The constitution issued by antipope John XXIII on 9 March 1959 concerns a seemingly technical act: the attachment of the appellation “Logrognensis” to the historic Diocese of Calahorra and Calceatense, and the elevation of the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “de la Redonda” in Logroño to the rank of concatedral, with corresponding rights and obligations, all executed in line with the 1953 Concordat between the Holy See and Spain and delegated to Hildebrando Antoniutti as “Apostolic Nuncio.”

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Administrative Mutation as Preludium to Revolution

The text presents itself as a minor canonical adjustment, cloaked in traditional Latin juridical form, appealing to pastoral care and better ordering of episcopal sees. Yet precisely in its apparent harmlessness it reveals the juridico-ecclesial mentality of John XXIII that would shortly after detonate the conciliar revolution: the replacement of the supernatural mission of the Church with bureaucratic engineering, the submission of ecclesial structuring to political concordats and demographic pragmatism, and the quiet preparation of a paramasonic, anthropocentric ordo novus (new order) under the guise of canonical normalcy.

This constitution must therefore be read not as an isolated local measure, but as a symptomatic sign of the displacement of the true Roman authority, the first acts of an usurping regime inserting itself into the legal organism of the Church, and prefiguring the dissolution of the public reign of Christ the King so magisterially taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas.

Instrumentalisation of Canonical Form to Mask Illegitimate Authority

At the factual level, the document:

– Recalls the 1953 Concordat between the Holy See and Spain as the normative context.
– Relays the petition of Hildebrando Antoniutti to adjust the diocesan title and raise “de la Redonda” to concatedral rank.
– Declares by “apostolic authority” that the diocese and bishop shall henceforth bear the cumulative title Calaguritana, Calceatensis et Logrognensis.
– Grants the church “de la Redonda” the dignity, rights, and obligations of a concatedral.
– Allows the diocesan bishop to reside in Logroño and the canons exercising office there to function as canons of the concatedral.
– Orders the Nuncio to execute and record these provisions, stating that contravening acts are null and that refusal to comply incurs penalties for disobeying the “Supreme Pontiffs.”

Superficially, nothing appears heretical: diocesan boundaries and titles have always been adjustable for just reasons. However:

1. The entire structure presupposes John XXIII as true Roman Pontiff, an assumption incompatible with the integral Catholic doctrine that a manifest modernist and public destroyer of tradition cannot hold the Petrine office. Pre-1958 theological doctrine, as articulated for instance by St. Robert Bellarmine and accepted classical canonists, affirms that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church because he is not a member. This principle, codified juridically in canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code (loss of office by public defection from the faith), renders null any alleged “apostolic authority” exercised by a man publicly initiating and promoting modernist novelties.

2. The text attempts to cloak his acts in the solemn cadence of genuine papal constitutions, exploiting Catholic reflexes of obedience, while his subsequent deeds (especially convoking the pseudo-council and unleashing the doctrinal devastation condemned in outline by Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi) expose him as the architect of systemic apostasy. Thus, the legal style becomes an instrument of deception: forma papalis, mens modernistica (papal form, modernist mind).

3. By presenting administrative acts as an unquestionable exercise of the “Supreme Pontiff’s” will, the constitution indirectly demands recognition of the usurper’s jurisdiction and thereby functions as one of the first tendrils by which the conciliar sect insinuates itself into the canonical continuity of the true Church.

The key issue is not the geographic detail but the usurped subject exercising what he calls “Nostra apostolica auctoritate.” A poison administered drop by drop is no less deadly than an obvious cup of venom.

Pastoral Rhetoric Detached from the Supernatural End

The opening lines invoke a traditional principle:

“Quandoquidem quaelibet Ecclesia in id constituitur ut fidelium greges per Episcoporum curas… facilius ad aeterna limina iter suum dirigere possint.”

Translation: “Since every Church has been established to the end that the flocks of the faithful, through the care, labours and solicitude of the bishops, having received the fruits of the divine Redemption, may be able more easily to direct their journey to the eternal threshold…”

At first hearing, this resonates with authentic doctrine. But observe:

– The entire document subsequently moves exclusively on the plane of territorial efficiency, demographic flourishing, and concordatarian procedure.
– There is total silence about:
– The integrity of doctrine.
– The safeguarding of the Most Holy Sacrifice.
– The defense against modernism, condemned only two years earlier by Pius XII as still threatening the Church.
– The duty to preserve the faith uncorrupted from liberal, masonic penetration denounced by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors.
– The public reign of Christ the King over nations, as solemnly proclaimed by Pius XI.

This silence is not a neutral omission. In the late 1950s, amidst escalating theological subversion, any document that reorders ecclesiastical structures without the slightest reference to the doctrinal and moral battle of the time is symptomatic of a naturalistic reduction. The constitution makes administration an end in itself.

