The document, issued on 5 February 1960 under the name of Ioannes XXIII, bestows on the church of St Charles Borromeo in Carmel, in the diocese of Monterey-Fresno, the title and privileges of a Minor Basilica. It extols the “piety” of the place, recalls its historical link with the beginnings of Catholic presence in California, highlights the tomb and cult of Junípero Serra, notes the popularity of Marian devotion under the title “Our Lady of Bethlehem,” and, invoking alleged apostolic authority, decrees the perpetual validity of this act within the conciliar structure.

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In reality, this seemingly harmless brief is a clear manifestation of the usurper’s claim to papal authority and an early brick in the conciliar sect’s program of falsifying history, instrumentalizing monuments, and canonizing a naturalistic, nation-building “Catholicism” emptied of the Kingship of Christ and the integral Faith.

Liturgical Ornament as Mask: A Pseudo-Pontifical Act of Self-Legitimation

The entire text must be read not as a neutral administrative act, but as an ideological gesture of a man who, beginning the line of usurpers after 1958, methodically dresses rupture in the garments of continuity.

From the outset, Ioannes XXIII speaks in the solemn style of authentic Roman pontiffs:
“Ad perpetuam rei memoriam… certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine…”
(“For a perpetual remembrance… with Our certain knowledge and mature deliberation and from the fullness of Apostolic power…”)

This formula, when used by a true Pope, expresses the exercise of real potestas iurisdictionis entrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors. Applied by one who inaugurates the conciliar revolution, it becomes a juridical counterfeit: an attempt to annex to a new religion the visible signs, titles, places and memories that belong to the Catholic Church of all ages.

Factual Level: The Manipulation of California’s Catholic Memory

1. The document presents Carmel and the church of St Charles Borromeo as:
– an ancient center of Catholic life (17th–18th century missions),
– repeatedly restored “ut ignis divinus ibidem excitatus auctibus novis aleretur” (“that the divine fire enkindled there might be nourished with new growths”).

Here, legitimate historical elements are invoked. But the act occurs in 1960, on the threshold of the conciliar upheaval which will:
– dismantle the traditional missionary theology,
– replace the supernatural end (conversion of pagans to the one true Church) with cultural accommodation and “dialogue,”
– subject liturgy and doctrine to anthropocentric experimentation.

Thus a true historical sanctuary is juridically re-inscribed under the authority of a man preparing the Council that will deny in practice what the missionaries there lived and died for: *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* (outside the Church no salvation).

2. The exaltation of Junípero Serra:
– The letter calls Serra “Apostle of California” and stresses that he is counted among men publicly honored by the United States.
– This double emphasis is revealing: the measure of ecclesial importance is subtly intertwined with recognition from the American state—a power formally condemned in its liberal-indifferentist ideology by prior magisterium (cf. Pius IX, *Syllabus Errorum*, especially 55, 77–80, rejecting separation of Church and State and reconciliation with liberalism).

Instead of clearly asserting the primacy of supernatural criteria—Serra as confessor of the Faith, preacher of conversion, enemy of paganism—the text slides effortlessly into the language of civil honor and national heritage. The mission becomes a monument; the Apostle becomes a proto-civic hero.

3. The promotion of the shrine as a place where:
– the people frequently assist at “Dominicum” (the Sunday liturgy),
– honor “Our Lady of Bethlehem,”
– and particularly celebrate weddings.

The focus on aesthetic appeal (“loci amoenitas”), local piety, curiosity for a picturesque sanctuary, and nuptial ceremonies reveals an early touristic, sentimental framing. What is entirely absent is:
– any call to penance,
– mention of the state of grace,
– warning against mortal sin,
– insistence on the integral doctrine on marriage (indissolubility, exclusion of contraception, condemnation of divorce and civil unions),
– affirmation of the obligation of Catholics to submit public and private life to Christ the King.

This omission is not accidental; it is programmatic. A pre-conciliar pope like Pius XI, contemplating any public cult, immediately subordinates it to the universal and social Reign of Christ: “Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ” (*Quas Primas*). Here, Serra’s church is praised, but Christ’s Kingship over the American state and its Masonic-liberal foundations is not even whispered.

Linguistic Level: The Courteous Piety of a New Religion

The rhetoric is elegant, devout on the surface, but revealing in its selectivity.

1. Sweetness without militancy:
– The sea, the beauty, “praeclara pietas,” “amoenitas,” “eximia in rem christianam promerita,” gentle Marian imagery.
– No combat vocabulary, no condemnation of errors, no denunciation of Freemasonry, liberalism, Protestant falsehood, or modernist infiltration—precisely at a time when, as Pius XII had already warned, the smoke of error was seeping into the Church.

Genuine Catholic pastoral texts—Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII—interweave devout language with precise doctrinal lines and explicit rejection of false principles. Here, the absence of doctrinal edge makes the text a paradigmatic product of the emergent *cultus hominis* (cult of man) and conciliar irenicism.

