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Author Topic: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...  (Read 5034 times)

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Offline MWCnABQ

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A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
« on: October 12, 2025, 12:10:04 PM »
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  •    Read from the web site, of a Sedevacantist Chapel in OH, a "Bishop" who has stepped down per Bp. Davila. The "Bishop" came to the realization of his "doubtful validity".being the Episcopal Lineage of Bp. Slupski. Another priest there, was conditionally ordained by Bp. Davila. 
         Incidentally, "Bishop" Pfieffer is also in Bp. Slupski Episcopal Lineage. I hope he will realize this.

    Offline Mat183

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #1 on: October 12, 2025, 12:41:05 PM »
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  •   
        Incidentally, "Bishop" Pfieffer is also in Bp. Slupski Episcopal Lineage. I hope he will realize this.

    You are now entering Pfeifferville



    Offline TKGS

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #2 on: October 12, 2025, 02:16:40 PM »
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  • Why does being consecrated by Bishop Slupski raise doubts about validity?  Just asking.

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #3 on: October 12, 2025, 02:52:52 PM »
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  • Why does being consecrated by Bishop Slupski raise doubts about validity?  Just asking.

    That's because there's one video out there in which Bishop Slupski botched either a consecration or an ordination, where it was likely invalid ... not too different than what Bishop Webster did in the case of +?Pfeiffer.  I saw the video, and he was definitely struggling to SEE.  I think he was otherwise quite fluent in Latin, which you could tell by his candence, but you could see him bending over trying to get closer to seeing the Missal.  I guess it could have just been due to the lighting or else he needed an updated prescription for his glasses.

    I've long wondered about whether or not the Church would just supply here, or otherwise you could get into a nightmare of scrupulosity.  After what I heard from Cardinal Cushing, saying Mass, a very familiar thing to priests that they should mostly have memorized ... I think I would be inclined to question the validity of any priest he ordained, and I'm sure that not a few of those went on to become bishops.  How crazy do you have to get with this stuff?  At some point you can get neurotic.  I'd attribute this to insufficiently-trained Trad bishops/priests, except that I have zero doubt that a lot of bishops in the 1940s and 1950s were just as bad if not worse.

    Of course, one might argue ... well, that's why you had two co-conserators.  I don't think that solves the problem.  Bishops rarely had trained priests monitoring him for validity during ordinations, and you could have 100 co-consecrators, and it matters nothing if the man isn't a valid priest, or even if the local parish priest who barely passed Latin class with a D- botched the man's Baptism.

    That's where Bishop Kelly's nonsense about requiring competent witnesses at the very least falls apart.  You could have eveything on video, with 10 priests there who are expert in Latin all affirm that everything had been done correctly, but if Father Smith zoned out for a minute during the Baptism and said "ego te absolvo ..." (having heard a thousand Confessions that weekend), or the bishop messed up the priest's ordination, you're in the same boat.  In other words adding extra consecrators still leave two weaker links at the Ordination and the Baptism on the consecrand, and therefore you can't have MORE certainty about the validity of his consecration that you do about the validity of his Baptism, due to that "weakest link" principle.

    Although he's since passed, if Bishop Kelly presented himself as a valid bishop, I would have asked him to prove that there were competent witnesses who can affirm that his Baptism was valid.  Until such a time as he could provide proof to that effect, he is to be regarded as a doubtfully-valid bishop, and priest.

    Offline SimpleMan

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #4 on: October 12, 2025, 02:57:40 PM »
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  •   Read from the web site, of a Sedevacantist Chapel in OH, a "Bishop" who has stepped down per Bp. Davila. The "Bishop" came to the realization of his "doubtful validity".being the Episcopal Lineage of Bp. Slupski. Another priest there, was conditionally ordained by Bp. Davila.
        Incidentally, "Bishop" Pfieffer is also in Bp. Slupski Episcopal Lineage. I hope he will realize this.
     A link to this website would be appreciated.


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #5 on: October 12, 2025, 02:59:58 PM »
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  • A link to this website would be appreciated.

    So, my guess would be Ramolla.  I think he was either ordained and/or consecrated by Paul Petko, and the video in question I think may have been specific to Petko.  Bishop Slupski botched the consecration of Paul Petko.

    But, yeah ... I get tired of these stupid cryptic posts where they're deliberately trying to beat around the bush as if either 1) virtue signalling against detraction (uhm, no, if it's on a public website) and 2) playing this "I'm important because I now something you don't know." game to get attention on threads.

