Qui catholico gloriantur nomine, the faithful of the Greensburg territory are here informed that the usurper in Rome, styling himself “Ioannes PP. XXIII,” by this brief Latin rescript “Qui Catholico” (16 December 1960), declares the Blessed Virgin Mary assumed into Heaven as “principal patroness” of the Diocese of Greensburg, appealing to their traditional Marian piety and continuity with Pittsburgh, and clothing the act in the full juridical solemnity of apostolic authority.

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Conciliar Marian Cosmetics as a Veil for Usurpation

This short document is a paradigmatic specimen of the early conciliar sect: externally pious, formally Marian, canonically ornate – and precisely for that reason theologically poisonous. It attempts to drape a revolutionary usurpation of the Apostolic See with the mantle of the Assumption, prostituting the juridical formulas of the true Church to lend counterfeit legitimacy to a man and a system preparing the conciliar catastrophe.

From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this rescript is not an innocent local patronage decree; it is an early, calculated use of Marian language to normalize obedience to a paramasonic structure already in rupture with the indispensable theological and disciplinary ethos affirmed consistently up to 1958.

Factual Dimension: Pious Words in the Mouth of an Intruder

The text states (translation first):

Those who glory in the Catholic name, the inhabitants of the Diocese of Greensburg, are said to cultivate with particular fervour of soul and to venerate the gracious Mother of God assumed among the stars.

It recalls:

Moreover, the Diocese of Pittsburgh, from which Greensburg territory was separated in 1951, had formerly been dedicated to the same Mother of God assumed into Heaven; furthermore many Marian churches are found in the Greensburg jurisdiction, clear testimonies of the piety by which that people, of various European origins, has from ancient times been accustomed to be devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Then follows the “grant”:

Therefore… by Our Apostolic authority… we constitute and declare the Blessed Virgin Mary assumed into Heaven the principal Patroness with God of the whole Diocese of Greensburg… with all liturgical honours and privileges…

On the factual level:

– The historical references (separation from Pittsburgh in 1951, existing Marian shrines, traditional devotion) are in themselves plausible and consonant with genuine Catholic life.
– The doctrine that Our Lady Assumed into Heaven may be principal patroness of a diocese is entirely in harmony with Catholic tradition, especially after the dogmatic definition of the Assumption by Pius XII (Munificentissimus Deus, 1950).
– The canonical form used – *certa scientia*, *matura deliberatio*, *plenitudo potestatis*, perpetuity, nullification of contrary acts – imitates the authentic juridical style of the pre-1958 papal magisterium.

Yet precisely here lies the grave problem: all these elements are deployed as a façade. The truth or orthodoxy of individual statements does not validate the speaker’s claim; rather, the illegitimacy of the speaker corrupts the act as a public ecclesial sign. The document presupposes as self-evident that the one signing “Ioannes PP. XXIII” possesses the *plenitudo potestatis* of the Roman Pontiff. That presupposition is the central lie.

The Linguistic Cloak: Marian Devotion as Political Technology

The language of this letter is deliberately:

– Short, smooth, affectively Marian.
– Void of doctrinal struggle, polemic against error, or insistence on the integral faith.
– Saturated with juridical absolutism applied to a minor liturgical-patronal decision, while impending doctrinal revolution (the council that would become Vatican II) is left shrouded.

Key symptoms:

1. The text repeatedly affirms its own juridical finality:
– “harum Litterarum vi perpetuumque in modum… praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces iugiter exstare ac permanere”.
– This absolutist formula is historically used for serious canonical or doctrinal determinations. Here it is expended on a local patronage decree – an inflation whose function is psychological: to habituate the clergy and faithful to accept this man’s “pontifical” voice as unquestionable.

2. The vocabulary “those who glory in the Catholic name” functions as rhetorical capture: anyone who accepts this patronage implicitly accepts his claim to be the Vicar of Christ. Marian devotion is used as a loyalty-metric to the conciliar usurper.

3. Tone: sentimentally deferential to popular piety, free from any call to conversion, rejection of error, or affirmation of the exclusive necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation. It is “pastoral” in the later conciliar sense: consoling, decorative, doctrinally anaemic.

