John XXIII’s apostolic constitution declares a purely juridical adjustment: the historical Diocese of Calahorra and Calceatense receives the added title “Logroñensis,” the Marian church “de la Redonda” in Logroño is elevated to concathedral, and canons may exercise capitular functions there. The entire text wraps this minimalist administrative act in solemn formulas of papal authority and threats of canonical penalties.
Administrative Formalism in the Service of an Illegitimate Regime
This constitution is a paradigmatic specimen of the vacuous legalism of the conciliar revolution in its preparatory phase: an act outwardly clothed with the venerable idiom of the Roman Curia, but inwardly detached from the supernatural mission of the Church and issued by one who, by doctrine and deed, had no authority to bind anyone.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, three fundamental theses guide the critique:
– First, the document presupposes as self-evident the legitimacy of John XXIII, whose public orientation and later council unleash that very apostasy condemned by pre-1958 Magisterium; thus, his “authority” must be weighed against the doctrine that a manifest heretic cannot hold the papal office.
– Second, the text exemplifies how the emerging conciliar establishment manipulates the forms of ecclesiastical law to consolidate a new, geo-political and statist ecclesiology, subordinated to concordats and national interests, not to the regnum Christi (reign of Christ).
– Third, the very style and silences of this act betray a naturalistic mentality: no word of the Most Holy Sacrifice, no concern for purity of doctrine or defense of souls against modernist errors, only structural choreography.
What follows unmasks, layer by layer, the theological emptiness and ecclesiological perversion embedded in this seemingly harmless rearrangement.
Factual Rearrangement Without Supernatural Substance
On the factual level, the content is straightforward:
– The Nuncio Hildebrand Antoniutti, invoking the 1953 Concordat between the Holy See and Spain, requests:
– Addition of “Logrognensis” to the diocesan title.
– Elevation of the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “de Redonda” in Logroño to concathedral.
– John XXIII decrees:
– The diocese and its bishop shall henceforth bear the cumulative title: Calaguritana, Calceatensis et Logrognensis.
– “De Redonda” gains concathedral status with its rights and obligations.
– The diocesan bishop may reside in Logroño ad libitum.
– Canons and beneficed clergy stationed in Logroño may exercise capitular duties at the concathedral.
– He grants the Nuncio the faculty to execute and register the act.
– He annuls any contrary provisions and threatens canonical penalties for non-compliance.
These are, in themselves, of minor pastoral and disciplinary scope. Yet the issue is not the possibility of legitimate reconfiguration (which the true Church has always held), but:
– Who commands?
– By what doctrine?
– In whose interest?
– With what supernatural intention?
The text never touches the true crisis of faith; it legislates topography while modernism corrodes doctrine. This disproportion is itself a symptom of spiritual dereliction.
Language as Mask: Sacred Forms for a New Ecclesiology
Superficially, the constitution imitates the noble legal Latin of genuine papal acts: references to pastoral care, salvation of souls, apostolic authority, perpetual memory. However, several linguistic features betray its function as camouflage for a dislocated authority.
1. Instrumental appeal to episcopal care
The opening justifies the act with a general maxim:
“Quandoquidem quaelibet Ecclesia in id constituitur ut fidelium greges per Episcoporum curas… facilius ad aeterna limina iter suum dirigere possint”
(“Since every Church is established so that, through the cares of the bishops, the faithful may more easily direct their journey to the eternal threshold”)
The formula is orthodox as a sentence, but here it is merely ornamental. There is:
– No reference to guarding the flock from heresy.
– No insistence that bishops must preach the whole, unchanging doctrine, condemn errors, and protect the Most Holy Sacrifice from profanation.
– No mention of the necessity of the state of grace, confession, or the last ends.
It is an abstract invocation of pastoral care, emptied of concrete doctrinal content—a verbal incense covering a bureaucratic maneuver.
