, consonant with perennial doctrine. The Church always recognized the Blessed Virgin as Consolatrix afflictorum (Consoler of the afflicted). Numerous pre-1958 Popes, including Leo XIII and Pius XI, promoted Marian shrines and crowned images.
But several factual and contextual elements demand attention:
1. John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli) is historically and theologically the initiating figure of Vatican II, the council which:
– Introduced religious liberty in contradiction to the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (propositions 15–18, 77–80).
– Promoted false ecumenism, relativizing the exclusive claims of the Catholic Church condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium animos.
– Undermined the public reign of Christ the King, explicitly opposed to the teaching of Quas primas.
2. The year 1959 sits between:
– The modernist infiltration condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi (1907).
– The convocation of Vatican II by this same John XXIII, which would operationalize the very errors Pius X anathematized.
The letter’s factual content is devotional; yet the agent and epoch mark it as part of a strategy: preserve Marian exteriors, while preparing to enthrone the cult of man within the sanctuary. It is a classic instance of what Pius X branded as Modernism’s tactic: to speak like Catholics while thinking like rationalists, to retain formulas while perverting their content.
Linguistic Level: Traditional Idiom as Cloak for Revolution
The rhetorical fabric is traditional:
– “Ad perpetuam rei memoriam”
– “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione”
– “deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine”
– “contrariis quibusvis nihil obstantibus”
These are time-honoured juridical formulas. But here they are employed by one who, by his subsequent program, shows himself architect of what Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII repeatedly condemned.
Several linguistic aspects are symptomatic:
1. Sentimental Marian tone without doctrinal militancy:
– Mary is “Solacium ac levationem… inexhausta cum caritate,” but there is no explicit link to her role in crushing heresies, defending orthodoxy, guarding purity of faith, or upholding the royal rights of Christ against liberal states and sects.
– The language of consolation is safely apolitical, pre-adapted to the “pastoral,” irenic style that will soon refuse anathemas while the world legalizes apostasy.
2. Shrine as “principal seat of religion”:
– The text says the church became quasi a main seat for the whole diocese:
“coetusque eodem congregantur quasi ad fontem principem et uberrimum, ex quo lymphae salutares non intermisso fluxu desiliunt.”
That is, “gatherings congregate there as if to the principal and richest source from which salutary waters flow without ceasing.”
– But there is significant silence about the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiation for sin, about confession, about the necessity of state of grace; the “salutary waters” are left in pious vagueness. The rhetoric prepares a new Catholicism of atmospheres and experiences, where Marian shrines become emotional centers detached from doctrinal intransigence.
3. Absolute tone of juridical self-assertion:
– The conclusion employs sweeping nullification of any contrary attempts. From a true Pope, this is the solemn defense of order. From the initiator of the conciliar revolution, it reveals a mentality: use the full weight of pontifical language to institutionalize what will soon provide canonical camouflage for a neo-church.
Linguistically, we see *continuity of form* married to *rupture of subterranean intent*—exactly the modernist method denounced by St. Pius X: “They put their designs into execution not by attacking directly, openly, and from the front, but by a type of perversion which is the more dangerous the less it is evident.” (paraphrased from Pascendi).
Theological Level: Marian Devotion Without the Kingship of Christ
The content on Mary is superficially sound, yet gravely incomplete in a way that reveals the emerging conciliar mentality.
1. No reference to the universal social reign of Christ the King
Pius XI teaches in Quas primas that:
– *Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ;*
– rulers and nations must publicly recognize and obey Christ;
– the Church must condemn laicist apostasy and demand submission of states to divine law.
The letter under review praises a “principal” Marian shrine of the diocese as a fountain of “salutary waters,” yet there is:
– No word about the obligation of Venezuela or its rulers to acknowledge Christ as King.
– No explicit call that Marian devotion must lead to the acceptance of the Syllabus of Errors against liberalism, socialism, and religious indifferentism.
– No reminder that Mary’s consolation is inseparable from her role in calling to penance, combating error, and defending the one true Church against Freemasonry and modern apostasy.
