The text issued under the name of Ioannes XXIII on 11 April 1962, a Motu Proprio concerning the “regimen of the suburbicarian dioceses,” reorganizes the relationship between the historic suburbicarian sees and those bearing the red hat: it transforms Cardinal-Bishops into merely titular holders of suburbicarian churches without real jurisdiction, centralizes in the antipope the free appointment of such titles, assigns actual ordinary power to separate residential bishops, and integrates these ancient sees structurally into a “conference” with the Roman diocese, all under the sign of administrative optimization and curial efficiency. In one stroke, the historic nexus between the episcopal dignity, real pastoral jurisdiction, and the highest rank of the Roman clergy is stripped and replaced by a functionalized, bureaucratic, jurisdictionless aristocracy at the service of a new power structure—an act that manifests not pastoral care, but the progressive demolition of the visible constitution of the Church in favor of the conciliar sect’s paramasonic regime.

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Desacralizing the Suburbicarian Sees To Consolidate a Neo-Church Oligarchy

This Motu Proprio must be read not as an innocent administrative adjustment, but as a programmatic gesture of the conciliar revolution at its threshold. Issued by John XXIII, first in the post-1958 line of usurpers, in the very year he convened the Vatican II assembly, it belongs fully to what must be called the systemic subversion of the divine constitution of the Church.

Already by 1962, the same usurping authority that convoked an ecumenical-simulacrum to enthrone *libertas religionis*, false ecumenism, and anthropocentric “pastoralism,” now touches the ancient Roman ecclesiastical order at one of its most symbolic points: the suburbicarian sees, historically linked to the highest clergy of the Roman Church and thus to the very expression of papal primacy.

Instead of guarding and strengthening what Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (1864) defended—namely, the divine rights, structure, and independence of the Church against liberal and revolutionary dissolutions—this Motu Proprio empties an essential institutional form of its substantive content. It is an act of juridical nominalism: titles without jurisdiction, dignity without pastoral substance, form severed from its theological root.

From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine before 1958, this text is a paradigm of how the conciliar sect operates:

– by appealing to venerable history while quietly inverting its meaning,
– by using canonico-bureaucratic language to introduce a new ecclesiology,
– by subordinating sacred structures to technocratic efficiency and “global commitments”,
– by eroding the visible mediation between the Roman Primacy and the episcopal order.

This is not merely a local reform; it is a signal that the new regime no longer understands the episcopate, cardinalate, and diocesan order as divinely rooted realities, but as modifiable instruments of a human, managerial “Church of the New Advent”.

Factual Level: From Pastoral Authority To Hollow Honorifics

The key provisions (I–VI) of the Motu Proprio can be synthetically deconstructed.

1. Article I:
“Cardinalis, a Romano Pontifice ad sedem suburbicariam promotus, nomen seu titulum ex ea obtinebit, quavis iurisdictionis potestate in dioecesim seclusa…”

Translation: the Cardinal promoted to a suburbicarian see receives only the name/title, with all jurisdictional power over the diocese excluded.

Thus the Cardinal-Bishop, once a true diocesan bishop of those historic sees, is converted into a purely titular dignitary. Jurisdiction, which in Catholic ecclesiology is intrinsically linked to the cure of souls (*cura animarum*) and the episcopal munus, is amputated. The ancient suburbicarian churches—Albanensis, Ostiensis, Portuensis et S. Rufinae, Praenestina, Sabinensis et Mandelensis, Tusculana, Veliterna—are reduced to heraldic accessories for a curial elite.

2. Article II:
The Motu Proprio grants to this “Cardinal of the episcopal order with the title of a suburbicarian church” only ceremonial privileges: pontificalia in the cathedral with throne and canopy, papal blessing with indulgence when celebrating solemnly, right of burial and funeral honours “veluti Episcopo Ordinario”.

In other words: theatrical mimicry of ordinary power without its substance. The faithful may see the cardinal as quasi-ordinary, but in fact he is nothing of the kind. *Simulatio iurisdictionis* replaces true jurisdiction.

3. Article III:
“Decet praeterea ex caritate, absque tamen obligatione, ut aliquando Missae sacrificium idem pro sua dioecesi applicet.”

It is merely “becoming”, not obligatory, that he occasionally apply the Holy Sacrifice for “his” diocese. The text explicitly renounces the intrinsic link between a bishop and the daily sacrificial intercession for his flock. Even the language of sacrifice is reduced to a matter of optional courtesy. Already here one senses the nascent horizontalist mentality that will, after 1969, mutilate the Roman Rite and reduce the Most Holy Sacrifice to a communal meal.