Authentic pre-1958 papal documents on Marian patronage were never detached from:

– The proclamation of the unique truth of the Catholic religion.
– Warnings against heresy, indifferentism, Masonry, and secularism.
– The call to penance, orthodoxy, the defense of the rights of the Church.

Compare Pius XI in Quas primas: he directly identifies secularism and laicism as a “plague” and calls for the public reign of Christ over states: peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ the King and under submission of laws and rulers to His rights. Here, in “Qui Catholico,” no such supernatural or social kingship dimension appears. “Patroness” is reduced to a liturgical badge, not a militant standard against the world and its errors.

Theological Exposure: Illegitimate Authority and Misused Marianity

The gravest theological fault of this document is not overt heresy in its lines, but the sacrilegious instrumentalization of orthodox Marian vocabulary to cement an apostate regime.

Several points must be ruthlessly exposed:

1. The Author Lacks the Office He Claims

The integral Catholic doctrine, as taught by St. Robert Bellarmine, the classical theologians, and codified in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, is clear:

– A manifest heretic cannot be pope: *“A non-Christian cannot in any way be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore a manifest heretic cannot be Pope”* (Bellarmine, summarized in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism file).
– Canon 188.4: public defection from the faith vacates an ecclesiastical office automatically, *ipso facto*, without further declaration.

John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), already before and at his election, was associated with modernist tendencies and networks repeatedly censured by St. Pius X and his successors. The same system that quickly invoked “aggiornamento,” opened the way to the doctrinally suicidal council, and rehabilitated condemned trends, is morally continuous with him. While specific hidden acts are historically contested, the systemic doctrinal trajectory is not: he is the initiator and symbol of a regime that embraces the very errors condemned in:

– The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX) – especially regarding religious liberty, separation of Church and State, and reconciliation with “progress” and liberalism.
– Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi (St. Pius X) – which anathematize the modernist notion of an evolving dogma and a historicist re-reading of doctrine.
– The social magisterium of Leo XIII and Pius XI, which insists on the public kingship of Christ and rejects laicism, syncretism, and indifferentism.

A putative “pope” who prepares, inaugurates, and blesses a council whose fruits directly contradict these fundamental teachings reveals by his works that he does not hold the integral Catholic faith. A manifest or at least morally certain modernist cannot validly hold the papacy. Thus, his acts, though externally clothed in papal forms, are the decrees of a private person, not of the Vicar of Christ.

The letter’s core claim – “deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine” – is therefore objectively false. This is not a minor technicality; it is blasphemous appropriation. He invokes the plenitude of a power he does not possess.

2. Marian Patronage without the Integral Faith is an Empty Shell

From the constant magisterium:

– Marian devotion is inseparable from faith in her Divine Son, in His unique Church, and in the objective, immutable character of revealed dogma.
– Popes and councils always treated Our Lady’s privileges as bulwarks against heresy and naturalism. The Assumption was defined by Pius XII precisely to confirm faith in bodily resurrection, supernatural destiny, and the dignity of the Immaculate Mother in the economy of salvation.

Yet in this letter:

– There is no affirmation that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
– No denunciation of error, Masonry, rationalism, or modernist exegesis.
– No call that the Greensburg faithful live according to the full social reign of Christ in public, political, legal life.
– No reminder of the Four Last Things, no insistence on the state of grace, confession, the Most Holy Sacrifice, or the necessity of the sacraments.

The Blessed Virgin is here used primarily as a unifying symbol, not as the Terrible Army set in battle array against heresy and apostasy.

Silentium de supremis (silence on what is highest) is not neutral; it is indictment. To invoke Mary while carefully avoiding those truths most offensive to the modern world (and to the modernist clergy) is to reduce her to an ecclesiastical emblem – theologically void, politically useful.

