CathInfo.com

You dont have a right to dissent from something with so many theologians saying is theologically certain, and call yourself catholic.

So LEF's thesis is that if one perseveres in grace, God will provide baptism before death. God can do that, after all. IAAD proposes a hypothesis: what if someone dies without baptism immediately after being justified? But it is precisely LEF's position that God will not allow that to happen. Where is the lack of logic in that position? It can't be refuted by a contrary hypothesis; hypothesis A excludes hypothesis B; the objection is a wash. Do I agree with LEF's position? I do not, any more than IAAD. But this position has nothing whatever to do with the proposition of Baius.

It should be noted that the LEF thesis has never been condemned ex cathedra (infallibly). It is disproved by the constant teaching of the Church. It is a question of contingent facts and of the free operation of Divine Power; namely, that God has actually permitted some justified persons to die without baptism, and yet be saved. THAT is clear from tradition, not from any a priori argument. At any rate, LEF's position is wrong, it can and should be condemned, I think, but in fact, it has not been. Formally, it possibly remains in the realm of arguable, but wrong, opinions, just like the innovatory and laxist implicit denial of Extra Ecclesiam by certain theologians, originating with the Spanish Dominican school of the 16th century, before the Council of Trent. Should both these opinions, the latter long tolerated (like Gallicanism and the Dominican opposition to the Immaculate Conception), be condemned? I think so, I hope so, I pray so, but that will be up to a future (valid) Pope.

In contrast to LEF's erroneous opinion, which did not even enter into his suppression, you have the archbishop of Boston and various priests openly and explicitly denying a defined dogma of the Faith, something as to which IAAD continues to keep a perfect silence. I wonder why.

It's another source of cheap amusement (nothing to with this blog, maybe) that even Wikipedia gets my point exactly right: LEF was persecuted (my word, of course) for his preaching No Salvation Outside the Church. I invite all to read it. There are, of course, points in the article that I would take issue with, but on several of the facts it's surprisingly (to me) accurate. No, I didn't ghost-write it or edit it either. Most amusing of all, a Jєωιѕн publication (The Jєωιѕн Week) gets it right too: "Richard Cardinal Cushing excommunicated a priest, Leonard Feeney, in 1953, for preaching that all non-Catholics would go to Hell." (This, by the way, is our moderator's expressed position as well, so why not admit that LEF was right on this point? Would that somehow weaken his, IAAD's, own position somehow?)

As a sad postscript to this affair, a writer in a leading American Catholic magazine a few years later (I think Commonweal, but perhaps it was America magazine), a layman if that improves things, actually referred to the dogma Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, a truth for which our Divine Savior poured out His Blood to bring to us, as "this medieval nonsense." Well, words fail.

The moderator has wondered just what I have been getting at. My aim is simply the truth, no matter which side it falls on. Only God's side is all truth. St. Augustine said, in regard to the Donatists (an early schismatic group), and the principle is of general application: to heal what is diseased, and not to harm what is healthy. A doctor of the soul acts no differently from a doctor of the body. There is a terrible scandal in mixing up in one immoderate attack not only on LEF, but on the Dimonds and similar "Feeneyites," what they get wrong, what they get right, and what is debatable. St. Augustine also said, "In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity." (necessary things=dogmas; doubtful things=opinions not yet determined)

A.M.D.G.



https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2023/11/gen-z-feeneyites.html

Can someone explain to me how the martyrs are in heaven if you deny BOB? The Holy Innocents are saints and martyrs. They are in the calendar. Do you deny the martyrs whose very relics are required to be in the altar, and whose very names are in the canon of the Mass?

On BOD, if someone is a catechumen and dies before they get to the font, or if someone lives on a primitive island where there are no priests - let's say they possess one Bible and have a desire to be baptized and be part of Christ's church, but they have a limited understanding, and they die before they have the chance, how can you say that certainly they are damned? Is God a cruel God, or is He a good God, merciful and just? Can someone just explain this to me in short terms. Now, BOD has a liberal interpretation which is false. Of course "not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." Mt. 7:21  The novus ordo would like to propose so. "Everyone goes to heaven following their own path." Pp. Francis said "good Muslims can go to heaven".

I was told that St. Francis Xavier said to the Japanese converts, in the 1500s when they asked "Could our ancestors, who had died without ever hearing the Gospel, be saved?" The missionaries never reached them. They had a form of cult mentality of ancestor worship. He had to inform them: "Those who died without baptism and the knowledge of Christ could not enter heaven." These were hard words for them. Could someone explain this? Could not a person come to the knowledge of the true God with their own reason (Vatican 1 council), and could a person live a virtuous life naturally, according to natural virtue? Therefore, we cannot definitely say that they are damned? We cannot say for sure that they are saved either. 

It seems to me a temptation of pride among some traditional Catholics - only they are in the correct cult and God has somehow predestined them for heaven but shut out the gate of heaven to nearly all others. Such that charity goes cold and people say "it's not worth even talking to you or trying to share the truth with you." Where is the zeal of the apostles here? Do you believe in predestination like the protestants? I don't agree with every word out of Bp Williamson's mouth, he's not infallible, but I must agree with him on this point. Feeneyism is a grave error.