Materna caritas is a solemn Latin decretal letter of John XXIII, declaring the canonization of Joaquina de Vedruna de Mas, foundress of the Carmelites of Charity, by rehearsing her life, virtues, alleged miracles, and the procedural steps of beatification and canonization, culminating in the formula by which he and the assembled hierarchy “define” her as a Saint of the universal Church. The entire text, however edifying it may appear on the surface, is structurally and doctrinally the self-exposure of an authority already internally subverted, preparing the way for the conciliar revolution by transforming sanctity into an instrument of anthropocentric, naturalistic humanitarianism and by presuming a magisterial authority which, according to perennial Catholic doctrine, a manifest heretic simply does not possess.

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The Canonization Formula as Self-Discrediting Claim of Usurped Authority

At the heart of this document stands the solemn formula:

“ad honorem Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis, ad exaltationem Fidei Catholicae et Christianae Religionis augmentum… Beatos Carolum a Setia… et Ioachiman de Vedruna de Mas… Sanctos esse decernimus et definimus, ac Sanctorum catalogo ascribimus”

(“for the honor of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith and the increase of the Christian Religion… we decree and define… to be Saints and enroll in the catalogue of the Saints”).

From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is the decisive point: the entire act rests on the assumption that John XXIII is a true Roman Pontiff, possessing the charism and jurisdiction to issue an irreformable, infallible canonization. Yet unchanging Catholic theology (notably St. Robert Bellarmine, *De Romano Pontifice*; the constant doctrine reflected in *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Paul IV; and the canonical principle codified in 1917 CIC can. 188.4) holds:

– A manifest heretic is not a member of the Church, therefore cannot be its head; such a one is incapable of exercising papal authority.
– A promotion to the papacy of one who has defected from the faith is null, void, and without effect.
– Public defection from the faith vacates an ecclesiastical office *ipso facto* (*per se et ante omnem sententiam*).

By 1959, the doctrinal trajectory, public attitudes, and preparatory networks culminating in Vatican II were already evident, and John XXIII stood as their chosen standard-bearer. The very person who would convoke a “pastoral council” opening the floodgates to condemned errors—religious liberty (against Pius IX’s *Syllabus*), false ecumenism, collegial democratization of the Church, the cult of man—is here presented as supreme, uncontested judge of sanctity. This is not a neutral historical datum but theologically decisive: an authority internally bent toward modernist reconciliation with “progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (precisely condemned in proposition 80 of the *Syllabus of Errors*) attempts to cloak itself in the infallible aura of canonization.

Thus the letter is not a simple hagiographical act; it is an early piece in the architecture of the conciliar sect’s self-legitimization: an usurping hierarchy manufacturing saints to embody and sanctify its nascent ideology.

Instrumentalizing Sanctity: From Supernatural Holiness to Humanitarian Exemplarism

On the factual surface, the text narrates:

– a devout Catalan girl, deeply pious, Eucharistic, devoted to the poor;
– a generous Christian wife and mother, then widow;
– a foundress of an institute for the care of the sick and education of girls, the Carmelites of Charity;
– a woman of penance, mortification, charity, fidelity to the cross;
– purported miracles before and after death, examined according to canonical procedure.

All these elements, considered abstractly and in themselves, fit traditional patterns of sanctity and could belong to a genuine Catholic saint. But the decisive question is not whether Joaquina, historically, practiced virtues; it is whether this document, its rhetoric, and its use of her figure serve the unchanging Catholic doctrine or a new, subtle orientation.

Several features reveal the underlying manipulation:

1. The insistence on “maternal charity” as the dominant, almost exclusive note, framed in a horizontal, emotional register:
– Repeated emphasis on qualities like “benignitas,” “mansuetudo,” “indulgentia,” social service, and philanthropy.
– Less accent (and certainly insufficient in proportion) on doctrinal combativeness, confession of the integral faith against error, defense of the rights of Christ the King in the temporal order.

