Programmatic Self-Dissolution: The Roman Synod as Prelude to the Conciliar Revolution
The brief Latin chirograph of John XXIII (16 January 1960) announces the convocation of the “First Synod” of the Diocese of Rome, to be held in the Lateran Basilica on 24 January 1960. It invokes the Holy Ghost, appeals to the example of the Eternal City, and sets three aims: that Catholic faith “revive more and more,” that Christian morals take “salutary growth,” and that the discipline of clergy and people be adapted and strengthened in response to “the needs of our age,” all under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary “Salus Populi Romani” and the Roman patron saints, to be held “by Our authority.”
The Factual Mask: A “Local Synod” as Engine of a Global Subversion
At first glance, the document seems formally unobjectionable: a diocesan synod convoked by the man publicly occupying the Roman See, held in the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, under pious invocations. This exterior decorum is precisely its danger. Under the thin veil of solemn Latin, we find the paradigmatic mechanism of the conciliar revolution: using structures that appear Catholic in order to inject principles that destroy Catholic faith, morals, and discipline from within.
Key factual and contextual points (all verifiable from pre-1958 sources and historical record):
– A valid diocesan synod, according to the constant discipline codified in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (can. 356–362), exists to:
– Confirm and apply existing universal and particular law.
– Correct abuses, strengthen clerical discipline, and defend doctrine.
– Operate strictly within the framework of immutable dogma and established sacramental discipline.
– Contrary to this, the Roman Synod of 1960—convoked by John XXIII and culminating in acts he promulgated—served as:
– A laboratory for the slogans later exploded at Vatican II: “aggiornamento,” adaptation to “today’s needs,” attenuation of doctrinal clarity, and softening of disciplinary rigor.
– A symbolic gesture to signal that even Rome, traditionally the firm rock of discipline, would submit to the new orientation.
The chirograph’s sweet brevity hides its true role: it is the formal starting pistol for the Roman application of a program that would soon culminate in the pseudo-council and the systematic demolition of Catholic public order. The essential lie is this: cloaking the intention to adapt the Church to the world under the language of strengthening faith and morals.
Linguistic Alibi: Pious Latin as a Cloak for Adaptationism
The wording must be dissected with precision, for its omissions and euphemisms betray the spirit animating it.
The key phrases:
“ut … catholica fides in aliorum etiam exemplum magis magisque revirescat” — “that the Catholic faith, also as an example for others, may revive more and more.”
“ut christiani mores salutare incrementum capiant” — “that Christian morals may gain a salutary increase.”
“utque cleri populique disciplina aptius nostrae huius aetatis necessitatibus respondeat ac firmiter roboretur” — “and that the discipline of clergy and people may more suitably respond to the needs of our age and be firmly strengthened.”
The lethal insertion is clear: “aptius nostrae huius aetatis necessitatibus respondeat”. The criterion introduced is not the immutable divine law, not the *regula fidei*, not the solemn condemnations of modern errors, but the alleged “needs of our age.” This is the exact conceptual reversal condemned repeatedly before 1958:
– Pius IX in the *Syllabus Errorum* rejected the subordination of the Church to the “civil power,” the idea that modern “progress” and liberal principles set the standard for ecclesiastical life (errors 19, 39–41, 55, 77–80). The chirograph’s orientation toward “the needs of our age” is functionally congruent with those condemned tendencies, even if cloaked in devout phrasing.
– St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane* and *Pascendi* condemned the notion that ecclesiastical institutions and discipline evolve primarily in response to historical circumstances, as if the Church were an organism of modern consciousness rather than the divinely constituted *societas perfecta*. Here, the Roman Synod is explicitly framed as updating discipline to contemporary exigencies—exactly the modernist spirit he anathematized.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* insists that true peace and order come only from the public and private recognition of the kingship of Christ, not from adapting the supernatural order to secular expectations. Yet this chirograph is silent on the public kingship of Christ over Rome and Italy and speaks instead in vague, pastoral, adaptable terms.
The rhetoric is:
– Polite.
– Sterilely bureaucratic.
– Devout in externals.
– Completely devoid of precise doctrinal content.
This is modernism’s habitual disguise. *Dolus bonus* in the juridical sense is intolerable in sacred things; here we face *dolus malus*: the deliberate use of Catholic forms to introduce non-Catholic criteria.
Grave Theological Omissions: Silence More Accusatory than Words
Measured against integral Catholic teaching prior to 1958, the most damning element of this text is not what it says, but what it carefully avoids saying. Silence here is not neutral; it is programmatic.
1. No mention of the objective enemies of the Church
– No warning against:
– Liberalism and laicism condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– Modernism, which St. Pius X, in *Pascendi* and *Lamentabili sane*, declared “the synthesis of all heresies.”
