This Latin text promulgated under the name of “Ioannes PP. XXIII” establishes an Eastern-rite (Ruthenian, Byzantine) Exarchate in Germany for displaced faithful from Galicia and the Carpathian region after World War II. It recounts Pius XII’s intention to provide a stable ecclesiastical structure directly subject to the Apostolic See, designates Munich as the see, grants the usual rights and privileges of such jurisdictions, orders Eastern traditions to be preserved, sends candidates for the priesthood to Rome, outlines financial provisions, and entrusts execution to Aloisius Muench, the Apostolic Nuncio in Germany. This seemingly administrative arrangement is presented as pastoral solicitude, but in reality it manifests the consolidation of the conciliar revolution’s control over the Eastern rites as instruments of a humanistic, politico-ecclesiastical agenda, rather than guardians of the true Catholic faith.
Oriental Exarchate as Instrument of the Conciliar Sect’s Expansion
Direct Subordination to an Illegitimate Center of Authority
On the factual level, the document claims to “complete” decisions of Pius XII by having “Ioannes XXIII” formally erect an Exarchate for Ruthenian Byzantine faithful in Germany, directly subject to the “Apostolic See,” with its seat in Munich and its own Exarch endowed with the rights and duties of an Eastern hierarch.
Key phrases expose the structure:
“Nova circumscriptio Apostolicae Sedi directo subicietur…” – “The new circumscription will be directly subject to the Apostolic See…”
In Catholic doctrine, *subiectio directa* to the Roman Pontiff is the seal and safeguard of ecclesial unity (cf. Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus). But here, in 1959, that formula is already being instrumentalized to rivet entire communities to a nascent conciliaris ordo, whose head—John XXIII—is the initiator of the very aggiornamento and false council that would dissolve in practice the exclusivity of the true Church, relativize dogma, and promote condemned errors of religious liberty and ecumenism (cf. Syllabus of Errors, nn. 15–18, 55, 77–80).
Thus:
– What appears as continuity (fulfilling Pius XII’s intention) functions as a juridical bridge into the upcoming revolution.
– The Ruthenian faithful, many of whom had suffered under communism precisely for their loyalty to Rome and to the Catholic confession against schism and heresy, are now bound more closely to an authority preparing to betray that confession on a global scale.
This is not a neutral administrative act; it is a strategic consolidation of souls under a center that will soon promote:
– false ecumenism with those very schismatics and heretics against whom Eastern Catholics had borne witness;
– practical abandonment of the doctrine that outside the Church there is no salvation;
– the subordination of the rights of Christ the King to the liberal state.
By 1959 the same milieu is already gestating the council that will contradict the intransigent teaching of Pius IX’s Syllabus and Pius XI’s Quas Primas. To subject the heroic, persecuted Ruthenian flock directly to that mutation is to weaponize canonical structures against the faith they were erected to defend.
Language of Pastoral Solicitude Masking Political-Ecumenical Engineering
The rhetorical surface is pious, classical Latin, full of apparently edifying notes:
– recalling the sufferings of displaced Eastern faithful;
– praising a visitor who died in exile “ob integrain atque incontaminatam fidem erga Romanam Ecclesiam”;
– stressing preservation of probati usus ac legitimae Orientalis Ecclesiae consuetudines.
But the language functions as a veil. Several aspects are telling:
1. Selective historical framing:
– The text attributes the displacement solely to “immane bellum… quod novissimum per totam fere Europam pervasit” (the immense latest war), carefully avoiding the central dogmatic and geopolitical fact: the systematic, diabolical persecution of Eastern Catholics by Soviet atheistic communism and Moscow Orthodoxy united in hatred of the Roman Church.
– The omission is not accidental. A true pre-1958 pontifical text would denounce:
– the anti-Christian, masonic-socialist forces warring against the Church (cf. Pius IX, Syllabus, and his condemnations of secret sects; Leo XIII in Humanum Genus; Pius XI against communism);
– the doctrinal gulf between the Catholic Church and schismatic Orthodoxy.
– Silence here anticipates the conciliar ecumenism which will rehabilitate Orthodoxy as “sister churches,” betraying the martyrs who chose union with Rome over schism.
2. Abstract “care for faithful” without explicit doctrinal note:
– Nowhere does the text recall the absolute necessity of remaining in the one true Church, the danger of indifferentism, or the duty of the Exarch to combat error and schism.
– Instead, it speaks of “alendae fidei et rituum integritati servandae, simulque necessitudini cum hac Apostolica Sede augendae” – nurturing the faith, preserving rites, and increasing bonds with the Holy See.
– The order is significant: faith is reduced to a generic object parallel to “rites,” both ordered to external “bonds” with an institution. The doctrinal content of that “fides” is never specified in terms of dogma contra error, nor is the Exarchate explicitly charged to defend against modernist contamination.
