The presented Latin text is an April 6, 1959 apostolic constitution “Culiacanensis,” attributed to John XXIII, by which a collegiate chapter of canons is erected at the cathedral of Culiacán, Mexico. It details the number and offices of canons, their juridical framework under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, norms for stipends and endowments, liturgical obligations on certain feasts, and precise prescriptions for choir and extra-choir dress, delegating execution to the apostolic delegate and asserting full canonical force of the act under Roman authority. In reality, this juridically meticulous document is a pious-looking smokescreen: a consolatory ornament of “continuity” promulgated by a man who had already set in motion the conciliar revolution that would devastate precisely the hierarchical, liturgical, and canonical order he pretends here to defend.
Ornamenting the Future Ruins: The Culiacanensis Constitution as Conciliar Sleight of Hand
Factual Continuity as Strategic Camouflage for Impending Subversion
On the factual level, “Culiacanensis” appears impeccably traditional:
– It:
– Erects a chapter of canons in the cathedral of Culiacán.
– Establishes six canons and two prebendaries; specifies dignities: Archdeacon, Canon Theologian, Canon Penitentiary in accord with can. 398 §1 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law.
– Assigns the appointment of dignities to the Roman See, distribution of other benefices according to law.
– Regulates that some offices can be joined to already beneficed priests.
– Submits the chapter’s rights and duties to the 1917 Code.
– Prescribes minimal obligations: capitular liturgical participation on a short list of major feasts.
– Provides detailed choir and extra-choir vesture (violet trimmings, rochet, mozzetta, Pian dress, etc.).
– Entrusts execution to the apostolic delegate and grants the usual derogations, nullifying any contrary provisions.
In isolation, such a constitution could be read as a laudable application of perennial Catholic discipline: strengthening the cathedral chapter as the bishop’s senate, promoting solemn liturgical worship, concretely embodying that the diocesan church is ordered, hierarchical, and God-centered.
However, this interpretation collapses once the author is identified: the same John XXIII who, within months, convokes the Second Vatican Council, raises to authority the very theologians condemned by Pius X, and initiates the demolition of the pre-1958 order. We are not here dealing with innocent continuity, but with a calculated *aesthetics of continuity* masking the doctrinal and liturgical breach to come.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this document is not refuted because it upholds canonical chapters, but because it uses genuine elements of Tradition as a legitimizing façade for a usurper whose program stands in objective rupture with the constant Magisterium, notably:
– The anti-modernist condemnations of Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors) which reject religious indifferentism, liberalism, laicism, and reconciliation with “modern civilization.”
– The doctrinal anti-modernist bulwark of Pius X (Lamentabili, Pascendi), which John XXIII effectively neutralizes by rehabilitating their adversaries.
– The kingship of Christ and the public rights of the true religion defended by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, contradicted by the conciliar cult of “religious liberty” and ecumenism.
Thus the primary factual deceit: a juridically orthodox act emitted by a man whose larger agenda systematically dismembers the very theological and canonical body he momentarily adorns. Simulatio iuris (simulation of law) functions here as a tool of revolution: retain the dress, gut the doctrine.
The Smooth Latin of Institutional Piety as Mask for Doctrinal Treason
On the linguistic level, “Culiacanensis” is crafted in the refined, impersonal, authoritative Latin of pre-conciliar Roman decrees. That style, in itself noble, becomes here an instrument of disorientation.
Key features:
– The opening appeals to “Ex vetusto maiorum instituto” – “From the ancient custom of our forefathers” – invoking the weight of tradition.
– It speaks of selecting “lectissimam virorum manum” – “a most select group of men” – to enhance divine worship and assist the bishop.
– It repeatedly invokes “de summa Nostra potestate” – “by Our supreme power” – and insists that contrary norms are null, and that disobedience incurs canonical penalties.
– It expends meticulous care on the sartorial details of choir habit, mozzetta colors, trimmings, the Pian dress, and juridical formalities of execution and documentary transcription.
Superficially, the rhetoric could be taken as an exemplar of Roman seriousness. Yet precisely this grave and decorous tone, wed to a name that inaugurated the conciliar apostasy, operates as a linguistic anodyne: it lulls the unwary into assuming identity between the pre-1958 papal magisterium and the conciliar program.
The rhetoric is strategically selective:
– It emphatically safeguards minor canonical and ceremonial details.
– It is entirely silent about:
– The contemporary war of Freemasonry and secular power against the Church (denounced repeatedly by Pius IX and Leo XIII).
– The poison of Modernism, which Pius X called the “synthesis of all heresies” and rigorously crushed through Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– The absolute necessity that such structures serve the militant defense of true doctrine against liberal, ecumenical infiltration.
Thus the language produces an illusion: Roman firmness, uninterrupted tradition, hierarchical dignity – precisely when the same signatory is preparing to overturn the doctrinal ramparts his predecessors had raised.
