CathInfo.com

Bottom line, the whole controversy with Fr. Feeney comes down to one man: Richard Cardinal Cushing, a key player behind Vatican II's Nostra Aetate.

https://thebostonpilot.com/opinion/article.asp?ID=172093

It was he, at the direct request of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (after Bobby complained about Fr. Feeney's Harvard preaching that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church), who silenced Fr. Feeney in 1949, placed St. Benedict Center under interdict, and drove the process forward. All communications to and from Rome on the "Boston Heresy Case" went through, and were filtered by, Cushing's office, including Suprema Haec (the 1949 Holy Office Protocol Letter), which was published ONLY in Cushing's newspaper "The Boston Pilot", and nowhere else. This was political.

Ted Kennedy details the episode in his autobiography True Compass (2009): Bobby Kennedy complained to his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., because Fr. Feeney was preaching there was no salvation outside the Church.  Joe called "Richard" (Cushing) right away to set up Bobby's meeting with the cardinal, who sent investigators to hear Feeney preach and then acted swiftly to shut him down. This had nothing to do with Baptism of Desire and everything to do with the dogma of No Salvation Outside the Church. (The "Baptism of Desire" angle wasn't even an issue then; the shift in defining "Feeneyite" from one who holds Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus as it has been defined to one who "denies Baptism of Desire", came in the 1990s, largely through Fr. Francois Laisney's book Is Feeneyism Catholic?.)

Ted claims Bobby's action led, over time, to "a major shift in Catholic teaching regarding the possibility of salvation for non-Catholics." He adds: "Nor did [Bobby's] principled gesture end with the banishment of Feeney. Reinforced by Cardinal Cushing's discussions with the papal hierarchy in Rome, it became an animating impulse of the Second Ecuмenical Council of the Vatican, which opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962."

Ted frames it as a proud family legacy sparking doctrinal change, boldly tying the Kennedys to a "major shift" and Vatican II.

It's all right there in Ted's autobiography, True Compass. 

Gee, none of that was covered by Fr. Robinson's "show notes." I wonder why?

Cushing didn't become this way at Vatican II.  He was always this way.  It was his agenda from the beginning.

You're either on the side of Fr. Feeney, the Council of Florence, the Council of Trent, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, or you're on the side of Cushing, Nostra Aetate, and Vatican II.  There is no middle ground.

The question boils down to
“Is “perfect contrition” enough to rid a person of all of their sins including “original sin”?

It's not simply a matter of ridding oneself of sins for the unbaptized. Their fallen nature must be elevated, they must be grafted into the Mystical Body of Christ, become part of the vine, and enter the one sheepfold. This isn't about just forgiving sins through sorrow, it's about supernatural rebirth: being "born again" of water and the Holy Ghost to become a true member of Christ's Church.

Perfect contrition does suffice in certain cases to forgive actual sins and reconcile a person with God before confession.  The Council of Trent spells this out clearly in its Decree on Penance (Session XIV). But that's for the already-baptized. We're talking here about something fundamentally different: the absolute necessity of the sacrament of regeneration for the unbaptized to be freed from original sin's effects, reborn in Christ, and incorporated into His Church.

If anyone says that baptism is free, that is, not necessary unto salvation, let him be anathema. (Council of Trent: Session VII, Canon V)

That's why Christ says: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). And again: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mark 16:16).

This is exactly what Fr. Feeney preached.