Relic Translations without Faith: Cultic Formalism in the Neo-Church
The document attributed to John XXIII, issued as Apostolic Letters under the title “Probatum studium,” recounts how, at the request of Giuseppe Stella, holder of the conciliar titles “bishop” of La Spezia, Sarzana, and Brugnato, permission is granted to transfer the head of Saint Venerius from the church of St Peter in Reggio Emilia to a church in La Spezia dedicated to Saint Venerius, thereby fostering local devotion. It briefly recalls the saint’s life, the ancient translation of his relics for safekeeping from pirates, and, invoking apostolic authority, derogates earlier norms (including those of Clement VIII) to legitimise this new relocation, declaring the act firm, valid, and perpetually binding.
This seemingly pious gesture is in truth a revealing specimen of the conciliar sect’s tactic: conserving externals to mask a subterranean revolution that empties Catholic devotion of its dogmatic and supernatural substance.
Substitution of Apostolic Authority by an Antipapal Signature
At the factual level, the text pretends to exercise true Apostolic authority: it speaks *ad perpetuam rei memoriam*, invokes the “Ring of the Fisherman,” derogates a true Pope (Clement VIII), and binds future recipients under its provisions. Yet this entire juridical apparatus rests on a usurped claim: John XXIII inaugurates the historical line of antipopes who preside over the conciliar revolution and the systematic dismantling of the pre-1958 Catholic order.
Key elements exposing the problem:
– The document assumes as unquestioned that the signatory is Roman Pontiff with full jurisdiction to legislate on relics, derogate prior papal dispositions, and impose perpetual obligations.
– It calls Stella “Venerable Brother” and acknowledges the conciliar diocesan structure as legitimate.
– It presents itself as an exercise of ordinary papal governance in continuity with Clement VIII, as though nothing in doctrine or worship had shifted.
Measured by the integral Catholic doctrine (pre-1958), this claim collapses.
1. *A manifest heretic cannot be Pope* (*de fide* in its theological conclusion). As synthesized by St Robert Bellarmine and reiterated by classical theologians, a public, notorious heretic is outside the Church and therefore incapable of holding the primacy: *“A manifest heretic is not a member of the Church; therefore he cannot be its head.”* This principle is rooted in the nature of the Church as a visible, one-faith society.
2. The conciliar revolution—prepared intellectually long before 1960 and then codified and publicised through Vatican II—embodies propositions already condemned by the Magisterium: religious liberty, ecumenism of equals, doctrinal evolution, the relativisation of the Social Kingship of Christ. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) and Lamentabili / Pascendi (Pius X) have branded such positions as *heretical* or *proximate to heresy*.
3. The same milieu that produces this letter is the milieu that soon after enthrones the cult of religious liberty (against Syllabus 15–18, 77–80), glorifies false ecumenism, and suppresses the public rights of Christ the King denounced by Pius XI in *Quas primas*, who warns that secularism and the dethronement of Christ are the root of modern calamities.
The problem is not that the letter speaks of a saint, but that an antipope and a paramasonic structure usurp the juridical and liturgical instruments of the true Church to give themselves a Catholic patina. The act is formally styled as papal; materially it is the exercise of a counterfeit authority. Under the traditional principles confirmed in the provided “Defense of Sedevacantism” file and in canon 188 §4 (1917 Code), such a structure is devoid of divine mandate. Any “perpetual” decrees it issues are canonically and theologically null: *quod nullum est, nullum producit effectum* (“what is null produces no effect”).
Thus the solemnity of the style is itself an index of the lie. The letter’s very juridical self-confidence manifests, not continuity, but the audacity of the usurpation.
Pious Relics, Impious Silence: The Naturalistic Emptiness of the Text
On the surface, the letter appears entirely “orthodox”: it honors a confessor saint, mentions his virtues, recognizes the legitimate desire of the faithful to venerate their heavenly patron, and regulates relics with canonical verbiage. Yet the most damning indictment is what the text does not say. Silence here is not neutral, but symptomatic.