4. Article V:
The actual governance of each suburbicarian diocese is entrusted to a separate residential bishop:
“Regimen dioecesium suburbicariarum a Romano Pontifice Episcopo loci committetur… verus et proprius illius ecclesiae erit Episcopus, loci Ordinarius…”

While on its face this seems canonically legitimate—assigning a proper diocesan bishop—the timing and surrounding context reveal another purpose: to detach the highest rank of the Roman clergy (Cardinal-Bishops) from concrete pastoral responsibility, and to align suburbicarian sees structurally with the soon-to-be constructed system of episcopal conferences (“coetus seu Conferentia”).

5. Article VI:
The suburbicarian sees must form together with the “diocese of Rome” a single conference, gathering under the “Cardinal Vicar of the City”.

This is a theological absurdity when measured by pre-1958 doctrine: Rome is the see of the Roman Pontiff; suburbicarian bishops are historically the closest collaborators in the Roman Church itself, not a “regional conference” dependent on a vicar acting as quasi-moderator. This anticipates the conciliar and post-conciliar shift from papal-episcopal hierarchical structure to a parliamentary, collegialist, conference-based system condemned in substance by the perennial Magisterium.

Factual conclusion: the Motu Proprio annihilates the traditional nexus of cardinalatial suburbicarian sees by:
– emptying their jurisdiction,
– turning Cardinal-Bishops into quasi-decorative curial lords,
– assigning real power to a new layer of functionaries,
– embedding everything within a conference-ideology foreign to Catholic ecclesiology.

Linguistic Level: Bureaucratic Piety As Cloak For Structural Revolution

The rhetoric of the document is classic conciliar-preconciliar transitional modernism: reverent references to past popes, solemn phrases about solicitude, careful invocations of history—weaponized to baptize a radical novelty.

– It invokes Sixtus V, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, to create a chain of apparent continuity. But the essential move—stripping Cardinal-Bishops of jurisdiction—is without precedent in its logic and linked to a different ecclesiology.

– The style is juridical, impersonal, avoiding any articulation of supernatural motives: there is no mention of *salus animarum* as supreme law in a serious, articulated way; no doctrinal explanation why the ancient arrangement had a theological significance; no appeal to divine constitution. Instead, we read about “religious matters’ increase throughout the world,” “multiplied necessities,” and the need that Cardinals be freed for Curial tasks so they can better assist the central government.

– The language of efficiency dominates: Cardinal-Bishops are to be “liberated” from diocesan duties to be more fully absorbed into the central apparatus. This transforms the highest order of the Roman clergy into technocrats of a global institution.

This is precisely the naturalistic- managerial rhetoric that Pius XI denounced when insisting in *Quas Primas* that peace and order cannot arise from purely human administrative schemes, but only from the social kingship of Christ. Here, administrative concerns are absolutized while the supernatural structure is relativized.

The ecclesiastical Latin is correct, but the *mens* is bureaucratic, not sacerdotal. What is left unsaid is more revealing than what is said.

Theological Level: Violation Of The Integral Notion Of Hierarchy

From the perspective of the Church’s doctrine prior to 1958, several grave problems emerge, which, while cloaked as disciplinary, disclose an altered theology.

1. Severing Dignity From Jurisdiction

In Catholic ecclesiology, while the Church may regulate titles and assign bishops as auxiliaries or emeriti, there is an intrinsic ordering: *ordo, iurisdictio, titulus* are not arbitrary tokens. The suburban cardinal-bishop was historically:
– a real bishop,
– of a real local church,
– forming with the Roman Pontiff the inner circle of the Roman Church’s episcopal expression.

By creating purely titular Cardinal-Bishops with no flock, the Motu Proprio exalts a caste whose dignity comes no longer ex munere pastorali, but from courtly proximity to power. This is the very inversion condemned in substance by tradition: authority is from Christ for souls, not from human promotion for bureaucratic usefulness.

The Fathers and theologians, echoed in the pre-1958 magisterium, teach that the episcopal office is ordered to preaching, sanctifying, and governing particular flocks. While honorary titles exist, the systematic evacuation of pastoral content at the apex signifies a new doctrine of hierarchy as functionaries of an institution, not successors of the Apostles. Such an ecclesiology is modernist at its root.

2. The Collegialist-Conference Virus

Article VI imposes that suburbicarian dioceses form with Rome a “coetus seu Conferentia” according to norms of Italian episcopal meetings. Thus, those sees once intimately bound to the primatial see are reduced to regional parity bodies.

Prior papal teaching—especially Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X—while allowing bishops’ meetings, never recognized “episcopal conferences” as autonomous doctrinal or governing subjects above diocesan ordinaries or as constitutive elements of the Church’s hierarchy. The later conciliar doctrine of collegiality would deform this further.

Here, subtly, we see:
– The diocese of Rome being treated as one see among others.
– Its vicar presiding over a conference as if primacy were exercised through bureaucratic participation, not from the unique, divinely-instituted Petrine authority.