This silence is not neutral. In the age when secularism, revolutionary movements, and masonic sects assault the Church, the function of an apostolic letter should be to arm the faithful with doctrinal clarity. Instead, it dissolves Marian piety into sentiment and shrine cult, leaving untouched the anti-Christian public order that Quas primas and the Syllabus denounce.
2. No explicit affirmation of the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church
Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the proposition that “the Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (no. 21), and likewise the notion that salvation may be found equally in any religion (nos. 15–18).
Here, John XXIII:
– Extols a diocesan sanctuary.
– Speaks of “Christian faithful” who flock there.
– Yet fails to reaffirm that only within the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, do Marian shrines have objective meaning.
We read neither a rejection of false cults, nor a warning against syncretism and superstition, nor a call to conversion of infidels or heretics. The Marian theme is hermetically sealed from the militant ecclesiology of the pre-1958 Magisterium. This anticipates the conciliar style: piety without exclusivity, devotion without dogmatic edge, tenderness without judgment. It is the seed-form of the future “dialogue” ideology.
3. Miraculous image as untheologized spectacle
The letter hints:
“Prodigialem etiam hanc imaginem esse rerum gestarum memoria et fidelium, eximiis muneribus supernis emulatorum, consensu probatur.”
That is, the image is “proved” prodigious by historical memories and the consensus of favors attributed. Fine, as far as it goes. But significantly:
– There is no doctrinal clarification against credulous superstition or against equating “miracles” with divine endorsement of later errors.
– There is no insistence that true signs must harmonize with the entire prior Magisterium.
The same mentality that can uncritically promote “prodigialem hanc imaginem” in vague terms is the mentality that later will weaponize pseudo-mystical phenomena to prop up the conciliar sect, while also tolerating or encouraging deviant cults. When Marian miracles are not explicitly anchored in the service of integral doctrine—including condemnation of modernism—they are ready to be absorbed into universalist sentimentalism.
4. Abuse of papal formulas by a manifest forerunner of conciliar novelties
The letter ends with classic legal phrases that in genuine pontifical usage express the indefectible authority of Peter:
“firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere…”
However, the same John XXIII will convoke a council that:
– Calls into question the Syllabus and integral anti-liberal teaching.
– Opens the gates to errors condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– Lays the juridical and liturgical groundwork for the neo-church, culminating in the destruction of the Roman rite and the sacraments.
Thus we face the objective theological problem: a man who uses the full style of papal plenitude to grant particular privileges is the same man whose deeds undermine the very foundation on which true papal authority rests. Non potest idem simul aedificare et destruere eodem in fundamento (the same one cannot simultaneously build and destroy on the same foundation). From the perspective of immutable doctrine, such self-contradiction is incompatible with the promises of Christ to Peter; hence the recognition of John XXIII as a true Pope collapses.
Symptomatic Level: A Shrine for the Neo-Church
This brief letter shows, in nuce, several structural traits of the emerging conciliar pseudo-ecclesial organism:
1. Marian devotion as anaesthetic, not weapon
Pre-1958 Catholicism made Marian cult a sword against error:
– Our Lady is invoked as Destroyer of all heresies.
– Papal encyclicals on Mary are saturated with dogmatic precision and anti-modernist clarity.
Here, Mary is reduced to “consolation and relief” for all, without doctrinal conditions. This sedation of Marian theology will later enable the conciliar sect to drape itself in Marian imagery while:
– promoting religious liberty,
– engaging in ecumenical betrayal,
– encouraging idolatrous “inculturations,”
– tolerating sacrilege against the Most Holy Sacrifice.
2. Local liturgical prestige domesticated into the conciliar framework
By declaring this church a minor basilica, the document:
– Binds local Marian devotion to the Roman center as then occupied.
– Ensures that honors, indulgences, and liturgical privileges depend on obedience to the same authority that will soon be the engine of the revolution.
The basilica dignity becomes, in practice, a chain: either the shrine follows the conciliar aggiornamento, or it is marginalized. Thus an apparently pious grant is a means of absorbing traditional devotions into the orbit of the future neo-church.
