The document issued under the name of John XXIII grants to the parish church of Steinfeld, dedicated to Saints Potentinus, Felicius, and Simplicius, the title and privileges of a minor basilica. It exalts the antiquity, architecture, monastic history, and pilgrim cult of the shrine, notes the suppression of the abbey by civil law in 1802, recalls its past as a center of ascetic and canonical life, and concludes with a solemn juridical formula conferring the new dignity and its associated spiritual prerogatives. In doing so, it wraps a purely honorific, aesthetic, and emotional gesture in solemn canonical rhetoric to cloak the deeper reality: a paramasonic, conciliar usurper uses traditional forms to legitimize his counterfeit authority and to divert souls from the reign of Christ the King as taught by the true Magisterium before 1958.

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Liturgical Ornament as a Screen for Usurped Authority

Factual Use of Tradition to Consolidate a Neo-Church

From a strictly factual angle, the text appears modest and innocuous:

– It praises Steinfeld’s church for its *religio, antiquitas, pulchritudo* (religious significance, antiquity, beauty).
– It recalls the veneration of relics of Saints Potentinus, Felicius, Simplicius and of St. Hermann Joseph (whose cult was confirmed by Pius XII).
– It notes Steinfeld’s historical role as a center of Catholic piety and canonical discipline: Benedictine nuns, Augustinian canons, later Premonstratensians.
– It laments the 1802 secular confiscation of the abbey but remarks that the church survived as a parish.
– It mentions that the site is now entrusted to the Salvatorians.
– It grants, *ex plenitudine potestatis apostolicae*, the title of minor basilica and the usual juridical-spiritual privileges attached to such a dignity, using strong perpetuity clauses and nullifying contrary acts.

On the surface, this resembles countless pre-1958 papal acts honouring ancient sanctuaries. Yet this is precisely the problem. The same juridical and liturgical language that once expressed the living authority of the Roman Pontiff is here instrumentalized by one who inaugurates the conciliar revolution. The act is not the continuation of Tradition; it is the exploitation of Tradition as symbolic capital to disguise a rupture.

The decisive issue is not whether Steinfeld possesses authentic relics or genuine historical merit—these may well be real—but that their prestige is pressed into the service of a structure which, beginning with John XXIII, prepares and executes the doctrines solemnly condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, in Quas Primas, and in Lamentabili sane exitu. The continuity of forms is invoked to sanctify the discontinuity of faith.

The Rhetoric of Aesthetic Devotion without Doctrinal Combat

Scrutinizing the language of the letter reveals a revealing imbalance.

1. The text speaks warmly of:
– architecture and art,
– pilgrimages,
– historical prestige,
– “a place of piety and virtue” in former centuries.

2. It is entirely silent about:
– the necessity of the *vera fides catholica* as the only way of salvation;
– the obligation of public profession of the Catholic faith against error;
– the fight against the liberal and masonic State that once suppressed the abbey and now shapes modern Europe;
– the absolute kingship of Christ over nations, as Pius XI taught: peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ (Quas Primas);
– the warnings of Pius IX and St. Pius X against the very ideas which the conciliar sect would soon enshrine: religious liberty, false ecumenism, doctrinal evolution.

This silence is not neutral. In the 1960 context—on the eve of the so-called council convoked by John XXIII—this stylised antiquarian piety functions as a mask. While the document solemnly affirms its “apostolic” authority, it refuses to perform the primary apostolic duty recognized by all true Popes: to guard, define, and defend the faith against contemporary errors.

Compare:

– Pius IX in the Syllabus exposes the lie that the Church should submit to the State, embrace indifferentism, or reconcile with liberalism.
– Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns precisely the modernist method that would later dominate the neo-church: historicism, relativizing dogma, reducing the supernatural to religious experience.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that civil society and its laws must be subject to Christ the King; laicism is a plague to be fought, not a neutral framework.

By contrast, this letter:

– records the 1802 confiscation as a past misfortune but offers no doctrinal judgment on the liberal-masonic ideology behind it;
– praises pilgrimage and relics while omitting any polemic against the liberal, naturalistic order that persisted;
– showers juridical formulas of “perpetual validity” over a decorative act, while the same regime is preparing to sacrifice doctrinal clarity on the altar of “aggiornamento”.

The tone is that of cultivated museum Catholicism: conservative in aesthetics, revolutionary in its omissions. *Quod tacet, clamat* (what it is silent about, it proclaims): the letter betrays an ecclesial mentality more interested in cultural heritage than in defending the absolute claims of divine Revelation over states, societies, and consciences.

