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Also, just forget Father Feeney.  Stop trying to shoehorn him into some kind of plan that you're comfortable with, stop mulling over his statements and trying to make them click.  Just trust God, trust the Church, and you can't go wrong.

Yes, Vatican II didn't happen overnight.  But that doesn't mean the Church has allowed a heresy to be taught for five hundred years ( if you think implicit faith is a heresy ).

If you have a tendency to intellectual pride, as I do, you are ripe for incipient Feeneyism or some variant thereof.  THe devil is ALL over it, trust me.  Careful!  The most important thing is to read good books, trustworthy sources.  St. Alphonsus is accredited a great theologian by everyone; Father Feeney is not.

Implicit faith is a heresy.  Was it condemned?  I think so:

Condemned Proposition: "A faith indicated from the testimony of creation, or from a similar motive, suffices for justification" (Pope Innocent XI, Denz. 2123).

Note the "from a similar motive..."

Faith in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ must be explicit:

1)  Our Lord Jesus Christ's words say so in the Gospels:  "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16)

2) The Athanasian Creed states so, explicitly, and that was infallibly included in the text of the Council of Florence.

3)  Implicit faith makes no sense.  How does one believe something "implicitly"?  It's like saying that I could be explicitly married to my wife yet, at the same time, be implicitly married to someone else, someone whom I do not even know.  If such an absurdity were true, how would I ever "divorce" such an individual?  How does someone with "implicit faith" ever get rid of it?  Can they apostatize, even if they want to??

As for implicit faith being taught for 500 years, it wasn't.  It was De Vega who first taught it, didn't he?  So, the idea is around 400 years old, and it was never widely embraced when it first showed-up.

As for Pope Pius IX, in my (humble) opinion, he blew it, big time.  He laid the foundation for Vatican II, but notice, none of his successors, until Pope Pius XII, followed in his footsteps.  If anything, they tried to correct his ideas.  In any case, we can read Pius IX's two statements in light of Tradition, but like Vatican II, one is not required to.  And, that's the problem, isn't it?

As for Father Feeney, I think that he was a great priest and theologian.  In essence, I think that he got things right, even though he got some of the details wrong.

As for St. Alphonsus, I think that he got some things wrong, which is the claim that you appear to be making about St. Augustine!

Jehanne said:

Condemned Proposition: "A faith indicated from the testimony of creation, or from a similar motive, suffices for justification" (Pope Innocent XI, Denz. 2123).

There were arguments about the minimum that's necessary for faith. Just admiring creation doesn't fulfill that minimum requirement, that is what Innocent XI was condemning.

Belief in God alone seems necessary by a necessity of means, not, however, explicit faith in a Rewarder. ERROR CONDEMNED. Pope St. Innocent XI

Here Pope Innocent XI is saying that it's not enough to believe, for instance, in a God that punishes all men, you must also believe God rewards the good.  But that doesn't necessarily mean this is the minimum of what must be believed.

Jehanne said:

1)  Our Lord Jesus Christ's words say so in the Gospels:  "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16)

He doesn't say they have to believe explicitly  :farmer:

Jehanne said:

2) The Athanasian Creed states so, explicitly, and that was infallibly included in the text of the Council of Florence.

The Athanasian Creed explicitly states the Catholic faith in a nutshell.  It doesn't say that to be saved you have to explicitly believe all of this.  

Come on, Jehanne, how many illiterate Catholics in the Middle Ages do you think understood what is said in the Athanasian Creed?  Do you think they'd know that all three Persons of the Holy Ghost are uncreated, or that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son and the Father and not just from the Father or just from the Son?  

So these illiterate Catholics had their own form of implicit faith, and St. Thomas speaks of this, he talks about how certain people are required to know less than others.

Jehanne said:

3)  Implicit faith makes no sense.  How does one believe something "implicitly"?  It's like saying that I could be explicitly married to my wife yet, at the same time, be implicitly married to someone else, someone whom I do not even know.  If such an absurdity were true, how would I ever "divorce" such an individual?  How does someone with "implicit faith" ever get rid of it?  Can they apostatize, even if they want to??

Here's one way to think of it -- the Immaculate Conception of Mary would have been unknown to most early Catholics, I believe.  Yet since early Catholics were still Catholics, they must have believed it implicitly, meaning that IF THEY WERE TOLD, they would have believed it, since their heart was disposed to believe all the Church teaches.

So if there is someone out there who is disposed to believe all that the Church teaches, but he doesn't know about the Church, God sees this, and this would be an example of someone who could be saved by implicit faith.  

Might a sense of peace, calm, and confidence come from the Devil?