The text promulgated in Latin under the name Virginis Immaculatae (5 September 1960) attributes to John XXIII an act by which the Immaculate Virgin Mary, in her privilege of the Immaculate Conception, is declared principal heavenly patroness of the Diocese of Divinópolis in Brazil, recalling the long-standing Marian devotion of the region and granting the corresponding liturgical rights and privileges attached to a primary diocesan patroness. The entire document, though clothed in pious language and centered on an exalted Marian title defined infallibly by Pius IX, is an act of jurisdiction issued by one who had already initiated the conciliar revolution, and therefore functions as another brick in the paramasonic edifice of the neo-church that occupies Catholic symbols while dissolving Catholic authority.
Marian Cloak for a Usurped Authority
From the perspective of *integral Catholic doctrine as universally professed before 1958*, no Catholic can read a juridical act of John XXIII in 1960 in isolation from his person, his program, and his work. The question is not whether the Immaculate Conception is true (it is, by the solemn definition of Pius IX, *Ineffabilis Deus*, 1854), nor whether dioceses may and should invoke the Holy Mother of God as patroness (they may). The question is: what is the theological and ecclesiological meaning when the architect of the conciliar insurrection, already advancing a program condemned by previous pontiffs, cloaks his usurpation in language apparently consonant with the faith?
This is precisely the method of the modernist, already anatomized and condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi and in the syllabus Lamentabili sane exitu: to speak in a devout register while subverting the foundation. The more apparently harmless the text, the more revealing its function as rhetorical camouflage.
Three essential premises are non-negotiable:
– Pius IX (in the Syllabus of Errors, especially propositions 15, 16, 17, 55, 77–80) and Pius X (in Pascendi, Lamentabili sane exitu) infallibly expose and condemn the errors which John XXIII prepared to enthrone at Vatican II: religious liberty, indifferentism, historicism, the reconciliation with “modern civilization” and liberalism.
– A manifest promoter and protector of these condemned tendencies cannot simultaneously be the guarantor of the Faith. As summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine (paraphrased): *A manifest heretic cannot be Pope, for he cannot be head of that of which he is no member.* This principle is reaffirmed in the pre-1917 canonical and theological tradition and codified in the 1917 Code (canon 188.4: public defection from the faith vacates office by the law itself).
– Therefore any act of jurisdiction by such a person is, in the order of the Church, void of true papal authority, even if materially accurate in vocabulary. What remains is a usurped apparatus—what may be called the “conciliar sect”—appropriating Marian and Catholic language as a legitimizing aesthetic.
This letter thus becomes a paradigmatic example of how the conciliar pseudo-magisterium attempts to merge continuity of symbols with rupture of faith.
Factual Level: Pious Ornament Serving an Alien Project
The text does four things:
1. It recalls that Portuguese Catholics brought devotion to the Immaculate Conception to Brazil and that the people venerated this privilege long before its solemn definition.
2. It notes particularly an old church in the region (Conceição do Pará) as a focal point of such devotion.
3. It reports that the local bishop (Christianus Portela de Araújo Pena) humbly requested that the Immaculate Conception be declared principal patroness of the Diocese of Divinópolis.
4. It “by apostolic authority” grants this request, constituting the Immaculate Virgin as principal heavenly patroness with all corresponding liturgical rights, declaring the act perpetually valid and nullifying anything contrary.
On the surface, this is textbook pre-conciliar form. But form without legitimate authority and without doctrinal coherence with prior papal condemnations is a shell.
Key factual observations:
– The letter is dated 5 September 1960, that is:
– After John XXIII’s announcement of the “Second Vatican Council” (1959), presented as an “aggiornamento” and “opening to the modern world” in terms already condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus 80: the Roman Pontiff “ought to come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — condemned).
– During the period when preparatory commissions were stealthily reorganized to marginalize sound doctrine and favor modernist experts—a process thoroughly documented from reputable historical sources (e.g., contemporary testimonies of pre-conciliar theologians and later critical scholarship). These show a deliberate sidelining of the anti-modernist safeguards of Pius X.
– The text is purely juridical-declarative; it does not teach new dogma. Its content is materially orthodox regarding the Immaculate Conception. However:
– A juridical act requires a true juridical subject. If the supposed lawgiver lacks office ipso iure, the act has no true canonical force in the divine constitution of the Church, however pious its matter.
– The letter functions as a confirmation ritual: the usurping authority drapes itself in Marian devotion to appear seamlessly continuous with Pius IX, while preparing to betray the very anti-liberal, anti-modernist foundations that gave dogmatic meaning to that Marian privilege.