Invocation of Apostolic Power by One Who Prepares Its Denial

Particularly striking is the use of maximal juridical language:

– “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra, deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine” – “with Our certain knowledge and mature deliberation, and from the fullness of Apostolic power.”
– The decree is to remain “firm, valid, and effective,” nullifying any contrary act, binding “nunc et in posterum” (now and in the future).

Here, the usurper who inaugurates the conciliar revolution—opening the way for religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and the cult of man—asserts *plenitudo potestatis* in an act that is perfectly aligned with preconciliar ceremonial forms, while in doctrine and governance he is about to undermine precisely the prerogatives historically associated with that *plenitudo*.

Pre-1958 doctrine is clear:

– The Roman Pontiff possesses real, sovereign, full jurisdiction in faith, morals, discipline, and government (cf. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus).
– This authority is ordered to guarding the deposit of faith, not to neutral “updating” or diluting its social kingship.

From that integral perspective, we face an internal contradiction:

– In minor matters (titles, basilicas, honorifics) John XXIII mimics authentic papal style.
– In great matters (preparation of the council, attitude to condemned errors), he sets in motion a program incompatible with Pius IX’s Syllabus, Pius X’s anti-modernist decrees, Pius XI’s Quas Primas, and the entire anti-liberal, anti-ecumenist tradition.

Thus this letter is not a harmless curiosity; it is an instance of a broader tactic: to cloak a looming revolution in the vestments of continuity. The usurper borrows the prestige of saints and shrines to anesthetize resistance to his doctrinal trajectory.

Beautifying Ruins: Naturalistic Restoration without Catholic Justice

The history of Steinfeld, as recalled in the letter, is itself a silent accusation against the ideology that John XXIII’s line would effectively befriend.

Key facts in the text:

– The abbey was violently suppressed under civil law in 1802.
– The religious driven out as a result of “iniqua lex civilis” (unjust civil law).
– The church survived as a parish, later entrusted to the Salvatorians.

Authentic Catholic evaluation, as expressed by Pius IX and others, is unambiguous: secular laws that usurp Church property and suppress religious orders are unjust, null in conscience, and often fruit of masonic and liberal hostility (see Syllabus, especially propositions 39, 55; numerous allocutions about expropriations and Kulturkampf). The Church must:
– denounce such acts;
– assert her own rights as *societas perfecta*;
– demand restitution or at least publicly reaffirm the principle that Caesar has no authority over what belongs to God.

What does this document do?

– It briefly notes the injustice.
– It then proceeds to accept as normal the post-liberal settlement: the ancient abbey dissolved, the shrine managed by another congregation under the same godless state framework.
– It offers a new title as compensation, without doctrinal protest against the principles which allowed that sacrilege.

This betrays a naturalistic mentality: comfort with the liberal order, concern for monuments, absence of crusading zeal for the public rights of Christ and His Church. It exemplifies what Quas Primas condemns: the relegation of religion to pious interiors while public life is handed to secularism. Pius XI warned that the plague of laicism consists precisely in this progressive exclusion of Christ from public law and institutions. Granting a basilica title without reaffirming the rights of Christ the King over Germany’s civil order is, in this context, a liturgical bandage over a gangrenous wound.

Saints and Relics as Tokens in a Conciliar Strategy

The letter heavily emphasizes:

– the relics of Saints Potentinus, Felicius, Simplicius,
– the tomb and cult of St. Hermann Joseph,
– the influx of pilgrims,
– Steinfeld as a “seat of piety and virtue.”

Veneration of saints and relics is, in itself, a mark of Catholic life. But here it is weaponized inversely: not to call to fidelity, but to legitimize the emerging neo-church.

Authentic pre-1958 papal teaching uses saints to:

– confirm doctrine (e.g., martyrs for the social kingship of Christ, confessors against heresy);
– inspire resistance to the world, the flesh, and the devil;
– fortify Catholics against liberal and modernist seductions.

In this letter:

– Saints and relics are invoked without a single word about doctrinal combat;
– their cult is praised as devotional heritage rather than as militant testimony against the world;
– the entire context omits that Germany and Europe were sinking deeper into apostasy, ecumenism, indifferentism, and State-church compromise.

The saints become cultural ornaments. This aestheticization of sanctity plays directly into the conciliar agenda: retaining emotive Catholic symbols while emptying them of dogmatic and anti-liberal edge, so that they can coexist comfortably with religious freedom, interconfessional “dialogue,” and the worship of human dignity.

