The text decrees, in solemn curial Latin, that Patrick, bishop and confessor, be constituted the heavenly patron of the Diocese of Ibadan (founded in 1958), at the request of Richard Finn, then bishop of Ibadan. It repeats standard formulas: the usefulness of assigning dioceses to a celestial patron for protection and example; the reliance on the saint’s intercession for growth of “Catholic affairs” in that region; and the usual juridical clauses declaring the act valid, perpetual, and nullifying any contrary attempts.
Patronage without Faith: John XXIII’s Pious Facade over the Emerging Neo-Church
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, this seemingly harmless brief must be read not as an isolated devotional act, but as a juridical fragment exposing the mentality and counterfeit authority of John XXIII, the inaugurator of the conciliar revolution. What appears as a routine nomination of a patron is, in reality, a revealing symptom: the usurper calmly exercises “apostolic” power while simultaneously preparing the demolition of the very supernatural order that alone gives meaning to heavenly patronage.
External Piety as a Veil for Doctrinal Subversion
On the factual level, the letter does three things:
– Affirms the traditional practice of entrusting dioceses to heavenly patrons.
– Grants Saint Patrick as patron of Ibadan, with corresponding liturgical rights.
– Uses strong juridical language to assert perpetuity and nullify any contrary acts.
In itself, each element would be perfectly legitimate if proceeding from a true Roman Pontiff within the unbroken line of Catholic tradition. But by July 1960 John XXIII had:
– Already convoked the so-called Second Vatican Council (1959), explicitly to “update” (*aggiornare*) the Church, introducing the principle of doctrinal evolution condemned by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– Begun replacing integral doctrinal clarity with an irenic, naturalistic “dialogue” posture toward false religions and the world.
Thus a contradiction arises: the same man who prepares to relativize the public reign of Christ (later codified in the documents of the conciliar sect) issues a document assuming the fully Catholic theology of heavenly intercession, immutable patronage, and juridical perpetuity. This is not continuity; it is camouflage.
The most serious scandal is that supernatural language is preserved as a decorative shell while the foundations of supernatural faith are being dissolved elsewhere by the same claimant.
Linguistic Cosmetics: Traditional Formulae in the Service of a New Religion
The rhetoric of the letter is consciously archaic and “safe”:
– Appeals to probata consuetudo (approved custom).
– Speaks of the faithful being “covered by the protection” of the saint, “warded from evils,” and stirred to Christian virtue.
– Enacts the choice of patron “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione Nostra deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine” (“with Our certain knowledge and mature deliberation and from the fullness of Apostolic power”).
At first glance, this language appears to be a pure continuation of traditional papal acts. But its deployment in 1960, by John XXIII in particular, carries a different weight:
1. The letter is entirely horizontal in effect:
– There is no mention of:
– the need to preserve the integral Catholic faith inviolate;
– resistance to heresy, liberalism, or paganism;
– the necessity of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* and the state of grace;
– the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church.
– The saint is invoked generically, as if heavenly patronage were a neutral spiritual ornament, not a militant standard-bearer of the one true Faith against error.
2. The juridical solemnity—“firms, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere” (to remain firm, valid, effective perpetually)—is deeply ironic:
– The same regime that soon after will trample on Quanta Cura, the Syllabus, Quas Primas, Lamentabili, Pascendi and the entire prior magisterium, here pretends incorruptible respect for its own minor act.
– It proclaims perpetuity in a small devotional measure while orchestrating practical abrogation of perpetually binding doctrinal condemnations.
The tone is thus anesthetizing: it borrows the vocabulary of Tradition to lull the faithful into trusting a structure already preparing to enthrone the very errors previously anathematized.
Theological Incoherence: Patron Saints in a System that Denies the Kingship of Christ
Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) is brutal here. The text presupposes a theology that the conciliar sect will, in practice and doctrine, soon undermine.
1. Saint Patrick as a model:
– Saint Patrick is historically the zealous apostle who:
– uprooted pagan cults;
– preached the necessity of conversion and baptism into the one true Church;
– exercised uncompromising intolerance toward idolatry.