Where the pre-1958 magisterium consistently subordinates canonical measures to doctrinal clarity and the supernatural end, this act confines itself to functionality: a new title, a concatedral, adjusted residences—no word on using these structures to defend souls from the gathering doctrinal storm.

The mentality is bureaucratic: the Church appears as an organisation to be optimised, not as the militant, teaching, sanctifying, and governing Body of Christ waging war against error and sin. This is the same mentality Pius X condemned: the historicist and institutionalist perception of the Church as a sociological entity evolving with circumstances, rather than a divinely constituted, immutable societas perfecta.

Concordat Fetters: Subordination of Ecclesial Order to the Temporal Power

John XXIII’s text explicitly anchors the act in the 1953 Concordat with Spain:

“sollemnibus Conventionibus servatis, quae inter S. Sedem et Hispanicam Nationem… inita sunt”

Translation: “With the solemn Conventions observed which were entered into between the Holy See and the Spanish Nation…”

By presenting his decision as organically framed by these political agreements, he reinforces a model where ecclesiastical structuring is intertwined with state arrangements. Yet authentic Catholic doctrine, reasserted vigorously by Pius IX and Pius XI, insists:

– The Church is a vera et perfecta societas (true and perfect society) with rights not derived from the state.
– The state has no authority to determine the internal constitution, jurisdiction, or titles of ecclesiastical entities.
– Concordats are legitimate only insofar as they serve the freedom of the Church and the reign of Christ, never as chains that condition her structure to political benevolence.

The constitution’s tone is of one who comfortably negotiates within secular frameworks; there is no proud reassertion of the absolute independence and superiority of the Church’s spiritual authority over any temporal approval. This silent acceptance of concordatarian conditioning foreshadows the post-conciliar dogma of “dialogue,” religious liberty, and mutual recognition of pluralism so squarely condemned by the Syllabus, especially propositions 55, 77–80.

Quas Primas teaches that society must publicly recognise Christ’s Kingship and that laws must conform to His law. Here, instead, the text implicitly ratifies an equilibrium: episcopal geography attuned to demographic and political convenience, not to the offensive of grace and truth. It is the embryonic mentality of the later false “Dignitatis humanae.”

Linguistic Cosmetics: Traditional Latin in Service of Modernist Usurpation

The constitution uses the classic arsenal of solemn papal style:

– Repeated references to “Nostra apostolica auctoritate.”
– Formulae of perpetuity: “Has vero Litteras nunc et in posterum efficaces esse volumus” (“We will and decree that these Letters be effective now and in the future”).
– Universal derogation clauses: all contrary provisions are null.
– Threats of canonical penalties against any who disobey.

This juridical solemnity is not in itself erroneous; it mirrors the venerable style of genuine pontifical acts. The perversion lies in its instrumentalisation: the usurper wraps his early gestures in the aura of continuity to disarm resistance, create legal habits of obedience, and consolidate recognition, precisely in view of the approaching subversion of Vatican II.

The linguistic strategy is subtle:

– No overtly heterodox statements.
– An insistence on order, rights, honors, obligations.
– An absence of all polemical clarity against the enemies so massively denounced by Pius IX and Pius X: Freemasonry, indifferentism, rationalism, laicism.

In an hour when these enemies are entrenched, such antiseptic administrative prose is itself a sign of complicity by omission. Where the true Popes burned with zeal to unmask the “synagogue of Satan” (Pius IX’s unequivocal designation of the masonic network attacking the Church), John XXIII’s document breathes a comfortable coexistence with them.

The rhetoric reveals a governing principle: preserve the shell, evacuate the content. Maintain the ceremonies of papal acts while altering the underlying intention. Lex loquendi manet, mens Ecclesiae subvertitur (the manner of speaking remains, the mind of the Church is subverted).

Theological Displacement: From Militant Church to Territorial Administration

From an integral Catholic perspective, every episcopal act must be measured by its ordinate submission to the immutable ends of the Church:

– Glory of God.
– Salvation of souls.
– Defense and proclamation of the one true Faith.
– Condemnation of error.
– Preservation of the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments.

Measured by this standard:

1. The constitution never asserts the exclusive truth of the Catholic Faith, never recalls that the diocese exists to guard souls from heresy and immorality endemic in modern states, never reaffirms the Church’s right to govern independently of political compromises.

2. It omits any mention of the imminent threats explicitly catalogued in Lamentabili and Pascendi. Two years after Pius XII’s death, on the eve of the new “council,” such silence amid reorganisation is eloquent: the new regime does not intend to continue the anti-modernist struggle; it intends to neutralize it.

3. The solemn canonical language anchors obedience not to doctrine but to office, understood materially. It attempts to sever the Thomistic and canonical nexus between authority and truth. Yet the perennial principle stands: potestas separata a veritate seipsam destruit (power separated from truth destroys itself). A pseudo-pontiff employing the Church’s juridical organs to introduce a new religion cannot be the subject of true obedience.

