The apostolic constitution “Culiacanensis” of 6 April 1959, issued by Angelo Roncalli as “John XXIII,” formally erects a cathedral chapter in Culiacán: it establishes a college of canons with specified dignities (Archdeacon, Canon Theologian, Penitentiary), regulates their number, minimal liturgical obligations, material endowment, vesture, and delegates execution to the apostolic delegate in Mexico.
This apparently meticulous juridical act, signed in the first year of Roncalli’s usurpation, already manifests the juridico-liturgical formalism, ecclesiological horizontalism, and blindness to the approaching revolution which together reveal the inner emptiness of a structure that had already begun to lose the spirit of the integral Catholic faith while carefully preserving its external decor.
Canonical Ornamentation at the Edge of the Abyss
Roncalli’s constitution, taken at face value, appears as a routine exercise of papal authority in continuity with centuries of Catholic discipline: the creation of a cathedral chapter to assist the bishop, dignify the worship of God, and provide counsel and clerical stability. Pre-1958 Catholic doctrine recognizes and values such chapters as instruments for the solemn celebration of the *Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary*, the custody of doctrine, and the governance of the diocese, aimed at the greater glory of Christ the King and the salvation of souls.
Yet here we are in April 1959:
– After decades of relentless assault by Liberalism, Freemasonry, Communism, and Modernism, repeatedly unmasked and anathematized by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
– On the eve of that conciliar catastrophe which Roncalli himself was already preparing, and which would enthrone the errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, “Lamentabili sane exitu,” and “Pascendi.”
– Within a Church increasingly infiltrated by precisely those currents that Pius X called *Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies*.
In such a context, this constitution’s silence is thunderous. There is no confession of the social kingship of Christ as the foundational reason to strengthen cathedral worship, unlike Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, who explicitly binds liturgical acts to the public condemnation of secular apostasy and the subjection of states to Christ. There is no warning against the poisonous doctrines Pius X and Pius IX detailed; no insistence on doctrinal integrity as the essential qualification for canons; no reference to the supernatural end: *salus animarum* (the salvation of souls) as the supreme law.
Instead, we find meticulous regulations about:
– Number of canons and “praebendati”
– Distribution of prebends
– Limited obligations to choir on a few major feasts
– Detailed prescriptions for choir habit and the so-called *habitus Pianus*
This disproportion—lavish care for structures and costumes, combined with the absence of militant doctrinal and supernatural orientation—betrays the onset of a deadly shift: from a Church combating error to a neo-church preoccupied with administrative aesthetics while preparing to capitulate to the world.
Factual Level: A Canonical Shell Detached from Militant Doctrine
The text determines:
– Creation of a chapter: six canons and two “praebendati”; one Archdeacon, one Canon Theologian, one Penitentiary, in line with can. 398 §1 of the 1917 Code.
– Reservation of dignities to the “Roman Pontiff”; distribution of other benefices according to law, with flexibility concerning prebends and cumulation with other benefices (even with *cura animarum*).
– Episcopal competence to define the endowment and administration.
– Strict specification of vesture: violet piping, tassels, stockings, mozzetta, rochet, and the Pian habit.
– Reduced choral obligation: limited to a small cluster of solemnities (Nativity, Easter, Pentecost, Assumption, Guadalupe, St. Michael).
On the surface, all appears canonically legitimate in the framework then still externally in force. But an integral Catholic evaluation—using the pre-1958 Magisterium as exclusive norm—must expose the contradictions and omissions.
1. The function of cathedral chapters in tradition:
– Historically: guardians of orthodoxy, solemn liturgy, and diocesan governance.
– They were to be schools of doctrine, defenders of the rights of the Church against secular power, and visible centers where the public reign of Christ over city and nation was confessed.
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* insists that all ecclesiastical structures must serve the explicit proclamation of Christ’s kingship against secularism and liberalism; peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ, and states sin gravely by refusing to acknowledge Him publicly.
2. What is missing here is decisive:
– No link between the chapter and the defense of the Catholic faith against errors condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (indifferentism, separation of Church and State, religious freedom, liberal “rights” against God).
– No reference to the need to oppose Modernist exegesis and doctrinal evolution condemned by Pius X in “Lamentabili sane exitu” and “Pascendi.”
– No insistence that canons must be doctrinally sound, anti-liberal, anti-modernist, faithful to the integral Tradition, and zealous against heresy.
Instead, the document treats the chapter as a functional and ceremonial entity, as if the greatest danger to the Church were liturgical irregularity of choir habits rather than the “synagogue of Satan” of secret societies and modernist infiltrations denounced by Pius IX and Pius X.