2. Administrative self-assertion:
– Repetitive legal solemnities: “has preces libenter admittere… edicimus, statuimus, decernentes… contraries quibusvis non obstantibus… irritum ex nunc et inane.”
– Such formulas are traditional—but weaponized to cover a radical fact: the authority that utters them has, in doctrine and intention (manifest in the subsequent Council and its implementation), broken with what Popes before 1958 consistently taught against religious liberty, false ecumenism, and doctrinal evolution.

The neo-church copies the syntax of Catholic decrees while subverting their content over time. This letter is typical: grandiloquent solemnities for a minimal, innocuous object, preparing the faithful to accept the same language later when used to enthrone the novus ordo religionis.

3. The cult of heritage:
– The sanctuary is called “praecipuis Californiae monumentis.”
– It is presented as an architectural and historical treasure.

This language, while not false at the natural level, subtly displaces the center of gravity: from *sanctuarium salutis animarum* (sanctuary of the salvation of souls) to “monument” of culture. It anticipates the post-1960s mania for cultural patrimony, where desecrated churches are preserved as museums while the Faith is betrayed at their altars.

Theological Level: The Usurper’s Claim and the Abuse of Basilica Status

Measured by integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, several theological problems become evident:

1. Illegitimate exercise of “Apostolic power”:
– The document attributes to Ioannes XXIII the “plenitudo potestatis Apostolicae” (fullness of Apostolic power).
– However, the same man convokes and directs a council whose documents, accepted and developed by his successors, promote:
– religious liberty in the condemned sense (Dignitatis humanae vs. *Syllabus* 15–18, 77–80),
– false ecumenism that denies the exclusive salvific identity of the Catholic Church (against *Unam Sanctam*, Council of Florence, *Mortalium Animos* of Pius XI),
– collegial, democratized ecclesiology against the monarchical structure divinely instituted (*Pastor Aeternus* of Vatican I),
– and liturgical revolution undermining the propitiatory character of the Most Holy Sacrifice.

*Principium certissimum*: A manifest, public promoter of principles repeatedly and infallibly condemned by the Church cannot be head of the same Church. As classical theologians (Bellarmine and others, consistently read according to pre-conciliar understanding) explain: a manifest heretic cannot be Pope, for he is no member of the Church.

Therefore the act of conferring basilica status, though outwardly conforming to canonical language, is juridically null in the order of the true Church. It belongs to the conciliar sect’s internal legal fiction.

2. Instrumentalization of authentic saints and devotions:
– The letter leverages Charles Borromeo and Junípero Serra—champions of doctrinal firmness, episcopal discipline, and missionary zeal—to decorate the future conciliar landscape.
– The pre-conciliar magisterium never used saints as shields for diluting doctrine. Here, however, Borromeo’s name is attached to a structure that will soon be used for the reformed rites and for the preaching of Americanist, liberal “Catholicism.”

This is a pattern:
– The conciliar sect claims continuity by adorning itself with figures formed in the integral Faith while simultaneously betraying the principles they embodied.

3. Silence regarding Christ the King and the social order:
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that states are bound to recognize and publicly honor Christ’s Kingship and submit their laws to His Gospel. He directly condemns laicism and the relegation of religion to private or cultural spheres.
– This document, focused on a sanctuary within the United States—a state whose founding principles enshrine religious indifferentism—does not:
– recall the obligation of that nation to submit to the true Faith,
– denounce secularism,
– or warn against Protestantism, Masonry, and the myth of neutral pluralism.

The omission is profound: a supposed successor of Peter praises a national shrine yet abstains from proclaiming to the nation its duty to acknowledge the one true religion. This is tacit acceptance of liberal “freedom of religion,” a thesis solemnly rejected by prior Magisterium.

4. Marian devotion reduced to sentimentalism:
– The reference to “Our Lady of Bethlehem” and wedding celebrations lacks any doctrinal precision:
– no reference to Mary’s role in crushing heresies,
– no call to the Holy Rosary as a weapon against error,
– no insistence on purity, modesty, and sacramental preparation.

In the age immediately foretelling the moral dissolution of the 1960s and 1970s, such silence is not innocent. True Marian devotion is intimately connected with doctrinal clarity and moral rigor; a Marianism without militancy is an empty shell easily co-opted by Modernism.

Symptomatic Level: An Early Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Strategy

This letter, modest in subject, is emblematic as a method:

1. Strategy of “continuity of externals”:
– Maintain:
– Latin formulas,
– canonical structures (Minor Basilicas, privileges, etc.),
– references to saints and to the past.
– While preparing a doctrinal and liturgical revolution that:
– changes catechisms,
– subverts ecclesiology,
– introduces sacramental rites of dubious or null validity,
– enthrones religious liberty and ecumenism.

The goal: create the illusion that the same Church continues, while in fact an entirely new orientation governs.

2. National and cultural embedding:
– Linking Serra’s cult and Carmel to American public recognition fits perfectly with Americanism condemned by Leo XIII (*Testem Benevolentiae*):
– preference for active over contemplative life,
– minimization of doctrinal controversy for civic harmony,
– adaptation of the Faith to democratic and pluralistic ideals.