2. Subordination to political arrangements
The act is explicitly grounded in the 1953 Concordat with Spain:
“sollemnibus Conventionibus servatis, quae inter S. Sedem et Hispanicam Nationem… inita sunt”
(“the solemn Conventions observed, which were entered into between the Holy See and the Spanish Nation”)
Instead of presenting ecclesiastical structuring as directly issuing from the divine constitution of the Church, it leans on a bilateral state agreement. This shifts the center of gravity from:
– Christ the King’s sovereign right over nations (Pius XI, Quas primas), towards
– The balancing of interests between a compromised “Holy See” already infiltrated by modernists and a confessional state drifting under the same pressure.
3. Inflated threats to protect a triviality
The conclusion threatens penalties for those who would “despise or in any way reject” these decrees. The apparatus of canonical terror is unleashed not against:
– Modernist exegetes condemned by Lamentabili sane exitu,
– Enemies of the faith,
– Sectarian infiltrators,
but against anyone questioning the imposition of a renamed title and concathedral status.
This inversion reveals a juridical positivism: the supreme concern is obedience to the administrative word of the usurper, not obedience to the deposit of faith.
Lex is severed from fides; the command is absolutized irrespective of its source. This contradicts the perennial principle:
– Lex injusta non est lex (“an unjust law is no law at all”),
and more fundamentally:
– A man lacking the Catholic faith cannot wield papal jurisdiction over the Church.
Theological Nullity: A Manifest Heretic Cannot Be Head of the Church
Here we must confront the decisive point: all the solemn formulas of this constitution depend on the supposition that John XXIII is a true Roman Pontiff. Pre-1958 Catholic theology supplies the criteria to judge that supposition.
1. The teaching of Bellarmine and the classical theologians
St. Robert Bellarmine, synthesizing the Fathers, articulates the principle (paraphrased):
– A manifest heretic is not a member of the Church; therefore he cannot be its head.
– Manifest heresy causes loss of jurisdiction ipso facto, “not after warnings or declaration,” because he is already outside the body of the Church.
Wernz-Vidal, Billot, and others concur in essence: notorious defection from the faith is incompatible with holding ecclesiastical office.
2. Canon law and tacit resignation
Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code states that any ecclesiastical office becomes vacant by the fact itself, without declaration, if the cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.
This is not an optional opinion; it is a codified juridical application of the dogmatic principle: one cannot be a pastor of the Church while publicly abandoning the Church’s faith.
3. Cum ex Apostolatus Officio: heresy and invalid election
Pope Paul IV’s bull declares that:
– If someone has deviated from the Catholic faith or fallen into heresy prior to a putative election to the Papacy, such an election is null, void, and without effect, even if accepted by all.
This is not obsolete pious rhetoric; it expresses the perennial impossibility of reconciling the papal office with public heresy.
4. Application to John XXIII and the conciliar project
John XXIII summoned and inaugurated the Second Vatican Council, the matrix of:
– Religious liberty doctrine contrary to the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (condemning the thesis that every religion may be publicly exercised with equal right, and that the State should be neutral).
– False ecumenism that treats heretical and schismatic communities as “sister churches,” directly contradicting the dogmatic exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the one true Church of Christ.
– Collegial and democratic distortions of the divinely instituted primacy.
– The cult of man, lauded in Paul VI’s concluding discourse of the Council, organically rooted in the same conciliar orientation.
While this particular 1959 act predates the promulgated texts of Vatican II, it issues from the same mind and milieu, already known for modernist sympathies and openness to doctrines long condemned. When such a man uses the fullness of papal style to legislate, the question is unavoidable:
– Is he a Catholic in the sense required by Bellarmine, by canon 188.4, and by Paul IV?
– If not, his acts, including this constitution, lack true papal authority and do not bind consciences as acts of the Church.
The text itself, by its silence on doctrine and its fixation on structural minutiae, mirrors this inner rupture: form without the Catholic substance.
From Supernatural Mission to Territorial Management
The act manifests a reduced understanding of the episcopal office:
– Genuine pre-1958 teaching, reaffirmed by Pius XI in Quas primas, insists that bishops, as successors of the Apostles, must:
– Preach the whole deposit of faith.
– Condemn modern errors: naturalism, indifferentism, secularism, socialism, freemasonry.
