The constitution attributed to John XXIII under the title “MINDONIENSIS (FERROLENSIS)” decrees two institutional changes: it joins the title “Ferrolensis” to the diocese of Mondoñedo, and it elevates the church of St. Julian in Ferrol to the rank of concathedral, allowing the diocesan ordinary to reside there as needed. Behind this apparently technical rearrangement stands the typical juridical facade of the conciliar revolution: a pseudo-pontifical act that, while outwardly conservative and canonical in form, proceeds from an authority already separated from the integral Catholic Magisterium and instrumentalizes ecclesiastical structures for a new religion.
Canonical Cosmetics in the Service of a Counterfeit Authority
The text presents itself as a solemn Constitutio Apostolica of John XXIII, dated 9 March 1959, concerning the diocese of Mondoñedo in Spain. Its key provisions, in translation and essence, are:
– The name “Ferrolensis” is joined to the diocese of Mondoñedo, so that it is henceforth designated “Mindoniensis-Ferrolensis.”
– The principal church of Ferrol (St. Julian) is raised to the dignity of a concathedral, with full canonical rights for canons and beneficiaries.
– The diocesan “bishop” is granted the faculty to reside in Ferrol for the administration of diocesan affairs.
– The Apostolic Nuncio Hildebrando Antoniutti (or his delegate) is tasked with execution and notification.
– The text declares itself perpetually valid, abrogating contrary prescriptions and threatening penalties for those who disregard it.
On a merely descriptive level, nothing here proclaims an explicit doctrinal novelty. But that is precisely the danger: the revolution clothes itself in traditional canonical language, using the venerable forms of papal authority to consolidate an already emergent, anti-traditional project. This act is one more stone in the façade behind which the new, anthropocentric, ecumenical, state-serving “Church of the New Advent” installs itself in the very juridical framework once used by true Popes.
Factual Level: Harmless Administration or Structural Capture?
At first glance, the document performs standard pre-1958-style ecclesiastical administration:
– it follows diplomatic conventions with Spain (mentioning the 1953 concordat),
– it recognizes demographic and civic growth in Ferrol,
– it adapts diocesan structures to “the needs of the times.”
Yet several elements expose its deeper character when read in light of unchanging doctrine:
1. The author is John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar upheaval:
– His later convocation of Vatican II, his program of “aggiornamento,” and his notorious opening speech praising the “prophets of doom” only to reject them, mark a deliberate break with the defensive, anti-liberal posture solemnly articulated by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– From the perspective of the perennial teaching reaffirmed in the Syllabus of Errors and in Lamentabili and Pascendi, his pontificate inaugurates not continuity, but rupture.
2. The timing: March 1959, between his announcement of the Council (January 1959) and its opening:
– This places the text squarely inside the initial phase of the conciliar project, where juridical and symbolic gestures served to consolidate obedience to a man preparing to overturn the entire doctrinal stance of the Church regarding the modern world.
– Routine acts function here as a claim: “I am the Pope; the Apostolic authority you trusted before 1958 is now mine; therefore, obey everything that will follow.”
3. The use of traditional legal formulas (“ad perpetuam rei memoriam,” threats of canonical penalties, abrogation of contrary norms) is formally correct but materially fraudulent:
– The very form that once defended the flock is turned into a mechanism to maintain psychological continuity while the substance of the Faith is prepared for subversion.
Thus, factually, the text is not “neutral.” It is an assertion of jurisdiction by one whose subsequent deeds and teachings—toleration and promotion of Modernist currents, convening a council that enshrined condemned principles—reveal incompatibility with the Catholic papacy as understood, for example, by St. Robert Bellarmine and the classical canonists: a manifest promoter of error cannot be the guarantor of divine tradition.
Linguistic Level: Traditional Rhetoric Masking a New Ecclesiology
The language is deliberately classical. It invokes:
– *regendum populum christianum* (to govern the Christian people),
– *incommutabili veritate* (with unchangeable truth),
– concern for *christifidelium* advantages in religion,
– appeals to the concordat, nunciature, and canonical decorum.
This rhetoric suggests continuity with the older papal style. Yet, when measured against the subsequent program of the same man, this stylistic adherence itself becomes evidence of duplicity.
Key features:
1. Bureaucratic-functional tone:
– The Church is presented institutionally as an adjustable administrative organism, molded to sociopolitical conditions (“cum temporum condiciones id exigunt”), with no mention of the supernatural end—salvation of souls, defense of the Faith, combat against error.
– This silence is not accidental. In integral Catholic language, structural changes are habitually linked to the ultimate end: *salus animarum suprema lex* (the salvation of souls is the supreme law). Here, such explicit supernatural reference is conspicuously absent.
2. Sacral solemnity without supernatural content:
– The text threatens penalties for non-compliance with a purely nominal-structural measure while utterly ignoring the dominant spiritual threats of the age: atheistic communism, Masonic infiltration, rampant liberalism, heresy in seminaries and universities.
