In this brief Latin decree issued in 1959, John XXIII grants the diocese of Tuy (Tudensis) the additional title “Vigo” (“Vicensis” in the Latin of the text, relating to Vigo) and elevates the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Vigo to the status of a concatedral (co-cathedral), with the associated privileges, jurisdictional provisions, and canonical formalities. The entire text is framed as a pastoral and organizational act aimed at promoting spiritual fruitfulness through an adjusted diocesan structure—but precisely therein its real significance emerges: a prelude in style, principles, and ecclesiology to the conciliar usurpation soon to devastate the visible structures of the Church.
Administrative Cosmetics at the Dawn of Revolution
Far from being a neutral technical document, this so‑called “apostolic constitution” is signed by the very initiator of the conciliar catastrophe, John XXIII, whose election and subsequent deeds must be judged in light of the perennial doctrine on heresy and office.
Already integral Catholic theology, clearly expressed by St. Robert Bellarmine, Wernz–Vidal, and the entire pre-1958 Magisterium, teaches that a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church because “non potest esse caput quod non est membrum” (“he cannot be the head who is not a member”). When one contemplates the programmatic aggiornamento, the rehabilitation of condemned “theologies,” the adulation of “modern civilization,” and the ideological preparation for Vatican II carried out by John XXIII, it becomes evident that such juridical acts, even when apparently modest, form part of a larger deformation of the notion of authority and of the Church herself.
This text must therefore be read not as an innocent diocesan adjustment, but as a small brick in the construction of the future conciliar sect, an operation of continuity-in-appearance and rupture-in-substance.
Subordination of the Sacred to Diplomatic Machinery
The opening paragraphs anchor the decision explicitly in the 1953 conventions between the Holy See and Spain. John XXIII states that the petition came from the nuncio, Hildebrando Antoniutti,
“rite servatis sollemnibus Conventionibus die vicesimo septimo mensis Augusti initis inter S. Sedem et Hispanicam Nationem anno millesimo nongentesimo quinquagesimo tertio”
(“with due observance of the solemn Conventions of August 27, 1953, between the Holy See and the Spanish Nation”).
On the factual level:
– The act appears as a juridical execution of political-ecclesiastical agreements.
– The elevation of the Vigo church to a concatedral and the annexation of the “Vicensis” title are justified not by clear supernatural necessities (defense of the faith, safeguarding sacraments, combating errors), but by administrative convenience and prestige.
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith:
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus (n. 55), condemns the separation of Church and State; but he likewise rejects (n. 19, 20, 44) any subjugation of ecclesiastical authority to civil power or mutualist contractualism that treats the Church as one negotiator among others. The Church, as a *societas perfecta*, acts from the mandate of Christ the King (Quas Primas), not as an appendage of concordats.
– The document’s spirit discloses a proto-conciliar mindset: the Church’s concrete acts are increasingly filtered through diplomatic frameworks, making “agreements” and “conventions” the implicit norm and justification, while the explicit confession of Christ’s kingship over nations is absent.
The silence is thunderous. There is no reminder that civil authority must submit to Christ the King and recognize the Church’s rights; no recollection of Pius XI’s insistence that “peace will not come until states recognize the reign of Christ.” Instead, we glimpse the Church of the New Advent in embryo: juridical acts wrapped in pious vocabulary, but mentally operating in categories of technocratic rearrangement and state-compatible management.
The Rhetoric of the “Diligent Farmer” as Ecclesial Managerialism
The constitution opens with an agricultural metaphor:
“Quemadmodum impiger providusque agricola… ita et Nos… annitimur ut per idoneam quoque rerum dispositionem ea fiat singularum Ecclesiarum condicio ut fructus usque laetiores sanctitatis atque bonorum operum edant.”
(“Just as a diligent and prudent farmer… so we also strive, through suitable arrangement of affairs, that the condition of individual churches be such that they may yield ever more joyful fruits of holiness and good works.”)
On the linguistic level:
– The language appears classically Roman and traditional, but the key hinge is the expression “per idoneam quoque rerum dispositionem” (“through suitable arrangement of affairs”).
– Holiness and good works are here subtly linked not primarily to doctrine, sacraments, or moral reform, but to optimized administrative engineering.
– This rhetorical strategy domesticates the notion of the Church as a supernatural society into a system whose “fruitfulness” is made to depend on structural rearrangements.
Traditional doctrine:
– The Church has always had to adapt diocesan boundaries; this is not in itself problematic. However, in authentic papal documents of earlier ages, even disciplinary or territorial acts are usually tied explicitly to the defense of true doctrine, the salvation of souls, the repression of error, or the strengthening of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* and sacramental life.