3. Silence about the enemies denounced by the pre-conciliar Magisterium
At the very moment when:
– Freemasonry and its satellites wage war against Christian social order;
– laicist regimes persecute or marginalize the Church;
– Modernism advances in seminaries and universities,
this act:
– Says nothing of the synagogue of Satan (language used by Pius IX and Leo XIII for the masonic conspiracy).
– Utters no warning against those errors meticulously condemned in the Syllabus and Lamentabili.
– Ignores the grave obligation of pastors to guard flock and shrines from heresy.
This is not innocent omission; it is the nascent “pastoral” style that will culminate in Vatican II’s refusal to condemn communism and liberalism. The letter is a microcosm of the method: devotional, aesthetic, tearful—yet mute before the real enemies.
4. Self-sealing legalism to protect a counterfeit trajectory
The closing formula declares that any contrary act, by whomever, with any authority, knowingly or ignorantly, is “irritum… et inane” (null and void). Such juridical absolutism is proper when exercised by the true Vicar of Christ. In the mouth of the initiator of conciliar subversion, it becomes chilling:
– The nascent conciliar program shields its acts with maximal canonical rigor, while soon dismantling the very theology that makes such rigor meaningful.
– The paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican will continue to imitate this style: imposing its liturgical and doctrinal novelties with pseudo-papal formulas, while being intrinsically void before God and the perennial Magisterium.
From Marian Shrine to Conciliar Stronghold: The Logic of Apostasy
If we read this letter through the lens of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, the diagnosis becomes evident:
– A true Marian document, from a true Pope, should:
– Explicitly affirm the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith.
– Link Marian veneration to the defense of orthodoxy against modern errors.
– Call the faithful to penance, to fidelity to the Roman rite, to rejection of liberalism, socialism, and religious indifferentism.
– Insist on the social kingship of Christ and the subordination of the state to divine and ecclesiastical law.
This text does none of this. Instead, it:
– Enshrines consolatory Marian language detached from doctrinal militancy.
– Binds a living shrine to the authority of the very man who will launch the conciliar revolution.
– Deploys traditional formulas to consecrate a trajectory toward rupture.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief): when the prayers, feasts, shrines, and basilicas are silently reoriented away from doctrinal intransigence, the faith of the people follows. What begins as Marian decor ends as conciliar indoctrination.
Thus, while the bare words of this apostolic letter do not yet blaspheme or openly teach heresy, they function historically as part of the machinery by which the conciliar sect wrapped its future apostasy in the mantle of Marian devotion and canonical solemnity. The shrine at Táriba is objectively worthy of honor insofar as it is ordered to the Most Holy Sacrifice and integral Catholic doctrine; but its instrumentalization by John XXIII’s act situates it within the false continuity strategy of the conciliar regime.
Return to the Pre-Conciliar Magisterium and True Marian Cult
The remedy is not to despise genuine Marian devotion or to reject every shrine honored before the revolutionary break. The remedy is:
– To restore the cult of the Blessed Virgin in the full light of anti-modernist doctrine:
– She is Mother of God, Mediatrix of all graces, Vanquisher of heresies, Queen of the Social Reign of Christ.
– Her shrines must be citadels of the integral faith, of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary according to the Roman rite, of firm rejection of liberalism, ecumenism, religious liberty, and the cult of man.
– To reject the authority of those who, like John XXIII and his successors in the conciliar line, abuse Marian language while undermining the Syllabus, Quas primas, Lamentabili, Pascendi, and the entire pre-1958 Magisterium.
– To recognize that acts which enmesh authentic devotions into a system of doctrinal treason cannot bind consciences against the prior, infallible teaching of the Church.
Only under the authority of the unchanged, integral Catholic faith—*semper eadem*—can any basilica, any shrine, any image truly be what this letter claims: a “fountain of salutary waters.” Outside that faith, such titles become empty ornaments on the forehead of a paramasonic structure attempting to mimic the Bride of Christ while serving another master.
Source:
Solacium ac levantionem (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025