– This disproportion betrays an institutionalist mentality: more zeal in defending administrative decrees than in defending dogma.
3. Implicit flattery of secular-political context:
– Reference to Ferrol del Caudillo (official name under Franco) and to the 1953 concordat underscores an opportunistic harmony with temporal power, but without reiterating, as Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, the absolute Kingship of Christ over states or the duty of governments to submit to His law.
– Such silence opens the way to later conciliar abandonment of confessional states and embrace of religious freedom condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, 77–80).
The rhetoric functions anesthetically: it reassures clergy and laity that “nothing has changed” while the architect of the greatest doctrinal and liturgical devastation in history consolidates recognition as legitimate Pope through apparently innocuous acts.
Theological Level: The Void Where the Supernatural Should Stand
Measured by the norm of pre-1958 Magisterium (which remains the only legitimate criterion), this constitution’s deepest problem is its theological emptiness and its use as an act of jurisdiction by a man whose subsequent actions contradict the Catholic understanding of the papacy.
Key theological points:
1. Authority and manifest heresy:
– Classical doctrine (St. Robert Bellarmine, as cited in the pre-1958 theological tradition): *manifestus haereticus* cannot be head of the Church, for he is no member of it; he falls from office *ipso facto*.
– Canon 188.4 (1917 Code) confirms that public defection from the faith vacates office automatically.
– By convening and promoting a council that would enshrine religious liberty, collegiality, false ecumenism, and openness to condemned errors, John XXIII set himself on a collision course with the Syllabus and with Lamentabili/Pascendi. This reveals that the apparent continuity of his administrative acts masks a radical disjunction.
2. The end of ecclesiastical structures:
– The constitution claims to act for the “greater advantage of religion” in the diocese.
– However, *true* Catholic doctrine, as reaffirmed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, teaches that all ecclesiastical order must explicitly serve the recognition of Christ’s social Kingship and the defense of revealed truth.
– The text does not once recall:
– the necessity of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as propitiation,
– the urgency of preserving the integrity of doctrine,
– the fight against liberalism, socialism, secret societies, and Modernism as mandated by Pius IX and St. Pius X,
– the Four Last Things or the state of grace of the faithful.
– This persistent silence on the supernatural end, combined with bureaucratic fixation on external order, is a hallmark of the Modernist, naturalistic drift condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi*: reducing the Church to an organism among others, adjusting to historical conditions.
3. Abuse of papal forms:
– The document claims perpetual validity and threatens penalties for any who “despise or in any way reject” these decrees, presenting disobedience as a grave offense against the “Supreme Pontiff.”
– But if the alleged “Supreme Pontiff” simultaneously—or soon thereafter—promotes principles irreconcilable with prior infallible teaching, then such demands for submission are theologically void.
– The attempt to bind consciences by acts of jurisdiction while undermining the doctrinal foundation of that jurisdiction exemplifies the *abomination of desolation* in the holy place: forms of authority without the substance of the Faith.
In sum, the constitution is not condemned because of its specific administrative content, but because it is a juridical operation of a structure already deviating toward Modernism, employing the aura of Catholic authority to secure obedience for a counterfeit magisterium.
Symptomatic Level: A Micro-Sign of the Conciliar Sect’s Strategy
This brief document, viewed in context, is symptomatic of the broader strategy of the conciliar sect:
1. Psychological continuity:
– Maintain Latin, the titles “Servus servorum Dei,” the structure of apostolic constitutions, references to concordats and nuncios.
– Through such gestures, soften resistance to the coming doctrinal inversion. The faithful see the same external forms and assume the same faith persists.
2. Territorial and symbolic consolidation:
– Strategic elevation of civic centers and temples strengthens local prestige and tightens the bond of clergy and laity to the new “papal” figure.
– The conciliar leadership needs diocesan networks already habituated to obey John XXIII in “small things,” so they will follow in “greater things”: acceptance of Vatican II, the new “Mass,” false ecumenism, religious liberty, and ultimately the cult of man.
3. Silence on the real enemy:
– While Pius IX explicitly unmasks Freemasonry and liberalism as instruments of the *synagoga Satanae*, and St. Pius X denounces Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies,” this act—issued in 1959, amidst evident doctrinal crisis—ignores entirely:
– the infiltration of Modernist theology,
– the corruption of seminaries,
– the pressure to reconcile with “modern civilization.”
– Instead of fortifying the diocese against error, it merely reshuffles titles—pure form without salvific content. This is the *spiritual bankruptcy* of the new orientation: endless talk of structures, none of sin, grace, or dogma.
4. Preparation for the neo-church:
– Once Vatican II is launched, the same diocesan structures and concathedrals will become relay stations for the new rites, new catechisms, and new doctrines.