4. The declaration of penalties for those who would not comply—“sciat se poenas esse subiturum iis iure statutas, qui Summorum Pontificum iussa non fecerint” (“let him know that he will incur the penalties established in law for those who do not carry out the orders of the Supreme Pontiffs”)—is a grim irony. The usurping authority cloaks itself in the protection owed to true popes, seeking to make resistance to revolution appear as disobedience to the papacy itself.

In substance, this document conditions minds to identify the conciliar usurper with the office, so that when blatant novelties arrive (religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism), opposition will be experienced as rebellion against the papacy rather than fidelity to it.

Symptom of the Conciliar Sect’s Emergence within the Visible Structures

This seemingly minor constitution illustrates several structural marks of the rising neo-church:

– Continuist camouflage: The use of traditional forms to introduce a new subject and new intentions; the hermeneutics of “nothing has changed” while everything essential is being prepared to change.

– Naturalistic priorities: Appeals to population, “flourishing” cities, pragmatic pastoral ease; no call to penance, no warning of judgment, no insistence on the narrow way.

– Concordatarian docility: The comfortable embedding of ecclesial decisions within prior political agreements, prefiguring the later cult of “dialogue” and mutual recognition of error condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus as incompatible with Catholic dogma.

– Legal absolutism without doctrinal content: Heavy emphasis on the binding force of the act and penalties for disobedience; silence on the prior and absolute obligation to adhere to the defined faith, as if jurisdiction could float free of orthodoxy.

Pius IX and Pius X, reading such a text within its historical context, would recognize the method they had already unmasked: modernism advancing not only through explicit doctrinal theses but through structural, pastoral, canonical modifications that reconfigure the life of the Church along naturalistic and historicist lines.

Pascendi condemns precisely the tendency to treat the Church as an institution subject to adaptation, governed by “pastoral” criteria that become the vehicles for doctrinal transformation. This constitution is one of the early tectonic shifts: by normalizing the authority of the usurper and habituating clergy and faithful to obey his structural decrees, it paves the way for accepting his later theological rebellion.

Silence as Accusation: No Word on Christ the King, No Word on Modern Errors

Most damning is what is absent.

At the end of the reign of Pius XII, Europe and Spain in particular were battlegrounds of secularism, Freemasonry, socialism, and liberalism—all clearly named and condemned in pre-1958 magisterium. The proper Catholic response, illustrated by Pius XI in Quas Primas, is to:

– Assert the social Kingship of Christ.
– Remind rulers and peoples of their duty to submit their laws to His law.
– Structure diocesan life to confront and defeat these errors.

Here, while altering diocesan titles and honors, John XXIII’s act:

– Utters not one syllable about Christ’s social reign.
– Offers no exhortation to defend the faithful against modernist poison.
– Displays no awareness that the Church is under organised masonic assault, which Pius IX had explicitly attributed to “the synagogue of Satan” orchestrating state persecutions and legislative attacks.

This omission is incriminating. When the Church’s enemies have been unmasked with clarity, and when the anti-modernist magisterium has been solemn and severe, the refusal even to gesture in that direction when reshaping ecclesiastical structures reveals a new orientation: cohabitation, not combat; integration into a pluralistic order, not confession of Christ’s exclusive dominion.

Silence about the supernatural and about enemies of souls, combined with meticulous attention to bureaucratic minutiae, is a sure diagnostic sign of that conciliar spirit which will later enthrone religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.

Conclusion: Anodyne Edict as Early Signature of Apostasy

Judged by the immutable doctrine and discipline of the Church prior to 1958, this constitution:

– Cannot be recognised as a legitimate exercise of the Papal Magisterium or jurisdiction, because it proceeds from a man who, by his public modernist orientation and subsequent acts, demonstrates the rupture described in classical theology as incompatible with the papal office.
– Manifests the key traits of the coming conciliar sect: legal formalism without doctrinal zeal, naturalistic criteria, subordination to political frameworks, and silent abandonment of the anti-modernist mission.
– Serves practically to consolidate the authority of the usurper in the consciousness of clergy and faithful, making later acceptance of doctrinal novelties appear as obedience to the same “Supreme Pontiff” who already regulated diocesan titles and concathedrals.

What appears as a small stone in the juridical wall is already part of another edifice: not the City of God described by the pre-conciliar Magisterium, but the humanist construction that will soon publicly enthrone dialogue, religious liberty, and ecumenical relativism.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) has its juridical counterpart: the law of governance reveals the belief of the governor. In this 1959 act we hear not the voice of the perennial Vicar of Christ reaffirming the rights of God and the duties of rulers and shepherds, but the moderated, administrative, tacitly naturalistic voice of one preparing to inaugurate the “new church,” the abominatio desolationis in the holy place, under the respectable seal of “Servus servorum Dei.”

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Source:
Calaguritanae et Calceatensis (Logrognesis)   (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025