3. Bureaucratic formalism as theological anesthetic:
– The document is saturated with juridical and procedural formulae about execution, documentation, canonical penalties, authentic copies, derogation clauses, etc.
– Such “romanità” once served dogmatic clarity; here it envelops and sanctifies the coming transformation, conditioning clergy and laity to equate obedience to an emerging neo-magisterium with fidelity to Christ.
– It is the classic modernist tactic condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi: maintaining forms while subverting substance.
In sum, the tone is not overtly heretical; it is more insidious: it naturalizes trust and structural attachment to an authority that is about to enthrone the very errors solemnly condemned by prior popes. This is the linguistic mask of apostasy: pious Latin used as liturgical incense for a new cult.
Manipulation of the Eastern Rites: From Witnesses to the Faith to Ecumenical Tokens
On the theological and symptomatic level, this constitution must be read against integral Catholic teaching on the Eastern Churches and the universal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff.
The perennial doctrine:
– Honors the legitimate diversity of rites while insisting on *unitas fidei* and *unitas regiminis* (unity of faith and government).
– Recognizes Eastern Catholics as living reproaches to schism: their union with Rome confesses that salvation and legitimate hierarchy subsist only in the Catholic Church.
In this light, several elements of the text become suspect:
1. Emphasis on “ritual integrity” without doctrinal militancy:
– The text highlights preservation of “legitimae Orientalis Ecclesiae consuetudines.”
– This is correct in itself; but isolated from explicit condemnation of schism and heresy, it becomes a prelude to the later conciliar usage of Eastern Catholics as decorative proof of a “pluralistic communion,” where divergent doctrines and sacraments are tolerated.
– Authentic pre-1958 magisterium never separated rite from dogma. Here, the disproportionate stress on ritual and canonical identity, without reaffirmation of exclusivist Catholic truth, is a negative theological sign.
2. Functionalization for “dialogue”:
– By centralizing authority over an Eastern community in Germany under the same emerging regime that will convene the council and pursue rapprochement with Moscow and Constantinople, the Exarchate is structurally predisposed to become:
– a display window of “unity in diversity”
– a laboratory for ecumenical policies in which Eastern Catholics are pressured not to “offend” schismatics by “proselytism,” contrary to prior papal mandates.
3. Subtle inversion of the hierarchy of ends:
– True doctrine: the primary end of ecclesiastical structures is the glory of God, the salvation of souls, and the public reign of Christ the King over individuals and nations (Quas Primas).
– Here, the implicit end appears as:
– stabilizing communities sociologically dislocated by war;
– strengthening “ties” with the Roman center as an institution;
– preserving a patrimony as cultural-ritual capital.
– The silence about the absolute obligation of Germany as a nation to submit publicly to Christ the King and His one Church is striking. The Exarchate is purely intra-ecclesial administration, not a supernatural rallying-point against secularism, socialism, and religious pluralism that Pius IX and Pius XI condemned.
– This omission aligns with the conciliar sect’s later surrender of the social kingship of Christ and approval in practice of religious liberty—errors anathematized in the Syllabus (nn. 15–16, 77–80) and contrary to Quas Primas’ insistence that states must recognize Christ’s royal authority.
The Choice of Agents: Muench, Tardini, Tisserant and the Conciliar Trajectory
Names matter. The document is executed and authenticated by figures emblematic of the transition from the Catholic order to the conciliar sect:
– Aloisius Muench, Apostolic Nuncio in Germany: a key liaison in the post-war reconfiguration of Church-state relations, embedded in the American-Western political vision, facilitating a model of “Catholicism” compatible with liberal democracy and religious pluralism.
– Domenico Tardini and Eugène Tisserant: central curial figures, later prominent in the gestation and direction of the council convened by the same John XXIII whose signature appears here.
Thus the Exarchate is not an isolated administrative fact; it is an early node in a network:
– staffed, shaped, and supervised by men who will help engineer the shift from Pius IX–Pius XII’s intransigent teaching to the “updating” that exalts human rights, dialogue, and ecumenism over the rights of Christ the King and the duty of nations to recognize the true Church.
The constitution’s legalistic threats—“Quae Nostra decreta… si quis vel spreverit vel quoquo modo detrectaverit, sciat se poenas esse subiturum…”—further manifest the attempt to bind consciences to a regime that will shortly use the same language of obedience to impose errors.
But according to integral Catholic ecclesiology:
– Obedience is owed to the Roman Pontiff precisely insofar as he transmits and defends what was handed down (*quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus*).
– If a putative authority employs his office to prepare, inauguratedly or openly, a program opposed to the Syllabus, opposed to Lamentabili, opposed to Quas Primas and the anti-modernist oath, then the juridical bonds he forges cannot demand adherence against the prior, infallible magisterium.
This constitution’s placement in 1959, by the very usurper who summons the council that will enthrone what Pius X calls Modernism, is a red flag: the Eastern Exarchate is drafted into a paramasonic structure that will hollow out its Catholic meaning.