2. The highlighting of social and healthcare works:
– The religious are praised as unpaid nurses, educators, servants of the poor—good in itself, but rhetorically detached from the primacy of the *salus animarum* (salvation of souls) and the necessity to resist state and ideological apostasy.
– This anticipates the conciliar sect’s “diaconia” ideology, where the Church is recast as a global NGO of “charity” dissolved into humanitarianism.

3. The narrative presents trials (wars, exile, persecution) almost exclusively as psychological-moral tests, not as occasions for explicit doctrinal witness against liberalism, naturalism, or Masonic anti-Church forces so prophetically exposed by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– The silence regarding the doctrinal nature of the anti-Catholic revolutions in Spain, liberalism, and secret societies is an eloquent omission.
– The same decades saw popes denouncing socialism, liberalism, Freemasonry as “synagogue of Satan”; here, the letter avoids such precise supernatural discernment, preferring edifying sentimentality.

Thus a delicate substitution occurs: *sanctity is used as a moral alibi for a hierarchy quietly detaching sanctity from doctrinal militancy and subordinating it to a soft, horizontal philanthropy.* This is precisely the mentality Pius X condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: transforming dogma into religious feeling and ethics into sentimental altruism.

Linguistic Sugar-Coating: Pious Latin as Veil for Ecclesiological Subversion

The document’s Latin is solemn, classical, apparently traditional. Yet the language serves a double purpose:

1. It wraps the act of canonization in the full majesty of pre-conciliar rhetorical form:
– Invocation of the Holy Trinity.
– References to the Magisterium, to heroic virtue, to miracles.
– Formal participation of cardinals, bishops, the whole visible hierarchy.

2. By doing so in 1959, it creates continuity-symbolism between the pre-1958 papacy and the line beginning with John XXIII:
– The letter repeatedly speaks in the voice of the “supreme pastor of the universal Church.”
– It catalogs all pre-conciliar procedures as fulfilled, aiming to disarm any future objection by embedding the usurper’s acts in traditional canonical form.

This is a paradigmatic modernist tactic: retain external forms, change the internal principle.

– *Lex orandi, lex credendi* is inverted. The sacred style is employed to legitimize a subject whose future acts will demolish the very doctrinal content that once gave that style meaning.
– The sacral Latin and juridical exactitude become—objectively—an instrument to accustom the faithful to accept the decrees of one who will inaugurate a systematic dilution of dogma.

Here the linguistic analysis converges with theology: the more carefully John XXIII imitates the traditional solemn style in 1959, the more fraudulent the continuity appears when viewed in light of the revolutionary council he convokes a few years later.

Theological Inconsistency: Infallible Canonizations and the Heretical Pontiff Question

Integral Catholic doctrine teaches:

– Canonizations, as solemn definitive judgments on a person’s presence in glory and exemplariness, are connected to the Church’s infallibility, since proposing a non-saint as universal model would gravely mislead the faithful.
– A manifest heretic cannot exercise papal authority; any such solemn acts would lack the guarantee of infallibility and even of jurisdiction.

Applying these principles:

1. If John XXIII is assumed a true pope, then:
– One must ascribe to his canonizations the same infallible weight as those of Pius X or Pius XI.
– Yet the same system that “canonized” here will later “canonize” radically heterodox figures, exponents of ecumenism, religious liberty, interfaith syncretism.

2. This leads to a contradiction:
– Either:
– a) one accepts these later canonizations and the modernist “saints” as true, thereby relativizing all prior doctrine on faith, morals, and the conditions of sanctity; or
– b) one denies the reliability of these post-1958 canonizations.

3. But if one must doubt the reliability of John XXIII’s successors’ canonizations due to manifest doctrinal deviations, then the same root principle applies already here:
– The act Materna caritas cannot be treated as an untouchable dogmatic datum; it is an act of an authority already compromised in principle.
– The canonization becomes, at best, historically doubtful in its juridical value; at worst, part of a systemic falsification.

