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The Recusant: Ten Questions for Fr. Pfeiffer - Stone - 12-14-2020
Taken from The Recusant - Autumn 2020, pages 24-25
Ten Questions for Fr. Pfeiffer
1. In 2015, you criticised Bishop Williamson for consecrating Bishop Faure with very little notice given, which meant that more Resistance priests and faithful could not attend. Yet when it came to your own attempted episcopal consecration you gave no notice whatsoever, no priests other than your two colleagues at Boston KY (Fr. Poisson and Fr. Pancras Raja) were present, and almost no faithful. Is this not equally deserving of criticism and a sign that something is not right?
2. In 2016, following the consecration of Dom Tomas Aquinas in Brazil, you and many others criticised certain Williamsonist priests and websites for attempting to suppress the sermon preached by Williamson (his infamous “The time for structure is yesterday” sermon) even though they had published plenty of pictures and other media. And yet at your own attempted episcopal consecration it was arranged that the consecrating “bishop” would not preach a sermon at all, not even five minutes. Nobody has been allowed to know from his own mouth why he was present at Boston, KY, attempting to consecrate you, we are just supposed just to take your word for it that it was “for the love of souls only” and no other reason. Isn’t this lack of a sermon equally as deserving of criticism as the attempt by the Fake Resistance in 2016 to suppress a sermon which embarrassed them?
3. Incidentally, why is it that there was no sermon by “Bishop” Neal Webster? And -the lack of sermon being unusual on such an occasion -why have you so far offered no explanation as to why there wasn’t one? Does this not look at least a little unusual, some might say even suspicious?
4. Do you accept that Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood form part of the Church’s teaching and that Sedevacantism does not, and further, that such an Episcopal Consecration, a public sacrament done before the whole world and not hidden away in private will always in practice be taken to be a public profession of Faith? Given which, how does your intimate involvement in such an event in public not constitute a public compromise of the Faith?
5. Shortly after the event, you said that you had told Webster that you did not agree with him about “the one baptism” or “the Pope issue.” If true, this must have been spoken in private and we have only your word for it. Are you able to see and will you have the humility to admit that telling someone privately that you do not agree (or alleging afterwards that you told them so in private) simply is not enough? That public actions matter immeasurably more than private words?
6. Your own faithful have been encouraged for years not to go to receive the sacraments from those involved in a public compromise of the Faith, such as the Ecclesia Dei priests, the modern SSPX, the Sedevacantist, the Feeneyites, et al. because it would necessarily be a public compromise and the Faith, something which matters more than sacraments. In what way is your own attempted “consecration” at the hands of a Feeneyite, sedevacantist “garage bishop” not exactly the same thing? In other words, if it is somehow OK for you to go to the sedevacantist or Feeneyites (both, in this case!) to get Holy Orders, why is it not OK for your faithful to go the sedevacantists to get their children confirmed or to go to Fr. Gavin Bitzer’s Feeneyite chapel to get Mass, Communion and Confession? Are you not guilty of a double standard here, one rule for you and another for everyone else?
7. You yourself have long been critical of Thuc-lineage “garage bishops” who have no proper training. From the two-and-a-half-hour long video put out by you, is it not abundantly clear that “bishop” Neal Webster fits this description like a glove, that he has no training and (to use your own words) “doesn’t know anything”?
8. Bishops are supposed to be chosen by the Church, the consecration ritual even says so and continually refers to the bishop-elect as “electus” (‘the one who has been chosen’). And to be chosen requires that someone else do the choosing, one cannot choose oneself. Before the Council, a bishop was never one who had petitioned, lobbied or actively sought the episcopate for himself, and the only “bishops” who had done so were to be found amongst the “Old Catholics,” the “Brazilian Catholic Apostolics” or other such schismatic, heretical sects. In 1988 the four SSPX bishops, whatever their faults or limitations, were at least chosen by Archbishop Lefebvre from among hundreds of other priests. Is it not the case, however, that you sought the episcopate for yourself, just like every other Thuc-lineage garage bishop, that like them, it was not the Church who called you but you who called yourself? (And please -getting Fr. Pancras Raja to ask Webster to consecrate you is just a sophism, it is “colour of law,” an empty form for the sake of appearances, since Fr. Pancras Raja is your subordinate and you are his superior, and therefore anything he does in such matters would normally be presumed to be done at your behest or at the very least with your permission.)
9. One often-heard and oft-repeated criticism of Bishop Fellay in 2012 was that, as a bishop, he ought never to have become Superior General; that Archbishop Lefebvre while he was still alive had appointed a simple priest as Superior General and had intended the bishops to be there simply to dispense the sacraments; that in becoming Superior General in 1994, Bishop Fellay had been invested with an appearance of authority which might prove dangerous, due to the risk of the priests and faithful seeing him as “our bishop” as though he held ordinary jurisdiction. You yourself voiced this view on many occasions in the early days of the Resistance. And yet, within the little empire of Boston KY, you are now both “bishop” and “superior general” combined, just like Bishop Fellay after the death of Archbishop Lefebvre; just like Fr. Kelly who became Bishop Kelley; just like Fr. des Lauriers who became Bishop des Lauriers, or Fr. Dolan becoming Bishop Dolan, or like Bishop Carmona, or Bishop Pivarunas. In this respect, how are you not just like every other sedevacantist sect? Are you not giving yourself a dangerous appearance of authority which you don’t really have?
10. Not so long ago, you seemed to spend a lot of time and effort in attempting to convince as many Traditional Catholics as possible, particularly those in the Resistance who had at one time supported you, that the fraudulent fantasy-merchant who calls himself “Archbishop Ambrose Moran” was both valid and legitimate and that it would be in everyone’s best interests (yours especially, no doubt!) for him to become actively involved in the capacity of a bishop. One of the paper-thin arguments which many will remember you making was that: “He’s certainly valid, and that’s what matters!” Another one was that: “He is professing the Catholic Faith in its entirety, he officially stands for what we stand for, and that’s what matters.” How do these two arguments look now, in light of your recourse to a man publicly known to be both a sedevacantist and a Feeneyite, who does not, by any stretch of the imagination, stand for what you stand for, and who is a long way from being “certainly valid”? Do not your own previous words condemn you?