Leonard Feeney Explained

Leonard Edward Feeney
Honorific Suffix:SJ
Birth Date:18 February 1897
Birth Place:Lynn, Massachusetts, U.S.
Death Place:Ayer, Massachusetts, U.S.
Ordained:June 20, 1928
Occupation:Priest, poet, lyricist, editor, chaplain
Known For:Feeneyism
Honorific Prefix:The Reverend

Leonard Edward Feeney (February 18, 1897 – January 30, 1978) was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, poet, lyricist, and essayist.

He articulated an interpretation of the Catholic doctrine extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation"). He took the position that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore no non-Catholics will be saved. Those positions are called, after him, Feeneyism.

Fighting against what he perceived to be the liberalization of Catholic doctrine, he was excommunicated by the Holy See. He was described as Boston's homegrown version of Father Charles Coughlin for his antisemitism.[1]

Biography

America

In the 1930s, as a Jesuit, Feeney was a literary editor at the Jesuit magazine America.[2]

Professor and polemics

He was a professor in Boston College's graduate school, and then professor of spiritual eloquence at the Jesuit seminary in Weston, Massachusetts. Thereafter, he became the priest chaplain at the Catholic Saint Benedict Center, a religious center at Harvard Square founded by Catherine Goddard Clarke, in 1945; Feeney had first visited in 1941. He gave incendiary speeches on the Boston Common on Sundays, leading Robert F. Kennedy, then a Harvard undergraduate, to write Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston requesting his removal.[3] [4] [5]

After April 1949 the affair became a public scandal when Feeney undertook in the press the defence of dismissed laymen[6] who were teaching in the Jesuit College (founded in Boston by the Society of Jesus in 1863) that those who were not members of the Catholic Church were damned.[7]

Feeney criticized Cushing for, among other things, accepting the church's definition of "baptism of desire". Finally, in 1949, Cushing declared Feeney's St. Benedict's Center off-limits to Catholics.[8] That same year Boston College and Boston College High School dismissed four of the center's members from the theology faculty for spreading Feeney's views in the classroom.[9] [10] In light of his controversial behavior, his Jesuit superiors ordered him to leave the center for a post at College of the Holy Cross, but he repeatedly refused, which led to his expulsion from the order. Cushing suspended Feeney's priestly faculties in April 1949; Feeney continued to celebrate the sacraments although he was no longer authorized to do so.

Around this time, Fr. Feeney began speaking on Boston Common, gathering large crowds of up to 2,000 people to his public meetings, both supporters and hecklers. According to The Harvard Crimson, Feeney declared that in Catholic majority Boston, he wanted to "rid our city of every coward liberal Catholic, Jew dog, Protestant brute, and 33rd degree Mason who is trying to suck the soul from good Catholics and sell the true faith for greenbacks".[9] Feeney would frequently throw visceral barbs back at his hecklers, describing them as "sexually degenerate, fairy, lewd, obscene, dirty, filthy, rotten, pawns, pimps, and frauds".[9]

Excommunication

On 8 August 1949, Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani of the Holy Office sent a protocol letter to Archbishop Richard Cushing on the meaning of the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation"). This protocol had been approved by Pope Pius XII on 28 July 1949. The document states: "[T]his dogma [''extra Ecclesiam nulla salus''] must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Saviour gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church".[11] [12] [13]

After Feeney refused twice to oblige to the Holy See's summons to Rome to explain himself, he was excommunicated on 13 February 1953 by the Holy See for persistent disobedience to legitimate church authority due to his refusal to comply. According to Cardinal John Wright, Pope Pius XII personally translated the edict into English.

The decree of excommunication was later published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.[14] His followers claimed that his excommunication was invalid.[15]

Following his excommunication, Feeney co-founded a community called the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with Catherine Goddard Clarke.[16] [17] This group later split in two, one of which became the Still River Branch, in good standing with the Catholic Church; the other is a schismatic group that holds to Feeney's views on Salvation.

Reconciliation with the Catholic Church and death

Feeney reconciled with the Catholic Church in 1972 without any recantation from his part.[18] [19] [20] This reconciliation without Feeney's recantation, reports the National Catholic News Service, "came about at least in part through the intervention of Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston who had attended lectures at St. Benedict's during his days as a seminarian. Cardinal John Wright, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, reportedly personally brought the matter to the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith".

Feeney died in Ayer, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1978.

For Feeney's death, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who had previously been a pupil in Feeney's lectures, shared his reflection on and personal experience with Feeney.[21]

The Point

Feeney was editor of The Point, which ran a mixture of theological and political articles, some of them branded anti-semitic by Feeney's critics. The newsletter frequently contained sentiments such as:

The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith monitored The Point magazine for at least 14 editions. In 1955, the League exchanged correspondence with the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding possible criminal investigation of Feeney and his followers, but no investigation was started.[22]

Reactions

As a Harvard undergraduate, Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy attended a meeting of students at which he stood up and challenged Feeney, later storming out following the priest's assertion that there was no salvation outside the Catholic faith.[23] A similarly negative reaction to Feeney's teaching was recorded by British novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh, who wrote of visiting the priest while in the United States:[24]

A few years later Feeney wrote critically of Knox and Newman in his collection of essays London is a Place, with an unsympathetic passing reference to Waugh's biography of St. Helena:[25]

In 2003, in an article for The Jewish Week newspaper, editor Gary Rosenblatt wrote:[26]