– Here, in 1959, on the eve of the council that will enthrone “religious liberty” and ecumenical indifferentism, we see the seeds of a new rhetoric: supernatural vocabulary serving as a thin veil over a functionalist, bureaucratic mentality.
The omission is decisive: there is not a single word warning against the massive infiltration of Modernism exposed by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi Dominici gregis*; no explicit reaffirmation of the immutable condemnations of liberalism and Masonry laid out by Pius IX; no denunciation of the secularist currents corroding Spain and Europe. The episcopal titles are cared for; the wolves preying on souls are not mentioned.
Silence on Modernism: A Complicity by Omission
In light of the grave crisis already fully diagnosed before 1958:
– St. Pius X condemned as heretical the thesis that dogma evolves, that Scripture is subject to purely historicist critique, that the Church must adapt her doctrine to modern thought.
– Pius IX and Leo XIII repeatedly unmasked secret societies, laicism, and naturalism as instruments of the “synagogue of Satan.”
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* demanded the public recognition of the social kingship of Christ and denounced secular apostasy as the root of the world’s misery.
Yet this 1959 act:
– Takes no opportunity to renew these condemnations.
– Speaks nothing about the duty of the new concatedral to be a bastion of doctrinal purity, Eucharistic reparation, Marian devotion in the authentic sense, or militant Catholic action against impiety.
– Omits all explicit profession against Modernism, despite the fact that, according to St. Pius X, it is the “synthesis of all heresies,” already deeply entrenched in seminaries and chanceries.
This is not a harmless lacuna. When ecclesiastical texts, even disciplinary ones, cease to breathe the supernatural vigilance of the true Church and instead confine themselves to self-referential structures, they habituate clergy and faithful to a religion where the supreme danger is disorder in files, not apostasy in doctrine.
Such silence, in the very years when the same authority is preparing a “pastoral council” destined to overturn in practice the Syllabus of Errors, functions as tacit complicity. Qui tacet consentire videtur (he who is silent appears to consent).
Elevation of a Concatedral Without Supernatural Mandate
The key operative provisions are:
– The diocese and its bishop receive the joint title “Tudensis-Vicensis”.
– The church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Vigo is raised to the rank of concatedral, with canons permitted to exercise their proper offices there, and the bishop free to reside and celebrate there.
These provisions, assessed according to integral Catholic doctrine, raise several symptomatic points:
1. No doctrinal or pastoral urgency:
– There is no confession that this new concatedral must guard the integrity of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary* according to the Roman rite, no stress on catechesis against error, no call to penance and conversion.
– The Blessed Virgin is nominally honored, but her true role—as destroyer of all heresies and exemplar of obedience to immutable truth—is not invoked.
2. Symbolic groundwork:
– By multiplying concathedrals and accentuating episcopal mobility, one accentuates the centrality of diocesan “structures,” “collegial” presence, and a more horizontal distribution of authority—concepts that will soon be exploited by the conciliar sect to dissolve monarchical episcopal responsibility into a fog of conferences and committees.
– The bishop is authorized to reside where he wills between these sees without explicit admonition that his first duty is to guard doctrine “opportune, importune” (in season and out of season). The danger is not juridical in itself, but theological by context: government is conceived administratively, not doctrinally.
3. Sacral minimalism:
– The text emphasizes privileges, competencies, delegation, canonical forms—but remains bloodlessly indifferent to the supernatural battle waged in Spain and Europe (Freemasonry, communism, liberalism, moral corruption).
– This contrasts sharply with the tone of Pius IX and St. Pius X, who in disciplinary letters constantly intertwined canonical measures with dogmatic clarity and anti-modernist warnings.
Thus what appears as a simple adjustment in titulature subtly trains minds to regard the Church as an evolving institutional network whose health is measured by legal neatness, not by fidelity to the deposit of faith.
Legal Absolutism Detached from Truth
The constitution concludes with a strong affirmation of binding force:
“Has vero Litteras nunc et in posterum efficaces esse et fore volumus… cuiusvis generis, contraria praescripta officere poterunt, cum per has Litteras iisdem derogemus omnibus… si quis… contra egerit ac Nos ediximus, id prorsus irritum atque inane haberi iubemus.”
(“We will and decree that these Letters be effective now and in the future… no provisions to the contrary of any kind may stand, since by these Letters we derogate them all… if anyone, of whatever authority, acts contrary to what we have decreed, we order that it be entirely null and void.”)
On the surface, this is typical papal juridical language. But in the larger context:
– The more emphatically John XXIII asserts plenary authority on minor structural matters, the more glaring his refusal to exercise that same authority to crush Modernism, to reaffirm the Syllabus, to enforce *Pascendi* with renewed vigour.