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #6 on: October 12, 2025, 03:04:01 PM »
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  • I guessed correctly ... but I guess it was via Dymek and not via Petko, but both Dymek and Petko were in turn from Slupski.

    https://ourladyofvictorychapel.blogspot.com/

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lkZNKY44ZIhctCr_LiClWpYT3_aziuYp/view?pli=1

    Offline TKGS

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #7 on: October 12, 2025, 06:30:04 PM »
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  • That's because there's one video out there in which Bishop Slupski botched either a consecration or an ordination, where it was likely invalid ... not too different than what Bishop Webster did in the case of +?Pfeiffer.  I saw the video, and he was definitely struggling to SEE.  I think he was otherwise quite fluent in Latin, which you could tell by his candence, but you could see him bending over trying to get closer to seeing the Missal.  I guess it could have just been due to the lighting or else he needed an updated prescription for his glasses.

    So....  There would be no question if the consecration hadn't been filmed?  Perhaps the only way to prove validity is to perform all sacraments strictly without recording devices.  I'm being facetious, of course, but orders weren't recorded from AD 33 to, at least, the 1940s and after that very seldomly until very recently.  How do we know that no bishop ever made a similar mistake that could have invalidated thousands of bishops through history?  It seems that the Church would supply for validity in such cases.


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #8 on: October 12, 2025, 08:20:00 PM »
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  • So....  There would be no question if the consecration hadn't been filmed?  Perhaps the only way to prove validity is to perform all sacraments strictly without recording devices.  I'm being facetious, of course, but orders weren't recorded from AD 33 to, at least, the 1940s and after that very seldomly until very recently.  How do we know that no bishop ever made a similar mistake that could have invalidated thousands of bishops through history?  It seems that the Church would supply for validity in such cases.

    Yes, indeed ... this has crossed my mind as well.  So, had it not been for the video that surfaced later, the consecration of Petko would have been considered valid.  Let's say now some video were uncovered of the ordination of Archbishop Lefebvre and it was found that Lienart botched the ordination (deliberately? ... given that he was suspect of having been a Mason).  What then?  All these Sacraments, untold thousands of them that derive from +Lefebvre, they're all invalid now, where we get the opposite of a sanatio in radice?

    So, the more I contemplate such matters, the more and more I've come to the opinion ... and others can feel free to shoot me down ... that as long as a minister has the intention to perform the Rite in question, to baptize, to absolve, to confirm, to ordain, to consecrate, where even a material botching of the essential form could and would be supplied for by the Church, based partially on Our Lord's Promise that what the Church binds on earth is bound in Heaven, so that if the Church presumes various Sacraments to be valid, so too does God hold them to be valid, and even a material defect in the essential from can be supplied for by the Church's presumption and declaration.  Nor would anything change if something were subsequently discovered.  So, for instance, if we found that video of the botched ordination of +Lefebvre, it would make no difference, and it would not require all those untold hundreds of thousands and millions of Sacraments to be re-administered.  Now, I think the cases where a couple of those Novus Ordite deacons deliberately changed the form to something invalid, those would not be supplied for by the Church, since it's clear that they were intending to do something other than what the Church does, since they refused to follow the form ... on purpose.  But it's quite obvious to all concerned that Bishop Slupski was attempting to CONSECRATE A BISHOP and that he was intending to follow the Church's Rite, to do what the Church does, and that he intended to use the correct essential form ... just that he tripped up, which is what i refer to as material error in the essential form (vs. formal error like when the deacons changed it on purpose).  That also reminds me of how we establish the correct MATTER for the Sacraments.  So, for instance, we don't need to get into a chemical analysis of the water used for Baptism, or the bread / wine for consecration at Mass, as theologians have long referred to what basically understood by common perception to be bread or water.  Similarly, if the common (and common sense) perception was that Slupski was consecrating, putting hands on the bishops going through the entire ceremony, etc. ... I personally hold this to be valid even if he botched the form.  That would also render +Pfeiffer's consecration valid.  Of course, this is obviously only my own speculative opinion, which has absolutely no support from the Church or from authority ... so that objectively speaking we must consider them to be in doubt.  I believe, therefore, that the +Slupski consecration of Petko must be considered to be objectively laboring under positive doubt and treated accordingly.

    Now, here's where this one gets tricky.  It wasn't (despite my original incorrect memory) Petko who consecrated Romolla, but Dymek, who also had been consecrated by +Slupski.  So we don't have evidence that this occurred when +Slupski consecrated Dymek.  That one could have gone over without a hitch.  Was the Petko situation somehow aberrant?  As mentioned, was the lighting poor, or were the bishop's glasses not right, or ... and I've experienced this myself, despite the fact that I wear glasses, where there are just some morning on which I feel my vision is extraordinarily poor, even with my glasses on.  Or was it a year later?  In other words, it it possible to extrapolate the Petko consecration to all other ordinations/consecrations performed by Slupski, or is positive doubt by definition a specific case by specific case matter.  I lean toward the latter ... UNLESS there's evidence for a habitual sloppiness on the part of the consecrator, or evidence that he truly struggles with Latin, or at least one other situation where the same thing happened.  Thus, for instance, I would question Clemente Dominguez's attempts to confect any Sacraments since he was not even close to having been properly trained ... except that in the first few rounds of ordinations/consecrations, he had as co-consecrators and assistants at ordination two pre-Vatican II priests who had in fact been consecrated by +Thuc on the same day he was.

