The EWTN news portal reports that Archbishop José Adolfo Larregain of Corrientes, Argentina, has annulled the marriage of two transgender persons celebrated in January 2026, citing defects in matter and form under the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The archbishop declared the marriage “null ipso facto” due to an ontological contradiction between biological sex and the self-proclaimed gender identity of the parties, a decision he linked to the 2023 document *Fiducia Supplicans* to avoid “confusion.” This act, presented as a defense of sacramental integrity, is in reality a meticulously staged performance of canonical rigor that, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, exposes the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the entire conciliar sect. It is a nullity within a nullity, a procedural gesture that deliberately obscures the fundamental apostasy of recognizing transgender ideology as a legitimate category and fails to invoke the immutable divine law and penalties that the pre-conciliar Church would have applied.
Theatrical Canonical Formalism: A Shell Without Substance
The archbishop’s reasoning rests on a technical distinction between ontological reality (biological sex) and phenomenological appearance (gender identity), concluding that the sacrament lacked proper matter and form. While this language superficially echoes Thomistic sacramental theology, its application is a modernist shell game. The pre-conciliar Church did not reduce marriage validity to a philosophical abstraction about “matter and form” detached from the moral and canonical context of the persons involved. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Can. 1014 §1) required that marriage be contracted between persons “who are not impeded by any diriment impediment.” A diriment impediment, such as “impotence” (Can. 1068) or “public honesty” (Can. 1069), rendered the marriage invalid *ab initio*. More fundamentally, the very concept of “transgender persons” is a modern, Gnostic denial of the God-created binary of sex (Gen. 1:27), a denial condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (1864) as part of the “naturalism” that “denies that God is distinct from the universe” (Error #1) and “makes human reason the sole arbiter of truth” (Error #3). To treat “transgenderism” as a mere phenomenological discrepancy to be corrected by canonical form, rather than as a manifest rejection of natural law and a state of mortal sin, is to accept the modernist premise that the body is a malleable construct. The archbishop’s analysis is silent on the sinfulness of the parties’ lives, the scandal given, and the need for public penance—all central to the pre-conciliar Church’s approach to public sinners.
The *Fiducia Supplicans* Poison: Blessing the Error While Nullifying the Sacrament
The archbishop’s invocation of *Fiducia Supplicans* is the smoking gun of apostasy. This 2023 document from the “Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith” authorizes “short and simple pastoral blessings” for “couples in irregular situations,” explicitly including same-sex couples. By citing this document as a guide to avoid “confusion,” the archbishop places a modernist, heretical text—which directly contradicts the Syllabus’s condemnation of “the opinion that… the Catholic religion is not the only true religion” (Error #21) and “that good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church” (Error #17)—as an authoritative norm for sacramental discipline. This is the essence of the “hermeneutics of continuity” fraud: using a document that legitimizes sin to “clarify” the boundaries of a sacrament. The pre-conciliar Church would have condemned such a blessing as blasphemous and the participants as public heretics and sinners, subject to excommunication (*Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* of Pope Paul IV). Instead, the conciliar sect’s approach is to manage the scandal through canonical technicalities while preserving the ideological framework of gender ideology. The archbishop’s statement that the ceremony “did not meet the requirements… and generated confusion” reveals the true priority: not the salvation of souls, but the maintenance of ecclesial order and public perception, a naturalistic concern utterly alien to the supernatural mission of the Church.
Silence on the Primacy of Christ’s Kingship and Divine Law
The article and the archbishop’s statement are masterpieces of omission. There is no mention of the Social Kingship of Christ so forcefully taught by Pope Pius XI in *Quas Primas* (1925): “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (n. 31). The Argentine state’s “gender identity law” is a direct assault on the divine law that “the male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). A true Catholic prelate would have declared the state’s law null and void in the court of conscience and forbidden any cooperation with it. Instead, the archbishop accepts the state’s redefinition of persons as a given, merely requiring the Church’s internal procedures to adjust. This is the fatal error of the conciliar sect: the separation of the spiritual from the temporal, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Errors #19-55). The archbishop acts as a mere administrator of a religious club’s bylaws, not as a successor of the Apostles who must proclaim that “every authority comes from God” (Rom. 13:1) and that human laws contrary to the divine law are “not laws at all” (St. Augustine, *De Libero Arbitrio* I, 5). The silence on the duty of Catholic rulers to enact laws in conformity with the Church’s teaching (*Quas Primas*, n. 32) is a denial of the entire Catholic doctrine of the state.
