The Latin text under the title “LAGOSENSIS (KADUNAËNSIS)” is a 1959 act of John XXIII elevating the diocese of Kaduna (Nigeria) to a metropolitan see, creating the ecclesiastical province of Kaduna from territories detached from Lagos and Onitsha, assigning suffragan dioceses (Jos and Oturkpo), granting metropolitan insignia and privileges to John McCarthy and his successors, and empowering the Propaganda Fide delegate to execute and record the changes. It is couched in solemn canonical language, claiming the “supreme and apostolic power” of John XXIII and binding force “now and in the future.”
Pseudo-Canonical Engineering of the Conciliar Revolution in Nigeria
Usurped Authority as the Root of Nullity
Already the opening lines expose the foundational defect:
“Qui arcano Dei consilio Patres Pastoresque universi gregis christianorum facti sumus…”
(“We, who by the hidden counsel of God have been made Fathers and Shepherds of the whole flock of Christians…”)
This self-designation presupposes that Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII) is:
– a true Roman Pontiff,
– a true universal Pastor,
– a true guardian of the deposit of faith.
Yet, judged by the integral doctrine of the Church prior to 1958, his subsequent public promotion of ecumenism, religious liberty, and aggiornamento — all condemned in substance by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII — reveals a man who ideologically positioned himself against the constant Magisterium. According to the very principles recalled in the provided “Defense of Sedevacantism”:
– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church because he is not a member of the Church; non potest esse caput qui non est membrum (“he cannot be head who is not a member”). Bellarmine, echoed by classical theologians, holds that a manifest heretic, by that fact, loses any jurisdiction.
– Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code stipulates tacit resignation by public defection from the faith.
Roncalli’s later conciliar program (convocation of Vatican II in an ecumenist, modernist key; rehabilitation of errors previously condemned as Modernism; favor toward religious liberty and “dialogue” condemned in the Syllabus and in Quas Primas) reveals the incompatibility between the claim of this constitution and the doctrinal identity required of a Roman Pontiff.
Thus, the act’s repeated assertion that these decrees proceed from his “supreme and apostolic power” is theologically void. The problem is not only jurisdictional; it is ontological: a man internally aligned with what Pius X called in Lamentabili and Pascendi the “synthesis of all heresies” cannot be the organ of Christ’s authority.
Therefore:
– The framework of this constitution is pseudo-pontifical.
– The jurisdictional engineering it enacts is, in the strict sense, canonically dubious and morally harmful, because it is one step in integrating souls into what would become the conciliar apparatus.
Naturalistic Administrative Tone: A Church Reduced to Cartography
The entire document is a clinical exercise in bureaucratic rearrangement. Its key concerns:
– boundaries,
– suffragan relations,
– external privileges of a metropolitan (pallium, processional cross),
– delegation of execution,
– legal perpetuity and immunization against contradiction.
Notably absent:
– any mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
– any insistence on guarding the purity of the faith in a mission territory,
– any warning against paganism, Islam, Protestantism, Freemasonry, or Modernism,
– any emphasis on salvation of souls, state of grace, the Social Kingship of Christ, or the last ends.
Instead, we read:
“omni ope contendimus ut catholicae rei gubernationi atque administrationi per terrarum orbem, qua aptiore potest ratione, consulamus”
(“we strive with all our strength to provide for the government and administration of Catholic affairs over the world in the most suitable way”)
This is pure technocratic language:
– “government and administration,”
– “more suitable manner,”
– “new ecclesiastical province… so that there is great hope that the faith may increase.”
The “hope” is expressed in vague, managerial terms, unsupported by doctrinal or spiritual exhortation. There is no call to:
– preach the one true faith against error,
– form a Catholic social order under Christ the King,
– resist the sects condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, made clear that peace and true increase of the Church require public recognition of the reign of Christ and submission of states and peoples to His law. Here, instead, the act treats the expansion of structures as if it were itself the growth of the Church. It is a precursor to the post-1962 illusion that multiplying dioceses, conferences, and commissions is identical with evangelization.
This silence about the supernatural — in a solemn constitution supposedly concerned with the care of souls — is itself an indictment. The omission is not accidental, but symptomatic of a mentality already sliding into the naturalistic, statist, and diplomatic ethos of the coming conciliar sect.
Language as a Mask for Revolution
At the linguistic level, the document carefully clothes itself in traditional formulae:
– *servus servorum Dei*,
– appeals to the “hidden counsel of God,”
– solemn prohibitions against altering or despising the provisions,
– threats of canonical penalties.