St. Robert Bellarmine, echoed by theologians and canonists cited in the sedevacantist corpus, insists: *a manifest heretic is deposed by God Himself* (*ipso facto*), and any “juridical” acts following such defection lack binding force in the order of divine right. The heavily insisted-upon authority in this letter thus paradoxically proves its own illegitimacy to the eyes enlightened by pre-1958 doctrine.

Selective Supernaturalism: Miracles as Functional Legitimization

The decretal details miraculous healings attributed to the intercession of Joaquina de Vedruna:

– Sudden cure of a child from diphtheritic laryngitis after contact with a relic.
– Sudden recovery of another child from severe pulmonary pathology.

Structurally, these cases are narrated in standard canonical fashion. However:

1. The conciliar sect, in its later developments, habitually exploits supposed miracles to canonize ideologically convenient figures, especially architects of religious liberty and ecumenism. Materna caritas fits into this pattern as an early instance of miracle-proceduralism buttressing a regime of sanctity inflation.

2. The document omits any robust reminder that:
– *Signa* must be subordinated to doctrine; miracles cannot authenticate heresy.
– The devil can simulate wonders; the Church’s discernment is doctrinal before it is empirical.

Pre-1958 papal magisterium, especially under Pius IX and Pius X, constantly subordinates any extraordinary phenomena to the bar of integral doctrine. Here, the rhetoric flows the other way: the integrity of the canonical process is implicitly invoked to confirm the integrity of the authority conducting it. Miracles cease to be signs that presuppose orthodoxy; they become instruments to manufacture trust in a nascent counterfeit magisterium.

The silence is crucial. There is no admonition that:

– Holiness is impossible without unwavering adherence to the whole Catholic faith.
– No cult of “charity” is valid if separated from dogma and from rejection of condemned errors.
– Social works detached from Christ’s Kingship and the rights of His Church can easily become part of a naturalistic gospel.

Thus, even where supernatural language appears, it is carefully confined and sterilized, never deployed to condemn modernist infiltrations, liberal legislation, or Masonic sects so forcefully unmasked by Pius IX in the *Syllabus* and by Leo XIII.

Omissions that Accuse: Silence on Christ’s Kingship and the Social Order

One of the gravest indictments of Materna caritas is what it does not say.

Pius XI in *Quas Primas* (1925) teaches with adamant clarity:

– Peace and social order are impossible unless individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to the reign of Christ the King.
– The Church must claim full liberty and independence from secular power.
– Secularism and laicism are a “plague” that must be condemned.

Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (1864) condemns as errors:

– The separation of Church and State (prop. 55).
– The idea that the Roman Pontiff can reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization in the sense proposed by revolutionaries (prop. 80).
– The reduction of religion to private conscience and denial of the Church’s rights over education and public morality.

In Materna caritas:

– No link is made between Joaquina’s charity and the Social Kingship of Christ.
– No denunciation of liberalism, anti-clerical laws, or the Masonic intrigues which ravaged Spain.
– No warning against indifferentism, naturalism, modernist “charity” severed from truth.

Instead, sanctity is localized in a quasi-apolitical, purely “maternal” sphere, convenient for a coming council that will preach “dialogue,” “religious freedom,” and state neutrality, all in open contradiction to the earlier magisterium.

This silence is not accidental. It is the symptom of a hierarchy shifting its axis:

– from supernatural combat against error to coexistence with error;
– from proclamation of Christ’s absolute rights to accommodation with secular ideologies;
– from the Cross as scandal to the world to the Church as respected humanitarian agency.

Such omissions, when measured against the unanimous anti-liberal doctrine of pre-1958 popes, themselves expose the theological bankruptcy of the mentality embodied by John XXIII’s act.

Symptom of a Systemic Revolution: Canonization as Pre-Conciliar Trojan Horse

Viewed in continuity with what followed (Vatican II and its aftermath), Materna caritas functions as:

1. A bridge-token:
– Using impeccable pre-conciliar ceremonial to accustom the faithful to receiving from John XXIII’s hands an act that presupposes full papal legitimacy.
– Once that trust is secured, the same person convokes a council that will corrode the very doctrinal foundations on which canonizations rested.