This logic is incompatible with the unchanging teaching of Vatican I’s *Pastor Aeternus* correctly understood: the pope is supreme pastor of the universal Church, not chairman of a college constituted by positive law. The suburbicarian sees were once a concrete, sacramental expression of his primacy; now they are integrated into a structure that anticipates the dilution of primacy into collegial management.

3. Subordination Of Sacred Order To Curial Technocracy

The Motu Proprio openly states the purpose: Cardinals in the Curia must be freed from all offices and burdens distracting them from assisting in governing the universal Church. The implication:
– True pastoral care of a concrete diocese is considered a “distraction.”
– The curial machine is regarded as the primary locus of ecclesial life and authority.

This is the ecclesiological equivalent of what Pius X condemned in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: the subordination of the supernatural, sacramental, and hierarchical reality to sociological and administrative categories. A cardinal without a flock but with maximal bureaucratic role personifies the modernist idol: the “expert” ruling an institutional religion adaptable to the world.

4. Abuse Of Papal Power By An Usurper

Since the Motu Proprio proceeds from an antipope (John XXIII), its juridical content is, in se, null. But even considered objectively, it witnesses to a mentality that treats core ecclesial structures as pliable expressions of personal policy.

Pre-1958 theology (e.g., as summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine, Cajetan, Suarez, classical canonists) affirms that while the Pope has full and supreme jurisdiction, he is not an autocrat free to invert the divine constitution of the Church. He cannot empty the episcopate of its nature, nor reduce the highest order of the Roman clergy to mere title-holders for reasons of convenience.

Here, we see the abuse of a claim to papal plenitude—by one who in fact did not hold the office—to effect:
– separation of hierarchical rank from *cura animarum*,
– normalization of conference structures,
– strengthening of a centralized, non-sacramental bureaucracy.

Such acts are doctrinally symptomatic, even if cloaked as disciplinary.

Symptomatic Level: A Step Toward The Conciliar Sect’s Counter-Church

This Motu Proprio must be read within a concatenation of events:

– The 1958 death of Pius XII and the subsequent usurpation by John XXIII.
– The convocation of the Vatican II assembly (1962), which would enthrone doctrines previously condemned: religious liberty (against the *Syllabus* 15–18, 77–80), false ecumenism, collegiality, and the cult of man.
– The liturgical revolution culminating in the 1969 new rite, which attacked the very heart of the Most Holy Sacrifice.

Within that chain, the restructuring of the suburbicarian sees functions as:

1. Symbolic Dissolution Of Roman Continuity

By detaching Cardinal-Bishops from real diocesan governance, the concrete Roman ecclesial body is thinned out. The Roman Church becomes less a local church with concrete pastors and more a headquarters of a global NGO. The ancient signs of her rootedness in real, blood-soaked martyrial lands around the City are relegated to emblematic ornament.

This contradicts the traditional sense in which those sees, noble by “martyrum praeconio”, manifested the unity between primacy and sanctity, authority and witness. To instrumentalize them for curial convenience is a profanation in the strict theological sense.

2. Preparation For A Collegial-Conference Magisterium

By inserting the suburbicarian bishops into a conference with the Roman diocese, governed through norms of Italian episcopal meetings, the Motu Proprio prefigures the post-conciliar substitution of:
– universal, clear, vertical magisterium
with
– diffuse, horizontal consensus of bodies (episcopal conferences, synods, etc.).

Pius IX in the *Syllabus* condemns the notion that national churches or independent structures may be established or that the authority of the Roman Pontiff is merely one element among others (prop. 37, etc.). The conference system is the organizational tool of such a mentality; this Motu Proprio pushes the historic core of the Roman Church into that scheme.

3. Oligarchic Control Of The Electoral Body

Though not spelled out, the creation of purely titular Cardinal-Bishops with curial prominence and concentration in Rome facilitates tighter manipulation of the conclave by the ruling modernist faction. The more cardinals are detached from real traditional diocesan life and immersed in the conciliar sect’s headquarters, the easier to ensure ideological alignment.

Thus, the reform:
– weakens the tie between cardinals and real Catholic flocks,
– strengthens their dependence on the usurping center,
– and makes the electoral college an instrument of a closed oligarchy rather than a representation of the true Church.

4. Expression Of The New Humanistic Super-Diocesan Centralism

Ironically, while Pius IX and Leo XIII battled against the modern state’s claim to dominate the Church, the conciliar sect constructs within its own walls an analogous absolutist center: a super-bureaucracy for which all ancient structures are disposable. This is the ecclesial mirror-image of Masonic centralization: symbols preserved, substance inverted.

*Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.* When hierarchy is emptied of its sacramental and pastoral meaning at the top, the entire organism is prepared for doctrinal deformation and liturgical corruption. The Motu Proprio is, therefore, not a marginal curiosity, but a telltale symptom of the Antichurch’s gestation.

Silences That Condemn: Absence Of Supernatural Motivation

Even more damning than what is said is what is not said.

– No mention that episcopal office exists for the preaching of the true faith, the guarding against heresy, the sanctification of souls through the Most Holy Sacrifice and the sacraments.
– No warning against the real enemies Pius X identified in *Lamentabili* and *Pascendi*: modernist exegetes, relativists, evolutionists of dogma, secret societies.
– No allusion to the divine right of the Church, forcefully taught by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, to govern herself according to Christ’s mandate.
– No reminder that Cardinals, to the extent they are true ecclesiastical princes, are so by participation in the care of souls, not by ceremonial precedence.

In a true Catholic document, especially one touching the structure of dioceses and bishops, one expects clear references to:
– *salus animarum suprema lex*,
– pastoral care,
– doctrinal guarding,
– sacramental sanctification,
– the Kingship of Christ over the City and its environs, as Pius XI thundered in *Quas Primas*.

Here we find instead:
– administrative functionalism,
– references to “negotiis”, “necessitates”, “incrementa rerum religiosarum” in vague, sociological terms,
– a concept of Cardinals as “praecipui consiliarii” primarily for curial matters.

The omission of the supernatural is itself a confession: this text breathes the spirit of a human institution adjusting its statutes, not the spirit of the spotless Bride of Christ defending and articulating her divine constitution. Silence on grace, on the state of souls, on the combat against error—is the gravest accusation.

Against Modernist Justifications: Why This Is Not Legitimate Organic Development

Advocates of the conciliar sect will argue:
– that the Pope (here, in their eyes, John XXIII) has full right to reorganize suburbicarian sees;
– that the separation of honorific and jurisdictional aspects is a practical development;
– that the episcopal conferences and curial optimization are pastoral improvements.

From the integral Catholic perspective, such defenses fail on several grounds:

1. *Plenitudo potestatis* is not license for revolution.
– The Pope is bound by divine and ecclesiastical tradition.
– He cannot legitimately subvert the theological meaning of sustained institutions, especially at the heart of the Roman Church, for merely utilitarian reasons.

2. Organic development clarifies and perfects; it does not invert.
– Historically, reform would deepen the link between Cardinal-Bishops and their flocks, or purify abuses.
– Here, reform abolishes that link and enthrones curialism: the inverse of organic growth.

3. The context of modernist infiltration is decisive.
– Pius X vehemently condemned the modernist tendency to regard Church structures as historically conditioned forms to be re-engineered according to contemporary needs.
– This Motu Proprio exemplifies that condemned mentality: the ancient form is judged through purely contemporary “needs”: international travels, curial work, etc.

In light of the pre-1958 magisterium, this act is not a lawful refinement but an attempted mutation, consistent with the same antichristic trajectory that will fabricate a new “Mass,” a new ecumenism, and a new concept of Church.

Call To Rejection: Fidelity To The Pre-1958 Roman Constitution

Given:

– the clearly anti-traditional spirit of this Motu Proprio,
– its issuance by an usurper whose “pontificate” inaugurated the conciliar apostasy,
– its functional role in preparing the conference-collegial oligarchy of the Church of the New Advent,

the only coherent Catholic conclusion is:

– to reject this act as devoid of binding force upon the true Church;
– to recognize in it a sign of the occupation of Roman structures by a paramasonic, modernist regime;
– to hold fast to the integral, immutable ecclesiological principles taught consistently up to Pius XII.

The suburbicarian sees, in the order of Catholic memory, remain what they were: venerable churches joined to the Roman See in testimony of martyrdom, historically entrusted to Cardinal-Bishops as concrete expressions of the unity between the papal primacy and episcopal dignity. The attempt to reduce them to empty titles and conference slots is null before God, and will fall with the collapse of the conciliar sect.

True reform, as all pre-1958 popes attest by their example, means:
– return to doctrinal clarity,
– defense against modernist poison,
– strengthening of real pastoral authority,
– firm proclamation of Christ’s Kingship over cities, nations, and institutions.

This Motu Proprio, by contrast, is a juridical shard of that program which Pius IX, Pius X, and Pius XI prophetically condemned: the enthronement of human managerialism, collegial relativism, and secular categories within what once was the sanctuary of divine order.

Non possumus accipere. (We cannot accept it.)

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Source:
Suburbicariis sedibus, Litterae Apostolice Motu Proprio Datae De suburbicariarum dioecesium regimine, d. 11 m. Aprilis a. 1962, Ioannes PP. XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025