Thus, factually, the text is not “evil” by its explicit content; its malignity lies in what it presupposes (recognition of John XXIII’s authority) and what it prepares (acceptance of the conciliar sect as legitimate heir of Marian and Catholic tradition).
Manipulated Language: Traditional Latin, Modernist Intent
The rhetoric appears impeccably Roman:
– Appeals to *Ad perpetuam rei memoriam*;
– Emphasis on the people’s long-standing faith in the privilege “longe antequam dogma… definiretur”;
– Description of faithful flocking to the shrine “praesidium imploraturi pientissimae Virginis”;
– The bishop’s humble petition and Rome’s gracious response;
– The solemn clausula typical of papal legal acts: “certa scientia ac matura deliberatione… deque Apostolicae potestatis plenitudine… praesentes Litteras firmas, validas atque efficaces… Contrariis quibusvis non obstantibus…”
Yet this stylistic imitation of solid papal acts is precisely what makes the text a rhetorical weapon.
Three linguistic symptoms of deeper corruption:
1. The invocation of “plentitudo Apostolicae potestatis” is usurped.
– This formula, when used by true pontiffs, expresses the divinely-instituted primacy condemned in proposition 34 of the Syllabus’ denounced errors (which deny the sovereign pontiff’s freedom of action).
– Here, the same formula is exploited by one who inaugurates the hermeneutic and institutional mechanism by which Catholic dogma will be relativized, non-Catholic religions praised, and state indifferentism sanctioned, all in direct violation of Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– Therefore the language is *formaliter* Catholic, *materialiter* instrumental: it seeks to transfer the aura of past papal acts onto a new regime that will, by design, repudiate their doctrinal content.
2. The focus on local devotion and pastoral benevolence without any militant doctrinal note.
– The letter entirely omits reference to the Immaculate Conception as a dogmatic bulwark against rationalism, naturalism, and liberalism—precisely the context emphasized by Pius IX.
– The Immaculate is praised sentimentally and liturgically, while the militant, doctrinal dimension of her privilege—as sign of absolute opposition between grace and sin, truth and error, Church and sects—is silenced.
– This discreet sentimentalization is the first step to transforming Marian devotion into a decorative symbol able to coexist with ecumenism and religious liberty.
3. The juristic absolutism in favor of an authority internally dialectical toward Tradition.
– The conclusion (irritumque ex nunc et inane for any contrary attempt) mimics the style of solemn condemnations like Pius IV’s Iniunctum nobis or Pius IX’s solemn reprobations.
– Yet the same juridical voice will soon orchestrate the “opening” to condemned principles. This is an abuse of canonical form: the solemn formula is invoked to cement compliance with a regime drifting toward doctrinal treason.
Thus, the text’s language is a polished mask: the more “traditional” it sounds, the more it attempts to narcotize resistance to the incoming conciliar mutation.
Theological Level: Marian Dogma Is Weaponized Against Its Own Foundations
The content explicitly presupposes and celebrates:
– The dogma of the Immaculate Conception (Pius IX, 1854);
– The Catholic legitimacy of Marian patronage;
– A hierarchical structure in which Rome confirms diocesan devotions.
At first glance, all orthodox. But this letter must be read in the light of three doctrinal axes:
1. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is inseparable from the anti-liberal, anti-modernist stance of the 19th-century papacy.
– Pius IX’s proclamation of Mary conceived without sin is organically tied to the Syllabus (1864), which condemns:
– Religious indifferentism (15–18),
– The separation of Church and state (55),
– The exaltation of “modern liberty” and liberalism (77–80).
– Mary’s unique preservation from all stain is a symbol and guarantee of doctrine preserved from stain. To invoke this dogma while preparing to reconcile with that modern world condemned by Pius IX is a doctrinal contradiction.
2. Pius X’s anti-modernist encyclicals and decrees (e.g., Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi) explicitly condemn the evolutionist notion of dogma and the adaptation of faith to modern thought.
– Propositions 57–65 in Lamentabili condemn the idea that:
– Truth changes with man;
– Catholicism must be transformed into a dogmaless Christianity to reconcile with modern knowledge.
– The very council convened by John XXIII will, in its texts and more so in its official implementation, operationalize precisely such adaptation—via religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, anthropocentrism.
– Therefore, a Marian act issued under his name is not neutral: it is the language of a regime that has already ideologically broken with previous papal discipline, even if that break is as yet implicit.