– To propose Patrick as patron while advancing a religion of “dialogue” with paganism and Islam, and of religious liberty condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors, especially 15–18, 77–80), is to **instrumentalize** the saint against his own spirit.
2. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches clearly:
– Peace and order are only possible under the social, public reign of Christ the King.
– States and peoples must recognize and submit to the authority of Christ and His Church, or they sink into apostasy and chaos.
– The encyclical explicitly condemns the secularist, naturalist order which Vatican II and its aftermath will effectively embrace under the name of “religious freedom” and “pluralism.”
Contrasting this with John XXIII’s regime:
– While signing such a letter, he prepares a council that will enthrone:
– religious liberty (denounced in the Syllabus as a pernicious error);
– ecumenism with heretics and schismatics, relativizing the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church;
– openness to masonic ideas of “human fraternity” and “dignity” detached from the Kingship of Christ.
– In that light, this act of assigning Patrick to Ibadan becomes a liturgical fig leaf:
– An appearance of fidelity, *covering the actual movement toward a universalist, naturalistic religion* incompatible with St. Patrick’s apostolic combat.
The heavenly patron invoked here, if truly followed, would condemn the entire conciliar enterprise that John XXIII inaugurates.
Silence on the Supernatural Battle: The Omission that Condemns
The gravest accusation against this brief is not what it says, but what it refuses to say.
A diocesan patronage decree, in an age of unprecedented heresy and state-sponsored apostasy across continents, could and should:
– Call the faithful of Ibadan to persevere in the one true faith amidst paganism, Islam, Protestantism, and syncretism.
– Exhort them to fidelity to the integral doctrine taught by the perennial Magisterium.
– Invoke the saint specifically as protector against error, heresy, and the seductions of naturalism and liberalism.
– Reaffirm the obligation of societies to recognize Christ’s Kingship and the Church’s exclusive authority in matters of salvation.
Instead, we find only:
– Vague wishes that “Catholic affairs” may increase.
– No explicit condemnation of false religions.
– No specification that “Christian life” means the life of grace, sacramental participation in the *Unbloody Sacrifice*, and obedience to the perennial teachings condemned by the conciliar deviation.
– No warning against Modernism, despite the solemn condemnations of St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*, which remain fully binding and directly address the mindset then advancing inside the hierarchy.
This silence is not accidental. It is the method of post-1958:
– retain a thin layer of devotions;
– avoid sharp doctrinal edges;
– never recall the concrete anathemas against liberalism, indifferentism, and masonic ideology;
– thus habituate the faithful to a cosmetic Catholicism, emptied of militant, exclusive truth.
Silentium de maximis est maxima accusatio (silence about the greatest things is the greatest accusation).
Systemic Symptom: The Conciliar Sect’s Exploitation of Traditional Forms
This letter is a precise microcosm of the conciliar revolution’s technique:
1. Formal continuity:
– Latin text, traditional curial style.
– Canonical formulas of validity and nullity.
– Reference to the Sacra Rituum Congregatio.
– Recognition of a saint of unimpeachable orthodoxy.
2. Substantial inversion:
– The same authority that affirms the perpetual validity of this minor act simultaneously prepares to ignore and contradict the perpetual validity of:
– the Syllabus of Errors, which brands the later conciliar principles as condemned propositions;
– *Quanta Cura* and *Pascendi*, which unmask the very “pastoral,” evolutionary, and immanentist tendencies codified at and after Vatican II;
– *Lamentabili*, which rejects the notion that dogma evolves with historical consciousness.
3. The result:
– A paramasonic structure that:
– simulates Catholic legal acts;
– deploys saints and devotions as emotional capital;
– but diverts souls into a cult of man, religious indifferentism, and sacrilegious parody of the sacraments.
To appeal to St. Patrick while constructing an ecclesial system that treats pagan cults and heretical sects as “dialogue partners” is theological fraud.
