The document under consideration is a Latin apostolic letter issued by the usurper John XXIII on 15 January 1960, in which he proclaims the Blessed Virgin Mary under the popular invocation “Nossa Senhora do Ar” (“Our Lady of the Air”) as the celestial patroness of all Portuguese aeronautical personnel. It briefly recalls the spontaneous devotion of Portuguese airmen, notes the historic protection of Portugal by Our Lady, cites the petition of aeronautical authorities supported by Manuel Cardinal Gonçalves Cerejeira, and, invoking alleged apostolic authority, formally designates this Marian title as patron, extending to it the liturgical honors accorded to patrons of groups or orders.
Marian Cosmetics for a Revolution: Pseudo-Piety in Service of the Conciliar Agenda
From Apostolic Authority to Performative Legalism
At the factual level, the text appears deceptively simple: a juridical act assigning a Marian patronage to Portuguese aviation. However, beneath the brevity of this formulaic decree stands the entire edifice of the conciliar usurpation.
The key closing formula merits close attention:
«…certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine… Beatam Mariam Virginem… caelestem apud Deum Patronam eligimus ac declaramus… praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere…»
(“…with sure knowledge and mature deliberation of Ours, and by the fullness of Apostolic power… We choose and declare the Blessed Virgin Mary… as heavenly Patroness before God… We decree that these Letters shall be firm, valid and efficacious, and remain so forever…”)
This solemn assertion of plenitudo potestatis (fullness of power) presupposes precisely what, in light of integral Catholic doctrine, is in grave doubt and, morally and theologically, must be denied: namely, that Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) held the papal office.
Pre-1958 Catholic theology (St. Robert Bellarmine, Suarez, Wernz-Vidal, Billot, etc.) teaches with clarity that a manifest heretic cannot possess or retain the papacy, for “non potest esse caput qui non est membrum” (“he cannot be head who is not a member”). This principle is not an optional opinion, but bound up with the nature of the Church as a visible society of one faith.
In the light of that doctrine:
– The entire document is an act of a man whose public theological orientation and subsequent revolutionary “council” show him as architect and symbol of the conciliar apostasy.
– The more solemnly he invokes “apostolic plenitude,” the more clearly he exposes the juridical simulation of the conciliar sect: a form without substance, a seal without authority.
Here the juridical style itself becomes self-accusatory: the loftier the form, the clearer that the usurped office is being instrumentalized to baptize a new religion with traditional incense.
Sentimental Devotion Detached from the Kingship of Christ
On the linguistic and theological level, this brief text is symptomatic.
Key elements:
– Emphasis on the “spontaneous” invocation by airmen:
“Aligera cymba qui per arduum properant caelum, Lusitani aërii nautae Beatam Mariam Virginem, vulgari adiecto nomine ‘Nossa Senhora do Ar’, plurimos iam annos sua quidem sponte solent invocare et excolere.”
(“Those who speed through the arduous sky in winged craft, the Portuguese airmen, of their own accord for many years now are accustomed to invoke and venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the common name ‘Nossa Senhora do Ar’.”)
– Stress on the experience of “fragility of material things” and multiple dangers, justifying entrustment to Mary.
– Reference to the historical protection of the Portuguese nation by Our Lady.
– Mention of “public authorities of aeronautics” humbly requesting such a patronage.
What is glaringly absent?
– No mention of the Social Kingship of Christ as taught authoritatively less than 35 years earlier by Pius XI in Quas primas, where it is affirmed that authentic peace, order, and protection for nations and their works depend on public recognition of Christ’s royal rights over states and institutions.
– No call to repentance, to the state of grace, to the frequent worthy reception of the sacraments, to avoidance of sin, to preparation for judgment – realities intrinsically bound up with any authentic Catholic dedication of professions and nations.
– No insistence that technological progress and aviation must be subordinated to the moral law, to the objective order of Christ’s reign, and to the mission of the Church.
We are offered instead a soft devotionalism: airmen are in danger; Mary is tender; authorities request a patroness; Rome grants the favor. The supernatural order is reduced to a vague heavenly insurance policy for professional risks.