By cheering that Serra is among those honored by the United States, the brief subtly suggests a harmony between Catholic sanctity and liberal institutions—precisely what prior Popes denounced as illusory and deadly.

3. The pseudo-legitimization of post-conciliar worship:
– Giving Minor Basilica status:
– ensures the church becomes a showcase of the “renewal” after 1962,
– allows indulgences, special rites, prominence in diocesan life—all now co-opted to spread the new religion.

What was once a center of true missionary zeal becomes a flagship of the “Church of the New Advent,” where:
– the Most Holy Sacrifice is replaced with the horizontal communal “meal,”
– preaching is moralistic, ecumenical, or political,
– and the memory of Serra is reinterpreted through human rights and inculturation narratives, rather than supernatural conversion.

4. The self-immunizing clause:
– The text declares all contrary acts “irritum ex nunc et inane” (null and void).
– This absolutist closure, legitimate in the mouth of a true Pope, is used here by a usurper to secure his narrative and jurisdictional claims against any contestation.

It is the juridical style of the conciliar system: using the form of Catholic authority to entrench its own departure from Catholic substance.

Contradiction with Pre-1958 Doctrine: A Condensed Overview

Confront this brief with the authoritative teaching it pretends to continue:

– *Syllabus Errorum* (Pius IX) condemns:
– the notion that the Church should reconcile with liberalism and modern civilization understood in an anti-Christian sense (80),
– the separation of Church and State (55),
– religious indifferentism (15–18).
– *Quas Primas* (Pius XI) insists:
– all nations, including republics like the United States, must publicly recognize Christ the King,
– secularism is a “plague” to be fought, not accommodated.
– *Mortalium Animos* (Pius XI) rejects:
– the ecumenical relativism that will later dominate the neo-church, instead requiring non-Catholics to return to the one true Church.
– *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi* (Pius X) condemn:
– the modernist method of preserving traditional forms while emptying them of doctrinal content,
– the historicization and psychologization of faith and dogma.

This 1960 letter:
– shows no awareness of these grave condemnations,
– embodies the soft rhetoric that will allow their practical reversal,
– appropriates the Petrine voice to inaugurate a non-Petrine agenda.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): by re-signifying sanctuaries and titles under a heterodox authority, the conciliar sect reshapes belief via liturgical and canonical cosmetics. The faithful see Latin seals, “Basilica Minor,” references to saints—and assume continuity—while the underlying magisterial trajectory turns against the very documents that once defined Catholic orthodoxy.

On Authority, Not Lay Anarchy

It is crucial to emphasize: the exposure of Ioannes XXIII’s act as illegitimate in the order of the true Church does not authorize lay self-jurisdiction or anarchic “do-it-yourself” structures.

– The authority to erect, consecrate, and designate basilicas belongs to the Church founded by Christ, hierarchically constituted, with real jurisdiction and valid sacraments.
– The current paramasonic structures occupying Rome do not possess this authority because they have defected from the integral Faith.
– Nonetheless, judgment on persons in foro externo (external forum) is governed by principles received from the authentic Magisterium and classical theology; it is not a playground for personal fantasies or democratic opinions.

The crime of the conciliar usurpers is precisely to subvert this divine constitution; the crime of lay or pseudo-clerical rebels would be to mimic the same subversion under the guise of resistance. True fidelity consists in:
– clinging to pre-1958 Catholic doctrine as norm,
– recognizing that a manifestly modernist, liberal, ecumenist leadership cannot be the juridical continuation of the Papacy,
– seeking the sacraments only where they are valid and where doctrine remains integral,
– and refusing to lend religious obedience to structures and documents that openly contradict the perennial Magisterium.

Conclusion: A Small Stone in the Architecture of Apostasy

This Apostolic Letter, on its surface, appears as a minor, pious act: honoring a historic mission church and solemnizing its role as a center of devotion. But seen through the lens of unchanging Catholic doctrine, it becomes:

– an exercise of counterfeit pontifical authority,
– part of a deliberate strategy to cloak an approaching revolution with symbols of continuity,
– a step in the transformation of missionary Catholicism into cultural and national folklore,
– a symptom of practical reconciliation with liberalism and Americanism condemned by the true Popes.

Under the blue sea and the Californian sun, the conciliar sect quietly inscribes its seal on a sanctuary born of the true Faith, preparing to colonize it liturgically and doctrinally. The response demanded of Catholics faithful to the integral Faith is not aesthetic admiration or sentimental piety, but lucid discernment: to distinguish between the venerable stones of Carmel, which belong to Christ the King, and the illegitimate hand that, in 1960, presumed to bless them in the name of a coming New Religion.

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Source:
Caeruleum mare, Litterae Apostolicae Curialis Ecclesia S. Caroli Borromaei in loco « Carmel », dioecesis Montereyensis Fresnensis, titulo ac privilegiis Basilicae Minoris cohonestatur, d. 5 Februarii …   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025