3. Ecclesiological coherence requires that the one who legislates under papal titles be in continuity with prior condemnations, not in open prelude to their practical negation.
– *Lex orandi, lex credendi*: if the same claimed authority that solemnly promotes a Marian patronage is also the one that soon presides over a council that implicitly denies the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation in practice (through ecumenism and esteem for false religions), then the Marian act becomes a veil.
– The Immaculate, invoked as “praecipua apud Deum Patrona” of a particular Church, is thus unofficially co-opted into protecting a local church that will be subordinated to a conciliar structure teaching:
– Honouring non-Catholic religions as “ways of salvation” in practice;
– Recognizing religious liberty as civil right against the Catholic confessional State condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII;
– Promoting doctrinal evolutionism through pastoral ambiguity.
– Such co-optation is an offense against the very Mother of God, who is patroness of the one *una, sancta, catholica et apostolica Ecclesia*, not of a federated ensemble of conciliar communities dissolving her Son’s social kingship.
Thus: **the act is theologically incoherent**. It associates the Immaculate with a juridical and doctrinal trajectory she, as icon of untainted orthodoxy, by her very privilege contradicts.
Symptomatic Level: How Conciliar Apostasy Hides Behind Marian and Pious Gestures
Seen against the post-1958 trajectory, this short letter is emblematic:
1. Appropriation of pre-conciliar piety.
– The conciliar sect never rejected Marian titles or Eucharistic vocabulary outright. Instead, it retained them while gradually emptying them of their previous militant and exclusive content.
– By signing Marian patronage decrees, John XXIII presents himself as heir of Pius IX, even while preparing to defang the Syllabus and reconcile with condemned liberalism.
– This is precisely the *modus operandi* of the system rightly described as the “Church of the New Advent”: preserve vestments and devotions, subvert doctrinal substance.
2. Silencing the Kingship of Christ and the social demands of Marian dogma.
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches without ambiguity (paraphrase): *Peace and order among nations can only be restored by acknowledging the public reign of Christ the King; states must publicly venerate and obey Him.*
– The text under review mentions nothing of this. It confines itself to devotional and liturgical formulas devoid of any assertion that the patronage of the Immaculate implies:
– Rejection of secularism;
– Rejection of religious liberty errors;
– Assertion of Catholic confessional identity.
– This silence is not accidental. It signals accommodation to a new paradigm where Marian devotion can comfortably coexist with the liberal state and interreligious egalitarianism.
3. Cementing obedience to illegitimate authority.
– The insistence on the perpetual validity of the decree and the nullity of any contrary act is institutional theatre: a usurping power demonstrates its capacity to legislate minutely (even about a local patronage) to habituate clergy and laity to its authority.
– Once that obedience is psychologically secured, the same authority will promulgate, in the name of “Pastoral Council,” texts and reforms that systematically erode previous condemnations.
4. Transforming dioceses into laboratories of conciliar religion under Marian banners.
– By reconfiguring local Marian shrines and patronages under the name of John XXIII, each diocese is gently integrated into the narrative: the same authority that gives you your beloved patroness is the one that will give you Vatican II, the new liturgy, ecumenism, religious liberty.
– The faithful, seeing venerable images crowned under the names of the conciliar occupants, are led to associate their ancient faith with the new doctrines. This is psychological usurpation.
In sum, this letter is a minor but clear example of the conciliar sect’s strategy: reverence in words; revolution in deeds.
Exposure of Modernist Bankruptcy behind the Document
To unmask fully the spiritual bankruptcy implicit in this otherwise short act, we must confront:
– The unchanging doctrine (Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII);
– The known agenda and outcomes of the conciliar revolution.
1. Against historicism and dogmatic evolutionism.
– Lamentabili sane exitu condemns the notion that dogmas are mere interpretations of religious experience evolving with time (errors 22, 54, 58–60).
– John XXIII’s programmatic speeches (e.g., the opening of Vatican II, which I recall from well-documented historical records) explicitly rejected the “prophets of doom” and proposed a new relationship with the modern world. This is not conjecture; it is in the official transcripts.
– The same hand that signs Virginis Immaculatae is the hand that prepares this evolutionist, conciliatory posture, condemned a priori by Pius X.
– Therefore invoking the Immaculate under such a hand is a contradiction: she represents the dogma immune from all stain of doctrinal mutation.
