Christianorum gregem… — already in the opening line of this apostolic constitution, John XXIII presents himself as the shepherd who, by an act of jurisdiction, carves a new diocesan structure — the so‑called Diocese of Tlaxcala — from the territories of Puebla (Angelorum) and Mexico City. The document delineates civil and ecclesiastical boundaries, designates Tlaxcala as episcopal seat with St Joseph’s church as cathedral, mandates at least an elementary seminary, channels chosen seminarians to the Roman Pius Latin American College, orders the erection of a chapter or, failing that, diocesan consultors, regulates benefices and property according to the 1917 Code, entrusts execution to the apostolic delegate, and cloaks everything in the solemn “perpetual” binding force of papal authority.
Conciliar Territorial Engineering under a Usurped Authority
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the entire text is vitiated at its root by the claim of John XXIII — the first in the conciliar line of usurpers — to exercise supreme and universal jurisdiction while laying foundations for the very revolution that would dissolve the Catholic order defined by Trent, Vatican I, the Syllabus of Errors, and the anti-modernist magisterium of St Pius X. What appears as a sober canonical act is in fact an early, calculated step in the erection of the Ecclesia nova, a paramasonic administrative lattice prepared to host the conciliar apostasy.
Factual Layer: A Technically Canonical Act, Strategically Revolutionary
On the factual surface the constitution:
– Detaches the civil territory of Tlaxcala from two archdioceses to create a new suffragan see.
– Fixes precise borders, names the cathedral, subjectes the new see to the metropolitan of Puebla (Angelorum).
– Imposes:
– erection of at least an elementary seminary;
– sending the “better” seminarians to the Pius Latin American College in Rome;
– erection of a chapter or, ad interim, diocesan consultors;
– application of can. 1500 CIC 1917 for the episcopal mensa and related temporal goods.
– Orders that all relevant acts be transmitted to the Consistorial Congregation; threatens canonical penalties for resistance; annuls contrary provisions.
Taken in isolation — and if issued by a true Roman Pontiff faithful to pre‑1958 doctrine — such a decree would be a normal exercise of papal solicitude, in continuity with Pius XI’s and Pius XII’s careful territorial adjustments for more effective pastoral oversight.
However:
– By May 23, 1959, Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) had:
– already announced and begun engineering the future “ecumenical council” that would enthrone religious liberty, collegiality, and false ecumenism condemned by Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, and Pius XI.
– already manifested, in word and governance, the program of “aggiornamento,” in direct friction with the fixed doctrine reasserted in the Syllabus and in Lamentabili sane exitu / Pascendi.
– Consequently, every structural decision must be read not as neutral, but as preparatory: creating obedient nodes inside the soon-to-be “Church of the New Advent,” designed to receive, implement, and enforce conciliar novelties.
In other words: a juridically precise decree becomes, in concrete historical context, an instrument for reorganizing Catholic Mexico into a docile grid of the conciliar sect.
Linguistic Layer: Pious Vocabulary as a Veil for an Emerging Neo-Church
The rhetoric of the constitution is deliberately traditional:
– Appeals to Christ the Redeemer and the care of the flock.
– Evokes the necessity of spreading observance of the divine law.
– Uses classic curial formulas: “de suprema Nostra auctoritate”, “in perpetuum,” voiding contrary acts, attaching penalties.
Yet this language is deployed in the service of a man whose subsequent words and deeds — and the revolution he inaugurated — stand in radical contradiction to the magisterium he superficially imitates.
Key observations:
1. The “pastoral” tone:
– Emphasizes administrative care and access to sacraments.
– Carefully avoids any warning against modern errors, Freemasonry, socialism, laicism, condemned errors enumerated in the Syllabus (Pius IX, 1864, especially 39–41, 55, 77–80).
– Ignores the modernist plague once anathematized by St Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi.
– This strategic silence reveals the true orientation: “pastoral” organization detached from doctrinal militancy.
2. The functional, bureaucratic register:
– The faithful appear as an administrable mass to be redistributed; dioceses as technical districts.
– The decree is saturated with canonical mechanics (seminarium, capitulum, mensa, consultores, tabularium) while utterly silent about the supernatural end: *salus animarum* in the integral, anti-modernist faith.
– The language manifests the mentality of technocratic churchmanship, which Pius XI implicitly condemns in Quas Primas when he insists the Kingship of Christ must rule public and social life, not merely internal administration.
3. The manipulative use of solemnity:
– The constitution threatens penalties against those who would resist: a traditional formula now placed in the mouth of a man whose entire project would soon overturn the very doctrine that made such threats meaningful.
– The solemn style attempts to wrap a coming apostasy in the vestments of continuity: a classic modernist tactic condemned by St Pius X, who unmasked those who “put on the mask of reformers” while undermining dogma.
In short, the vocabulary mimics traditional papal authority, but stripped of its doctrinal edge; *forma catholicitatis* without *substantia catholicitatis*.
Theological Layer: Silence on Christ the King, Betrayal of the Supernatural End
Measured against pre‑1958 doctrine, the most damning feature of this text is what it omits.
