The document under review, issued by antipope John XXIII on 23 May 1959 under the title “Potiora inter,” designates the Marian shrine known as “Nuestra Señora de El Soto” (Our Lady of the Grove) in Iruz as the principal patronal devotion of the Toranzo valley in the diocese of Santander, and authorizes the canonical coronation of its image. In solemn and affectively charged language, it extols local Marian piety, recalls alleged graces and even “prodigious” favors attributed to this image, mentions its profanation during the Spanish civil war and subsequent restoration, praises the care of the Discalced Carmelites, and formally proclaims the Virgin under this title as heavenly Patroness of the region with the usual liturgical privileges.
Idolatrous Sentimentality as Preparatio for the Conciliar Revolution
The text is brief, but precisely in its brevity it reveals the emerging profile of the coming conciliar sect: an aestheticized Marianism severed from doctrinal militancy, a bureaucratic sacralization of local cults without any serious reference to the kingship of Christ, to the integral faith, or to the war waged by Freemasonry and Modernism against the Church. It is an apparently “pious” act which, in the concrete historical context and from the pen of John XXIII, operates as a calculated anesthetic before the surgical mutilation of Catholic dogma.
Historical and Juridical Context: The Signature of an Usurper
From the perspective of *integral Catholic doctrine ante 1958*, any serious analysis must begin with the subject acting.
– John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), whose name stands on this document, is the first in the line of usurpers who inaugurated the conciliar revolution. His later convocation of Vatican II, his ecumenical program, his protection and promotion of Modernists, and his rupture with the anti-liberal stance of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI, manifest a *publicly and pertinaciously heterodox* orientation.
– According to the sound doctrine summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine and the theologians cited in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file, a manifest heretic cannot hold the papal office: *non potest esse caput, qui non est membrum* (he who is not a member cannot be the head).
– Canon 188.4 (1917 Code) affirms that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office automatically. Roncalli’s modernist and ecumenist positions (well documented outside this small letter) are incompatible with the *Syllabus of Errors* of Pius IX (e.g. propositions 15–18, 55, 77–80) and with *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* of St. Pius X.
Therefore, the very juridical claim of this letter—purporting to exercise Apostolic authority, to bind the faithful, to establish liturgical privileges—is null and void. Every solemn formula in the text (“certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra… deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine… praesentes Litteras firmas… validas… atque efficaces”) becomes, in fact, a juridical mask covering an authority already forfeited.
This is not an external appendix; it is the key to interpreting the entire operation. An invalid “pontificate” produces an invalid framework of cult and discipline, even where it mimics Catholic forms.
Factual Level: Pious Narrative without Doctrinal Substance
The text praises the shrine:
“the Marian sanctuary… attracts to itself in a singular way the minds of the faithful and the kind Mother of God, piously invoked, there dispenses heavenly favors, sometimes also in a prodigious manner.”
Key observations:
1. The narrative enumerates:
– Antiquity of the image and shrine.
– Custody by Franciscans, later Discalced Carmelites (since 1898).
– Damage suffered during the Spanish civil war.
– Zeal of the faithful of the Toranzo valley.
– Supplication of the local ordinary and Carmelites for patronage and coronation.
2. What is systematically missing:
– No mention of the need for *state of grace*, confession, or conversion from sin as condition to receive graces.
– No call to doctrinal fidelity amid the ravages of liberalism, Masonry, and socialism, explicitly unmasked as the “synagogue of Satan” and the engine of persecution in pre-conciliar papal teaching (see Pius IX in the Syllabus and appended texts; see Leo XIII’s encyclicals against Freemasonry; see Pius XI, *Quas Primas*, on the rebellion of nations against Christ the King).
– No denunciation of the communist and Masonic forces behind the profanations of the Spanish civil war.
– No reaffirmation that peace and protection are promised only within the reign of Christ the King and obedience to His one Church, as Pius XI thunders: peace is impossible until individuals and states recognize the reign of Christ (Quas Primas).
– No insistence on the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Church, condemned as “error” whenever denied by Pius IX in the Syllabus (e.g. propositions 16–18, 21).