    Offline Marcellinus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #9 on: October 13, 2025, 11:42:43 AM »
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  • Petko questioned his own +Slupski consecration, so he was conditionally consecrated by Joseph Macek.. Unfortunately, the Macek line is of questionable validity.  The story of Paul Petko is tragic in so many ways, the validity issue only being one of the tragedies. 

    When +Slupski conditionally "ordained" Petko to the priesthood, this was done by having Petko grab the ends of +Slupski's stole while he said, "You are a priest".  There's no way that is valid.

    Sacramental theologians are clear... if you so mispronounce the words that it changes the meaning of what is being said (or makes it unintelligible, as what happened with the Petko and Pfeiffer consecrations), then the form is invalid.  There is no sanatio in radice for Holy Orders.  It's either valid at the moment or not.

    Offline Pax Vobis

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #10 on: October 13, 2025, 12:35:31 PM »
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  • Sacramental theologians are clear... if you so mispronounce the words that it changes the meaning of what is being said (or makes it unintelligible, as what happened with the Petko and Pfeiffer consecrations), then the form is invalid.  There is no sanatio in radice for Holy Orders.  It's either valid at the moment or not.
    Agree.


    Offline TKGS

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #11 on: October 13, 2025, 09:15:42 PM »
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  • I agree with Ladislaus here.  I remember reading about a priest who was baptizing "In nomine Patria...", which, of course, means "In the name of the country..."  He was not doing so intentionally, but because of his bad Latin skills.  It was noticed by a visiting priest who contacted the diocese, which referred the case to Rome.  The decision was that no baptism had to be re-done as the priest fully intended what the Church intends and his mispronunciation did not invalidate the baptisms.  (I wish I could provide the reference, but I did read about it.  The point is that, unless there is proof that the priest did not intend to perform the sacrament correctly, the Church provides for validity when it comes to mis-speaking words and not intentionally adding or subtracting words.

    Given human nature, it is incredible to believe that never, through the centuries of the Church, has any bishop not made an error in his speech while ordaining or consecrating someone.

    Offline Pax Vobis

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #12 on: October 13, 2025, 10:04:10 PM »
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  • I agree with Ladislaus here.  I remember reading about a priest who was baptizing "In nomine Patria...", which, of course, means "In the name of the country..."  He was not doing so intentionally, but because of his bad Latin skills.  It was noticed by a visiting priest who contacted the diocese, which referred the case to Rome.  The decision was that no baptism had to be re-done as the priest fully intended what the Church intends and his mispronunciation did not invalidate the baptisms.  (I wish I could provide the reference, but I did read about it.  The point is that, unless there is proof that the priest did not intend to perform the sacrament correctly, the Church provides for validity when it comes to mis-speaking words and not intentionally adding or subtracting words.

    Given human nature, it is incredible to believe that never, through the centuries of the Church, has any bishop not made an error in his speech while ordaining or consecrating someone.
    There's a difference between a mispronunciation of one word here or there, and using a word that doesn't resemble the correct word.  In your example, "patria" is similar enough to "patri" that it is understandable what is meant.

    In the case of Fr Pfeiffer, the words which Bishop Webster used were so botched as to be non-sensical.  And it wasn't 1 or 2 words, but many.  

    Yes, intention is important, but so is reality.  The form/prayers are written for a reason.  

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #13 on: October 14, 2025, 02:34:18 PM »
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  • Right, Pax ... that's the common opinion, that if the word "root" is different, then the Sacrament would be invalid.

    I'm arguing for an even more lenient  position, again, relying on the fact that the Church tends not to rely upon technicalities, as if things were magic spells, but common perception.  If I used some water for Baptism that had a bunch of chemicals in it, as long as the general common-sense perception of it would be that it's what most people commonly refer to as "water".

    Take break for instance.  Sinc the 1940s, most bread has been genetically butchered and doesn't resemble what would have been in use during OurLord's time, the ancient grains, like Ferro, and Emmer, etc.  Since they're genetically mutilated, would they be invalid matter?  No, since the Church relies on common perception.  Still looks like bread and has all the accidents whereby an average person could identify it as such.

    Similarly, if I go to an episcopale consecration, there's a whole lot more there that tells you that it's a Catholic Rite of Episcopal Consecration, and specifically, taking the case of Bishop Webster's attempt to consecrate Father Pfeiffer.  We all knew that he was saying the essential form, since otherwise, how would we know that he botched it.  While being gravely incorrect, we knew what he meant by it and what he intended to be doing, pronouncing the words of the essential form.  If it was so unrecognizable that we could not infer what he was doing, we'd not have been able to even say, "ah, that's invalid".