1. No reference to the social Kingship of Christ:
– Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches unequivocally that:
– Peace and order for nations are possible only under the public reign of Christ the King.
– States and rulers must recognize, honour, and obey Christ and His Church in public law.
– Tlaxcala — in Mexican history — is a locus of evangelization and martyrdom; a place where once the true Faith publicly permeated society.
– Yet the constitution:
– does not even hint at the duty of the new diocese to re‑christianize public life.
– does not confront the liberal, Masonic, anti-Catholic order dominating Mexico.
– treats the Church as if peacefully coexisting under liberal states were normal.
This omission aligns perfectly with the condemned liberal thesis (Syllabus, 55) that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church,” and with proposition 80, rejected by Pius IX, that the Roman Pontiff should come to terms with “progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”
2. No denunciation of Freemasonry and persecution:
– Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X explicitly unmask Masonic sects as the prime engineers of secularist persecution and doctrinal dissolution.
– Mexico had, in the early 20th century, seen savage, Masonic-inspired persecutions and attempts to subject the Church to the state.
– A truly Catholic constitution for a new Mexican diocese, in continuity with those Popes, would:
– Recall the blood of martyrs.
– Condemn the laicist laws.
– Demand full liberty for the Church as a right from Christ, not a concession from the state.
– John XXIII’s act is mute.
– This muteness is itself an implicit concession to the liberal order — a refusal to exercise the “force” and indirect temporal power whose denial is condemned in the Syllabus (24).
3. Instrumentalization of seminaries for conciliar indoctrination:
The decree orders:
“Cum autem alumni eo aetatis pervenerint qua sint philosophicis theologicisque disciplinis imbuendi, qui meliores fuerint Romam mittantur, Collegio Piano Latino Americano recipiendi.”
(“When the students reach the age at which they are to be imbued with philosophical and theological disciplines, those who are better are to be sent to Rome, to be received at the Pius Latin American College.”)
In a pre‑modernist framework this would be laudable; but in 1959, this is:
– A calculated channeling of the most promising youth into a Roman environment already being reoriented toward aggiornamento:
– softening of anti-modernist vigilance,
– ecumenical experiments,
– doctrinal dilution.
It is the pipeline by which Tlaxcala’s future “clergy” would become functionaries of post-conciliarism. Under the mask of promoting sound doctrine, it secures ideological conformity to the coming revolution. *Corruptio optimi pessima* (the corruption of the best is the worst): the best candidates are targeted first.
4. Canonical language weaponized against the true Faith:
– The constitution affirms that the new bishop, chapter, and consultors exercise authority according to the 1917 Code and traditional discipline.
– But once John XXIII’s status is recognized as that of an antipope — a manifest heretic in the sense articulated by St Robert Bellarmine and the classical theologians cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file —
– his acts of jurisdiction are devoid of pontifical authority.
– the created structures become, in practice, instruments of a schismatic, heterodox pseudo-church.
– The threat of penalties for those who would resist “the will of the Supreme Pontiff” becomes a grotesque inversion:
– *Qui resistunt revolutioni puniendi sunt*, while those who uphold integral doctrine are marginalized.
Thus, theology is not merely omitted; it is inverted under the cloak of continuity.
Symptomatic Layer: The Tlaxcala Constitution as a Microcosm of Conciliar Apostasy
The constitution is symptomatic of deeper pathologies that would fully manifest in the conciliar and post-conciliar epoch.
1. Reduction of the Church to an administrative corporation:
– The act treats:
– diocesan boundaries,
– seminary obligations,
– cathedral designation,
– consultative organs,
as if the essence of the Church were juridical arrangement.
– There is:
– no insistence on safeguarding the anti-modernist oath (imposed by St Pius X in 1910) for future clergy.
– no reaffirmation of doctrines under attack: the inerrancy of Scripture, the unique salvific role of the Catholic Church, the condemnation of indifferentism and false ecumenism.
– This corresponds to modernism’s practical program: maintain forms, empty them inside, then refill them with new content — “dialogue,” “religious liberty,” and the cult of human dignity detached from Christ the King.
2. Preparation for collegiality and democratization:
– The emphasis on chapters and diocesan consultors anticipates the post‑conciliar inflation of episcopal conferences and advisory bodies that dilute and relativize jurisdiction, against the ultramontane clarity of Vatican I.
– While chapters are traditional, here they appear in an ecclesiological trajectory:
– from strong papal monarchy defending dogma,
– to a horizontal, bureaucratic structure facilitating doctrinal drift.
3. Integration into a network obedient to the upcoming council:
– The new diocese is made suffragan of Puebla, itself to be absorbed into the conciliar project.
– Its seminarians, trained in Rome, will later implement:
– vernacular liturgy,
– sacrilegious “eucharistic” abuses,
– ecumenical and interreligious contamination.
– The 1959 act thus ensures that Tlaxcala’s faithful will be handed over, step by step, to a hierarchy which will suppress the Most Holy Sacrifice in its traditional form and replace it with a protestantized rite, and will preach religious liberty condemned by the Syllabus.
4. Systemic silence about last things and supernatural stakes:
Perhaps the gravest symptom: no mention of:
– state of grace,
– danger of heresy,
– eternal damnation,
– necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation.