Instead of doctrinal combat, there is a soft-focus story: an image was honored, desecrated, restored; now let us crown it. The *res* is Marian; the *forma mentis* is sentimentalist and naturalistic.
This naturalization of the supernatural order—where Marian devotion is treated as a regional cultural patrimony and pious sentiment rather than as an instrument of militant fidelity against error—is a precursor to the post-1962 Marian kitsch: images, crowns, processions, but no anathemas, no integral dogma, no social Kingship of Christ.
Linguistic Level: Sweetness as Solvent of Militant Faith
The rhetoric of the letter is instructive.
– Continual emphasis on “ornament,” “piety,” “singular invitation,” “heavenly favors,” “golden crown.”
– Bureaucratic formulas of validity and perpetuity that mimic prior papal acts, but are now emptied of doctrinal edge.
– The one allusion to persecution is utterly bloodless:
“cum bello civili in Hispania furente religio vexaretur catholica, foede esse deturpatum manu sacrilega violatumque; rebus vero compositis, religionis studium vicisse impietatem…”
(“during the civil war in Spain, when the Catholic religion was harassed, [the image] was shamefully disfigured and violated by sacrilegious hand; when order was restored, zeal for religion overcame impiety…”)
Here lies a classic modernist-ecclesiastical euphemism: no mention of the ideological and doctrinal nature of the enemies; no naming of Freemasonry, socialism, or atheistic communism; no recalling the prior papal condemnations; no call to penance for national apostasy. Only “impiety” in generic terms. The reality of a doctrinal war against Christ and His Church is linguistically dissolved in soft abstractions.
Contrast this with Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, who:
– Identifies the rejection of Christ’s kingship as the root cause of social chaos.
– Demands public, political subjection of laws and states to Christ.
– Condemns laicism as “plague” and “public apostasy.”
– Institutes a feast to reaffirm the full rights of Christ over nations and parliaments.
Roncalli’s text, by contrast, is a specimen of *irenicist sacral bureaucracy*: doing something “religious” that costs nothing to the world, offends no error, and demands no conversion.
The language functions as a moral anaesthetic: *dulcia verba* without doctrinal steel. Such language disposes clergy and laity to accept, only three years later, the anti-doctrinal optimism and indifferentist vocabulary of Vatican II.
Theological Level: Marian Cult Detached from the Kingship of Christ and the One True Church
From the standpoint of authentic Catholic doctrine (Trent, Vatican I, pre-1958 papal magisterium), at least four grave theological disorders are manifest.
1. Patronage without Explicit Confession of the One Ark of Salvation
Catholic tradition recognizes local patrons and crowned images, but always within an explicit framework:
– Mary is honored precisely as Mother of the Incarnate Word, who is King of all nations and sole Savior.
– Her privileges and patronage are ordered to the triumph of the Catholic faith over heresy and infidelity.
– True Marian devotion is intrinsically doctrinal, anti-ecumenist in the modern sense, and submitted to the integral magisterium.
Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns as errors:
– That “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (15).
– That “man may find the way of eternal salvation in the observance of any religion whatever” (16).
– That “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (18).
Yet in this letter:
– There is no recollection that Mary’s patronage is conditioned upon fidelity to the Catholic faith and rejection of false religions and sects.
– There is no explicit confession that outside the Church there is no salvation.
– The entire act can be read (and in the emerging conciliar atmosphere would be read) as a generic cultural and spiritual blessing over a territory, independent of its concrete adherence to Catholic dogma.
This silence is not innocent; it is a functional relativization. *Tacere, cum loqui debes, est clam negare* (to be silent when one must speak is a hidden denial).
2. Failure to Connect Marian Veneration with the Social Reign of Christ the King
In Quas Primas, Pius XI grounds all hope for peace and order in the public recognition of Christ’s kingship:
– He insists that both individuals and states must submit to Christ’s law.
– He teaches that secularism and the dethronement of Christ cause social ruin.
– He makes the cult of Christ the King an explicit condemnation of laicist apostasy.