Abuse of Juridical Language to Sanction a Counterfeit Authority
Consider the core juridical assertions:
– The act is done:
– “certa scientia” (with certain knowledge),
– “matura deliberatione” (with mature deliberation),
– “plenitudine Apostolicae potestatis” (from the fullness of Apostolic power).
– It is to be:
– “firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere” (firm, valid, effective, perpetually);
– any contrary attempt is declared “irritum… et inane” (null and void).
Here lies a key exposure:
– The more John XXIII insists on the juridical absoluteness of his act, the clearer the principle: if such power were truly Apostolic, it could never be used to undermine the deposit of faith or authorize a council and reforms that contradict prior solemn teachings.
– Potestas ad aedificationem, non ad destructionem data est (power is given for building up, not for destruction). When the supposed “plenitude” is directed toward demolition of dogma and worship, it unmasks itself as lacking legitimacy.
This brief, therefore, inadvertently helps establish the criterion by which John XXIII and his successors are judged:
– Either his claimed authority is real, in which case:
– he and his line cannot lawfully found a new doctrinal, liturgical, and ecumenical regime contrary to the pre-1958 Magisterium;
– and the conciliar revolution stands self-condemned.
– Or the revolution proceeds as it did, in open contradiction with prior teaching:
– which demonstrates that the authority invoked in such acts is not that of the true Papacy guarding the indefectible Church, but of an occupying structure imitating her external forms.
In either case, the use of solemn language here serves to expose the later conciliar system as juridically and theologically dissonant with what the Papacy, by nature, must be.
Saint Patrick against the Pseudo-Mission of the New Advent
Saint Patrick’s authentic legacy, as known from his own writings and Catholic tradition, provides a merciless criterion:
– He preached the exclusive necessity of the Catholic faith and baptism for salvation.
– He destroyed idols, did not “dialogue” with them.
– He established a robustly hierarchical, sacramental, penitential Church, anchored in the *Most Holy Sacrifice* and submission to Rome as the rock of orthodoxy.
The conciliar sect that John XXIII sets into motion will:
– Present pagan religions as “ways” of encountering God;
– Praise false cults in interreligious spectacles;
– Replace missionary urgency with relativistic “witness” and “accompaniment”;
– Tolerate, even promote, desecration of what still bears the name of altar.
To claim Patrick as patron of Ibadan in 1960 while plotting a universal deconstruction of missionary Catholicism is, therefore:
a liturgical and spiritual exploitation of a saint of uncompromising orthodoxy for the benefit of a project of doctrinal dissolution.
Sanctus Patricius, if truly invoked, stands not with John XXIII’s aggiornamento, but with the anathematizing clarity of Pius IX and St. Pius X, with the social reign of Christ the King taught by Pius XI, against the humanistic, masonic-friendly neo-church.
Conclusion: A Small Document as Indictment of a Greater Betrayal
This brief, read superficially, seems benign, even edifying. But under the light of pre-1958 magisterial doctrine and the subsequent historical trajectory, it becomes:
– Evidence of the method by which the conciliar revolution advanced:
– maintaining traditional ornamentation;
– omitting every militant, exclusive, supernatural note;
– conditioning the faithful to trust a hierarchy already turning away from the condemned errors of liberalism and Modernism into their open embrace.
What is missing is decisive:
– No reaffirmation of the Syllabus’ condemnation of indifferentism and false religious liberty.
– No echo of *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi* against Modernist biblical and doctrinal corruption.
– No explicit binding of Ibadan’s faithful to Christ’s public Kingship and the absolute authority of the pre-existing decrees of the Magisterium.
– Only a soothing act of patronage, easily integrated into a program that, within a few years, will change doctrine, worship, and ecclesial self-understanding.
Therefore this text, instead of being a proof of continuity, stands as a subtle witness against the conciliar sect:
– It reveals how the usurping structure cloaked its nascent apostasy in gestures of orthodoxy.
– It confronts us with the necessity of returning, not to these ambiguous tokens, but to the full, uncorrupted teaching of the pre-1958 Church, in which saints, councils, and papal acts form a coherent, supernatural, militant whole under Christ the King.
Source:
Quemadmodum (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025