– The absolutist juridical style remains; the object is altered. That is the essence of the conciliar revolution: use of the external forms of papal authority in service of an internal redirection against the prior magisterium.
Integral Catholic doctrine, reaffirmed by the anti-modernist oath, tolerates no opposition between one magisterial act and the previous living teaching. Authority is true authority only insofar as it is strictly bound to the deposit of faith: lex credendi statuit legem supplicandi (“the law of belief establishes the law of prayer”). When the solemn energy of papal language is spent on rearranging honorary titles while the wolves roam unchecked, we see juridical form separated from doctrinal substance.
This separation prepares the later abuse: the same outward forms (constitutions, decrees, “councils”) will be invoked to legitimize religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism, and liturgical desecration, all in direct collision with the pre-1958 magisterium. The Tudensis text is one more rehearsal: command everything, except the defense of truth.
Continuity of Personnel, Discontinuity of Faith
The signatories (Cardinals Copello, Mimmi, officials of the Apostolic Chancery) are representatives of a Roman apparatus that, while still clad in traditional dignity and Latin formulas, is already permeated by tendencies later unleashed at Vatican II.
Here the symptomatic elements are:
– The apparatus functions efficiently to implement structural changes.
– There is no parallel insistence that bishops and canons solemnly profess, defend, and enforce the anti-modernist syllabus; no reminder of the recent condemnations of theological novelty.
Thus, continuity of personnel masks discontinuity of faith. The very men and offices meant to be guardians of tradition are mobilized to normalize an ecclesial praxis where the supernatural is assumed but not fought for, where errors are known but not anathematized, where Marian and canonical language coexists peacefully with a growing admiration for “modern man” and “progress.”
The Tudensis constitution, almost ostentatiously “traditional” in form, exemplifies this anesthesia: pious style without doctrinal combat; canonical minutiae without metaphysical clarity; a Church still speaking Latin while preparing to enthrone anthropocentric vernacular chaos.
From Territorial Adjustments to the “Church of the New Advent”
It would be naïve to isolate this constitution from the near future: within a few years, the same line of usurpers will:
– Convene and approve the documents of Vatican II, contradicting in practice Pius IX’s Syllabus and St. Pius X’s condemnations.
– Introduce a new rite that obscures the sacrificial and propitiatory nature of the Holy Mass.
– Promote ecumenism, religious liberty, and collegiality irreconcilable with the integral Catholic doctrine that the one true Church of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.
In that light:
– This text’s most significant trait is what it does not say. It does not confess explicitly the exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the one ark of salvation for Spain. It does not exhort the clergy of Tuy-Vigo to resist liberalism, communism, Masonry, or moral corruption as mortal enemies of Christ the King.
– It presents itself as an expression of plenary authority while being entirely mute on the defining doctrinal battles of its time—an ominous anticipation of a “magisterium” content with governance devoid of dogmatic militancy.
Such silence is not neutral. It is the disciplinary face of the coming neo-church: a paramasonic structure that maintains continuity of bureaucracy and rhetoric while inverting the hierarchy of truths—putting human arrangements, bilateral agreements, and administrative tidiness ahead of the non-negotiable rights of God and the integrity of the deposit of faith.
Where the true Popes of the pre-1958 Church never ceased to condemn, warn, and define, here we find a juridical text perfectly comfortable in a world already marching toward secular-humanist synthesis, offering nothing but **“safe” internal rearrangement**. This is precisely the mentality that made Vatican II and its aftermath possible: a blindness to the supernatural war, a preference for serene wording over saving truth.
Conclusion: A Minor Decree as a Symptom of Major Defection
Judged by the immutable norms of the Catholic Magisterium prior to 1958:
– The content of this constitution—annexing a title and elevating a concatedral—is not in itself heretical.
– The deeper problem lies in its tone, context, and omissions: **a pseudo-pastoral activism that exalts administrative acts while leaving unchallenged the doctrinal siege condemned by Pius IX and St. Pius X.**
The Tudensis decree teaches us how the conciliar revolution advanced:
– not solely by spectacular ruptures,
– but by a thousand seemingly innocuous acts that accustomed clergy and faithful to accept a Church that speaks warmly, legislates busily, and yet no longer wields the sword of truth against Modernism, liberalism, naturalism, and syncretism.
In such a system, episcopal titles may multiply and concathedrals rise, yet if the integral Catholic faith is not professed in word and deed, the vineyard remains barren. No rearrangement of diocesan boundaries can substitute for the one thing necessary: unwavering fidelity to the doctrine infallibly taught before the ascension of usurpers and the enthronement of the Church of the New Advent.
Source:
Tudensis (Vicensis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025