Silentium theologicum here is not innocent. The weighty legal phrases and baroque dress prescriptions function as liturgical cosmetics covering the carcinoma of Modernism. The document’s tone betrays what it never states: that for the new regime, Tradition has been reduced to manageable aesthetics, not binding dogmatic content.
Doctrinal Criteria: When a Traditional Form Serves a Revolutionary End
At the theological level, “Culiacanensis” must be judged according to the immutable doctrine codified before 1958, not by the counterfeit hermeneutic of continuity later concocted by the conciliar sect.
Three points are decisive.
1. Authority is contingent upon Catholic faith, not vice versa.
Integral Catholic theology (expressed by St. Robert Bellarmine and others) holds that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church, because one who is not a member cannot be the head. The provided Defence of Sedevacantism file accurately recalls this principle:
– A manifest heretic loses office *ipso facto*; jurisdiction does not adhere to one separated from the Church.
– Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code recognizes tacit resignation by public defection from the faith.
Even before the most spectacular post-conciliar apostasies, the program of John XXIII – culminating in a council that enshrines condemned propositions (religious liberty, collegiality against papal monarchy in its proper sense, ecumenism relativizing the unique truth of the Catholic Church) – must be read as incompatible with the intransigent teaching of:
– Pius IX’s Syllabus, especially:
– Condemnation of religious indifferentism (15–18),
– Rejection of State-Church separation as an ideal (55),
– Condemnation of liberalism and reconciliation with “modern civilization” understood as emancipation from Christ (80).
– Pius X’s condemnation of doctrinal evolution and “living tradition” in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– Pius XI’s Quas Primas, asserting that true peace is impossible without the public, social reign of Christ the King and the submission of states to His law.
“Culiacanensis” never contradicts these explicitly; it does something more insidious: it quietly presupposes that the one signing may rearrange the visible order of the Church while covertly repudiating the anti-modernist line. A juridical act that is materially traditional but formally issued by an emerging revolutionary power becomes the Trojan horse by which the faithful are taught to obey a structure that will soon legislate error.
2. Instrumentalization of legitimate institutions.
Cathedral chapters, canonical dignities, and choir dress are legitimate elements of ecclesial life. Historically, they:
– Assist the bishop in governance.
– Guarantee solemnity of the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– Guard orthodoxy through the presence of a Canon Theologian and Canon Penitentiary.
But once the “Church of the New Advent” emerges—doctrinally mutated after the council—such chapters either:
– Are emptied, marginalized, or abolished.
– Or are left as picturesque survivals, silently serving a neo-church that publicly promotes ecumenism, false religious liberty, and a man-centered liturgy, in open tension with pre-1958 magisterium.
Thus, the erection of the Culiacán chapter in 1959 must be read as part of a deceptive continuum:
– Use authentic juridical categories and aesthetics to reassure the faithful.
– Then, under the same nominal authority, corrupt doctrine and worship.
– Retain or selectively display traditional forms to create optical continuity, even while their theological soul has been ejected.
This is precisely what Pius X warned against: the Modernist who stays inside ecclesiastical structures, preserving appearances while subverting meanings. “Culiacanensis” is not heretical in its text; it is weaponized ambiguity in its context.
3. The grave omission of the militant, anti-modernist purpose of ecclesiastical structures.
In line with Quas Primas, every ecclesiastical institution must serve:
– The public proclamation of Christ’s kingship.
– The subordination of temporal realities to divine law.
– The defense against laicism, indifferentism, and Masonic subversion condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
Yet in this constitution:
– There is not a single word linking the chapter’s institution to:
– Defense of the true faith against widespread indifferentism in Mexico.
– Resistance to Masonic and liberal currents denounced by previous popes.
– The catechetical combat against modernist exegesis and doctrinal relativism.
– The Canon Theologian is mentioned purely as a titular office, not as guardian of orthodoxy in the sense of Pascendi’s anti-modernist oath.
The omission is devastating. It reveals a concept of the chapter as a decorative, ceremonial organ serving a neutralized cathedral life, not as a fighting senate of the bishop for the integral faith.
Silentium de fide militante—silence about the Church’s real war against heresy—is, in such a context, a betrayal. Especially in 1959, after decades of encyclicals exposing Freemasonry, liberalism, socialism, and modernism, a document multiplying details on violet trimmings but saying nothing about guarding the deposit of faith is theologically symptomatic.
From Legal Formalism to the Conciliar Sect: The Predictable Fruit of an Uncorrected Revolution
Symptomatically, “Culiacanensis” illustrates how the conciliar sect advances:
– It initially acts in continuity with canonical formalism.
– It erects structures that appear fully integrated into the pre-conciliar legal and liturgical order.
– It thereby demands obedience and habituates clergy and laity to accept its acts as those of the true Roman Pontiff.
