The motu proprio “Ad Suburbicarias Dioeceses” of John XXIII suppresses the canonical right of option for the suburbicarian dioceses (CIC 1917, can. 236 §3), centralizing in his own hands (and those of his successors) the free nomination of Cardinal-Bishops to these historic sees, under the pretext of changed pastoral circumstances and demographic growth in the territories surrounding Rome. In one short page, it encapsulates juridical voluntarism, liturgical-pastoral pretexts, and a quiet demolition of ecclesial symbolism, revealing a mentality not of guardianship but of managerial occupation of what belongs to the Church of all ages.
Centralized Usurpation in the Name of “Pastoral Needs”
John XXIII’s text is brief, apparently “technical,” and therefore all the more revealing. Stripped of pious ornament, its operative content is:
“…abrogatum declaramus praescriptum eiusdem can. 236 § 3, quo ius optionis sancitur; atque nominationem Cardinalium Episcoporum ad Suburbicarias Sedes unice ad Nos et ad Successores Nostros libere pertinere volumus.”
English: “We declare abrogated the prescription of can. 236 § 3, which establishes the right of option; and We wish the nomination of Cardinal-Bishops to the Suburbicarian Sees to belong solely and freely to Us and to Our Successors.”
This is not a neutral adjustment. It is a juridical and symbolic act situated at a decisive moment: on the eve of the conciliar revolution. Under the rhetoric of prudence, it inaugurates a pattern: the concentration of power in a personalist, experimental, and effectively absolutist “pontificate” that prepares the dismantling of the visible constitution of the Church and her Roman center.
Historical Continuity Violated Under a Pastoral Pretext
On the factual level, the motu proprio presents three elements:
– a reference to the special bond of the suburbicarian dioceses with Rome;
– an appeal to “changed conditions” and “increased population”;
– a consultation of Cardinals, followed by the abolition of the right of option.
The alleged chain of reasoning is:
new pastoral conditions → more difficult exercise of pastoral office → need for new norms → suppression of ius optionis → free papal appointment.
This is logically defective.
– The increase of the faithful and complexity of administration could justify:
– auxiliary bishops,
– clearer separation of titular/symbolic roles from effective governance,
– or better delineation of jurisdictional responsibilities.
– It does not logically follow that one must abolish a long-standing canonical mechanism that expressed the collegial-hierarchical structure of the Roman Church under the Primacy, not outside it.
The suburbicarian structure signified:
– the intimate participation of the Cardinal-Bishops in the governance of the Roman Church;
– the visible rootedness of the Primacy in concrete particular Churches around Rome;
– an ordered balance between papal authority and the stable, traditional dignities of the Roman episcopate.
By peremptorily suppressing the *ius optionis* and reserving everything to his own “free” choice, John XXIII:
– weakens tradition-rooted rights within the hierarchy;
– reinforces a juridical voluntarism: what matters is not the inherited canonical form but the present will of the reigning figure;
– transforms symbolic, ecclesiologically dense structures into mere objects of papal administration.
This is the same voluntaristic principle that will later be used to:
– fabricate a new rite of “Mass,”
– distort episcopal consecration and priestly ordination,
– re-engineer dioceses, religious orders, and liturgical law according to sociological programs.
From the perspective of unchanging Catholic doctrine, authority is not arbitrary. *Potestas* is bound to *traditio*. Pius IX, in the Syllabus, rejects the idea that ecclesiastical authority is a sheer product of mutable positive law or subject to the State; by parity of reason, the papal office itself is bound by divine constitution and received tradition, not free to erase venerable structures on managerial whim.
Language of Technocratic Managerialism as Symptom of Apostasy
The rhetoric of this document is cold, bureaucratic, and horizontal:
– “mutatas… rerum condiciones”
– “auctum… incolarum numerum”
– “difficilior Pastoralium munerum exercitatio”
– “magis idonea ratione novisque editis normis prospiceretur”
Nowhere:
– invocation of the *regnum Christi* as the supreme norm of ecclesiastical order;
– mention of the supernatural dignity of these sees;
– reference to the Fathers, the ancient discipline, or canonistic tradition as binding norms;
– appeal to the *salus animarum* in its true sense: salvation from sin, hell, and heresy through the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacraments.
Instead, we find:
– functionalist vocabulary: “new norms,” “more suitable manner,” “changed conditions”;
– a style congruent with modern administration, not with the voice of the Vicar of Christ as taught by pre-1958 papal doctrine.
This silence is not neutral. In Catholic theology, the omission of the supernatural horizon at decision points concerning the structure of the hierarchy is itself a sign of naturalism. St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi unmasks this method: appeal to “history,” “conditions,” “needs” to undermine immutable realities under a thin veneer of technical adaptation.
Here:
– a concrete, venerable canonical structure expressing the Roman ecclesiological tradition is sacrificed to pastoralist jargon.