3. Displacement of the True Ecclesiological Center

The brief anchors legitimacy in structures reorganized under post-war American ecclesiastical policies, not in the unbroken doctrinal stance of the Roman See. The Diocese of Greensburg’s Marian devotion is praised, but:

– There is no insistence that its priests uphold anti-modernist doctrine as required by St. Pius X’s measures.
– No reminder of the Oath Against Modernism (still formally in force in 1960).
– No warning against secularism, communism, or the masonic infiltration identified forcefully in the Syllabus and later papal interventions.

Instead, Marian patronage is given as if it were automatically coherent with whatever theological and liturgical direction these structures will later impose. Thus Mary is tacitly annexed to the future conciliar agenda.

This contradicts the pre-1958 line, exemplified by Pius IX and Pius X, where Mary is invoked precisely as destroyer of heresies, not patroness of doctrinal evolution.

Symptomatic Dimension: Early Template of the Conciliar Sect’s Marian Strategy

Viewed in its historical and spiritual context, “Qui Catholico” is not an isolated curial nicety; it is a symptom and instrument of a deeper revolution. Several features reveal this:

1. The Mechanism: Conservative Form, Subversive Function

– Use of classical Latin.
– Use of solemn legal formulas.
– Use of an entirely orthodox object (Assumption of Our Lady, diocesan patronage).

Function:

– Habituation of clergy and laity to recognize Roncalli as lawful Roman Pontiff.
– Construction of a narrative continuity: same Marian piety, same Latin, same seals – therefore the same Church.
– Preparation of psychological obedience for when the same authority will promulgate novel doctrines, ambiguous pastoral constitutions, and a new liturgy.

This is the signature of the conciliar sect: *simulatio traditionis* (simulation of tradition) to smuggle in modernism. As St. Pius X warned, modernists hide inside Catholic structures, speaking Catholic language while inverting its inner content.

2. The Omission of Combat: Betrayal of the Marian Militant Office

In true Catholic usage, proclaiming a patroness is also a call to arms:

– The patron is protector in battle.
– Patronage is linked to penance, orthodoxy, and the duty to resist error.
– Marian feasts and dedications have historically been responses to concrete threats: heresies, Turkish invasions, revolutions, plagues of impiety.

Here, nothing of the sort:

– 1960: the world burns with atheistic communism, moral degradation, ecumenical relativism, Freemasonry. Even the Syllabus explicitly denounced the sects assaulting the Church.
– Yet this document mentions none of this. Instead, it offers a spiritually anesthetizing gesture. The faithful are lulled by a saccharine act of Marian honor while the revolution prepares to burst forth in the upcoming council.

This calculated omission – in a document that claims “perpetual” force with the full “plenitude of apostolic power” – is itself a sign of apostasy. When the supreme authority ostensibly acts yet refuses to name the enemies of Christ, it effectively blesses their advance.

3. Canonical Maximalism to Hide Doctrinal Minimalism

Note the disproportion:

– Maximum canonical language:
– perpetual validity,
– universal nullity of contrary acts,
– claim to be binding fully now and in the future.
– Minimal doctrinal content:
– no substantial instruction in faith or morals,
– no reinforcement of Marian dogma beyond sentimental phrases.

This is juridical theatre. The conciliar sect takes over the shell of papal absolutism (which in the true Church protected dogma and discipline) and retools it to police liturgical trivia and diocesan patronages – while it simultaneously dismantles the very doctrinal and liturgical bulwarks that that authority existed to defend.

It is, in effect, the inversion condemned by Pius IX: treating the Church as if her rights are ornamental while bowing to the demands of liberalism and “modern civilization” (cf. Syllabus, prop. 80, condemned: the Roman Pontiff ought to reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization).

Mary Co-opted by a Neo-Church: Why This Matters

Some might object: “But the content is orthodox, the patronage is good; why attack it?” Because integral Catholic faith demands we recognize:

– Autoritas non est nisi a Deo (authority is only from God) when it serves the deposit of faith, not when it frontally contradicts the anti-modernist magisterium.
– Marian devotion severed from doctrinal integrity becomes superstition or propaganda.