Silencing the Social Kingship of Christ in Post-War Germany
A conspicuous omission with grave theological implications is the complete absence of any explicit call for:
– the confession of Christ’s Kingship over the German nation;
– the restoration of public recognition of the Catholic religion after the catastrophe of National Socialism and amidst the rising secular and masonic order;
– the repudiation of atheist communism and liberal indifferentism as intrinsically evil systems condemned by prior popes.
Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches unambiguously that:
– peace and order among nations are impossible without recognizing the reign of Christ and submitting public life to His law;
– the Church must demand, not request, the public rights of her King.
Pius IX in the Syllabus condemns:
– the proposition that the state should be separated from the Church (n. 55);
– the notion that civil authority is the source of all rights, or that religious liberty and free propagation of all cults are beneficial (nn. 39, 77–80).
Yet this 1959 constitution:
– speaks of displaced populations and ecclesiastical reorganization, but not of the duty of German public authority to recognize and favor the one true Church;
– does not even hint that these Ruthenian Catholics, purified in suffering, should be leaven to recall Germany to the Kingship of Christ against Protestantism, secularism, and masonic infiltration.
This silence is not pastoral modesty; it is a programmatic retreat. The same conciliar sect that will soon applaud religious freedom as a “right” in the temporal order is already, here, training Eastern Catholics to think of their Church as a tolerated ethnic-ritual body inside a neutral state, not as the army of Christ summoned to convert that state.
From Anti-Modernist Condemnations to Conciliar Subversion
Reading this document in light of Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi (St. Pius X):
– Lamentabili condemns the thesis that the Magisterium cannot definitively declare the sense of Scripture (prop. 4), that dogma evolves from religious experience (22, 54), that the Church must conform to “progress” (63–65).
– The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns indifferentism, latitudinarianism, and the compatibility of Catholicism with liberalism and masonic-modern civilization.
– These condemnations are renewed and confirmed, not temporally limited, not negotiable.
Yet John XXIII, under whose name this constitution is issued, will:
– convene a council explicitly presented as opening the Church to modernity and refusing condemnatory language against errors;
– inaugurate a hermeneutic by which dogmatic clarity is subordinated to “dialogue” and “pastoral” adaptation;
– clear the way for ecumenism that treats schismatic and heretical bodies as “means of salvation.”
Thus, the Exarchate’s establishment in this framework:
– conscripts Ruthenian Catholics—by structure and obedience—to collaboration with a neo-church that denies in practice the very anti-modernist principles for which Eastern confessors and martyrs had suffered.
– transforms what should have been a bastion of intransigent Catholic orthodoxy into a bridgehead of conciliar syncretism.
The constitution’s insistence on penalties for those who would “detrectaverit” its decrees becomes tragically ironic: it is used to intimidate precisely those who, faithful to Pius IX and Pius X, would refuse to follow a trajectory into Modernism.
Conclusion: Canonical Architecture Serving the Abomination of Desolation
In itself, the erection of a territorial Exarchate for Eastern Catholics dispersed by war could have been an act of genuine pastoral charity and defense of the true faith. Under a true Roman Pontiff, bound in mind and will to the constant Magisterium, such a structure would:
– reinforce the uncompromising Catholic confession against Byzantine schismatics;
– cultivate Eastern patrimony as a weapon against Protestant and modernist errors;
– summon nations to the social reign of Christ the King.
But placed in April 1959 under John XXIII—initiator of the conciliar process, architect of the aggiornamento, and first in a line of usurpers who would enthrone the cult of man, religious liberty, false ecumenism, and dogmatic relativism—this constitution must be recognized as an element in the paramasonic reconfiguration of ecclesial structures.
Its features reveal the pattern:
– **Centralization under an authority preparing to betray prior doctrine.**
– **Emphasis on ritual and “ties” over dogma and militancy against error.**
– **Bureaucratic, depersonalized language masking the redirection of loyalty from the perennial Magisterium to a revolutionary neo-church.**
– **Silence about Christ’s social Kingship, the condemnations of liberalism and Modernism, and the unique salvific necessity of the Catholic Church.**
Therefore, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this “Exarchia in Germania” is not a neutral fact of ecclesial life but a juridical and symbolic step in subordinating once-faithful Eastern Catholics to the conciliar sect: transforming their hard-won fidelity into an asset of the very system that will relativize their martyrs, legitimize their persecutors, and dissolve the boundaries between truth and error.
The only coherent Catholic response is:
– to reject the modernist usurpation of authority;
– to adhere unflinchingly to the pre-1958 magisterial condemnations of liberalism, ecumenism, and Modernism;
– and to recognize that structures erected in service of that usurpation, even when clothed in venerable Latin, operate not as channels of grace, but as instruments preparing and sustaining the abomination of desolation within what once was the visible citadel of the Church.
Source:
Exarchia in Germania (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025