– Once this obedience is secured, the same authority:
– Convenes a council that contradicts prior magisterial condemnations (on religious liberty and ecumenism).
– Reforms the liturgy, replacing the Unbloody Sacrifice’s propitiatory clarity with a meal-centered assembly rite.
– Dilutes episcopal and canonical structures into bureaucratic “conferences” and commissions aligned with secular ideologies.
– Elevates “dialogue,” “human rights,” and “religious liberty” above the duties of states and individuals to Christ the King.
In this process:
– Chapters such as that of Culiacán either:
– Become docile organs of the new ecumenical, anthropocentric “pastoral” direction.
– Or are practically irrelevant, while real power moves into modernist episcopal conferences and Vatican dicasteries operating in the orbit of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
“Culiacanensis” thus functions as a photographic negative of the coming apostasy:
– Where the document stresses juridical obedience to Rome, the future conciliar regime demands that obedience be weaponized to accept novelties condemned by previous popes.
– Where it prescribes liturgical solemnity, the later revolution tears apart the very theological foundations that gave solemnity its meaning.
– Where it uses law to protect ecclesiastical order, the succeeding system uses law to punish fidelity to the integral Catholic faith and to promote syncretism and sacrilege.
This is not accidental. It is the logic of Modernism exposed by Pius X: the revolution loves to clothe itself in traditional formulas until it can invert their content.
Naturalistic Neutrality and the Absence of Eschatological Gravity
A final decisive element: the document’s total silence regarding supernatural stakes.
An apostolic constitution erecting a chapter at the end of the age of Christendom, in a world devoured by laicism, communism, moral dissolution, and doctrinal confusion, ought—if emanating from the true Roman Pontiff—to emphasize:
– The salvation of souls (*salus animarum suprema lex*).
– The Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiation for sins.
– The preaching of sound doctrine against modern errors.
– The obligation of public worship of the true God, against secular neutralism.
– The judgment of Christ, the danger of hell, the need for bishops and canons to guard the flock against wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Instead, “Culiacanensis” is content with:
– Institutional design.
– Vesture.
– Processual validity clauses.
– Penalties only in terms of disobeying the document itself, not for betraying the faith it supposedly serves.
This reduction to an almost purely immanent, bureaucratic horizon is a symptom of the mentality soon codified by the conciliar sect: the Church as administrative and ceremonial organism integrated into an egalitarian, pluralist, “dialogical” world.
Ubi deest eschaton, intrat humanismus naturalisticus: where eschatological seriousness is absent, naturalistic humanism occupies the vacuum. Even in a seemingly “pious” decree, the lack of overtly supernatural and anti-modernist orientation betrays a shift: from the Church Militant to a church-administration adjusting itself to the world it is called to convert and judge.
Conclusion: Legal Piety in the Service of a Counterfeit Ecclesial Project
“Culiacanensis” in itself, read as a juridical text, does not promulgate doctrinal error. It describes a legitimate type of canonical structure, rooted in centuries of Catholic practice. Yet this is precisely why it is dangerous when uncritically received: it is used as evidence that John XXIII was simply continuing tradition, thereby legitimizing the entire line of conciliar usurpers who would dissolve the pre-1958 Catholic order while hiding behind selected survivals of its shell.
From the standpoint of unchanging Catholic doctrine:
– Any act that serves, directly or indirectly, to consolidate obedience to a regime that will promote condemned principles (religious liberty understood as a right to public false worship, ecumenism as relativization of truth, modernization of dogma by “living tradition”) becomes objectively complicit in that revolution.
– The solemn, Latinate, canonically precise style of “Culiacanensis” is no guarantee of truth; Modernism habitually nests in structures it did not create, to empty them from within.
– The absence of any militant anti-modernist, Christ-the-King-centered theological orientation, in 1959 of all times, is a damning sign of the spiritual myopia—or calculated duplicity—of the author.
What is required today is not nostalgic admiration for such documents as “evidence” of harmony between the conciliar sect and the pre-1958 Church, but a lucid discernment:
– to distinguish legitimate institutions and laws as they existed in the true Church;
– from their instrumentalization by those who used them as camouflage while erecting the “Church of the New Advent,” which Quas Primas, the Syllabus, and Lamentabili already implicitly condemn by their very doctrinal substance.
The Collegiate Chapter of Culiacán, like many pre-conciliar structures, was erected on paper under an authority that would soon betray the very principles that justify such institutions. The faithful must not be deceived by the survival of these external forms; they must return to the integral Catholic faith, the pre-1958 magisterium, and the true sacramental and hierarchical life that cannot coexist with modernist apostasy, regardless of how elegantly it is written in Latin or clothed in violet-trimmed lace.
Source:
Culiacanensis – Constitutio Apostolica in Cathedrali Ecclesia Culiacanensi Canonicorum Collegium constituitur, d. 6 m. Aprilis 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025