2. Against religious indifferentism and liberalism.
– Pius IX teaches that it is an error to say that:
– Any religion suffices for salvation (16),
– Protestantism is another form of the same religion (18),
– The State must be separated from the Church (55),
– The Pope can reconcile with liberalism (80).
– Vatican II and its subsequent application—prepared and launched by John XXIII—practically enshrine what previous popes condemned, especially in Dignitatis Humanae and the ecumenical praxis.
– A Marian act that does not reaffirm the exclusive, absolute claims of the Catholic Church and the Social Kingship of Christ, in a context rushing toward liberalism, participates in an implicit betrayal by omission.
3. Against Modernist manipulation of symbols.
– St. Pius X in Pascendi unmasks the Modernist as one who:
– Speaks like a Catholic in devotions,
– Thinks like a relativist in doctrine,
– Acts like a revolutionary in discipline.
– Virginis Immaculatae is a prime example of the first element (pious discourse), while historical context reveals the second and third in the broader actions of its signer.
– Thus, the document is theologically bankrupt not because it directly teaches heresy, but because it is instrumentalized to legitimize an authority and a trajectory that culminate in systemic heresy and apostasy.
4. Clarification respecting legitimate authority and judgment
– Authentic judgment of persons in foro externo belongs to the Church. But the integral Catholic must apply the doctrinal principles given by that same pre-1958 Magisterium.
– When one who claims to be Pope inaugurates a line of teaching and governance objectively contradicting the prior, unanimous papal condemnations on religious liberty, ecumenism, and modernism, the conclusion is not a lay usurpation of judgment but a Catholic recognition of incompatibility: *non possumus*.
– The letter’s rigorous juridical language (“irritum et inane si quid secus attentari contigerit”) highlights the contradiction: a power that shows maximal juridical self-awareness in minor Marian acts, while in major matters behaves as if bound by none of its predecessors’ anti-liberal, anti-modernist definitions.
What the Document Does Not Say: The Loudest Accusation
Silence, in such a context, is damning.
– No mention that Mary Immaculate is terror of heresies, vanquisher of all errors, model of unchanging fidelity in doctrine.
– No mention that her patronage over a diocese demands:
– Sound catechesis,
– Preservation of the Most Holy Sacrifice in its propitiatory character,
– Rejection of liturgical and doctrinal innovations.
– No warning against secret societies and masonic sects that Pius IX and Leo XIII exposed as primary enemies pursuing precisely the subversion that the conciliar revolution advances.
– No assertion of the exclusive necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, no call for public recognition of Christ’s Kingship in society as taught in Quas Primas.
The letter thereby presents devotion as if it were separable from doctrinal militancy; as if one can honor the Immaculate without fighting liberalism, modernism, secularism, indifferentism. This abstracted Marianism is spiritually sterile and easily co-opted. It is Marianism defanged.
Such omission is not innocent, given the signer and the imminent council. It is preparation for the sentimental, aesthetic Catholicism of the conciliar sect, where Marian and Eucharistic words are retained while the theology of exclusive truth and kingship is neutralized.
Conclusion: Between the Immaculate and the Abomination
To unmask the bankruptcy here, one must hold two truths simultaneously:
– The Immaculate Conception is a triumphant Catholic dogma, inseparably bound to the anti-liberal, anti-modernist stand of the 19th–early 20th-century papacy.
– The line beginning with John XXIII, through the conciliar revolution, systematically opposed in practice those very condemnations, while maintaining a façade of Marian and devotional continuity.
Therefore:
– This act, Virginis Immaculatae, is not an expression of genuine papal Marian governance in continuity with Pius IX and St. Pius X, but a juridical simulacrum by an authority already ideologically set on reconciling with condemned errors.
– Its use of solemn formulas and Marian devotion is instrumental, seeking to fuse true Catholic piety with adherence to a nascent conciliar system.
– In that sense, it exemplifies the spiritual and theological bankruptcy of post-1958 structures: retaining fragments of Catholic form while evacuating the substance of militant, exclusive, immutable doctrine.
The Immaculate Virgin does not and cannot place her patronage at the service of religious liberty, ecumenism of compromise, evolutionist dogma, or anthropocentric cults. She is, by her very conception, antithesis of modernism. Any structure that invokes her while betraying the doctrinal foundations defined by Pius IX and defended by St. Pius X condemns itself by its own contradictions.
Source:
Virginis Immaculatae, Litterae Apostolicae Beata Maria Virgo Immaculata praecipua caelestis Patrona dioecesis Divinopolitanae constituitur, d. 5 m. Septembris a. 1960, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025