Father Feeney was a priest of the Society of Jesus until, in 1949, he co-founded the religious order, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Mancipia Immaculati Cordis Mariae), whose acronym is MICM.
This priest was a defender of the unchangeable traditional teaching/doctrine of the Catholic Church. He fought against the false doctrines of Americanism, Liberalism and Modernism, all rampant well before Vatican II Council (1962-1965). Early in his priestly career he was referred to as “the greatest theologian in America” by his Jesuit peers.
Father Feeney recognized that the root of the church’s inner problems and failure to convert America to the true Faith (and elsewhere throughout the world) was the result of a suppression of the thrice-defined dogma that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Father Feeney and the members of St. Benedict Center began to preach with great effectiveness this salutary dogma. Many conversions to the Church followed, including the sons and daughters of influential Protestants of the Boston-Harvard area. He was soon after persecuted and villified by his own fellow Jesuits, by fellow churchmen, and by his superiors. He was threatened and expelled from the Jesuit order, censored, threatened with excommunication and left out to hang with what is called a “dry martyrdom”. Yet, he did not give in to the enormous pressures to “soften up” on what the Church has infallibly defined as necessary for salvation.
Two books giving an account of this priest’s treatment are The Loyolas and the Cabots, by Catherine Goddeard Clark, and After the Boston Heresy Case, by Gary Potter, published and sold by Catholic Treasures. Another such book is Father Feeney and the Truth about Salvation, Brother Robert Mary, MICM, Tert., available from the same publisher.
The following is a concise and precise record and outline of the facts of the Father Feeney case:
http://catholicism.org/father-feeney-fact-sheet.htmlThe facts presented in this short article need to be made known so that the good name of Father Leonard Feeney, M.I.C.M., can be restored among Catholics and the immutable dogma of no salvation outside the Catholic Church be once again proclaimed from the housetops.