The Modernist “Phenomenological” Trap: Subjectivism Over Objective Truth
The archbishop’s use of “ontological” and “phenomenological” categories is a direct import of Modernist subjectivism condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* (1907) and *Lamentabili Sane Exitu* (1907). Proposition #59 of *Lamentabili* states: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” The archbishop’s framework treats “phenomenological” appearance (the couple’s self-presentation as man and woman) as a separate, negotiable reality from “ontological” sex. This is the Modernist error of separating the “religious experience” from objective truth. The pre-conciliar Church taught that the external rite (phenomenon) must conform to the internal reality (ontology) willed by God, not to the subjective self-perception of the sinner. The marriage was invalid not because of a philosophical dissonance, but because the parties, by embracing transgender ideology, were in a state of manifest public heresy and sin, rendering them incapable of receiving the sacrament. Canon 1095 of the 1983 Code requires sufficient use of reason and freedom from grave fear; a person who denies the natural law as taught by the Church lacks the requisite supernatural freedom. The archbishop’s analysis, by focusing on the ritual’s external mismatch with biological reality, implicitly accepts the subject’s internal “gender identity” as a factor to be weighed, a concession to the very error it claims to oppose.
Absence of the Penalty of Excommunication and the Duty of Public Correction
The most glaring omission is the complete absence of any canonical penalty, particularly excommunication. In the pre-conciliar Church, such a scandalous event would have triggered immediate action under Canon 2314 of the 1917 Code: “All the acts of a notorious grave sinner are invalid… in so far as they require the use of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.” The celebrant, the witnesses, and the transgender persons themselves would have been latae sententiae excommunicated for participating in a sacrilegious simulation of a sacrament and for public heresy. Pope Pius IX’s *Etsi Multa* (1873) condemned the idea that a heretic can hold office or perform valid acts. The archbishop’s “canonical disciplinary measures” are vague bureaucratic language, a far cry from the ferocious condemnation required by the Syllabus (Error #64: “It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them” is condemned, but here the “legitimate prince” is Christ, whose law is defied). The archbishop acts as a corporate manager containing a PR crisis, not as a pastor of souls wielding the “power of the keys” to bind and loose (Matt. 16:19) in defense of the faith. Where is the public act of reparation? Where is the command to do public penance? The entire response is a legalistic nullification that leaves the sinners in their error, scandalizing the faithful by implying that the only problem was a technical flaw in the ceremony, not the mortal sin of transgenderism itself.
The “Good of Souls” as a Naturalistic Pretext
The archbishop claims to act “by virtue of his ordinary authority… to safeguard the good of souls, the juridical order of the Church, and the correct understanding of the sacraments.” This is the classic modernist inversion. The “good of souls” in Catholic theology is their eternal salvation, which requires the explicit renunciation of sin and heresy, the reception of sacraments in a state of grace, and subjection to the law of God. The archbishop’s action does none of these things. It does not call the transgender persons to repentance. It does not reaffirm the immutability of sex. It does not condemn the Argentine gender law as contrary to the divine law. It merely withdraws the Church’s official recognition of a particular ritual, leaving the persons in their state of error and the community confused about whether the sin is the ritual or the ideology. This is the “pastoral” approach of the conciliar sect: manage appearances while accommodating the revolution. St. Pius X, in *Pascendi*, called this “the synthesis of all errors” (n. 2). The “juridical order” being safeguarded is the order of the conciliar sect’s internal procedures, not the order of God’s law. The “correct understanding of the sacraments” is reduced to a matter of correct ritual form, not of the sanctifying grace that requires the recipient to be in the state of grace and orthodox faith.
Conclusion: A Nullity Within the Abomination of Desolation
This annulment is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar apostasy. It uses traditional-sounding language (“ontological,” “phenomenological,” “matter and form”) to administer a modernist reality where sin is managed, not condemned; where the state’s anti-natural laws are accepted as a given; where the primary concern is avoiding “confusion” among the faithful rather than leading them to truth; and where the ultimate authority is a 2023 *Dicastery* document that blesses sin. The archbishop, a functionary of the conciliar antipapal structure (the current usurper being “Pope” Leo XIV), performs a ritual of traditionalism that has no connection to the unchanging faith. The pre-conciliar Church would have responded to this event with a thunderous Syllabus-style condemnation, excommunications, and a call for the state to uphold the divine law. Instead, we have a bureaucratic nullity that leaves the fundamental error—the acceptance of transgender ideology as a legitimate human condition—entirely intact. This is not a victory for tradition; it is the sect’s method of absorbing a scandal by offering a technical “correction” while surrendering the doctrinal and moral high ground. The faithful are left with the impression that the Church “stands for marriage” while in reality it has already capitulated to the gender revolution at its core. The only true response is total rejection of the conciliar sect and its “clerics,” and adherence to the integral Catholic faith as it existed before the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the last true Pope.
Source:
Archbishop declares nullity of marriage between 2 transgender persons in Argentina (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.02.2026