– the act trains the hierarchy and faithful to accept that what has “always been” can be discarded overnight for prudential slogans, thus predisposing them to accept later, vastly more destructive innovations.
Theological Principle Trampled: The Church Is Not a Laboratory
Integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958 is clear:
– The papacy is the divinely instituted principle of unity and guarantor of *traditio*.
– The Roman Church enjoys a unique primacy, but that primacy is not an arbitrary legislative omnipotence.
– Stability of ecclesiastical structures, especially those bound up with the Roman See and the cardinalate, is a good to be changed only for grave reasons and in continuity with tradition.
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that true peace and order depend on the social and public reign of Christ the King, not on adjusting divine institutions to variable political or demographic factors. The motu proprio, however:
– cites no divine law;
– invokes no Christological kingship as norm;
– does not present the change as protection of the sacral order against secular aggression;
– only adapts to “mutated circumstances” as if circumstances were the sovereign.
This inversion is the seed of post-conciliar apostasy:
– Instead of judging times and structures by the law of Christ, one reshapes ecclesial tradition to fit sociological narratives.
– What is introduced here on a narrow juridical point becomes a model:
– “Changed conditions” will be invoked to justify religious liberty, ecumenism, liturgical deconstruction, and doctrinal relativization.
– The Church is turned, in practice, into a historical project administrated by experts and “pastors,” not the indefectible Mystical Body guarding a received deposit.
This mentality is precisely that condemned by St. Pius X, who anathematized the idea that dogmas and institutions are mere expressions of evolving religious consciousness and pastoral need.
Preparation for the Conciliar Subversion of Hierarchical Structures
On the symptomatic level, this motu proprio is a hinge between Catholic order and conciliar disfigurement.
Key features:
1. Personalist concentration of appointment power:
– By abolishing the *ius optionis*, John XXIII ensures that the suburbicarian titles—and with them a core symbolic element of the Roman episcopate—depend exclusively on his will and that of his “successors.”
– Once this pattern is accepted, the same logic supports:
– appointment of compliant men shaped by modernist theology,
– the muting of any structural resistance to doctrinal corruption within the College of Cardinals.
2. Neutralization of the sacramental-symbolic dimension:
– Historically, suburbicarian sees are not decorative. They testify that the Roman Primacy is rooted in a concrete, local episcopal network, organically united to Peter’s See.
– Turning them into mere honorifics assigned at the unfettered pleasure of a ruler acting as CEO signals that tradition is a portfolio of assets to be shuffled, not a sacred inheritance.
3. Pedagogy of obedience to novelty:
– The text presents the change as obvious and consensual: the cardinals were consulted, most agreed; he decides.
– No serious theological argument; no sense of rupture.
– This trains minds to accept that:
– if the “pope” says it is for pastoral reasons, resistance is “unthinkable.”
– even if something venerable is abolished, the faithful should assume continuity.
This is proto “hermeneutic of continuity”: perform a rupture, describe it in calm canonical Latin, and thereby narcotize conscience. The same method will be deployed for the monstrous new “mass,” the new “sacraments,” and the new ecclesiology of the conciliar sect.
Contradiction with Pre-Conciliar Teaching on Ecclesiastical Rights
Pre-1958 magisterial doctrine, rightly understood, rejects both:
– liberal-statist encroachments upon the Church,
– and arbitrary self-mutilation of ecclesiastical structures in the name of “progress.”
From the Syllabus of Pius IX:
– Condemned is the idea that the Church is not a perfect and free society with her own rights (prop. 19).
– Condemned is the subordination of ecclesiastical order to external notions of liberal progress (e.g., 55, 77–80).
Implicit in these condemnations:
– the sacredness and stability of canonical structures that express the Church’s divine constitution;
– the rejection of viewing hierarchy and dioceses as fluid constructs to be continuously reshaped according to the spirit of the age.
St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi condemns the thesis that:
– dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy are “modes of explanation” arising from historical pressures (cf. condemned propositions 54, 64, 65).
Yet John XXIII’s motu proprio:
– precisely invokes historical and demographic circumstances as sufficient reason to discard a venerable canonical institution at the heart of the Roman Church,
– presents no principled doctrinal boundary that would prevent similar interventions into more fundamental realities.
Thus, while limited in scope, it habituates the Church’s public life to a Modernist premise: that ecclesiastical law and even symbolic-structural elements are plastic materials subordinated to “needs” discerned by reigning managers.
Signs of the Conciliar Sect’s Emerging Ecclesiology
This short document already reflects the ecclesiology that will become explicit in the conciliar and post-conciliar pseudo-magisterium:
1. Ecclesia as sociological organism:
– The justification rests on population growth and administrative burden.
– The supernatural mission (to save souls from eternal damnation through the true Faith and the Unbloody Sacrifice) is absent.
2. Primacy distorted into bureaucratic centralism:
– True papal primacy: *servus servorum Dei* guarding tradition, limited by divine and ecclesial law, exercising authority *ad aedificationem*.
