The document “Chihuahuensis” of John XXIII, issued as an apostolic constitution on 8 January 1959, juridically erects a collegiate chapter of canons in the metropolitan cathedral of Chihuahua: it specifies the number of canons and prebendaries, their dignities (Archdeacon, Theologian, Penitentiary, Administrator), regulates choir dress and external habit, links the new chapter to certain solemn liturgical functions, outlines competencies regarding benefices, and declares that diocesan consultors’ office ceases ipso facto once the chapter is erected.
Ritual Ornament for a Coming Revolution
Factual Rearrangement: Institutional Cosmetics on the Eve of Catastrophe
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith, the first and gravest fact about this text is its signer: John XXIII, the initiator of the conciliar revolution, whose entire program contradicted the constant magisterium summed up by Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors, 1864) and by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907). The juridical content—erection of a chapter of canons—is, taken in itself materially traditional; yet the entire act must be read as a calculated deployment of traditional forms to cloak an approaching subversion.
The text presents:
– Creation of a chapter with six canons and two prebendaries.
– Attribution of traditional dignities: Archdeacon, Theologian, Penitentiary, Administrator.
– Detailed norms on choir dress and the so‑called “Pian” habit.
– Provision, due to shortage of clergy, to cumulate dignities/benefices even with cures of souls.
– Specification of days for common solemn functions: Nativity and Resurrection of Our Lord, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Assumption, Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
– Transfer of consultative function from diocesan consultors to the new chapter.
– Broad delegations for execution by Aloisius Raimondi, apostolic delegate in Mexico, with standard clauses of canonical enforceability.
At first glance, nothing here is overtly heretical. But this is precisely the method of the conciliar sect in its incubation phase: to preserve external, baroque canonical forms while emptying them of their supernatural function and redirecting them to serve a new ecclesiology. In 1959, months before announcing the council that would enthrone religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the cult of man, John XXIII plays the “restorer of institutions.” This is not renewal in Christo Rege, but liturgical and canonical choreography preparing hearts to obey the coming apostasy.
Language of Authority without the Substance of Tradition
The Latin is deliberately solemn, imitating the cadence of authentic papal constitutions:
“Nos haec omnia rata habentes, de Nostra apostolica auctoritate ea quae sequuntur decernimus atque iubemus.”
(“We, holding all these things as ratified, by our apostolic authority decree and order what follows.”)
The phrasing is precisely that of true pontifical acts; but in the mouth of the one who will convoke the council that tramples Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, such formulae become parasitic. The rhetoric seeks to trigger habitual obedience formed in the age of Pius IX–Pius XII, while the project already tends towards rupture.
Note how:
– The text is obsessed with external minutiae of vesture: subcollar, buttons, piping, mozetta colour, biretta tuft. This is not incidental. It signals a mentality in which ecclesiastical dignity is aestheticized while doctrinal combat against liberalism and Modernism is silently abandoned.
– The habitual papal threats at the end—nullity of contrary acts, penalties for disobedience—are retained, but never once is the supernatural end (salvation of souls, defence of the true faith against modern errors, the Social Kingship of Christ) explicitly invoked as the ratio legis. The contrast with Pius XI’s Quas primas, where every legal and liturgical measure is explicitly ordered to the public reign of Christ, is striking. Here: institutionalism without proclamation of Christ’s royal claims over Mexico’s apostate state.
This bureaucratic solemnity, severed from militant doctrinal clarity, is symptomatic of a hierarchy already internally penetrated by that which St. Pius X condemned as modernismus, “the synthesis of all heresies.” The text’s linguistic decorum masks theological decomposition.
Ecclesiology Reduced to Structures: The Missing Supernatural Horizon
Measured by unchanging Catholic doctrine before 1958, the deepest indictment of this constitution is its silence.
What is entirely absent?
– No assertion that the chapter exists ad tuendam fidem, to guard the purity of doctrine against liberalism, naturalism, socialism, and Freemasonry, all vigorously unmasked by Pius IX in the Syllabus and by Leo XIII.
– No reminder that sacred dignities exist to adore Christ the King in the Most Holy Sacrifice and to extend His public reign over nations, as Pius XI requires: peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (Quas primas).
– No mention of the last ends: death, judgment, hell, heaven; no appeal to the necessity of the state of grace; no insistence that canons and clergy must be vigilant against the “enemies within,” unmasked by St. Pius X as the real danger far more lethal than external foes.
– No allusion to the immense gravity of Mexico’s history of Masonic persecution and bloody apostasy (Cristero War); no demand that the chapter serve as a bulwark against the secular state condemned in propositions 55 and 77–80 of the Syllabus (separation of Church and State, indifferentism, liberalism).
– No reference to the duty of canons to denounce and combat secret societies, even though Pius IX and Leo XIII repeatedly exposed Freemasonry as the “synagogue of Satan” waging war on the Church.
This silence constitutes not a neutral omission, but a doctrinal position: the Church is being recast as an institution of liturgical functionaries and consultative bodies, integrated into a naturalistic order, shorn of its combative, exclusive claim as the one ark of salvation and sole possessor of social kingship.