This Marian letter:
– Does not mention Christ’s kingship.
– Does not demand that the valley of Toranzo acknowledge publicly the rights of Christ over civil law, education, and public life.
– Reduces patronage to a devotional and liturgical “privilege” detached from the necessary restoration of Christian society.
Thus, the cult of Mary is being wielded as a decorative veil over the abandonment of the integral doctrine of Christ the King: exactly the dynamic denounced in Quas Primas as secularism’s victory.
3. Absence of Militant Anti-Modernist Note
St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* anathematizes:
– The evolution of dogma.
– Historicism and subjectivism.
– Reduction of revelation to religious feeling.
– Undermining of Scripture’s inspiration and inerrancy.
– Democratization of magisterium and relativization of dogma.
From 1907 onward, every authentic act of Roman authority had a double obligation:
– Positively to promote Catholic truth.
– Negatively to guard the faithful against Modernist infection.
In this 1959 letter:
– There is no reference to the anti-Modernist oath.
– No warning against liberalism, false ecumenism, indifferentism.
– No call to resist the very currents that Roncalli himself would, within a few years, unleash through Vatican II.
The text represents an implicit repeal in practice of Pius X’s program: a pastoralism that avoids condemning concrete errors, contents itself with “pious” gestures, and thereby aids the “synthesis of all heresies.”
4. Instrumentalization of Marian Devotion as Pre-Conciliar Camouflage
One must read the act in its timing:
– 1959: Roncalli announces the council that becomes Vatican II.
– His early measures include a wave of Marian and local devotions, canonical coronations, and “pastoral” gestures that reassure the pious while he prepares doctrinal subversion.
The pattern:
– Retain external Marian forms to placate the faithful.
– Simultaneously introduce a new theology of the Church, of religious liberty, and of ecumenism that contradicts Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI.
Thus, a letter such as “Potiora inter” is not a harmless local favor. It exemplifies a deliberate strategy: use Marian iconography as a sentimental cover for the emerging *conciliar sect*. Marian devotion, once the terror of heretics, is here domesticated into a regional folkloric bond, easily integrated into the future “dialogue,” “religious liberty,” and “humanist” order.
Symptomatic Level: Fruits of the Conciliar Revolution and the Logic of This Act
Let us examine how this kind of act, in nuce, contains the subsequent disorders.
From Patroness of a Valley to Marian Ecumenistic Relativism
Once Marian patronage is proclaimed in a manner:
– Without doctrinal militancy.
– Without insistence on exclusive Catholic truth.
– Without reference to the necessity of public submission of civil society to Christ.
Then the same Marian categories can be easily:
– Employed for pan-religious “Marian days,”
– Invoked before non-Catholic crowds without calling them to conversion,
– Reinterpreted as “Mother of humanity,” “model of openness,” etc.
What begins as a local coronation void of doctrinal teeth easily ends as the Marian decor of Assisi-style apostasy. The absence of clear doctrinal conditions in 1959 is the proximate precondition for Marian abuse in the Church of the New Advent.
Canonization of Pious Aestheticism over Sacramental Reality
The letter orders a solemn Mass and coronation; but precisely in the antichurch context, these simulated rites:
– Are linked to a hierarchy whose episcopal consecrations (after the 1968 reform) are at best doubtful, at worst invalid.
– Are embedded in structures that have replaced the *Unbloody Sacrifice* with a protestantized assembly meal, as will happen a decade later.
– Exhibit continuity of rubrics externally, while the doctrinal foundation is being eroded.
Thus, even apparently “traditional” acts performed or authorized by the conciliar usurpers function to confer legitimacy on their pseudo-magisterium, distracting from the fact that their system is rupturing the sacramental and doctrinal continuity of the Church.
Silence about Judgment, Sin, and Hell: The Gravest Omission
The most telling feature is the absolute silence on:
– Mortal sin and the danger of damnation.
– The necessity of repentance.
– The Four Last Things.
– The grave obligation to reject modern errors condemned by pre-1958 popes.
Instead:
– Mary is a beneficent dispenser of favors.
– The people are gently praised.