– Freemasonry and secret societies, which pre-1958 popes explicitly indicated as the organized assault engine against the Church (cf. Pius IX’s explicit attribution of persecutions to masonic sects in the Syllabus-related texts).
– Rome is presented as if in a doctrinal vacuum, as though the schooled enemy were no longer at the gates or within the walls. This is precisely contrary to the constant pre-conciliar vigilance and matches the tactic noted in the [FILE: False Fatima Apparitions]: diversion away from the true source of apostasy—modernism in the hierarchy—toward sterile, sociological adjustments.
2. No mention of the state of grace, the Four Last Things, or sacramental life as combat
– A true synodal call, faithful to Catholic tradition, would:
– Call clergy and faithful to penance, confession, reparation, and return to the Most Holy Sacrifice as propitiatory for sins.
– Recall the terror and justice of God, judgment, hell, and the necessity of persevering in grace.
– Here:
– “Christian morals” and “discipline” are treated as bureaucratic categories to be optimized for “our age.”
– The supernatural is reduced to a decorative invocation at the start; the text does not once articulate concrete supernatural means or doctrinal clarity as the basis for reform.
– This radical omission fits the naturalistic drift condemned by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, where he exposes secularism and laicism as the plague that denies Christ’s kingship in social life. The chirograph speaks about “example” for others but not about the obligation of nations and rulers in Rome to submit publicly to Christ the King.
3. No assertion of the immutable character of doctrine and discipline
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII unanimously insist that:
– The Church’s dogma is immutable.
– Essential structures of discipline (safeguarding the sacraments, clerical state, religious life) cannot be reshaped by worldly ideology.
– The chirograph:
– Replaces this with adaptive language: discipline must “more suitably respond” to current needs.
– Suggests not the perennial application of unchanging norms, but revision in function of the epoch.
This is the classic modernist inversion: *sentire cum mundo* instead of *sentire cum Ecclesia*.
Subtle Usurpation: The Roman See as Instrument of the Neo-Church
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, another decisive element must be underlined: the subject who speaks.
The text bears the name “IOANNES PP. XXIII,” dating from 1960, within the series of acts that:
– Precede and prepare the convocation of the so‑called Vatican II.
– Introduce the pastoral and aggiornamento vocabulary systematically condemned by earlier magisterium when used as a hermeneutic of rupture.
– Lead to the post-1960 construction of a *conciliar sect* that supplants Catholic identity with humanistic, ecumenist, and naturalistic principles.
Given the doctrinal principles synthesized in the [FILE: Defense of Sedevacantism]:
– *A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church.* As Bellarmine, Billot, and the tradition teach, a man who publicly adheres to doctrines incompatible with defined dogma cannot be a true pope, for *qui extra Ecclesiam est, caput eius esse non potest* (“he who is outside the Church cannot be its head”).
– The conciliar and post-conciliar deviations—religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the cult of man, liturgical devastation—confirm the presence of a systemic apostasy incompatible with the papal office as defined by Vatican I (which bound the Roman Pontiff to safeguard, not innovate upon, the deposit of faith).
Within that framework, this chirograph is not a neutral legal act of a true Pastor, but:
– A juridical mask of an emerging *paramasonic structure*.
– A strategic step: to make the Diocese of Rome itself the pilot ground of adaptation, so that the future *neo-church* can claim Roman continuity while betraying Roman doctrine.
The Lateran, cathedral of the true Popes, is thus placed at the service of a synod whose methodological premise—adaptation to the age’s needs—is the same premise condemned by St. Pius X as the essence of modernism.
Adaptationism Against Quas Primas: Denial of Christ’s Social Kingship
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas* (1925), teaches clearly:
– Peace and order will not be restored until both individuals and states recognize and submit to the reign of Christ.
– The Church must publicly condemn secular apostasy and insist that civil laws conform to divine law.
– The Feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely as a remedy against laicism, relativism, and the dethronement of Our Lord in public life.
Measured against this:
– The chirograph’s reference to “example for others” in Rome is emptied of doctrinal content.
– There is no call to re-establish the full public reign of Christ over Italian society, the laws of the State, or international life.
– There is no denunciation of the liberal, Masonic, and anti-clerical forces long identified by the popes as enemies.
– Instead:
– “Needs of our age” become an implicit interpretive key.
– The Church in Rome appears as one actor among many, adjusting its internal discipline so as to appear more “relevant,” rather than as the divinely founded authority claiming obedience from nations.
This is a practical negation of *Quas Primas*, even while avoiding overt contradiction in words. It is the method of the modernists: never formally deny, but systematically omit and neutralize.
The Abuse of Marian and Apostolic Patronage as Spiritual Cosmetics
The chirograph invokes:
– The Blessed Virgin Mary under the title “Salus Populi Romani.”
– St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist.
– Saints Peter and Paul and the patrons of the City.
This should signal militant fidelity to:
– The baptismal and penitential preaching of the Baptist.