Maxime quod tacetur, clamatur (“Most of all, that which is silenced is shouted”). By avoiding everything essential that prior magisterium stressed with burning urgency, the text heralds the new religion of the council to come: a church of structures, ceremonies, and “rights,” reconciled with liberal modernity.
Instrumentalizing Traditional Dignities for a Neo-Church Agenda
The erection of dignities appears orthodox:
– Archdeacon.
– Theologian.
– Penitentiary.
– Administrator.
Under Pius IX or St. Pius X, such offices would be erected or reformed to:
– Guard doctrine against error and censorship‑worthy publications.
– Ensure worthy administration of the sacraments ordered to the propitiatory Sacrifice.
– Provide rigorous doctrinal and moral guidance to clergy and people.
Under John XXIII, the context is inverted.
1. The “Theologian”
There is no indication that the theologian canon is bound to defend, for example:
– The condemnation of religious freedom errors (Quanta Cura).
– The rejection of indifferentism and latitudinarianism (Syllabus 15–18).
– The anti-modernist syllabus of Pius X (Lamentabili).
Instead, we know (from verifiable subsequent history) that John XXIII will within months launch a council that:
– Will enthrone precisely the errors Pius IX and Pius X anathematized: religious liberty, collegiality understood as democratization, ecumenism as relativism, evolution of doctrine.
Thus this theologian’s stall, erected under the aegis of such a program, is ordered not to the integral defence of immutable doctrine, but to the management and gradual reorientation of doctrine within a paramasonic structure. The “Theologian” risks becoming the local custodian of the coming hermeneutica evolutionis, camouflaged as “renewal.”
2. The “Penitentiary”
The Penitentiary canon’s dignity recalls the Church’s immense seriousness regarding mortal sin, censures, indulgences. But nothing here recalls:
– The teaching that every soul outside the state of grace is an enemy of God.
– The real danger of sacrilege against the Most Holy Eucharist.
– The grave threat of naturalistic morality and secular legislation condemned by the Syllabus, which produces objectively sinful civil structures.
In the emerging conciliar sect, confession is progressively horizontalized and psychologized. The dignified Penitentiary stall, erected here, may soon serve a redefined praxis in which sin is trivialized, punishments are hushed, and the absolute moral law is silently negotiated in the name of “pastoral” approaches.
3. The Chapter vs. Consultors
The constitution declares that diocesan consultors will cease in office ipso facto once the chapter is erected. Historically, chapters possessed real canonical weight: election, advice, vigilance over the bishop. Yet by 1959, the conciliar architects are preparing a new episcopal regime where “collegiality” will mask centralization in a new, supra-traditional bureaucracy obedient not to the perennial magisterium but to a revolutionary “council.”
Replacing consultors with a chapter at this juncture is less a return to medieval health than a controlled restructuring: institutional actors in Chihuahua are bound more tightly to the Roman center just as that center is about to be seized by the neo-church. Externally traditional, internally reprogrammed.
Ritual Detail as Theological Sedative
The striking emphasis on vesture demands attention:
“…subcollari violaceo… veste nigri coloris cum orae textibus, orbiculis et ocellis violaceis… rocheto cum flexu in manicis rubini coloris… bireto nigro cum flocculo violaceo, et mozeta lanea… habitum quem Pianum vocant…”
Nothing is said of:
– Interior holiness required for such dignities.
– Obligation to profess the faith integrally and to reject Modernism.
– Duty to defend the Social Kingship of Christ against laicism.
– Obligation to denounce errors condemned in the Syllabus and Lamentabili.
Thus:
– External elegance is meticulously legislated.
– Internal orthodoxy and militancy are simply presumed—and in fact soon betrayed.
This is methodical: the conciliar program initially reassures clergy and laity by conserving picturesque externals (canons, mozettas, “Pian” habits) while quietly altering theology, ecclesiology, and liturgy. Once obedience has been secured through continuity of trappings, the same authority will abolish or empty those very forms (as seen later in the near extinction or neutralization of cathedral chapters, the suppression of genuine choir life, and the reduction of traditional habits to rare costumes).
Such fetishizing of external forms without reiterating their doctrinal raison d’être is a symptom of spiritual exhaustion, if not of calculated deception. It lulls souls into trusting a hierarchy that is already preparing to enthrone the exact liberalism, religious “freedom,” and naturalistic “human rights” condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X.
Separation from the Social Kingship of Christ
Authentic pre-1958 magisterium, especially Quas primas, insists:
– Christ is King not only of individuals but of societies, states, laws, and public life.
– There is no legitimate neutrality of the State towards the true religion.
– Public apostasy and laicism are mortal sins with social consequences.
In a Catholic reading, the erection of a metropolitan chapter in Mexico—a land drenched in the blood of martyrs of the Cristero resistance—should:
– Explicitly reaffirm the exclusive rights of Christ the King over the Mexican nation.
– Denounce the laicist constitution and Masonic oppression as objectively unjust and null where they usurp divine and ecclesial rights (Syllabus 39–42, 55).