Bibliography

See also

Notes and References

  1. Book: Blakeslee, Spencer . The Death of American Antisemitism . Praeger, Greenwood Publishing Group . 2000 . 0-275-96508-2 . Westport, Conn. . 93 . 4. The Anti-Defamation League . 99029576 . After World War II, Boston was to acquire a homegrown version of Coughlin in the form of Father Leonard Feeney, a charismatic but openly antisemitic Jesuit priest, whose highly vocal insistence that Catholicism was the only path to salvation gained him a youthful following, but also roused intense anger among Jews and Protestants [...]. Feeney's Sunday speeches on the Boston Common required a police presence to avert violence. His fiery rhetoric also divided a great many Catholics, who feared his oratory would stir a backlash that would block their entrance into the American mainstream. Although Feeney was excommunicated in the 1950s for violating Catholic doctrine, it came too slowly to satisfy many Jews who held strong memories of the Holocaust. . 2014-03-25.
  2. News: America . April 13, 2009 . Oops! Now and then America got it wrong . James T. . Keane . James T. Keane former assoc editor of America --> . 2014-03-25 . The national Catholic weekly has also occasionally featured authors whose later antics brought it some embarrassment, including the articles and poetry of a literary editor with a brilliant mind and a talent for comic verse, Leonard Feeney, S.J. Feeney published frequently in America and earned a certain amount of fame for his numerous books, including a book of essays, Fish on Friday. He grew much more famous a few years later for a different reason: his excommunication from the Catholic Church in 1953 for refusing to accept the church's definition of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("there is no salvation outside the church"). Though Feeney was reconciled to the church in 1974 (Avery Dulles, S.J., wrote his obituary for America), his establishment of his own schismatic religious community, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and his long fight with church authorities overshadowed his literary genius until his death in 1978..
  3. Web site: Faith was integral to Bobby Kennedy's life and politics. 2016-08-17. National Catholic Reporter. en. 2019-10-22.
  4. Web site: Augustine. Aquinas. Luther. Bobby Kennedy?!. 2009-09-14. National Review. en-US. 2019-10-22.
  5. Book: Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. Robert Kennedy and His Times. 2002. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 9780618219285. 66. en.
  6. Web site: Library : Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus: Father Feeney Makes a Comeback. www.catholicculture.org. 2019-09-10.
  7. Marchetti-Selvaggiani . F. Cardinal . 1952 . [Letter on the Father Feeney Controversy] ]. The Furrow . 3 . 12 . 654–659 . 27656123 . 0016-3120.
  8. Feldberg . Michael . 2012 . American Heretic: The Rise and Fall of Father Leonard Feeney, S.J. . American Catholic Studies . 123 . 2 . 109–115 . 10.1353/acs.2012.0016 . 163025345 . 2161-8534.
  9. News: . Laurence D. . Savadove . Father Feeney, Rebel from Church, Preaches Hate, Own Brand of Dogma to All Comers – One-Time Jesuit Plans To Use Ex-Harvard Men to Spread Idea . December 6, 1951 . 2014-03-25 .
  10. Book: Thomas, Evan . Robert Kennedy: His Life . Evan Thomas . 51 . Tough. February 5, 2013 . Simon and Schuster . 9781476734569 . 2014-03-25 . https://books.google.com/books?id=ofXSLln9a3QC&q=robert+kennedy+father+feeney&pg=PA51.
  11. Web site: Letter to the Archbishop of Boston EWTN. www.ewtn.com. 2019-09-30.
  12. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/cdffeeney.txt Letter of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office
  13. October 1952 . Analecta A Letter from the Holy Office . The American Ecclesiastical Review . CXXII [''sic'', should be CXXVII] . 5 . 307–315.
  14. Web site: ACTA APOSTOLICAE SEDIS COMMENTARIUM OFFICIALE ANNUS XXXX V - SERIES II - VOL. XX. The Holy See. vatican.va.
  15. News: Mazza . Michael J. . . Michael J. Mazza --> . 2014-03-25. Priginally published in Fidelity, 206 Marquette Avenue, South Bend, IN 46617
  16. News: Feeney Forgiven . https://web.archive.org/web/20070930055525/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908875,00.html . dead . September 30, 2007 . . October 14, 1974 . March 25, 2014.
  17. Web site: Our History . . . June 22, 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081205004454/http://sistersofstbenedictcenter.org/Our%20History.html . December 5, 2008. Now http://sistersofstbenedictcenter.org/history.html .
  18. Book: Madrid . Patrick . Vere . Pete . . 2004 . 9781931709262 . 72.
  19. News: 1978-02-01 . Leonard Feeney, Jesuit Priest, 80; Ousted in Dispute Over Salvation . en-US . The New York Times . 2021-12-26 . 0362-4331.
  20. News: 31 January 1978 . FATHER LEONARD FEENEY DIES AT 80 . 6 . . The Catholic News Archive.
  21. News: Dulles . Avery . Avery Dulles . February 25, 1978 . Leonard Feeney: In Memoriam . 138 . 135–137 . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20101224124019/http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10724 . December 24, 2010. Please see also
  22. Book: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Leonard Feeney.
  23. Book: Sorensen, Ted . Ted Sorensen . The Kennedy Legacy . Weidenfeld & Nicolson . 1970 . 27–28.
  24. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (1980), 292–3.
  25. Book: Feeney, Father Leonard, M.I.C.M. . Fog over London. London is a Place . Leonard Feeney . May 18, 2005 . March 24, 2014 .
  26. Web site: The Jewish Week. 2004-03-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20040301124318/http://www.thejewishweek.com/top/editcolcontent.php3?artid=2962. 2019-09-10. March 1, 2004.

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