– Defend the public rights of Christ the King over individuals and states.
– Guard the integrity of the Most Holy Sacrifice and sacraments.
In this constitution:
– The diocese’s modification is justified not by the needs of defending the faith, but by:
– Demographic, economic, and geographic considerations.
– The growth and importance of Logroño as a city.
The relevant passage:
“florere enim eam urbem incolis, industriis, loci opportunitate”
(“for that city flourishes in inhabitants, industries, and advantageous location”)
This is telling. The criteria for concathedral dignity are framed in terms of:
– Population,
– Industry,
– Strategic position.
Not:
– The fervor of the faith,
– The centrality of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– The historical witness to orthodoxy,
– The defense of the Church against modernist errors.
This is ecclesiastical cartography according to sociological metrics. It is an implicit capitulation to the naturalistic spirit condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus, which denounces:
– The subordination of the Church to civil criteria.
– The reduction of religion to a human and historical phenomenon.
Here the conciliar sect reveals its method:
– Use the traditional chancery style to enact decisions based on secular parameters.
– Present them as continuity, while shifting the axis of decision from the supernatural to the pragmatic.
Silence about the Real Enemy: Modernism and Freemasonry
Equally damning is what the constitution does not say.
At the time of this act:
– The errors condemned by Lamentabili sane exitu (1907) and Pascendi (1907) had not disappeared; they had entrenched themselves in seminaries and theological faculties.
– Masonic and paramasonic forces targeted Spain and Catholic nations, as diagnosed by Pius IX and Leo XIII, seeking to turn the Church into an instrument of liberal regimes.
– The devastation of doctrine, liturgy, and religious life was already germinating in the same circles that would soon exploit Vatican II.
Yet this document:
– Says nothing about defending the faithful of Calahorra or Logroño from doctrinal corruption.
– Says nothing about guarding against secularization, socialism, freemasonry, or the cult of man.
– Says nothing about the necessity of integral catechesis, reverent worship, or public acknowledgment of Christ the King by civil authority.
Instead, its only note of severity is reserved for infractions against its own administrative provisions:
“Quae Nostra decreta in universum si quis vel spreverit vel quoquo modo detrectaverit, sciat se poenas esse subiturum…”
(“Whoever shall despise or in any way reject Our decrees shall know that he will incur the penalties established by law…”)
The shepherd is mute before the wolves, but thunders against any who question his rearrangement of titles. This is the inverted hierarchy of concerns typical of the conciliar establishment.
Conciliar Seeds: Collegial Administration and Nationalized Structures
Though brief, the text reveals the structural DNA of post-conciliarism.
1. Fusion of Holy See and national politics
The direct reference to the Spanish Concordat shows:
– A Church apparatus eager to embed itself into state frameworks, not as the sovereign Societas perfecta above the state in spiritual matters, but as a partner in negotiated equilibrium.
– This mentality leads seamlessly to the later acceptance of religious liberty regimes and to the relativization of the Church as one “moral actor” among many—denounced in substance by Pius IX (Syllabus, prop. 55, etc.).
2. Flexibilization of episcopal residence
Granting the bishop free right of residence in Logroño, with a concathedral, prepares patterns later exploited by the neo-church:
– Episcopal sees shifted, merged, and managed primarily for administrative convenience.
– Bishops increasingly functioning as regional managers of a multinational religious corporation, not as fathers guarding a historically and theologically defined flock with clear duties before God.
3. Canonical participation of canons
Allowing canons of Calahorra and Calceatense serving in Logroño to exercise capitular functions in the concathedral is, in itself, not intrinsically erroneous. But within the larger drift:
– Capitular structures are being instrumentalized as decorative shells, while real doctrinal and disciplinary authority slips into bureaucratic and synodal mechanisms divorced from Tradition.
– The preservation of external titles and honors masks the dilution of their original function: to safeguard solemn liturgy and assist the bishop in the governance of a truly Catholic diocese.
