The Latin text promulgated by John XXIII under the title “Seguntinae” (9 March 1959) is a juridical act of the conciliar revolution’s early phase: it adds “Guadalajarensis” to the name of the Diocese of Sigüenza, elevates a Marian church in Guadalajara to the rank of concathedral, regulates canons’ rights and residence, and entrusts execution to the nuncio in Spain, all “by our apostolic authority,” within the framework of the 1953 Concordat between the Holy See and Spain. Behind this apparently technical rearrangement of diocesan structures stands the usurper who opened the door to Vatican II and the dismantling of the Catholic order—an act therefore stamped not with pastoral solicitude, but with the mark of the nascent anti-church consolidating its legal and territorial apparatus.
Jurisdiction Without Faith: An Anti-Church Consolidates Its Frontiers
Formal Catholic Vocabulary in the Service of an Illegitimate Authority
At the most immediate level, the document appears as a conventional pre-1958-style canonical constitution: solemn Latin, invocations of “apostolic power,” care for the faithful, mention of concordats, due process, execution clauses. But this external form masks the essential theological datum: by 1959 the man signing as “Ioannes PP. XXIII” stands at the threshold of, and in continuity with, the conciliar subversion later codified in Vatican II and its aftermath.
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine, the decisive principle articulated by the classical theologians (e.g. Bellarmine in *De Romano Pontifice*) remains: a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church nor wield jurisdiction, because *non potest esse caput qui non est membrum* (“he cannot be head who is not a member”). When the conciliar line beginning with John XXIII openly introduces ecumenism, religious liberty, collegialism, and the cult of man—errors solemnly repudiated by the pre-1958 Magisterium, notably:
– The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (especially 15–18, 55, 77–80) rejecting indifferentism, the separation of Church and State, liberalism, and reconciliation with “modern civilization” understood as emancipation from Christ’s Kingship.
– The anti-modernist condemnations of St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi*, which brand doctrinal evolutionism and democratic ecclesiology as the “synthesis of all heresies.”
—then any act of such a usurping authority, even when clothed in traditional juridical style, is infected by the same principle of rebellion. This constitution is therefore not a harmless administrative note; it is another brick in the juridical architecture of the *conciliar sect*.
The document’s own self-presentation—“de apostolica Nostra potestate ea, quae sequuntur, decernimus et iubemus” (“by our apostolic power we decree and order the following”)—becomes the very point at which its nullity appears. For apostolic power is not a decorative phrase; it is a participation in the authority of Christ the King. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* teaches that all authority must explicitly serve the social reign of Christ, and that rulers who detach from His law undermine the very foundation of their office. The same axiom binds ecclesiastical authority: a pseudo-pontiff who paves the way for doctrines condemned by his predecessors cannot invoke the name of Peter without blasphemy. The contrast is stark: the language is that of Tradition; the subject wielding it is the harbinger of the anti-traditional revolution.
Naturalistic Premises Beneath a Marian and “Pastoral” Veneer
On the surface, “Seguntinae” justifies its measures by reference to:
– numerical growth of the faithful in Guadalajara,
– their “industry and initiatives,”
– improved pastoral provision via a concathedral,
– compliance with the 1953 Concordat.
The opening rationale reduces the Church’s concrete structuring to empirical and administrative factors:
“Cum laetissimo animo acceperimus maxima in Seguntinae dioecesis urbe, quam Guadalajara appellant, christianam rem incrementa cepisse ob fidelium numerum eorumque industriam et incepta…”
(“Having received with the greatest joy that in the largest city of the Diocese of Sigüenza, called Guadalajara, Christian affairs have grown because of the number of the faithful and their industry and initiatives…”)
The criteria invoked are characteristically horizontal:
– demographics,
– civic prominence,
– bureaucratic convenience,
– political treaties.
What is conspicuously silenced?
– No mention of the primacy of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* as the heart of diocesan life.
– No emphasis on the state of grace, conversion from sin, or defense against heresy.
– No reminder of the duty of Spanish society to recognize publicly the Kingship of Christ (so powerfully reaffirmed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*).
– No warning against liberalism, secularism, or masonic infiltration already denounced repeatedly by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
– No ascetical or supernatural criteria whatsoever: sanctity of clergy, doctrinal purity, Eucharistic devotion, Marian piety in the sense of *ad Jesum per Mariam* ordered to the Cross.
This cold administrative tone is not a neutral accident. It is symptomatic of the mentality Pius X condemned: the replacement of supernatural ecclesial categories with sociological and political ones. The document reads as if diocesan configuration were primarily a question of efficient management and concordatary alignment—precisely the naturalistic reduction which earlier popes fought against.