Pius IX condemned the proposition (16) that anyone can find the way of salvation in any religion; Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that ignoring Christ’s reign brings social ruin. St Pius X defined Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies and warned that novelty in dogma destroys the Faith. Yet in this act, preparing a crucial pastoral structure in a historically Catholic land, there is not one word about these supernatural stakes.
Silentium de supernaturalibus (silence concerning supernatural realities) is not a neutral omission: it is the signature of the emerging conciliar sect, which will replace the *regnum Christi* with “human rights” and “dialogue.”
Contradiction with Pre-1958 Magisterium and Canonical Principle
The constitution’s moral illegitimacy becomes starker when contrasted with the doctrinal principles articulated in the authentic sources provided.
1. Against Modern Liberalism and Secularism (Syllabus of Errors):
– The Syllabus (77–80) rejects:
– the denial that the Catholic religion should be the only state religion;
– the assertion that the public exercise of all cults is beneficial;
– the pretence that “progress” and “modern civilization” are compatible with diluting Catholic dogma.
– John XXIII’s act, read in historical context, tacitly accepts:
– the Mexican liberal settlement;
– coexistence with anti-Catholic legislation;
– a purely spiritualized mission.
– Tlaxcala’s new structure is not marshalled as a bastion for re‑establishing Christ’s social reign, but as an integrated cog in a Church already preparing to bless religious freedom as a “right.”
2. Against Modernism (Lamentabili sane exitu, Pascendi):
– St Pius X condemns:
– the idea that dogmas evolve according to historical conditions (prop. 22, 58–60).
– the reduction of ecclesiastical authority to “listening to the people” (prop. 6).
– the denial of the Church’s right to judge in matters of revelation (prop. 2–8).
– The Tlaxcala constitution does not explicitly state such errors, yet:
– its author would soon convoke a council whose interpreters would normalize these condemned theses.
– it reshapes Church governance while refusing even the standard anti-modernist reaffirmations used by previous Popes.
– *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (he who is silent appears to consent): in this context, silence concerning the condemned errors is complicity, not prudence.
3. On the loss of office through heresy:
According to the principles reiterated in the Defense of Sedevacantism:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church:
– *“Non potest esse caput qui non est membrum.”* (He who is not a member cannot be the head.)
– A pope manifesting heresy or publicly undermining faith loses office ipso facto (Bellarmine, Wernz–Vidal; canon 188.4 CIC 1917 regarding public defection from the faith).
– John XXIII’s program, speeches, and acts — especially his promotion of religious liberty and ecumenism that would erupt in the conciliar documents — place him in objective rupture with the fixed pre‑1958 magisterium.
– Therefore this constitution, though dressed in canonical solemnity, proceeds from one who does not hold papal authority and functions as an administrative edict of a nascent parallel structure — the conciliar sect — rather than an act of the Catholic Church.
Exposure of the Spiritual Bankruptcy Encapsulated in the Text
Summarizing the multi-layered bankruptcy manifest in this constitution:
– Bureaucratic pastoralism without doctrinal confession:
– The act multiplies structures while refusing to confess Christ the King against the liberal state or to warn souls against modern errors.
– Formation directed toward Rome infiltrated by aggiornamento:
– The best seminarians are sent precisely where the Faith is being methodically relativized, ensuring the future “clergy” of Tlaxcala will be vectors of the conciliar revolution.
– Abuse of papal style in service of a revolutionary agenda:
– Traditional formulas (“perpetual,” penalties for disobedience) are weaponized to enforce compliance not with the perennial magisterium, but with a counterfeit authority.
– Silence regarding Freemasonry and laicism in Mexico:
– No echo of Pius IX, Leo XIII, or St Pius X’s condemnations; no warning against sects condemned as the “synagogue of Satan.” The omission testifies to alignment with the world the earlier Popes unmasked.
– Preparation of a docile territorial grid for the “abomination of desolation”:
– By canonical appearances, a Catholic diocese; in historical truth, a future outpost of the neo-church, where:
– the Most Holy Sacrifice would be replaced by a protestantized assembly,
– indifferentism and religious liberty would be preached,
– and the flock would be led away from the integral Faith once preached by missionaries and martyrs.
What should have been an act of strengthening the Church in Mexico becomes, in context, a precise example of how the conciliar usurpers harnessed canonical machinery and traditional language to construct the external carcass within which post-conciliarism, false ecumenism, and the cult of man would operate. The Diocese of Tlaxcala, as constituted here, is not defended as bastion of Christ’s social reign, but prepared as an obedient province of the Church of the New Advent.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief”): once the structures and seminaries are in the hands of those imbued with conciliar ideology, the belief of the people follows. This apostolic constitution is one more coldly calculated stone in the edifice of that betrayal.
Source:
Angelorum – Mexicanae (Tlaxcalensis) – Constitutio Apostolica quibusdam ab Archidiocesibus Angelorum et Mexicana detractis territoriis nova efficitur Dioecesis « Tlaxcalensis » appellanda, d. 23 m. Ma… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025