But:
– These formulae function as a juridical shield behind which a new orientation of “mission” is being arranged.
– The same Roncalli who here swears juridical perpetuity to this administrative configuration will shortly afterward unleash a council that relativizes everything: doctrine, liturgy, pastoral practice, ecclesiology.
The insistence:
“Has vero Litteras nunc et in posterum efficaces esse et fore volumus…”
(“We will and decree that these letters be effective now and in the future…”)
combined with:
“si quis… contra egerit ac Nos ediximus, id prorsus irritum atque inane haberi iubemus”
(“if anyone, of whatever authority, acts against what We have decreed, we order that it be held as utterly null and void”)
exposes the internal contradiction of the conciliar usurpers:
– They invoke absolute obedience and irreformability for their own structural acts, while they themselves effectively trample or relativize the solemn condemnations of their predecessors (e.g., Syllabus of Errors, Lamentabili, Pascendi, Quas Primas).
– They claim stability for their juridical rearrangements while simultaneously proclaiming “aggiornamento” and the “pastoral” fluidity that, in practice, dissolves traditional discipline and doctrine.
The style is classic: externally pious Latin; internally ordered toward a political-ecclesiastical reconfiguration that prepares the soil for Modernist domination.
Theological Vacuum: No Defense of the One True Faith
From the perspective of unchanging doctrine before 1958, the gravest fault of this constitution is not what it says, but what it refuses to say.
1. No affirmation that:
– Only the Catholic Church is the ark of salvation.
– Conversion to the Catholic faith (not generic Christianity) is necessary for the people of Nigeria.
– False religions are condemned as such, in line with the Syllabus (which rejects indifferentism, latitudinarianism, and religious liberty).
2. No warning against:
– Freemasonry and secret societies, which Pius IX and Leo XIII explicitly denounced as principal instruments of the “synagogue of Satan.”
– Protestantism and sectarianism, rampant in mission lands.
– Islam and tribal cults.
– The errors condemned in Lamentabili and Pascendi, even though Modernist currents already targeted Scripture, dogma, and mission theology.
3. No mention of:
– The necessity of valid sacraments and the Most Holy Sacrifice offered by truly Catholic priests,
– The obligation of integral catechesis according to the Roman Catechism and prior Magisterium,
– The Social Kingship of Christ over Nigeria’s public life: civil law, education, and culture.
In contrast, Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that:
– Peace and order depend on states recognizing Christ’s authority.
– The Church must claim full freedom and independence to lead souls to eternal life.
– Secularism and laicism are a “plague” destroying nations.
Here, nothing of that battle-cry appears. Instead:
– A new province is erected as if one were drawing lines on a colonial administrative map.
– The emphasis is on “aptior ratio gubernationis” (a more suitable manner of governance), not on the public rights of Christ the King.
This theological void is precisely what enables the later conciliar transformation:
– Instead of a militant Church militans, we see an ecclesial management office preparing frameworks soon to be occupied by those preaching religious liberty, ecumenism, and the cult of man.
Structural Colonization for the Conciliar Sect
Symptomatically, this constitution:
– Extracts certain dioceses from under Lagos and Onitsha, forming a new metropolitan center.
– Establishes a local hierarchy that, after 1962, will be seamlessly integrated into the structures of the “Church of the New Advent.”
This is a key mechanism:
– The more structures created immediately before the conciliar revolution, the more nodes exist through which the revolution can be propagated.
– Such acts dress themselves as missionary zeal, while in reality they:
– Plant loyal administrators of the coming aggiornamento.
– Bind local churches into an emerging network loyal not to the pre-1958 Magisterium, but to the personalities and ideology inaugurated by John XXIII.
Critical details:
– The document reinforces attachment to the apparatus of Propaganda Fide, which will be repurposed as a vehicle for post-conciliar ecclesiology.
– The authority of the delegate Vedasti Mojaisky Perrelli, and his successors, is rooted in obedience to Roncalli’s will, not in an explicit, faithful application of the doctrinal condemnations of Modernism.
Thus:
– The constitution is an instrument of pre-conciliar-looking but proto-conciliar centralization.
– It is precisely the kind of “neutral” technical act that later allows the conciliar sect to claim continuity in Africa: “We have dioceses, metropolitans, provinces; therefore we are the same Church.” This is the deception: continuity of external skeleton, rupture of doctrinal soul.