This is not how the pre-1958 Magisterium speaks when it is truly guarding souls. Compare:
– Pius XI in Quas primas insists that civil rulers must recognize and submit to Christ the King, that laws must conform to divine law, and that secular rejection of His rights is the root cause of social ills and wars. Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the idea that civil authority is the origin of all rights and that the Church should be subordinated to the state; he rejects liberal religious indifference and secular autonomy as mortal errors.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns those who would adapt the faith to “modern progress,” relativize doctrine, or reduce religion to experience.
Against this robust doctrinal background, the letter’s tone reveals:
– A Marianized veneer placed over a naturalistic understanding of aviation as a neutral technical field in need merely of “protection,” not evangelization, not submission to Christ’s reign.
– The omission of any explicit reference to Christ’s sovereign dominion over skies, nations, and military and civil structures. Mary appears as a stand-alone protective symbol rather than as Mother of the King, Queen subordinated to and manifesting His rights. This severing is subtle, but exactly corresponds to later conciliar practice: the Marian element is sentimentalized while the doctrinally precise Christocentric and ecclesiocentric framework is muted or suppressed.
This is not traditional Marian theology; this is devotional pacification for an order already slipping into apostasy.
Abuse of Marian Patronage: From True Intercession to Symbolic Ornament
Authentic Catholic patronages are ordered to:
– Foster fidelity to the one true faith.
– Strengthen public witness to Christ’s dominion.
– Call specific states of life or professions to sanctity, detachment from sin, and subjection to the moral law.
– Bind concrete works (including technical and military) to the law of God and the mission of the Church.
In this text, however:
– The concern is almost exclusively the physical risk:
“…qui fragilitatem rerum e materia fabricatarum noverunt experiundo et pericula adeunt multa.”
(“…who by experience know the fragility of things made of matter and undergo many dangers.”)
– The solution is a devotional title legalized from above; but no corresponding moral obligation is placed on either the airmen or the state.
– The air authorities appear as protagonists; the Church (or, more accurately, the conciliar usurpers) simply ratifies their desire.
The consequence is grave:
– Marian patronage is instrumentalized as a religious decoration to a modern technological state, without binding that state and its agents to the public reign of Christ the King or to Catholic moral doctrine concerning war, justice, and social order.
– This corresponds precisely to the liberal and masonic project condemned by Pius IX: religion confined to the “spiritual” or sentimental realm, while public order, technology, and political power are governed by autonomous human reason and “neutral” values.
By offering a patroness without demanding the Kingship of Christ, the document confirms the shift from Catholic integral order to the conciliar “religion of humanity,” in which Mary is tolerated as cultural heritage and psychological comfort, emptied of her role as Terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata (“terrible as an army set in battle array”) against heresies and infidelity.
The Language of Power without Faith: A Forensic Shell of Authority
The rhetorical and legal formulae imitate genuine papal acts:
– “Ad perpetuam rei memoriam.”
– Appeals to “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione.”
– Invocation of “Apostolicae potestatis plenitudo.”
– Nullity clauses against any future contradiction.
Yet the entire structure functions as a juridical mask:
– The document claims unassailable, perpetual validity, but proceeds from one whose subsequent council and teaching form contradict the pre-1958 Magisterium in crucial points (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, anthropocentrism).
– The text presumes that to legislate such a patronage is a self-evident exercise of legitimate power. But the integral Catholic criterion asks first: does the one legislating profess the same faith as Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, in the same sense, without novelty? Lex orandi and lex credendi cannot be severed.
The linguistic contrast is telling:
– Pius XI in Quas primas speaks with thunderous clarity against laicism, exposes political impiety, and demands public obedience to Christ.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus directly names the errors of liberalism, socialism, and secret societies, including masonry, as enemies of the Church.
– St. Pius X in Pascendi denounces Modernists as the most dangerous enemies within, laying precise doctrinal anathemas.
Here, in Aligera Cymba, we have:
– No condemnation of any error.
– No reference to the doctrinal crisis of the age.
– No warning against the masonic or secularist penetration of states and armed forces (including aviation), despite the explicit and grave warnings of previous popes.