The same conciliar sect that:

– Introduces religious liberty against the Syllabus.
– Engages in false ecumenism, treating schismatic and heretical sects as “sister churches.”
– Promotes interreligious gatherings that practically deny the uniqueness of the Church.
– Deforms the Most Holy Sacrifice into an anthropocentric assembly rite.
– Exalts man (*cultus hominis*) and democracy within the Church’s structures.

also proclaims Marian patronages, Marian years, and Marian shrines – but as ornaments. These pious labels function as spiritual camouflage for an enterprise that undermines the very faith Our Lady has always defended.

Therefore:

– The Greensburg decree is not neutral. It is one thread in the fabric of counterfeit continuity.
– It trains the faithful to see no incompatibility between venerating the Assumption and obeying an authority preparing the very revolution condemned by Pius IX and Pius X.
– It attempts to enlist the name of the Immaculata into service of a conciliar agenda that will relativize doctrine, desacralize worship, and enthrone human rights above the rights of Christ the King.

Reasserting the Pre-1958 Criterion: Mary Against the Conciliar Sect

From the standpoint of the unchanging magisterium:

– The Blessed Virgin Mary, assumed into Heaven, is Queen precisely because her Son is King, and His Kingdom is not redefined by modernist evolution, nor subject to secular pluralism.
– Pius XI in Quas primas insists that states and societies must publicly submit to the reign of Christ: separation of Church and State and religious indifferentism are condemned. This is irreconcilable with the conciliar sect’s practical endorsement of laicism and its refusal to demand civil recognition of Christ’s kingship.
– Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns the very principles later normalized by the conciliar structures: freedom of all cults, equality of all religions before the law, and the subjugation of Church to state or modern culture.
– St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns historicism, doctrinal evolutionism, and the attempt to reinterpret dogma through “modern experience.”

Thus any structure, any “pope,” any document that moves along the opposite trajectory – even when speaking sweetly of Our Lady – must be rejected as non-Catholic.

In this light:

– The Catholics of Greensburg who truly “glory in the Catholic name” must read “Qui Catholico” critically:
– Affirming the truth of the Assumption.
– Holding fast to Mary as their heavenly patroness.
– But refusing to see in Roncalli’s signature a guarantee of legitimacy, recognizing rather the attempt of an intruder to exploit their Marian piety.

The true devotion to Mary in Greensburg or anywhere else today requires:

– Fidelity to the integral pre-1958 magisterium.
– Rejection of the conciliar revolution, its liturgy, its ecumenism, its cult of man.
– Recognition that sacraments and jurisdiction cannot be fabricated within a neo-church that has doctrinally defected.
– Entrusting oneself to bishops and priests who retain valid orders and profess the whole traditional faith without compromise.

To continue to treat such acts of the conciliar sect as harmless is to concede the field to the “abomination of desolation” that has occupied the holy place.

Conclusion: Choose Between the Immaculata and the Neo-Church

“Qui Catholico” is a minor document, but precisely for that reason it reveals the mechanism of deception:

– Orthodoxy in small things to prepare apostasy in great things.
– Marian titles used to crown a structure that will soon trample upon the Syllabus, Lamentabili, Pascendi, and the social kingship of Christ.
– Unquestioning appeals to “Apostolic power” from one who inaugurates the very conciliar process that dissolves apostolic faith in practice.

The integral Catholic conscience must therefore:

– Distinguish sharply between the true Assumption of Mary and its exploitation by the conciliar sect.
– Reject the claim of John XXIII to the *plenitudo potestatis* while cleaving more fervently to the Marian dogmas defined and defended by the pre-1958 papacy.
– Recognize that genuine Marian patronage cannot co-exist with doctrinal modernism; Mary is Mother of the Church, not patroness of revolution.

Either Mary stands with the unchanging Catholic faith and against the neo-church, or she is invoked as a decorative accomplice of apostasy. There is no tertium quid. To honor her truly is to repudiate the conciliar counterfeit that dared sign her name under its usurped seal.

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Source:
Qui catholico, Litterae Apostolicae Beata Maria Virgo Caelo recepta primaria Patrona eligitur dioecesis Greensburgensis, d. 16 m. Decembris a. 1960, Ioannes PP. XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025