In *Quas Primas*, Pius XI identifies as “the plague of our age” the secularist laicism which removes Christ from public order and treats religion as one element within a merely human social arrangement. Here, instead of vigorously affirming the social reign of Christ over Guadalajara and Spain, “Seguntinae” simply weaves the Church more tightly into a statist-legal framework, invoking the 1953 Concordat formalities as a quasi-foundational reference. The subtext: ecclesial structure is negotiated with states, certified by bureaucratic procedures, justified by statistics—not commanded by Christ the King for the salvation of souls.
The Language of Juridical Absolutism Without Supernatural Content
A second level of decomposition concerns rhetoric. The constitution is saturated with peremptory canonical formulae:
– “decernimus et iubemus” – “we decree and command”;
– “Has vero Litteras nunc et in posterum efficaces esse et fore volumus” – “We will that these Letters be and remain now and in the future effective”;
– sweeping derogations of any contrary prescriptions;
– threats of penalties for those who “spurn or in any way reject” the decrees.
Yet these strong juridical expressions are applied to a content that is theologically anemic: a change of diocesan title, concathedral status, procedural details. This disproportion is revealing. The vocabulary of pontifical sovereignty is preserved, but it no longer defends dogma against heresy, nor the rights of Christ against states that defy Him. It serves instead:
– to enforce micro-administrative rearrangements,
– to enshrine the will of a man whose overall program is the convocation of Vatican II and subsequent demolition of pre-existing doctrinal and liturgical order.
Thus, the rhetoric of absolute, sacral authority is detached from the supernatural ends that alone justify it. This is precisely what Pius IX warned against regarding civil authority in the Syllabus: power absolutized in its own order without submission to divine law. In “Seguntinae,” we witness a parallel deformation at the ecclesiastical level: the authority-forms of the papacy are wielded by a usurper to reconfigure canonical structures while simultaneously (in the broader context of his reign) preparing to betray the Faith.
The frightening inversion:
– Where true popes thundered with such formulae against Modernism, Freemasonry, indifferentism, and schism,
– the anti-church uses the same solemn clauses for self-legitimating technical moves, while falling silent on, or directly contradicting, those earlier doctrinal condemnations.
This is not harmless continuity; it is parasitism. The *paramasonic structure* occupying the Vatican lives off the authority-symbols built by real popes, all the while hollowing out their substance.
Ecclesiology Subordinated to Concordats and Political Equilibria
The constitution explicitly subordinates its procedure to the 1953 Concordat between the Holy See and Spain:
“…rite quidem servatis sollemnibus Conventionibus die XXVII mensis Augusti anno MCMLIII inter Sanctam Sedem et Hispanicam Nationem initis…”
(“…with due observance of the solemn conventions entered into on 27 August 1953 between the Holy See and the Spanish Nation…”)
On one level, concordats as such are legitimate instruments, long used by true popes to defend the Church’s liberty and the social Kingship of Christ. However, two elements must be distinguished:
1. Traditional teaching (e.g. Pius IX, Syllabus 19, 55) insists that the Church is a *perfect society*, possessing its own rights from Christ, not from the state. Concordats must safeguard, not relativize, these divine rights.
2. When an anti-church, headed by a usurper and oriented toward liberal-ecumenical doctrine, invokes a concordat, the risk is inverted: the apparatus of treaties becomes a means of weaving the conciliar sect more firmly into the fabric of compromised regimes and naturalistic order, preparing later “updates” in the name of religious liberty.
Silence in “Seguntinae” about:
– the obligation of the Spanish state to recognize Catholicism as the one true religion,
– the error of equal rights for false worship (Syllabus 77–79),
– the intrinsic subordination of civil authority to Christ the King (Quas Primas),
is more eloquent than any paragraph. The document functions within an implicit acceptance that ecclesial boundaries and titles are matters of concordatary administration rather than direct proclamations of Christ’s royal rights over nations. The supernatural primacy of divine law over human law—*lex divina supra legem humanam*—is smothered beneath the polite mention of conventions and procedures.
Canonical Acts as Preludes to the Liturgical and Doctrinal Dismantling
From a symptomatic viewpoint, “Seguntinae” belongs to that last pre-Vatican II wave of acts where:
– external forms remained traditional,
– Latin was still used,
– diocesan structures were strengthened in appearance,
– Marian titles (here, the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary) were retained,
while internally, a different spirit had begun to rule. This spirit would soon:
– convoke a council saturated with Modernist periti,
– introduce “religious freedom” against the Syllabus,
– promote false ecumenism with heretics and infidels,
– attack the integrity of the *Most Holy Sacrifice* through the imposition of the new rite,
– elevate men and women of dubious doctrine as “saints” of the new religion.
Seen from this vantage, the elevation of a Marian temple to concathedral status can no longer be read naively. It is a typical conciliar technique:
– retain Marian and traditional vocabulary to anesthetize the faithful,
– while placing these devotions under the jurisdictional control of the emerging *neo-church*,
– ensuring that the external cult becomes a vector for the new ideology (ecumenical, anthropocentric, evolving dogma).