    I'm referring to this as a material error regarding the pronounciation of the essential form ... distinguishing it from formal error, such as where the Rite itself was intentionally changed (Anglicans, Novus Ordo, etc.) or if some minister deliberately changes it (Novus Ordo "deacon" guy who said "We baptized ..." ... where he wasn't intending to do what the Church does, since he changed the Rite).  But it's quite clear to the common sense of anyone watching that Webster was intending to consecrate Father Joseph Pfeiffer, or that Bishop Slupski was attempting to consecrate Father Paul Petko.

    There's just part of me that feels like we might in fact be attempting to reduce the essential form to some magical incantation, where if you move the air with the exact correct syllables, that effects consecration.  Really the intent of the essential form is just to make it clear what you're doing.  I'm pouring water on someone's head.  Why?  Well, he had some dirt on his head, so I went to wash it off.  You use the form to disambiguate the entire Rite and to explain to everyone so that it's clear what you're doing.  I think that perhaps the Church supplies when it's clear objectively what the minister was attempting to do.

    Again ... my personal speculative opinion, means nothing in the objective order, and so objectively remains in state of positive doubt, and my opinion and $7 might gert you a coffee at Starbucks, if it doesn't cost more than $7 with tax.

    On another thread, I have also speculated that absolution of sins over the phone would be valid ... but won't digress into that here.

    Basically, if the Church presumes it valid and considers it valid, then IMO it's valid, and God would accept that and provide a sanatio for any defect, based on the principle that what the Church binds on earth is bound in Heaven.  So if the Church considers it valid and binds the faithful to consdier it valid, then it's valid, and God accepts it as valid and effects the grace associated with the Sacrament.

    Otherwise, you'd have nothing but chaos.  Yeah, yeah, they say "presume it to be valid".  Well, I can presume all I want, if the +Lienart botched the Ordination of Archbishop Lefebvre ... my presumptions means nothing.  Or does it?  And that's where I hypothesize that the Church will supply and God accept as valid any Sacraments that the Church declares to be presumed valid.  Now, of course, the Church's judgment has been that if you have evidence to the contrary, that presumption no longer prevails.  But, then, what if we had gone 25 years before a video surfaced, like with those NO "priests"?  That gets a bit more sticky.

    Offline Pax Vobis

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    Re: A "Bishop" who was a Bishop until this past week...
    « Reply #14 on: October 14, 2025, 03:10:17 PM »
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  • Similarly, if I go to an episcopale consecration, there's a whole lot more there that tells you that it's a Catholic Rite of Episcopal Consecration, and specifically, taking the case of Bishop Webster's attempt to consecrate Father Pfeiffer.  We all knew that he was saying the essential form, since otherwise, how would we know that he botched it.  While being gravely incorrect, we knew what he meant by it and what he intended to be doing, pronouncing the words of the essential form.  If it was so unrecognizable that we could not infer what he was doing, we'd not have been able to even say, "ah, that's invalid".

    I'm referring to this as a material error regarding the pronounciation of the essential form ... distinguishing it from formal error, such as where the Rite itself was intentionally changed (Anglicans, Novus Ordo, etc.) or if some minister deliberately changes it (Novus Ordo "deacon" guy who said "We baptized ..." ... where he wasn't intending to do what the Church does, since he changed the Rite).  But it's quite clear to the common sense of anyone watching that Webster was intending to consecrate Father Joseph Pfeiffer, or that Bishop Slupski was attempting to consecrate Father Paul Petko.
    Yes, I get the material vs formal error argument.  I would just break it down further into "material accident" vs "material incorrect".

    If Bishop Webster can't get the latin correct enough, then my conclusions would be:
    a.  He shouldn't be doing consecrations to begin with.  Preparation is key; you can't perform sacraments willy-nilly with no prep work or knowledge.
    b.  If his eyesight is that poor, then he should have an assistant and/or more practice.
    c.  If he was stuttering due to nervousness or anxiety, then maybe that's a GOOD THING and the consecration shouldn't have happened, or should've been invalid.

    In this day and age, with the crisis, I think (for something as important as a consecration) there should be LESS leniency, not more.  We should be EXTRA CAREFUL, not extra laid-back.

    Knowing Fr Pfeiffer's mode of operation, as a bull in a china shop, where everything is thrown together and a "make it happen" type of attitude, I'm sure +Webster was bull-rushed into this whole thing.  Thus, the lack of preparation.  Thus, the errors.

    And I just can't fathom that God would bless this type of thing.  God does not rush things; especially spiritual things.