The document attributed to John XXIII, titled “Mariani cultus,” is a Latin apostolic letter by which he confers the title and privileges of a minor basilica on the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “Del Quinche” in the Archdiocese of Quito. It recounts the antiquity and architectural beauty of the sanctuary, the intensity of local Marian devotion, the supposed miracles depicted there, the pastoral care by clergy entrusted with the shrine, and on this basis grants juridical-liturgical distinctions and associated privileges to the temple.
Already in this apparently pious administrative act, the conciliar usurper manifests the juridical presumption and theological deformation of the emerging neo-church: a Marian varnish covering the systematic destruction of the Kingship of Christ and the subordination of true worship to a counterfeit magisterium.
Masonic Marian Ornamentation as a Mask for Usurpation
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, every pontifical act must be assessed under the strict criterion of *veritas in caritate* (truth in charity) and submission to the perennial magisterium. Here we have an act dated 2 May 1959, the first year of John XXIII’s rule, conferring the dignity of Basilica Minor on a Marian shrine. At first glance, this might seem anodyne, even edifying. However, *ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos* (“by their fruits you shall know them”): no papal style or stamp can sanctify an authority which, in its person and program, is already oriented toward the conciliar revolution.
The document’s entire structure is typical of the paramasonic post-1958 system:
– An impeccably Roman legal form used to clothe a power already detached from the living Tradition.
– A sentimental Marian rhetoric deployed precisely by the man who would convoke the council that institutionalized ecumenism, religious liberty, and the cult of man.
– A cultic exaltation of a local image and miracles, cut off from any doctrinal clarification against the errors tearing the world and the Church.
This minor basilica decree is therefore not “neutral”: it is one brick in the edifice of the Church of the New Advent, where Marian language is instrumentalized to divert the faithful from the integral faith toward a conciliatory, naturalistic, and ecumenical pseudo-devotion.
Instrumentalizing Marian Devotion Without Confessing the Kingship of Christ
The letter extols the shrine as an “eminent seat of Marian devotion,” enumerating:
“the amplitude of the edifice, the artistic works… the great altar… the miracles expressed in paintings… the intense piety of the faithful who flock there in great numbers to invoke the Mother of God… the sufficient number of priests… the rich sacred ornaments and liturgical furnishings”.
The entire emphasis lies on:
– external splendour,
– narrative of miracles,
– quantity of pilgrims,
– sufficiency of clergy,
– canonical privilege (basilica rank).
What is rigorously absent?
– Any proclamation of the *social and political Reign of Christ the King* as taught infallibly and integrally by Pius XI in *Quas primas* (11.12.1925), where it is declared that true peace and order flow only from the public recognition and submission of states, institutions, and individuals to Christ’s dominion.
– Any warning against the condemned modern errors enumerated by Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors* (1864): religious indifferentism, separation of Church and State, laicism, liberalism, and the satanic assault of Freemasonry.
– Any explicit link between Marian veneration and conversion to the integral Catholic faith, rejection of heresy, confession of the one true Church, and submission to the unchanging magisterium.
The Marian sanctuary is juridically crowned by an authority already aimed at dismantling everything Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII defended. This is the method:
cultus sine doctrina (devotion without doctrine), or rather, devotion cut off from doctrine and made to serve a novel doctrine.
Pius XI, in *Quas primas*, teaches clearly that peace and order can exist only where Christ reigns publicly, where laws, education, and states are subject to His law. Here, the usurper speaks of a popular Marian cult without the slightest demand that Ecuador or any nation recognize the dominion of Christ and His one true Church in public life. The shrine is celebrated not as a bastion of the rights of God against the revolution, but as a picturesque center of feeling-based religion compatible with the liberal order condemned by the pre-1958 magisterium.
This silence is not accidental; it is programmatic. In a time when modernist, laicist, and masonic forces were consolidating their conquest of nations and institutions, the putative supreme pastor issues a decree that speaks of miracles, ornaments, and canonical titles while ignoring the war against Christ’s royal rights. This is the “Marian” face of conciliar apostasy.
Sanctifying a Counterfeit Authority: Abuse of Papal Formulas
Particularly significant is the deployment of the full weight of papal legal language:
“certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine…”
(“with Our certain knowledge and mature deliberation and in the fullness of Apostolic power…”)
and the sweeping clause:
“Contrariis quibusvis nihil obstantibus… irritumque ex nunc et inane fieri, si quidquam secus… attentari contigerit.”
(“Anything to the contrary notwithstanding… and we declare null and void from now on anything attempted to the contrary.”)
Formally, this is identical to authentic papal rescripts. Materially, however, it is used by the very figure at the head of the conciliar revolution—John XXIII—who inaugurated the trajectory that the pre-conciliar popes explicitly condemned:
– Pius IX: rejection of liberalism, religious indifferentism, separation of Church and State, and the submission of the Church to secular powers.
– St. Pius X (*Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*): condemnation of the evolution of dogma, democratization of Church authority, reduction of religion to sentiment and experience.