This is not innocent. It is the mentality of a leadership already anesthetized, for whom maintaining juridical façades suffices, while the citadel is being opened from within.
Linguistic Level: Bureaucratic Sacralism as a Mask for Paralysis
The language is outwardly traditional: *Ex vetusto maiorum instituto*, *haec Apostolica Sedes curat*, *de summa Nostra potestate*, threats of nullity for non-observance. Precisely here lies the problem.
1. Inflation of juridical formulas:
– The repeated solemn clauses—*de summa Nostra potestate… volumus et decernimus… irritum atque inane*—are deployed to regulate a small diocesan chapter.
– Meanwhile, the same authority under Roncalli will soon be instrumentalized to convoke a council that demolishes the very doctrinal foundations solemnly guarded by his predecessors.
2. Formal piety without doctrinal militancy:
– The rhetorical posture suggests continuity, but the content is curiously attenuated: no combat, no condemnation, no vigilance.
– This is symptomatic of a shift from the integral Catholic notion of the Pope as *custos et defensor fidei* (guardian and defender of the faith) to an administrative manager concerned with structures and appearances.
3. Symbolic attention to vestments:
– Long descriptions of mozettas, piping, stockings.
– In a time when enemies within were at work to profane the Sacrifice, invert doctrines, and enthrone man at the center, this refined sartorialism signals a class of clerics content with ceremonial markers while losing the zeal of the Fathers and the intransigence of Tridentine discipline.
The tone is that of a sacralized bureaucracy: perfect Latin, canonical precision, but voided of the supernatural alarm and doctrinal clarity that resound, for example, through every line of the Syllabus of Pius IX or *Pascendi* of Pius X. This is how revolutions proceed in the Church: not first with shrill rupture, but with a gentle suffocation of vigilance under a cloak of continuity.
Theological Level: Absence of Christ the King, Absence of War on Error
Measured by the immutable doctrine before 1958, several theological pathologies emerge.
1. Eclipse of the Social Kingship of Christ
In *Quas Primas*, Pius XI teaches that:
– Nations and rulers sin if they do not officially recognize and honor Christ.
– Public cult, feasts, and canonical institutions must serve to restore the reign of Christ in public life.
– The feast of Christ the King is explicitly instituted as a weapon against laicism, indifferentism, and the secular apostasy of states.
In Roncalli’s constitution:
– The erection of the chapter is not connected to the public, social reign of Christ over Culiacán, Mexico, or the state.
– The chapter is not charged with being a bulwark against Freemasonry, Communism, and liberal anti-Catholic legislation, despite Mexico’s laicist past and anti-clerical persecutions.
– There is no exhortation that canons preach, defend, and apply the doctrine condemned in the Syllabus (e.g., errors 39–55 on the state’s authority over the Church, separation of Church and State, secular education).
Thus, there is a practical denial—by omission—of that central teaching: that the Church must claim and exercise public rights, not retreat into decorative liturgical life.
2. Silence on Modernism and Doctrinal Conditions
St. Pius X, in “Lamentabili” and “Pascendi,” imposes grave obligations:
– Vigilance against modernist clergy.
– Exclusion of those infected with liberal, evolutionary, or relativistic views from teaching, preaching, and ecclesiastical dignities.
– The oath against Modernism (1910) as a condition for ecclesiastical offices.
In 1959, to erect a chapter without:
– Recalling these obligations.
– Requiring that canons be proven enemies of Modernism.
– Warning against false exegesis and doctrinal relativism.
is a glaring defect. It is not a neutral oversight; it is a symptom that the anti-modernist line is being quietly dropped. The same Roncalli who issues this apparently orthodox constitution will relativize prior condemnations and open the way for “dialogue” with precisely those errors earlier anathematized.
This lack of doctrinal demands for the chapter’s members stands in material conflict with the prior magisterial stance that offices must not be granted to those infected with errors. It reveals a different theological orientation: *irenicism*, laxity, and confidence in structures without conversion or doctrinal rigor.
3. Minimalist Liturgical Obligations: Devaluation of the Office
A genuine chapter is meant to offer:
– Daily solemn participation in the *Most Holy Sacrifice*.
– Chant of the Divine Office.
– Continuous visible homage to God in the cathedral.
Roncalli’s constitution permits the chapter’s proper liturgical functions to be limited to a handful of feasts. This:
– Reduces the canonical (and theological) meaning of a chapter.
– Reveals a concept of ecclesiastical dignity unmoored from the continual, sacrificial worship of God.
– Anticipates the later neo-church attitude: multiplying “ministries,” “councils,” and bodies with prestigious titles and almost no real obligation to sacrifice, penance, or doctrinal guardianship.