Observe the omissions:
– No mention of the necessity of *state of grace* for fruitful veneration.
– No mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice or sacramental life as the heart of devotion.
– No call to penance, conversion from sin, rejection of error, or fidelity to the integral Catholic faith.
– No reference to the supernatural end: salvation of souls, avoidance of hell, judgment, reparation to God’s offended majesty.
– No warning against the enemies of the Church already laid bare by Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI: liberalism, Freemasonry, Modernism, naturalism, indifferentism.
Instead, we find a bureaucratic choreography: request, consent, transfer, derogation clauses, assertion of validity. The saint is reduced to a devotional emblem tied to local feeling (*“probatum studium pietatis… quo incolae sinus Lunensis…”*), rather than a militant model of sanctity calling the faithful to doctrinal purity and heroic virtue.
This is not accidental. It is part of the ideological mutation: preserve the relics; evacuate the doctrine. Maintain the cult; amputate the creed. What Pius X condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*—the separation of religious form from dogmatic content, the subordination of faith to lived “religious sentiment”—is foreshadowed in such texts by their anesthetizing, purely horizontal tone.
Linguistic Cosmetics as Veil of the Conciliar Revolution
The linguistic register is deliberately traditional: Latin, formulae like *“Ad perpetuam rei memoriam”*, references to Clement VIII, invocation of the Fisherman’s Ring, derogation clauses, solemn threats of nullity for contrary acts. To an unwary eye, it breathes continuity.
But the language functions as camouflage.
1. The text repeatedly elevates the “proved devotion” of the local faithful as decisive motive: cultic subjectivism becomes the driving criterion—*pietas populi* invoked without a parallel insistence that such devotion be measured against immutable doctrine. This aligns subtly with condemned modernist propositions that place religious truth in the “consciousness” and experience of the community (cf. *Lamentabili* 20–24, 54).
2. The rhetoric accentuates horizontal bonds: the antipope and “bishops” moving relics to comfort a regional devotion, as if the Church were primarily a pastoral service network adapting symbols to felt needs, rather than the divinely constituted *societas perfecta* guarding and imposing revealed truth upon nations (against errors 19–21, 55 of the Syllabus).
3. The formulaic oaths of perpetual validity and nullification of contradictory acts sound impressive, but, in the mouth of an illegitimate legislator, they invert justice. There is a perverse mirroring: he who objectively ruptures continuity with the Magisterium dares to threaten nullity upon anyone who might resist his act about a relic translation, while his own “pontificate” undermines the very conditions of authentic ecclesiastical obedience.
Thus the language is not neutral. It is the sacralized idiom of an occupying power, appropriating the legal and liturgical codes of Rome to consolidate a new, anti-Roman project. *Verba vetera, mens nova* (ancient words, new mind).
Relics without Dogma: Abuse of Holy Things in a Paramasonic Structure
At the theological level, treating the document as if it belonged within the continuous Magisterium would be a grave confusion.
The traditional discipline regarding relics presupposes:
– A true hierarchy, with validly ordained bishops and a true Pope.
– A unified faith, wherein the veneration of saints strengthens adherence to defined doctrine and ecclesial submission.
– Strict safeguards against superstition, trafficking, and profanation of holy bodies.
This letter, however, appears in the historical and doctrinal context of a structure that:
– Is progressively dismantling the traditional liturgy and discipline surrounding the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Is preparing, via John XXIII’s convocation and ideological direction of Vatican II, the enthronement of religious liberty and ecumenism—positions condemned by the authentic Magisterium.
– Is replacing the Kingship of Christ, so powerfully reaffirmed by Pius XI in *Quas primas*, with a cult of human dignity, interreligious dialogue, and political quietism.
In such a context, the solemn manipulation of relics becomes deeply ambivalent:
– On one hand, it exploits the instinctive Catholic respect for saints to maintain the credibility of the neo-church.