– Pius XI and Pius XII: defense of the objective Kingship of Christ, the supernatural order, and the unchanging doctrine, against secular humanism and pseudo-religious universalism.
When an authority uses the language of *plenitudo potestatis* (fullness of power) to consecrate its own program of rupture, the faithful must recognize a fundamental principle recalled by theologians and canonists prior to 1958: no ecclesiastical act has authority if it stands against the perennial magisterium; a manifest heretic or revolutionary cannot wield the power he attempts to usurp.
Thus this decree, though clothed in traditional forms, functions as a self-legitimating gesture of the conciliar apparatus: it asserts jurisdiction and pontifical authority precisely while that same figure prepares to betray the deposit of faith. Marian language and canonical solemnity are tools to habituate the faithful to obedience toward a structure already mutating into the conciliar sect.
The Linguistic Cloak: Sentimental Piety Without Supernatural Clarity
The rhetoric of the letter reveals the mentality underlying it.
Note the key elements:
– Emphasis on architectural “magnificence” and artistic admiration.
– Collection of miracle narratives as picturesque ornaments.
– Repeated highlighting of liturgical vestments and material richness.
– Warm praise of the local devotion and of the religious congregation to whom the sanctuary is entrusted.
Conspicuously absent:
– Clear reference to *supernatural ends*: conversion from sin, confession of the one true faith, necessity of the state of grace, the Four Last Things (death, judgment, hell, heaven).
– Doctrinal clarity on Mary’s role as *Destroyer of all heresies* (*omnes haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo*), champion of the unique Church of Christ against all error.
– Any admonition against superstition, syncretism, or naturalistic “miracle collecting” detached from doctrine.
This linguistic profile is not neutral; it is symptomatic:
– The language is devotional-aesthetic rather than theological-dogmatic.
– Mary is presented primarily as an object of affective pilgrim piety, not as the Queen who commands nations to subject themselves to her Son and His Church.
– The sanctuary is framed as an emotional-spiritual center without being explicitly tied to the pre-conciliar doctrinal fortress against liberalism and modernism.
St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, condemned precisely this shift: the reduction of religion to sentiment, the use of devotions as mutable expressions of religious experience, the refusal to bind piety inseparably to objective dogma. A Marian decree that revels in images, crowns, and privileges while never once affirming the absolute necessity of the integral Catholic faith for salvation fits the pattern of this condemned modernist immanentism dressed in traditional phraseology.
Ecclesiological Subtext: A Shrine Integrated into the Conciliar Project
The document carefully underlines that the shrine is entrusted to a congregation (Oblates of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary), that there are “sufficient priests and clerics,” that the cult is intense, and that the canonical act inserts the church into the network of minor basilicas with their associated indulgences and liturgical prerogatives.
On the factual level, there is nothing wrong with religious congregations serving a Marian shrine, with rich liturgical furnishings, or with canonical honors when issued by a true pope. The problem lies at the ecclesiological level under the conditions of 1959:
1. The one signing is the initiator of the aggiornamento, the “opening to the world,” and the council that enthroned principles directly incompatible with the *Syllabus*, *Quas primas*, and *Lamentabili*.
2. The sanctuary, under such authority, is no longer simply a stronghold of integral Catholic life; it becomes organically attached to a hierarchy in the process of apostasy.
3. The Marian title “Del Quinche” is amplified without any clear doctrinal safeguard against the liberal-nationalist, syncretic, or purely emotional uses of Marian symbols so typical of the Church of the New Advent in Latin America.
By integrating this local cult under the badge of a minor basilica granted by John XXIII, the conciliar structure anchors popular devotion to its own anti-doctrinal project. The faithful are encouraged to trust an episcopate and a Roman center that will soon teach them:
– that false religions are means of grace,
– that the State must be religiously neutral,
– that dialogue replaces evangelization,
– that dogmas “develop” into their own negation.
Thus the shrine’s elevation is not an isolated administrative favor; it is a strategic sacramentalization of obedience to the emerging neo-church.
Silence on Modernism and Freemasonry: A Loud Confession of Complicity
Given the historical context, the omissions of the letter are devastating.
Before 1958, the Magisterium consistently unmasked and condemned:
– Freemasonry and related sects as *synagoga Satanae* (synagogue of Satan) waging organized war against the Church (Pius IX, Leo XIII and others).
– The liberal, laicist, and naturalist conception of society, which separates civil order from Christ’s law (Pius IX, *Syllabus*; Leo XIII, *Immortale Dei*, *Libertas*).
– The modernist principle that dogma evolves according to consciousness and history (St. Pius X, *Lamentabili*, *Pascendi*).
– The errors of indifferentism and ecumenism that reduce the one true Church to one religion among many.
A true successor of Pius IX and St. Pius X, when solemnly exalting a Marian shrine, would naturally:
– call the faithful and the nation to reject liberalism, socialism, Freemasonry, and false religions;
– proclaim Mary as Queen who leads souls back to the one Ark of Salvation and to the public Kingship of Christ;
– explicitly protect the cult from modernist instrumentalization and superstitious abuse.