– Ordain the chapter to be a visible organ of public reparation and militant preaching of the Kingship of Christ, especially through the solemn exposition and cult of the Blessed Sacrament.
The constitution does none of this. It refers to solemn functions (Christmas, Easter, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Assumption, Holy Cross) purely ritualistically, with no word about the public, political, and juridical claims of those mysteries upon the nation.
This silence is not accidental; it is structural:
– A hierarchy preparing to embrace “religious liberty” and “ecumenical dialogue” cannot proclaim with integrity the obligation of states to worship Christ the King and submit their laws to His Church.
– Thus, even in a seemingly pious act like the creation of a chapter, every trace of the anti-liberal combat of Pius IX and Pius X is suppressed.
What remains is a decorous, state-compatible, “non-political” Catholicism: liturgy as heritage, clergy as functionaries, theology as an internal discourse, the Church as one actor among many in a pluralist society. Exactly the model anathematized in essence by the Syllabus.
Continuity Claimed, Rupture Prepared: The Conciliar Method at Work
The constitution ends with classic clauses of perpetuity, nullity, and penalties:
“…Has vero Litteras nunc et in posterum efficaces esse et fore volumus… cuiusvis generis, contraria praescripta… per has Litteras iisdem derogemus omnibus… Qui… spreverit vel… detrectaverit, sciat se poenas esse subiturum…”
(“…We will and decree that these letters be effective now and in the future… any contrary provisions of any kind… by these letters we derogate all such… whoever shall despise or in any way reject [them], let him know that he will incur the penalties…”)
Here lies the essential perversion:
– The formulae of unquestionable papal authority are deployed by the very usurping line (beginning with John XXIII) that will shortly:
– Undermine the anti-modernist magisterium.
– Promote condemned principles of religious liberty and collegiality.
– Replace the Catholic notion of the Church as a perfect society with a communitarian, “People of God” ideology prone to democratization and syncretism.
– Prepare the way for a fabricated liturgy in which the Most Holy Sacrifice is obscured and faith in the Real Presence is eroded.
– The threat of penalties is thus co-opted to bind consciences to a proto-conciliar obedience that will be used against the very doctrine formerly protected by such penalties.
Potestas separata a veritate in seipsam ruens est (“Power separated from truth collapses into itself”). The Chihuahuensis constitution exemplifies this: an act formally within traditional canonical competence, but materially serving a trajectory that repudiates the integral faith.
Systemic Symptoms of the Conciliar Sect’s Gestation
Several structural elements of this constitution anticipate, in germ, the ecclesiology of the post-1958 neo-church:
– Centralization through compliant local elites:
– The chapter’s creation and composition are tightly controlled from Rome.
– Those appointed are structurally dependent on a hierarchy soon to redefine dogma and liturgy, yet cloaked in traditional titles.
– Clericalism emptied of doctrinal rigor:
– The entire document presupposes clerical prestige and authority, but never recalls the non-negotiable duty to guard against modernist perversion. This fosters a caste of functionaries who will dutifully implement the conciliar revolution while draped in pre-conciliar garments.
– Naturalization of ecclesial life:
– All justifications are practical, juridical, aesthetic.
– The supernatural is presumed, not proclaimed; where the Church once thundered against error, here it politely administers.
These are precisely the mechanisms through which the conciliar sect—the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic occupation of Catholic structures—would impose itself: keep the shells, change the substance.
Reasserting the Only Legitimate Criterion: Immutable Doctrine Before 1958
Against the background of Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, the Chihuahuensis constitution is theologically and spiritually bankrupt not because it creates a chapter (an act in itself legitimate in Catholic tradition), but because:
– It refuses to link that act explicitly and militantly to:
– The condemnation of liberalism, secularism, indifferentism, rationalism, socialism, and Freemasonry.
– The absolute necessity of integral Catholic doctrine for salvation.
– The public reign of Christ the King over Mexico and all nations.
– The vigilant rejection of every modernist attempt to evolve dogma or relativize truth.
By 1959, such omissions could no longer be excused as mere oversight. They are programmatic. An act of governance that should have fortified the front line against apostasy is reduced to administrative and ceremonial choreography. The chapter of canons is thus established not as a bastion of the faith of Pius IX and St. Pius X, but as an integrated cog in the machinery that would soon betray that faith.
The integral Catholic response is clear:
– Respect the office of canons and chapters as historically Catholic where they serve the immutable magisterium.
– Refuse to be deceived by the use of traditional Latin, vesture, and canonical formulas when wielded in service of an ecclesial project that contradicts the pre-1958 magisterium.
– Measure every structure and command by the perennial doctrine: where they serve Christ the King and His one true Church, they bind; where they prepare or embody modernist revolution, they must be exposed and rejected.
Lex credendi statuit legem orandi et regendi (“The law of believing establishes the law of praying and governing”). In “Chihuahuensis”, we already see the inversion: the law of governing and dressing is carefully prescribed, while the law of believing is left dangerously open to the coming conciliar mutation. This disjunction betrays the true direction of the act and unmasks its spiritual vacuity beneath the façade of continuity.
Source:
Chihuahuensis (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025