– The divine Sonship of Christ and the anti-heresy witness of John.
– Peter’s confession of the divinity of Christ and his pastoral authority.
– Paul’s anathema against any perversion of the Gospel (Gal 1:8–9).
Yet the content of the text:
– Includes no reaffirmation of the anathemas.
– No restatement of the exclusive salvific claim of the Catholic Church.
– No call to break with the world’s anti-Christian principles.
The holy names are used as rhetorical ornament to sanctify a project of adaptation. This instrumentalisation of the saints is not piety; it is spiritual camouflage. Rome’s martyrs are invoked to preside over a process whose fruits would be the betrayal of their blood: ecumenism with heretics, religious liberty indifferent to truth, and a mutilated liturgy.
Discipline Bent Toward the World: From Synodal Language to Ecclesial Decomposition
When the chirograph demands a discipline that “more suitably responds to the needs of our age,” we must ask: which “needs” concretely?
In the immediate historical context, we see the emerging pattern:
– Pressure to relax clerical discipline and doctrinal precision in order to align the clergy with democratic, secular, and psycho-social expectations.
– Movement toward a parliamentarized, “synodal” ecclesiology, democratizing structures and eroding the God-given hierarchical constitution of the Church as defined by Trent and Vatican I.
– Preparation for liturgical transformation: the very Roman diocese becomes the stage on which new, pastoral, vernacular, “participatory” tendencies are tested, ultimately leading to the destruction of the Roman Rite and its replacement with a fabricated rite that obscures the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of the Most Holy Sacrifice.
St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*, explicitly condemns:
– The idea that discipline and worship should be reconstructed to fit the “needs” and “consciousness” of modern man.
– The subordination of ecclesiastical forms to historical relativism.
The chirograph stands in that condemned trajectory. It is a hinge text between the era of doctrinal clarity and the triumph of the “new advent” ideology.
Systemic Symptom: Consistency with the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Apostasy
This small document must be read not as an isolated administrative notice, but as a symptom of a continuous line that:
1. Embraces the categories of:
– “Update,” adaptation, pastoral change.
– Attention to the age rather than condemnation of its errors.
2. Leads directly to:
– The so-called Vatican II with its promotion of religious liberty and ecumenism against the Syllabus and *Quas Primas*.
– The emergence of a *neo-church* that:
– Levels Catholic truth with heresy and infidelity.
– Cultivates a “cult of man.”
– Replaces the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary with communal self-celebration.
3. Is anchored in:
– The re-framing of Roman diocesan life away from the strict guardianship of the deposit to experimental “pastoral” projects.
Seen in this continuum, the chirograph’s apparently innocuous language becomes intelligible as the seed of self-destruction. *Principium mutationis* lies precisely in such small, ideologically charged adjustments of vocabulary, which prepare souls to accept later, more explicit betrayals.
Integral Catholic Response: Rejection of the Adaptation Principle and Fidelity to Perennial Doctrine
From the unchanging doctrine before 1958, the proper judgment of the principles embodied here is unambiguous:
– The Church’s faith, morals, and essential discipline do not derive their norm from the “needs of our age,” but from divine revelation and right reason:
– *Lex aeterna* (eternal law) and *lex evangelica* govern; human and historical “needs” must submit, not the reverse.
– The Diocese of Rome, by divine constitution, is called to be:
– Norm of orthodoxy, not laboratory of innovation.
– Center of resistance to modern errors, not pilot project for their introduction.
– Any “synod” whose operative principle is adaptation to an age steeped in apostasy is inherently suspect:
– If it seeks to conform structures of sanctification and teaching to the world’s expectations, it is an abuse of ecclesiastical authority.
– If it omits clear denunciation of modernism and liberalism, it tacitly cooperates with them.
Therefore:
– The language and intent manifested in this chirograph, read in light of the subsequent conciliar and post-conciliar catastrophe, must be recognized as part of the architecture of the *conciliar sect*, not as a faithful development of Catholic tradition.
– The only Catholic stance is:
– To reject the adaptationist, world-pleasing presuppositions.
– To hold fast to the condemnations of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– To adhere to the immemorial Roman doctrine, liturgy, and discipline as the authentic expression of the Church founded by Christ, independent of the usurping neo-structures that dress their revolution in borrowed Latin.
In sum, this apparently pious convocation text is an early juridical veil for the programmatic deconstruction of the Roman bastion. Under the invocation of the Holy Ghost and the saints, it introduces the poisoned criterion of “the needs of our age,” which, once accepted, legitimizes every subsequent betrayal: doctrinal dilution, moral laxity, liturgical profanation, and the enthronement of man where Christ the King alone must reign.
Source:
Chirographum quo prima Romanae Dioecesis Synodus celebranda indicitur (die XXIV m. Ianuarii A. D. MCMLX) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025