– Only a smooth, conflict-free legalism that perfectly prefigures the conciliar sect’s habit of issuing sentimental “messages” while surrendering the substance of Catholic doctrine in practice.
The silence is damning. Qui tacet consentire videtur (“He who is silent is seen to consent”). By offering Marian patronage without challenging the anti-Christian structures governing modern states and their militaries, this act tacitly consents to the liberal order previously anathematized.
Symptom of a Deeper Disease: Marian Devotion as Controlled Opposition
On the symptomatic level, this letter is a small but pure specimen of the conciliar method:
1. Maintain outward continuity of forms:
– Latin document.
– Traditional formulas.
– Marian title, national piety, reference to centuries of protection.
2. Carefully avoid substantive confrontation with modern errors:
– No mention of the condemned thesis that the state is the source of all rights.
– No denunciation of indifferentism, secularism, or masonry in a context where they are historically relevant (Portuguese political and military structures amid global liberal ascendancy).
– No link between Marian patronage and duty of Catholic rulers and soldiers to defend the true faith and reject unjust commands.
3. Shift the axis from dogma to experience:
– The airmen’s “own accord” devotion is central; the act ratifies an existing sentiment.
– The role of ecclesiastical authority is reduced to bless what is already popular – a democratization of cultus that parallels the later democratization of doctrine and liturgy after 1962.
4. Use Marian vocabulary to tranquillize Catholic instincts:
– By sprinkling Marian patronages and pious invocations, the emergent conciliar regime disarms legitimate suspicion. Faithful souls see familiar devotions and presume continuity, while, at the doctrinal and ecclesiological level, the revolution proceeds elsewhere (preparation for the council, ecumenical and religious liberty agenda, liturgical subversion).
This mechanism is precisely how Modernism, unmasked by St. Pius X, survives: not by frontal rejection, but by internal re-interpretation, sentimental dilution, and strategic silence. The letter’s refusal to speak the strong language of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, or Pius XI is itself a confession.
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Doctrine on Church, State, and Technology
When confronted with the solid teaching of the pre-conciliar Magisterium, the deficiencies of this text become theologically intolerable.
1. Pius XI (Quas primas):
– Asserts that rulers and states must publicly recognize and honor Christ the King and govern according to His law.
– Condemns secularism as the root of contemporary evils.
– States clearly that returning to “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” is the only remedy.
Yet in Aligera Cymba, a sphere tightly bound to the modern state (aeronautics, including military aviation) is addressed merely with a sweet invocation, without calling that sphere to recognize Christ’s public reign or to reject secular autonomy. It is Marianism without Christ the King; a mutilated devotion that effectively confirms the laicized state.
2. Pius IX (Syllabus):
– Condemns propositions affirming religious liberty, equality of all religions before the state, subordination of the Church to civil power, and separation of Church and State.
– Identifies masonic and liberal sects as principal engines of war against the Church.
A truly Catholic act concerning national aviation in 1960 – amid the known rise of such forces – should, in continuity with Pius IX, remind state authorities that:
– They are bound to honor the Catholic religion exclusively (where historically Catholic).
– They must purge state and military structures of anti-Catholic and masonic influences.
– They must order their policies according to Christ’s law, not merely seek heavenly “protection” for their machines.
The total absence of such admonitions here is not accidental; it is complicity.
3. St. Pius X (Lamentabili, Pascendi):
– Condemns the reduction of religion to feeling, the relativization of dogma, the domestication of the supernatural to human needs.
– Identifies the method of the Modernists: preserving formulas while emptying them of content.
Aligera Cymba fits exactly this dynamic:
– Marian formulas are preserved.
– The integral doctrinal context (Christ’s Kingship, rights of the Church, condemnation of modern errors) is excised.
– The supernatural is pressed into a merely supportive role for technological and national ambitions.
This is the “devout” mask of the conciliar sect.
The Moral Vacuum: No Call to Conversion, No Warning of Judgment
Silence about last things is the loudest voice in this document.
For airmen facing real danger, an authentic Catholic apostolic letter would:
– Urge them to remain always in the state of grace through frequent confession and worthy communion in the true Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Warn against the sins common in military and technical environments: impurity, blasphemy, drunkenness, unjust violence, complicity in unjust wars.