2. A prototype of the conciliar sect’s “saint-making”:
– Sanctity increasingly defined by social activism, institutional works, and emotive “openness.”
– Heroic virtue measured less by doctrinal intrepidity than by psychological sweetness and adaptability.

3. A functional canonization:
– The Carmelites of Charity, devoted to education and healthcare, become ideal vectors of the new post-1958 agenda of social-engagement-first, catechesis and doctrinal militancy last—or nowhere.
– Elevating their foundress in 1959 symbolically blesses the shift from confessional militancy to humanitarianism.

This is not to deny that individual religious, including Joaquina historically, may have lived authentic Catholic virtue prior to the revolution. The point is that her image is seized, framed, and canonically defined by an authority already oriented toward systemic apostasy. The act thereby participates in the illegitimacy of that authority and in its project.

Contrast with Integral Catholic Principles: Why the Act Cannot Bind the Faithful

From the perspective of unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, several principles converge:

– *Nemo potest dare quod non habet* (no one can give what he does not have): a non-Catholic, or manifest heretic, cannot confer infallible ecclesiastical judgments.
– *Quod contra ius divinum fit, nullum est* (what is done against divine law is null): if a claimant to the papacy publicly promotes or prepares doctrines contrary to what previous popes have definitively taught—e.g., religious liberty, ecumenism with false religions—his claim collides with divine constitution, and his acts lack authority.
– *Fides et mores* are the first criterion of recognition of the Church’s voice; if those are systematically undermined, the voice cannot be that of the true Bride of Christ.

Applied to Materna caritas:

1. The external correctness of the canonical process does not heal the internal defect of authority.
2. The document’s pervasive silence on anti-liberal, anti-modernist doctrine, its naturalistic tone, and its role as prelude to Vatican II confirm alignment with the condemned tendencies catalogued in *Lamentabili* and the *Syllabus*.
3. Therefore, the faithful who cling to integral Catholic faith are not bound in conscience to accept this canonization as guaranteed by the infallibility of the Church.

Rather:

– They must distinguish between:
– the real historical virtues of Joaquina de Vedruna (which can be piously esteemed, insofar as they conform to Catholic faith), and
– the juridical-infallible status claimed for her by an authority that cannot demonstrate continuity with the pre-1958 magisterium in doctrine and principle.

To accept uncritically such acts as irreformable is to legitimize, retroactively, the very usurpation by which the conciliar sect enthroned itself.

Conclusion: Sanctity Hijacked to Serve the Revolt against Tradition

Materna caritas, read with supernatural vigilance and guided solely by the immutable doctrine of the Church prior to 1958, reveals the following:

– It cloaks John XXIII with the full insignia of papal authority at the very threshold of his conciliar revolution.
– It presents a canonization that, in form traditional, in substance participates in a progressive shift toward humanitarian, de-doctrinalized sanctity.
– It strategically omits references to Christ’s Kingship, the rights of the Church over states and education, the mortal errors of liberalism, modernism, and secret societies.
– It subordinates miracles and heroic virtue to the consolidation of a counterfeit magisterium.
– It exemplifies how the conciliar sect instrumentalizes edifying narratives to demand unconditional submission to its acts, thereby attempting to drag the faithful into implicit acceptance of its apostasy.

Under the light of the pre-1958 magisterium, the only consistent stance is:

– to revere authentic virtue wherever it truly flourished before the revolution,
– but to deny doctrinal and juridical credit to acts of those who, by words, deeds, and the councils they convoked, stand in rupture with the unchangeable Catholic Faith.

In this sense, Materna caritas stands not as a pure act of the spotless Bride of Christ, but as one of the early, polished documents of that paramasonic, conciliar structure which dares to occupy the Vatican while dismantling, step by step, the very doctrinal edifice from which it steals its language and ceremonies.

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Source:
Materna caritas, Litterae Decretales Beatae Ioachimae De Vedruna De Mas Viduae, Legiferae Matri Sororum Carmelitidum A Caritate, Sanctorum Honores Decernuntur, XII Aprilis 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025