Instead, John XXIII’s text is mute on all these points. No warning against the very forces which the pre-1958 popes unequivocally identified as the main agents of ecclesial persecution and doctrinal subversion. This silence, in such a context, must be read as tacit complicity or at minimum as a pastoral abdication incompatible with the previous magisterial stance.
The result is a Marian decree perfectly compatible with:
– religious pluralism,
– naturalistic nationalism,
– cultural Marianism devoid of doctrinal edge,
– collaboration with anti-Christian powers.
Exactly the pattern which Pius IX and St. Pius X denounced, and which the conciliar sect will later canonize as “dialogue” and “inculturation.”
The Abuse of Marian Imagery as Pseudo-Legitimization of the Neo-Church
One of the gravest aspects of this letter is the exploitation of Marian piety to confer moral credit on an authority in rupture with Tradition. The sequence is clear:
– The people love the Blessed Virgin and venerate a particular image.
– The usurping authority arrives and “crowns” the devotion with papal recognition and privileges.
– The faithful, seeing the familiar signs of Roman approval on their beloved shrine, are led to accept, without discernment, the new teachings and practices emanating from the same authority.
This is not Marian devotion serving Christ’s unchanging Gospel; it is Marian devotion annexed as an affective shield for doctrinal revolution.
True pre-1958 doctrine recognizes Mary as:
– Mother of God,
– Immaculate,
– Mediatrix of all graces in the proper sense,
– Refuge of sinners,
– Destroyer of all heresies,
– Queen who demands obedience to Christ and His Church in the full Catholic sense.
The Marian rhetoric of John XXIII’s decree, by contrast, is:
– vague,
– aestheticized,
– unarmed against error,
– entirely usable as an emotive ornament for the conciliar agenda.
Thus, while no explicit heresy is formulated in these few paragraphs, the entire operation is theologically poisonous: Marian signs are used to confer Catholic odor on a power that will soon enthrone precisely the doctrines and practices that Our Lady, in the authentic Tradition of the Church, cannot but abhor.
Canonical Hyperbole Without Supernatural Gravity
The tail of the decree is a cascade of juridical absolutes:
“We decree and establish… these present Letters are to be firm, valid, and effective forever… if anyone attempts anything to the contrary, it is null and void.”
This is classical papal legal style. Yet strikingly absent is any reference to:
– the eternal salvation of souls,
– the gravity of sacrilege,
– the demands of true worship in spirit and in truth,
– the necessity of the state of grace and orthodox faith for benefiting from indulgences or privileges.
A true Catholic legislation regarding sanctuaries and basilicas always points—explicitly or implicitly—to the ultimate end: *salus animarum* (the salvation of souls) under the law of Christ and the dogmatic framework of the Church. Here, the heavy canonical machinery is used chiefly to guarantee the perpetual prestige of a shrine under the authority of a structure that is, in fact, dissolving the conditions for salvation by poisoning doctrine and worship.
The disproportion is evident:
– maximal juridical assertiveness,
– minimal supernatural gravity,
– no doctrinal safeguards.
This inversion is a hallmark of the conciliar sect: legal absolutism where it serves its institutional self-assertion; doctrinal laxity where the perennial faith demands precision and combat.
Symptomatic Manifestation of the Conciliar Program
In light of the above, this short apostolic letter is not an innocent relic of “the old style” prior to the explicit devastations of the 1960s. It is a symptom and instrument of the same apostasy:
1. It presupposes the capacity of John XXIII to exercise the *plenitudo potestatis* while his words, deeds, and program move along the lines condemned by prior magisterium.
2. It integrates a Marian sanctuary into the official network of a hierarchy preparing to disseminate religious liberty, ecumenism, and doctrinal relativism.
3. It models the new style: lavish devotional language without doctrinal teeth, silence about the central modern errors, juridical pomp as self-legitimization.
4. It conditions the faithful to accept the conciliar revolution under the sign of Marian and liturgical continuity—what will later be described, deceitfully, as “hermeneutic of continuity.”
From the perspective of the unchanging pre-1958 doctrine, this operation is theologically bankrupt:
– It fails to confess the Kingship of Christ in the sense taught by Pius XI.
– It ignores the concrete enemies identified by Pius IX and St. Pius X (liberalism, modernism, Freemasonry).
– It reduces Marian cult to emotional and cultural devotion, severed from her mission to guard and enforce the integral Catholic faith.
– It abuses papal forms to stabilize an anti-traditional regime.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): if Marian sanctuaries and basilicas are thus absorbed into a structure where the law of belief is being overturned, their external honors become part of the masquerade by which the conciliar sect disguises its revolt.
The only coherent Catholic response is not naive veneration of such acts because they sound pious, but ruthless discernment according to the permanent magisterium of the true Church. Wherever Marian language is co-opted to shelter liberalism, ecumenism, and the cult of man, there we must unmask the lie, defend the unchanging faith, and refuse to bend the knee to structures and “decrees” that serve the destruction, not the exaltation, of the Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Source:
Mariani Cultus (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025