– Here: primacy as the freedom “to dispose,” not primarily to guard; a sovereignty more akin to secular executive power than to the Petrine office as taught and exemplified by earlier true Popes.
3. Prefiguration of the horizontal, “synodal” system:
– Consulting the cardinals as a consultative body in order to justify a pre-decided course corresponds to the later “synodal” manipulation: controlled consultation to rubber-stamp revolutionary decisions.
4. Hidden desacralization:
– Where Catholic Popes, when touching venerable institutions, wrapped their acts in explicit appeals to divine law, Fathers, Councils, and tradition, John XXIII is starkly minimalist.
– The effect is to reduce the spiritual gravitas of structural decisions: if even the suburbicarian sees can be adjusted like departmental portfolios, nothing appears inviolable.
From Juridical Manipulation to Liturgical and Doctrinal Catastrophe
It would be naive to treat “Ad Suburbicarias Dioeceses” as isolated. It stands at the threshold of:
– the calling and orchestration of the pseudo-council;
– the systematic preparation of the College of Cardinals and Curia to accept novelties;
– the progressive replacement of defenders of integral doctrine with men favorable to religious liberty, false ecumenism, and liturgical subversion.
The same logic at work here—unrestricted self-attributed freedom to reshape venerable canonical realities—will undergird:
– the fabrication of the 1968 new rite of episcopal “consecration,” endangering apostolic succession;
– the 1969 new “mass,” where the Most Holy Sacrifice is obscured by a communal meal ideology;
– the subsequent proliferation of pseudo-canonical experiments: national conferences, “collegiality,” “inculturation,” etc.
Once the faithful accept that the head of the structures occupying the Vatican may, invoking perceived needs, revoke what centuries regarded as normative, it becomes easier to sell the lie that:
– all dogmatic formulations,
– all liturgical rites,
– all canonical disciplines
are equally mutable expressions of a living community.
That is Modernism in pure form, condemned unequivocally by St. Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
Silence on Christ the King and the True End of Ecclesiastical Power
The gravest indictment of this motu proprio lies in what it does not say.
No mention:
– that ecclesiastical structures exist for the reign of Christ over society, as Pius XI solemnly taught in Quas Primas;
– that the suburbicarian dioceses, as part of the Roman Church, stand as visible expression of that kingship in and around the Eternal City;
– that the dignity and stability of episcopal sees are ordered to the custody of the true Faith and sacramental life, not to the comfort or strategies of administrators.
By omitting the supernatural telos and speaking merely of “conditions,” “numbers,” “pastoral difficulties,” the text embodies the spirit of secular governance. This is not accidental rhetoric; it is a spiritual orientation:
– Eroding the sense that law in the Church is a participation in divine order.
– Fostering the illusion that institutional tinkering is a primary solution to pastoral challenges, rather than:
– preaching of the full doctrine,
– promotion of penance,
– defense against heresy,
– fidelity to the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments.
Such silence prepares the “conciliar sect,” in which the supernatural is systematically submerged under:
– “human rights,”
– “dialogue,”
– “pluralism,”
– “religious freedom,”
– all condemned in substance by the pre-1958 Magisterium as incompatible with the sole rights of Christ the King and His true Church.
Exposure of the Spiritual Bankruptcy Manifested
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this motu proprio is theologically and spiritually bankrupt for several converging reasons:
– It treats a venerable element of the Roman Church’s hierarchical structure as disposable, without grave doctrinal or moral necessity.
– It adopts the idiom and premises of secular administrative reform instead of expressing a mind steeped in the supernatural, patristic, and canonical tradition.
– It habituates clergy and faithful to accept abrupt changes in fundamental ecclesial symbols on the sole basis of papal will, thus undermining the very notion of tradition as binding.
– It foreshadows and structurally enables the conciliar and post-conciliar devastation: once juridical and symbolic patrimony is relativized, liturgical and doctrinal patrimony follow.
– It offers no confession of Christ’s kingship, no robust reaffirmation of the Church as perfect, sovereign society—as proclaimed in the Syllabus and Quas Primas—but instead appears as a small, quiet concession to a view of the Church as historically malleable organization.
In sum, in one page, John XXIII sets his signature to a principle diametrically opposed to the mind of Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII: the principle that what has been handed down in the Roman Church’s concrete institutional form may be remodeled at will for pastoral convenience. That principle, once accepted, destroys any effective barrier against the conciliar sect’s dogmatic evolutionism, false ecumenism, and sacrilegious liturgical inventions.
The act is therefore not a pious adjustment, but a symptom and instrument of the great apostasy that would shortly manifest itself in the so‑called “Church of the New Advent.” What presents itself as prudent governance is, under the light of pre-1958 Catholic doctrine, the discreet administrative face of rebellion against *traditio* and against the public, juridical, and liturgical reign of Christ the King in His own House.
Source:
Ad Suburbicarias Dioeceses (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025