– The priests and faithful, having been taught that resistance to a papally signed decree about a concathedral incurs penalties, will be psychologically disarmed when ordered to accept the Novus Ordo, religious freedom, interreligious prayer, and ecumenical betrayal.
– Thus, this constitution is part of the “soft capture” of canonical obedience—misdirecting loyalty from the perennial Papacy to a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican.
Silence as Accusation: What This Text Does Not Say
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the most damning elements of this constitution are its omissions:
– No reference to the necessity that all civil society acknowledge Christ as King, as taught clearly in *Quas Primas*.
– No mention that diocesan reorganization must serve the preaching of the full, unadulterated Faith against liberal errors condemned by the Syllabus.
– No exhortation to combat Modernism, despite explicit and recent condemnations in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*—still binding, not “surpassed.”
– No concern for safeguarding the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* against profanation, even as liturgical abuses and novel tendencies were festering.
– No evocation of the supernatural end: eternal salvation, judgment, heaven, hell.
In Catholic theology, *tacent, clamant*—their silence cries out. When an alleged supreme shepherd speaks officially about the ordering of a diocese and makes no effort to orient this order explicitly to the defense of divine truth and the reign of Christ, it reveals a naturalistic concept of the Church: an institution to be efficiently managed, not the Ark of Salvation waging war against error.
Such silence, especially on the eve of Vatican II, is not neutral. It is complicity.
God’s Rights vs. Juridical Formalism of the Neo-Structure
The document asserts strong juridical claims: derogation of contrary norms, condemnation of resistance, insistence on formal obedience. Yet the only robust, non-negotiable rights it defends are:
– the right of the new “pontiff” to reorder titles and buildings,
– the right of his diplomatic apparatus to enforce this.
In contrast, the true pre-conciliar Magisterium teaches:
– that civil and ecclesiastical authority alike are bound to confess the Kingship of Christ;
– that Church laws and reforms are null if they contradict divine law or undermine the Faith.
Pius IX makes clear that the State is not the source of all rights (Syllabus, 39), and that separation of Church and State (55) and reconciliation with liberalism (80) are condemned. Pius XI insists that social peace is impossible without public recognition of Christ’s reign. St. Pius X, in *Pascendi*, unmasks the Modernist strategy of adapting and evolving doctrine under the pretext of “pastoral needs” and “conditions of the times.”
Against this background, John XXIII’s constitution is a juridical mask behind which looms exactly what the earlier Popes anathematized: a project of “reconciliation” with modernity and liberalism, soon codified at Vatican II. The act demands obedience without reaffirming the higher obedience to God’s immutable law. It is the inversion of Catholic order: human ecclesiastical decrees are elevated; divine rights are left unspoken.
On Clergy and Structures: Instruments of Apostasy When Detached from Truth
The constitution presupposes a diocesan hierarchy that will docilely execute its prescriptions. But by 1959, many in this hierarchy were already penetrated by Modernist influences. John XXIII and the subsequent usurpers rely precisely on:
– docile administrators more loyal to institutional promotion than to doctrinal militancy,
– “canons” and officials who will gladly accept a concathedral title while silently tolerating or promoting theological corruption.
The integral Catholic perspective must be categorical:
– Structures detached from the full Catholic Faith are not neutral; they become instruments of seduction.
– The mere fact that a document emanates from Rome and is clothed in Latin and formal dignity does not guarantee its legitimacy when the supposed author undermines, by other acts, the very foundations of the Faith he claims to guard.
– True authority belongs only to the true Church, professing without dilution the doctrine of all ages and operating with valid sacraments according to the Roman Rite received and defended up to Pius XII inclusive.
Thus, those who, under the pretext of respecting such constitutions, later cooperated in introducing the conciliar novelties and the new rite manifest themselves not as defenders of Catholic order but as functionaries of the conciliar sect.
Conclusion: A Small Decree as a Witness Against the New Regime
This constitution is brief, apparently conservative, and administratively unremarkable. Yet read in the light of the unchanging Magisterium before 1958 and of what followed under John XXIII and his successors, it becomes a telling document:
– It shows how the usurping regime preserves forms while preparing to betray substance.
– It exhibits the obsession with juridical formalism detached from explicit theological militancy.
– It contributes to habituating clergy and laity to uncritical submission to a figure whose program contradicts the anti-liberal, anti-Modernist stance solemnly imposed by his predecessors.
– It is silent on Christ the King, silent on Modernism, silent on the Four Last Things—thereby aligning itself with the naturalistic, horizontal mentality of the nascent neo-church.
By their fruits you shall know them. An act of true papal authority, even in administrative matters, breathes the spirit of supernatural faith, zeal for dogmatic integrity, and open warfare against error. This document, instead, breathes quiet institutionalism in the dawn of apostasy. Its cold, self-referential legality—divorced from explicit confession of the unchanging doctrine—exposes the inner bankruptcy of the conciliar project that would soon devastate the Church’s visible structures.
Source:
Mindoniensis (Ferrolensis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025