– On the other, it divorces those relics from any coherent framework of Catholic dogma and moral teaching, turning them into sacral ornaments in a new religion that tolerates or promotes condemned errors.
The gravest abuse is precisely this: the holy remains of a confessor of Christ are instrumentalised to decorate an institution that systematically betrays the confession he embodied.
When a paramasonic structure that glorifies religious liberty (Syllabus 15–18, 77–80), dilutes the unique claims of the Catholic Church, and dethrones Christ the King in public life presumes to regulate relics, we witness not an act of continuity but a desecration under juridical forms.
Perpetual Rights of the True Church vs. Revolutionary Derogations
The document claims to derogate, “insofar as necessary,” dispositions of Clement VIII regarding relics. This is a theologically rich detail.
Clement VIII, a true Pope, legislated within the integral faith. His norms were an expression of the Church’s authority as *societas perfecta*, guarding the sacred with clarity and sobriety. To derogate those norms validly requires:
– possession of the same Petrine authority;
– fidelity to the same faith and worship.
Here we see instead an antipope, embedded in an emerging neo-church, unilaterally positioning himself above that juridical tradition. This gesture, apparently minor and devotional, manifests an underlying mentality: the past is clay to be reshaped by present “pastoral needs.” That is precisely the evolutionary, historicist attitude condemned by Pius X in *Lamentabili* (e.g. 58–65) and *Pascendi*.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of praying is the law of believing”) applies analogously: the law of veneration (relics, cult of saints) reflects and shapes the law of belief. When a revolutionary regime appropriates control of relics, it proclaims: “The saints now belong to our narrative.” Allowing such a regime to define where and how a saint’s head is honored is implicitly accepting its authority to define the Church’s memory and identity.
Thus the derogation clause is symbolic: the conciliar sect positions itself as sovereign editor of tradition, wielding the past as a toolkit while subverting its meaning.
External Piety as Smokescreen for Modernist Apostasy
Symptomatically, “Probatum studium” is a model instance of the conciliar tactic of controlled continuity:
– Maintain: saints, relics, Latin, certain ritual solemnities.
– Subvert: doctrine, understanding of the Church, mission, liturgy, the Kingship of Christ.
This tactic serves several ends:
1. It pacifies the faithful attached to tradition, giving them consoling signs that “nothing essential has changed,” while the doctrinal infrastructure is being detonated elsewhere.
2. It allows modernist usurpers to claim historical and spiritual legitimacy: “we too venerate the saints, we too care for relics, therefore our authority is Catholic.”
3. It anesthetises resistance: those who see Latin documents with familiar formulas assume orthodoxy and fail to recognise the incompatibility between these external acts and the simultaneous promotion of condemned principles.
But the Apostolic Magisterium had already unmasked this strategy in principle:
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus, exposes the liberal thesis that the Church must reconcile herself with modern civilization and its principles (error 80), precisely what the conciliar leaders embrace.
– Pius X unmasks the modernist who can “compose their books with such skill that they seem now to be Catholics, now to be non-Catholics” (Pascendi), preserving external language while infusing it with new content.
“Probatum studium” stands as a small but crystalline illustration: a document that looks entirely pre-conciliar in form, yet belongs to the antichurch’s legal corpus and helps legitimize its usurped rule.
Usurped Hierarchy and the Abuse of Episcopal Titles
The text repeatedly honours Giuseppe Stella as “Venerable Brother” and bishop of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato, treating the post-1958 conciliar episcopate as if it were identically continuous with the pre-1958 Catholic hierarchy.
From the perspective of integral Catholic principles:
– Jurisdiction and sacramental orders in the Church are ordered to the preservation and transmission of the same faith, sacraments, and worship.
– A hierarchy that publicly promulgates, defends, or submits to heretical or condemned doctrines, or that imposes sacramental rites which attack the doctrine of the Sacrifice and the priesthood, thereby reveals itself as severed from Apostolic authority, regardless of retained terminology.