Legalistic Grandiloquence in the Service of a Counterfeit Structure

The closing paragraphs deploy maximal canonical solemnity:

– The letter is declared to be perpetually valid, binding all concerned.
– Any attempt to act otherwise is pre-emptively declared null and void: “irritumque ex nunc et inane fieri, si quidquam secus… attentari contigerit.”

Such formulas, in genuine papal acts, express the real authority of Christ exercised through His Vicar. From the perspective of integral, pre-1958 doctrine:

– *Potestas in ecclesia est ad aedificationem fidei, non ad destructionem* (power in the Church exists to build faith, not to destroy it).
– Juridical forms are at the service of the immutable deposit of faith (*depositum custodi*).

Once that deposit is betrayed or subverted, the same juridical grandeur becomes a hollow shell, even a parody. Here, the conciliar protagonist rehearses traditional legal rhetoric to perform a trivial act, while silently advancing a program that will:
– dilute the claims of the Church over states (against Syllabus and Quas Primas),
– exalt religious liberty in the condemned sense,
– promote ecumenical relativism,
– subject doctrine to historicist reinterpretation.

Thus the letter is symptomatic: the form of authority is obsessively affirmed in minutiae, while its substance is being prepared for evacuation. This is typical of revolutions: they drape themselves in the vestments of the very order they are overthrowing, until the foundations have been sufficiently eroded.

Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution in Nuce

This document, read in isolation, may seem harmless. Placed in its historical and doctrinal context, it reveals several symptoms of the conciliar sect’s mentality already operative:

1. Reduction of the supernatural mission to cultural heritage.
– No call to conversion of Germany as a nation to the social kingship of Christ.
– No condemnation of liberal-masonic assaults on the Church.
– Focus on artistic value, historical continuity, sentimental devotion.

2. Use of traditional devotions to tranquilize resistance.
– Pilgrimages and relics are endorsed, but never mobilized against modern errors.
– The faithful are encouraged to be pious tourists, not soldiers of Christ.

3. Assertion of “apostolic” authority divorced from apostolic doctrine.
– Strong juridical language coexists with an incipient program to embrace those very errors anathematized by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– The authority is appealed to in externalities, while the true ends of that authority are undermined.

4. Embryonic acceptance of the secular order as normative.
– The violent secularization of 1802 is lamented, yet effectively accepted as the new normal.
– No insistence that states must recognize and favour the one true Church, as taught repeatedly before 1958.

5. Preparation of a “church of monuments” compatible with modernism.
– A pious, artistically rich, emotionally touching religion is promoted, purged of its anti-liberal, anti-ecumenical, dogmatically militant character.
– This makes possible the later coexistence of pseudo-traditional aesthetics with doctrinal betrayal.

All this is entirely contrary to the magisterial line up to Pius XII, which:

– Condemns religious indifferentism and the equality of cults (Pius IX, Syllabus).
– Condemns the evolution of dogma and historicist exegesis (St. Pius X, Lamentabili, Pascendi).
– Declares that civil and social order must submit to Christ the King (Pius XI, Quas Primas).
– Identifies masonic and liberal forces as enemies seeking the destruction of the Church.

This letter’s meticulously curated silence on these points is itself an indictment. Instead of being an act of the Church Militant, it reads as an act of a church resigned—if not predisposed—to peaceful coexistence with the very anti-Christian powers denounced by the true Popes.

Conclusion: Ornamented Piety at the Service of Apostasy

The Steinfeld decree is a small but telling stone in the construction of the conciliar edifice:

– It preserves the shell of pre-1958 ecclesiastical language.
– It honours a legitimately venerable sanctuary.
– It employs the vocabulary of *plenitudo potestatis* and perpetual validity.

Yet, by its calculated omissions and its historical placement, it serves as part of a broader strategy: to use traditional ornament to legitimize a new religion in which:

– Christ the King is reduced to a private devotion, not the Legislator of nations.
– Saints are cultural icons, not intransigent defenders of Catholic exclusivity.
– The Church becomes a museum and dialogue-partner, not the unique Ark of Salvation.
– Juridical solemnity is detached from uncompromised doctrinal fidelity.

Thus the document, judged by the unchanging Catholic theology prior to 1958, has no salvific weight, but rather illustrates how the conciliar sect co-opts sacred places and memories to clothe its spiritual and theological bankruptcy in an illusion of continuity.

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Source:
Religione, Litterae Apostolicae Basilicae Minoris titulo ac dignitate decoratur paroecialis Steinfeldiae ecclesia Ss. Potentini, Felicii et Simplicii, intra fines dioecesis Aquisgranensis, d. 7 m. Oct…   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025