– Exhort superiors to respect the natural and divine moral law in all missions, reminding them that they will render account to Christ the Judge.
– Tie Marian patronage explicitly to conversion, penance, and fidelity to the integral Catholic faith.
Instead, we find:
– A purely protective framing: Mary as shield against the “fragility of material things.”
– No eschatological horizon, no Purgatory, no Hell, no account of souls killed in aerial operations.
– No reminder that death in mortal sin is eternal loss, regardless of any sentimental invocation.
Such omissions are not pious discretion; they are crimes of spiritual negligence. They expose the underlying naturalism of the conciliar mentality: heaven reduced to benevolent oversight of human projects, not the absolute supernatural end before which all human activity must bow.
Usurped Seal, Misused Name: Why This Act Does Not Bind the Faithful
If one applies the principles articulated by classical theologians, as reflected in the doctrinal synthesis summarized in the provided materials:
– A manifest heretic, or one who prepares and promulgates a new religion contrary to the previous Magisterium, cannot possess papal authority.
– Canon 188.4 (1917) and the doctrine that public defection from the faith causes the office to be lost ipso facto confirm that one who departs from Catholic doctrine cannot wield legitimate jurisdiction in the Church.
– The so-called line beginning with John XXIII is thus a line of usurpers, whose acts, especially when instrumental in the conciliar revolution, lack binding force in the true Church.
Within that framework, Aligera Cymba must be read as:
– A juridically-styled but non-pontifical text, issued by an antipope.
– An instance of simulated authority used to reshape Catholic consciousness: exalting harmless devotions, diverting from the pressing war against Modernism, and normalizing collaboration with secular and masonic powers.
– A warning sign: whenever Marian or other traditional elements are deployed by the structures occupying the Vatican without the integral doctrinal context, they function as bait, not as authentic acts of the spotless Bride of Christ.
Thus:
– The faithful attached to the integral Catholic faith are not bound by this pseudo-pontifical patronage.
– They may, of course, honor the Blessed Virgin in all her legitimate titles, especially as Queen of Heaven and Earth and protector of those in danger; but they must refuse any Marian cult that serves as a decorative veil over the conciliar sect’s apostasy.
– The proper response is to reaffirm the teachings of Pius IX, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII on Church, State, and Christ’s Kingship, and to reject the abuse of Marian devotion as propaganda for a paramasonic structure that has enthroned man, “dialogue,” and religious liberty in place of the crucified and reigning Christ.
Conclusion: Unmasking Pseudo-Marainism in the Service of Apostasy
Aligera Cymba is not a harmless curiosity in Latin about a niche patronage. It is a microcosm of the conciliar strategy:
– Preserve a sentimental, non-threatening Marian façade.
– Strip away the hard edges of Catholic doctrine that condemn liberalism, secularism, Modernism, and masonry.
– Sanctify, by apparent pontifical approval, the integration of “religion” into the neutral, technocratic state – precisely what prior popes denounced as a work of the “synagogue of Satan.”
Against this, the integral Catholic response must be:
– To expose such acts as juridically void in the order of the true Church, emanating from a line of usurpers.
– To denounce the exploitation of Our Lady’s holy name for the spiritual disarmament of nations and professions.
– To call all who sincerely love the Blessed Virgin to return not to a soft cult of “protection” detached from doctrine, but to her true role: leading souls to unconditional obedience to her divine Son, to His one true Church, to His Social Kingship, to the rejection of Modernism and every novelty condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium.
Only in that light can any invocation of Mary over the skies be pleasing to God: when it is, inseparably, an invocation of the Mother of God against the kingdom of man, and for the triumph of the Kingdom of Christ over every state, institution, and human enterprise, including those that dare to pierce the heavens with their fragile machines.
Source:
Aligera cymba, Litterae Apostolicae Beata Maria V., Vulgo « Nossa Senhora Do Ar » Appellata, Caelestis Patrona Omnium Lusitaniae Aëronautarum Eligitur, d. 15 m. Ianuarii a. 1960, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025