This reductionist liturgical praxis belies the Catholic understanding of *officium* as inseparable from *sacrificium*.
Symptomatic Level: Early Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
This constitution must be read as a prelude to the conciliar apostasy.
1. Continuity of Form, Inversion of Intention
We observe:
– Use of authentic pre-conciliar canonical framework (1917 Code).
– Retention of hierarchical terminology, Latin, external solemnity.
– But an internal reorientation: from militancy to accommodation, from dogmatic clarity to administrative normality.
This is the typical tactic of subversion: *eadem verba, alius sensus* (the same words, another meaning). Structures are kept; the spirit animating them changes. Those pretending to be traditional Catholics later point to such documents as “evidence” of continuity, ignoring the shift in priorities and omissions that betray a new orientation already at work.
2. Decorative Catholicism as Incubation Chamber of Apostasy
The constitution exemplifies a Catholicism:
– Which still cares for rochets and mozettas.
– Which still threatens penalties for disobedience to canonical minutiae.
– But which does not dare, in a country marked by murderous laicism, to proclaim: the state must submit to Christ; secular errors are condemned; Freemasonry is satanic; educating children outside the authority of the Church is pernicious (cf. Syllabus, propositions 45–48).
It is the Catholicism of men who arrange their choir stalls while Modernists and Freemasons prepare to turn the sanctuary into a platform of humanist “dialogue.” It is precisely this spiritual tepidity that made the conciliar disaster possible.
3. Instrumentalization of Authority
The closing threats—declaring all contrary acts “irritum atque inane” and warning of canonical penalties for those ignoring this act—reveal a paradox:
– Authority is asserted strongly in minor disciplinary matters.
– The same authority will be shrewdly not used—or directly abused—where the law of God and prior condemnations demand intransigence.
Pius IX and Pius X used their office to condemn and expel errors. The conciliar usurpers will use office-forms to protect and propagate them. This 1959 document stands at the hinge: authority language without authority spirit.
Exposure of the Underlying Bankruptcy
From the perspective of the unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the constitution “Culiacanensis” is not condemned for erecting a chapter as such—this, in itself, is a legitimate and traditional institution. Its problem lies deeper:
– It exemplifies a governing class that no longer thinks in terms of:
– Combat against the revolution.
– Defense of the rights of Christ the King and His Church over nations.
– Militant anti-modernist vigilance.
– Linking every legal and liturgical reform directly to the supernatural end: salvation of souls, conversion of states, destruction of error.
– It reduces a spiritually crucial institution to:
– A small honorary body with negligible obligations.
– A structure easily assimilable into the coming conciliar sect, where “chapters,” “councils,” and “commissions” serve horizontal governance, not vertical submission to Christ’s kingship.
– It treats as secondary—or ignores entirely—what prior pontiffs presented as absolutely primary:
– Condemnation of indifferentism, rationalism, laicism, socialism, Freemasonry (Pius IX’s Syllabus).
– Uncompromising rejection of Modernism and evolution of dogma (Pius X).
– Necessity of the public recognition of Christ’s royal rights (Pius XI’s *Quas Primas*).
– Assertion of the Church’s full freedom and superiority over the state in matters of salvation (constant doctrine).
In short: the document is a polished stone in the façade of a building whose foundations were already being hollowed out. Its author would soon open the floodgates to that conciliar upheaval which enthroned all the errors his predecessors had damned.
Conclusion: Recovering the Authentic Purpose of Ecclesiastical Structures
Integral Catholic faith demands that every canonical act be measured by:
– Does it explicitly serve the glory and reign of Christ the King in society, as taught by Pius XI?
– Does it protect the faithful against condemned errors, as demanded by Pius IX and Pius X?
– Does it bind office to sacrifice, doctrine, and militancy, or only to dignity, income, and vesture?
– Does it strengthen the visible, public contradiction between the Church and the world, or does it prepare integration into a naturalistic, democratic, pseudo-religious system?
“Culiacanensis,” judged by these criteria, fails. It is the sign of a hierarchy increasingly satisfied with beautiful forms and canonical ornamentation, while failing to deploy its divinely-instituted authority against the enemies assailing the flock from within and without.
An authentic restoration will not consist in nostalgically reviving such chapters in the conciliar sect, decorating modernist cathedrals with old costumes. It will require returning to the pre-1958 doctrinal intransigence, where every chapter, every dignity, every canonical structure exists not as an end in itself, but as a disciplined, public, and supernatural instrument of the Kingdom of Christ against the kingdom of this world.
Source:
Culiacanensis (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025