The letter’s serene reliance on such “bishops” is therefore a theological symptom of the deeper disorder: an anti-church pretending to exercise the divinely-instituted power of governance. Their management of relics, far from being a guarantee of authentic cult, becomes an occasion of objective scandal: Catholics are invited to venerate saints under the auspices of those who war against the faith those saints professed.
It is not the laity’s self-assertion that judges them, but the unchanging teaching of the true Magisterium that unmasks them as intruders and apostates. The same pre-1958 Church which commands reverence for relics and bishops also commands the rejection of modernist poison, regardless of the rank of its bearers.
Christ the King Silenced: No Call to Social or Personal Submission
Pius XI in *Quas primas* teaches with adamant clarity that true peace and order depend on the public and private recognition of the reign of Christ the King; he condemns secularism and insists that rulers and nations must submit to Christ’s law.
In stark contrast, this letter:
– Limits itself to internal ecclesiastical logistics.
– Offers no reminder that the saint’s intercession must obtain grace for the faithful to submit wholly to Christ, in personal morals and in social life.
– Ignores the massive encroachment of secular, Masonic, and anti-Christian powers that Pius IX and Leo XIII had unmasked.
By 1960, Europe is drenched in laicism, socialist and liberal ideology, and open Masonic influence. A true Pope, even in an apparently small act regarding relics, would naturally situate the saint’s cult within the combat against these enemies, urging the faithful to persevere in the integral faith, to reject indifferentism and new doctrines, to defend the rights of the Church against the State.
Instead, we have a quietist bureaucratic text: as if the only relevant horizon were the emotional satisfaction of a coastal population wishing “their” saint’s head closer to them.
This unnatural truncation—focusing on spatial relocation while omitting supernatural war—is itself a sign of modernist naturalism: the reduction of religion to cultural-psychological consolations within a world otherwise obeying autonomous humanist principles. It fits the condemned liberal thesis that the Church should adapt to progress and modern civilization (Syllabus 80), and it contradicts the militant, kingly vision of Christ set forth in *Quas primas*.
Theological Verdict: A Pious Shell Enclosing an Empty Core
Measured by the immutable pre-1958 Catholic doctrine and discipline, “Probatum studium” reveals:
– A counterfeit legislator: an antipope of the conciliar revolution presuming to legislate on sacred matters.
– A counterfeit hierarchy: conciliar “bishops” treated as normal pastors while collectively embedded in, and agents of, doctrinal subversion.
– A counterfeit continuity: traditional forms and Latin solemnity employed as theatrical décor for a structure that in its doctrinal and liturgical trajectory contradicts the Syllabus, *Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*, and *Quas primas*.
– A counterfeit piety: genuine relics manipulated in a framework where saints are instrumentalised to adorn a neo-church intoxicated with liberalism, ecumenism, and religious relativism.
Therefore, the act, ascribed to John XXIII, cannot be received as a legitimate exercise of the Keys but as an instance of sacrilegious appropriation of the external treasures of the Church by a paramasonic structure seeking to clothe its apostasy in the venerable garments of tradition.
The true sons of the Church must:
– Maintain veneration for Saint Venerius and all true saints in union with the unchanging faith, not the neo-church’s novelties.
– Recognize that sacramental, liturgical, and juridical acts emanating from manifestly modernist usurpers lack binding force, whatever their formulaic threats of nullity against dissenters.
– Refuse to be deceived by Latin and relics when they are wielded as instruments to legitimise the conciliar revolution.
Non est pax impiis, dicit Dominus (“There is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord”): no authentic peace, order, or sanctity can flow from structures that war against the integral Faith, even when they piously move the skull of a saint from one shrine to another with arch-canonical pomp. The only path is a return to the complete, pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, worship, and discipline, in which saints, relics, and laws are once more inseparably ordered to the reign of Christ the King over souls and nations.
Source:
Probatum studium (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025