– Impiety appears as a past inconvenience, now happily overcome.
This is precisely the “pastoral” style that in the conciliar sect:
– Replaces preaching on sin with therapeutic optimism.
– Replaces the Cross with sentiment.
– Replaces the militant Church with a democratic, dialoguing NGO.
Such silence is not pastoral; it is homicidal. It prepares souls to accept an anti-gospel in which all religions are “paths,” Christ is reduced, dogma is negotiable, and the public reign of Christ is replaced by the “rights of man” and Masonic humanitarianism condemned in the Syllabus.
Exposure of the Logic: From Sede Vacante to Pseudo-Marian Propaganda
From an integral Catholic perspective, the steps are coherent:
1. Public, pertinacious heterodoxy (Roncalli and successors) = forfeiture of papal office (Bellarmine, Wernz-Vidal; Canon 188.4).
2. Forfeiture of office = nullity of their legislative, doctrinal, and liturgical acts (no Apostolic authority).
3. Nullity of acts = “Potiora inter” is not a papal act but a text issued by an usurper, exploiting the forms of the papacy to advance a non-Catholic agenda.
4. The content of the letter, while apparently orthodox in words, is:
– Structurally modernist by its silences.
– Naturalisitic in its tone.
– Disconnected from the militant anti-liberal stance required by Quas Primas and the Syllabus.
– Part of a pattern of using Marianism as emotional capital while dismantling the doctrinal fortress of the Church.
Hence, the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of this attitude lies not in explicitly denied dogmas, but in the skilful replacement of:
– The Church Militant with a church of ceremonies and smiles.
– Marian co-redemptive combat with Marian decoration serving a conciliar, ecumenist, Masonic trajectory.
Against Both Modernist “Clergy” and Lay Autocephalous Illusions
Two final clarifications are necessary.
1. The conciliar pseudo-clergy:
– Those who propagate such texts as exercises of “papal” authority.
– Those who participate in the system of Vatican II, the new rites, false ecumenism, and religious liberty.
– Are not innocent functionaries but instruments of apostasy, bearing heavy responsibility for leading souls away from the integral faith.
2. Yet any reaction that:
– Rejects this usurping hierarchy,
– Only to construct private “churches,” democratic doctrinal forums, or self-invented cults,
– Equally betrays Catholic order.
The authority to judge doctrine and govern the Church belongs to the true hierarchy of the one Church of all ages, defined by Vatican I as a divine institution, not to lay opinion or modernist “synods.” The solution is not anarchic self-judgment, but faithful adherence to the perennial magisterium up to 1958, the traditional rites, and bishops and priests whose orders and doctrine are certainly Catholic.
Conclusion: Unmasking the Gentle Prelude to the Abomination
“Potiora inter” is a small text, but emblematic. It is:
– A juridically void letter issuing from a manifestly heterodox usurper.
– A theologically anodyne act that domesticates Marian devotion into regional folklore.
– A linguistic precursor to the sentimental, non-condemnatory, naturalistic style of Vatican II and its aftermath.
– A symptom of that deeper betrayal whereby the external shell of Catholic piety was preserved just long enough to smuggle in the conciliar revolution and enthrone, in place of the Cross of Christ the King, the cult of man and the religion of universal fraternity.
Authentic Marian devotion, according to the constant magisterium, must:
– Lead to uncompromising adherence to Catholic dogma.
– Arm the faithful against Modernism, liberalism, and Freemasonry.
– Strengthen the public confession of Christ’s social kingship.
– Inspire horror for sacrilege, false ecumenism, and religious indifferentism.
Where these elements are absent, replaced by sugary rhetoric and decorative coronations authorized by a heretical usurper, the faithful must recognize not the voice of the Bride, but the calculated lullaby of a structure preparing the *abominatio desolationis* in the holy place.
Source:
Potiora inter, Litterae Apostolicae Beata Maria Virgo Vulgo Appellata « Nuestra Senora De El Soto » in Praecipuam Patronam Regionis « De Toranzo » eligitur et eiusdem Imago Corona Redimitur, die XXIII… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025