By binding the canons and clergy of Guadalajara into this new canonical configuration under the authority of John XXIII, the document quietly incorporates them into the legal organism that will soon promulgate the conciliar revolution. The sacramental appearance of continuity—cathedrals, chapters, solemn decrees—serves to disguise the fact that all these elements are being transferred under the headship of an anti-pontiff.
The Silence on Doctrine as Evidence of Naturalism and Modernist Strategy
One might object: “This text is purely administrative; it need not restate doctrine.” From the integral Catholic perspective this objection fails for two reasons.
1. In an age already marked by:
– State apostasy,
– spreading liberalism and socialism,
– Modernism condemned but not eradicated,
– masonic and paramasonic operations against the Church (exposed by Pius IX and Leo XIII),
any pontifical act touching the public shape of the Church in society is bound, by supernatural prudence, to manifest clearly the rights of Christ and the Church. Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to make such public acts a continual condemnation of secular apostasy. A “pontiff” who rearranges diocesan structures without any such affirmation, while preparing a council that will embrace religious liberty, reveals by his silence where his heart lies.
2. The essence of Modernist strategy, as unmasked by St. Pius X, is often not frontal denial but:
– ambiguous language,
– strategic silences,
– pastoral pretexts,
– gradual displacement of supernatural ends by immanent ones.
“Seguntinae” fits this pattern:
– Strong canonical style, no explicit doctrinal error in its lines,
– Yet utter silence on the supernatural ends of ecclesial authority,
– Comfortable embedding in concordatary bureaucracy,
– Marian and canonical solemnity used decoratively, not doctrinally.
In context, such silence is not neutral; it is complicity. The constitution thus becomes a case study in how the *Church of the New Advent* stabilizes its hold: retain the shell, empty the core.
The Abuse of Threatened Penalties by a Counterfeit Magisterium
Particularly striking is the concluding threat:
“Quae Nostra decreta in universum si quis vel spreverit vel quoquo modo detrectaverit, sciat se poenas esse subiturum iis iure statutas, qui Summorum Pontificum iussa non fecerint.”
(“Whoever in general should despise or in any way refuse our decrees, let him know that he will incur the penalties established in law against those who do not obey the orders of the Supreme Pontiffs.”)
Here the usurper presumes:
– to equate his administrative decision with the binding authority of true Supreme Pontiffs,
– to call down canonical penalties upon any who might resist.
Yet by the principles reaffirmed in the pre-1958 tradition:
– Authority binding in conscience presupposes fidelity to the deposit of faith.
– A manifestly heterodox or revolution-preparing “pontiff” cannot hide behind juridical formulas to demand obedience.
– Canon 188.4 (1917 Code) and the constant doctrine on heresy and office teach that public defection from the faith vacates ecclesiastical office *ipso facto*.
Thus this threat is doubly perverse:
– It usurps the mantle of legitimate papal authority.
– It seeks to coerce consciences into compliance with a structure that will become an instrument of doctrinal subversion.
Instead of paternal warning against sin, error, and hell, one finds bureaucratic intimidation to enforce acceptance of a merely technical rearrangement under an illegitimate rule. The supernatural order is inverted: obedience to Christ’s unchanging Magisterium would, in fact, demand distrust of and resistance to the conciliar manipulators, not submission to them.
Seguntinae as Microcosm of the Conciliar Sect’s Method
When read through the lens of unchanging Catholic teaching prior to 1958, “Seguntinae” exposes several key characteristics of the conciliar operation:
– Preservation of Latin and solemn style as camouflage.
– Exclusive focus on structural and demographic considerations, omitting explicit affirmation of the social reign of Christ and the warfare against liberalism, Modernism, and Freemasonry that earlier popes incessantly proclaimed.
– Organic incorporation of local churches into a framework governed by a man whose overall agenda (soon to be manifested) is incompatible with the Syllabus, *Quas Primas*, and *Pascendi*.
– Use of juridical absolutes (“we decree and command… penalties… null and void”) to buttress an authority already bent toward revolution, thereby turning canonical obedience into a snare.
– Instrumentalization of Marian and cathedral symbolism to confer a false aura of continuity on a system that, within a few years, will unleash liturgical devastation and doctrinal relativism.
In short, the text’s theological bankruptcy lies not in crude heresy on its surface but in its function: a formally orthodox, substantively naturalistic, politically entangled act, emanating from an illegitimate claimant to Peter’s throne and reinforcing the infrastructure that the *conciliar sect* would soon mobilize against the integral Catholic Faith.
The faithful who cling to the unaltered doctrine of the Church must see such documents for what they are: not monuments of pastoral wisdom, but artifacts of an occupying power—using the language, seals, and curial machinery of the Catholic Church to extend its grasp, while methodically preparing the eclipse of the true hierarchy, the profanation of the *Unbloody Sacrifice*, and the enthronement of humanist, ecumenical, evolving pseudo-Christianity in place of the reign of Christ the King.
Source:
Seguntinae (Guadalajarensis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025