Perverted Use of Canonical Threats
The text ends with the familiar solemn formula:
– forbidding anyone to “tear or corrupt” the letters,
– declaring all contrary acts “irritum atque inane” (null and void),
– threatening canonical penalties for those who do not obey “Summorum Pontificum iussa.”
This is strikingly ironic.
Pius IX in the Syllabus, St. Pius X in Lamentabili and Pascendi, Pius XI in Quas Primas, and Pius XII in their doctrinal acts:
– used similar solemn forms to condemn:
– religious liberty,
– indifferentism,
– rationalism,
– Modernism,
– and the subordination of the Church to secular powers.
John XXIII, while borrowing the juridical style, prepares and then opens a council that:
– rehabilitates condemned notions (religious liberty in Dignitatis Humanae-style teaching, ecumenism in line with indifferentism, collegiality undermining papal monarchy),
– promotes precisely those errors against which earlier Popes used the same solemn language.
Thus, canonical threats are inverted:
– Those who resist the pre-conciliar condemnations of Modernism are treated as “Catholics in good standing.”
– Those who remain faithful to the pre-1958 Magisterium are vilified as disobedient.
In this constitution, the same inversion germinates:
– The text implicitly demands submission to the personal authority of Roncalli’s line, while entirely silent about submission to the already defined anti-Modernist teachings.
– The formula “poenas… qui Summorum Pontificum iussa non fecerint” (“penalties of law for those who do not carry out the orders of the Supreme Pontiffs”) is weaponized in favor of a claimant who is in ideological rupture with his predecessors.
From an integral Catholic standpoint, this is a juridical parody:
– An antipope cloaking pragmatic territorial rearrangement in the authority of St. Peter, to bind consciences into a structure soon to be turned against the faith.
The Missing Supernatural: Sign of a Neo-Church Mentality
Most damning is the cold absence of:
– concern for the integrity of the Most Holy Sacrifice,
– insistence on the exclusive salvific necessity of the Catholic Church,
– any reference to keeping the faithful from receiving invalid rites or from mingling with heretical or pagan worship,
– any call to erect the reign of Christ over laws, schools, and society in Northern Nigeria.
Instead:
– The document treats diocesan multiplication as a self-evident good.
– It promotes dignities and external signs without reminding the new metropolitan of his duty to:
– destroy error,
– protect his flock from heresy,
– combat Freemasonry and sects, in the manner required by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
By contrast, Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that:
– public apostasy through laicism and religious indifferentism must be condemned,
– Catholics must fight “under the banner of Christ the King,”
– civil rulers must publicly honor Christ.
Here, nothing. The supernatural mission is presupposed rhetorically but evacuated concretely. This silence is not neutral; it is the atmosphere in which the conciliar sect, the “abomination of desolation,” can later claim that missionary activity consists in “dialogue,” “inculturation,” and mutual enrichment, rather than conversion.
Conclusion: Anodyne Text as a Tactical Instrument of Apostasy
Taken in isolation, this 1959 constitution might appear to some as a harmless, even prudent provision for ecclesiastical governance. Under the light of unchanging Catholic doctrine and the subsequent deeds of John XXIII and his line, it reveals itself as:
– A juridical act issued by a man who, by adherence to condemned principles, cannot be recognized as a true Roman Pontiff according to traditional theological criteria.
– An exemplar of the strategy whereby:
– traditional forms are retained,
– doctrinal content is hollowed out,
– administrative expansion prepares the global infrastructure of the conciliar sect.
– A text whose bureaucratic tone, naturalistic categories, and culpable silences mirror the mindset condemned by St. Pius X: the Modernist who hides under ecclesiastical garb while dissolving the supernatural.
Where Pius XI proclaimed that peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ, this act confines itself to cartographic manipulations and the distribution of insignia. Where Pius IX unmasked Masonic sects and liberal systems as enemies of Christ, this text is mute, even while it helps construct a framework that will, in practice, accommodate them.
In sum:
– The constitution “Lagosensis (Kadunaënsis)” is not a luminous act of apostolic zeal, but an antechamber: a seemingly pious legal instrument harnessed to the long-range project of transforming the visible structures of the Church into the paramasonic neo-church of Vatican II. Its authority is as precarious as the claim of its author to the papal office, and its silence on the supernatural mission is itself a powerful testimony against it.
Source:
Lagosensis (kadunaënsis), Constitutio Apostolica dioecesis kadunaënsis ad gradum et dignitatem metropolitanae ecclesiae elevatur, d. 16 m. Iulii a. 1959, Ioannes PP. XXIII (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025