The Abuse of Papal Style to Cement an Anti-Papal Authority
One of the gravest aspects of this constitution is the appropriation of the full majesty of papal legal language:
– “Ad perpetuam rei memoriam”
– “De Nostra apostolica auctoritate decernimus et iubemus”
– Nullifying any contrary provisions.
– Equating certified copies with the original under ecclesiastical seals.
– Threatening penalties for disobedience.
All of this presumes:
– That the one speaking is the successor of Peter in the sense of Vatican I’s dogma: a true guardian of the deposit, incapable of imposing on the Church that which is contrary to faith and morals.
Yet, the same person inaugurates:
– A council and reforms that openly contradict:
– The Syllabus of Errors,
– Quanta cura,
– Mirari vos,
– Quas primas,
– Lamentabili sane exitu, and
– The entire anti-modernist Magisterium.
Here arises an unavoidable contradiction:
– Either the pre-1958 Magisterium condemning liberalism, religious freedom, ecumenism, and modernist exegesis is true, or the conciliar project vindicated by John XXIII and his successors is true.
– They cannot both be true in the same sense, since they assert mutually exclusive principles.
Therefore:
– To ascribe to John XXIII the authority of a true pope, while he prepares and launches a program incompatible with prior binding teaching, is to embrace evolution of dogma, solemnly condemned as modernist.
In that light, this constitution is not a harmless administrative curiosity; it is one link in the chain of an illegitimate governance that retains the vesture of papal acts to habituate the faithful to obedience toward a new religion.
Integral Catholic Response: Why This Act Cannot Bind the Faithful
From integral Catholic doctrine, the reasons this act is deprived of genuine binding force can be summarized:
– Principium fidei: The papacy is an office of witness to the unchanging deposit. A man who objectively promotes, protects, or inaugurates condemned errors cannot be presumed to hold it.
– Incompatibilitas haeresis et iurisdictionis: A manifest heretic is outside the Church and cannot wield her jurisdiction. This is not a mere opinion but a doctrinal axiom expressed by Fathers, theologians, and canonical tradition.
– Canonica cessatio: Public defection from the faith, or pertinacious adherence to condemned principles, triggers tacit resignation from office (1917 CIC c. 188.4).
– Inutilitas legis ab extraneo: Laws and decrees issued by one who lacks the office are juridically null for the Church, regardless of external compliance.
Therefore:
– The rearrangement of titles and concathedral dignity described here, as an act of the conciliar sect’s head, is an act of a parallel structure, not of the true Church of Christ.
– The true faithful are not bound in conscience by such acts as if they proceeded from the Vicar of Christ, though they may tolerate or materially acknowledge resulting customs insofar as they do not involve heresy, sacrilege, or scandal.
This does not mean that every detail is intrinsically evil; it means it lacks the authority it claims and participates in a system whose principle is rebellion against the prior Magisterium.
Conclusion: Behind Harmless Legalities, the Mechanics of Usurpation
This apostolic constitution exemplifies a larger pattern:
– The conciliar sect clothes itself in traditional legal formulas while incrementally:
– Reorienting ecclesiastical life according to political, demographic, and ecumenical criteria.
– Silencing any militant defense of the faith against modernism and freemasonry.
– Training clergy and laity to obey the voice of an authority that, in doctrine and praxis, repudiates the anti-modernist, anti-liberal teaching of the pre-1958 popes.
By itself, the attachment of “Logrognensis” to a diocesan title may seem insignificant. But within the total context, it is one more exercise in asserting universal obedience to a non-Catholic magisterium. The more modest the content, the more revealing the mechanism:
– Absolute language,
– Threatened penalties,
– Invocation of “apostolic authority,”
deployed not to defend the deposit of faith, but to fine-tune the apparatus of a new religion.
Integral Catholics, bound by the Magisterium of all ages, must see through this façade and hold fast to the principle that only the unchanging doctrine and sacraments of the true Church, taught and guarded before the conciliar usurpation, possess divine authority. Everything else, however piously phrased and meticulously sealed, is juridical theatre in the service of an alien project.
Source:
Calaguritanae et Calceatensis (Logrognesis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025