I have a copy of Architects of Confusion in my hand. Below is a scanned copy of it, found on line. Pages 7 - 13 will answer your question. Anyone who doesn't want to be considered as unfair, will at least give St. Benedict Center this chance to explain "what happened" and about "the letter." The whole pamphlet is worth reading, and it is the better way to approach the subject. But at least read 7-13. The anti-Feeney haters don't stop to consider that his persecutors are the same who later went after ABL. It does not occur to them that just MAYBE there is something TO Fr. Feeney - that maybe "the finger of God" is there.
https://hieronymopolis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/architects-of-confusion-scanned-by-hieronymopolis.pdf
.
The Father Feeney haters in the Vatican knew even 13 years ahead of time that he would be the obstacle standing in the way of their Vatican II, and he must be removed. He was the darling of all the elementary parochial schools in the 1940's, when Father Feeney's framed photograph was prominently hung on the classroom walls, right next to the picture of Pope Pius XII. To them, these two images were the image of the Church to American Catholic children. Then one day, without so much as an official announcement, suddenly his pictures were removed from the classrooms all over America. The word was out! Father Feeney had lost favor with the highest office of the Church. He was excommunicated!!
.
So he lived out his life quietly doing what good he could with his friends close by, until one day a knock came at the door. It was 3 priests from the diocese, who had been sent to set things right. They were invited inside and stood there with Fr. Feeney and several witnesses. It had been decided on high that it wouldn't be right to let Fr. die without being reinstated, so these 3 priests asked him if he would like to pray the Creed with them. He suggested the Athanasian Creed, in Latin, which was well known by all since all priests in those days were accustomed to reciting it every Sunday in their Breviary prayers.
.
Curiously, the very issue over which he had been so-called disciplined in the first place, EENS, is how the Creed begins and ends:
.
QUIcuмQUE vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est, ut teneat catholicam fidem: Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in aeternum peribit.
WHOEVER wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever.
.
They had to get rid of the popular assent to Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus in order for Vatican II to get off the ground, and Fr. Feeney, who defended EENS with all his strength, was simply in the way of progress. The reason for his punishment had never been more than a vague accusation of "disobedience" because they couldn't legally accuse him of doctrinal error when he was DEFENDING the integrity of doctrine.
.
By the way, so-called baptism of desire was never so much as a topic on the table, officially, for it is not defined, it is not doctrine, and it is not a matter of canonical process.
.
To prove how ridiculous the whole affair was, after Vatican II did its damage and the New Mass was trotted out and taken in wholesale like the Trojan Horse it was, they re-instated Fr. Feeney using the same Creed that he had defended all along, which defense was at the root of his having been so-called excommunicated. In other words, the so-called excommunication was a dog-and-pony show, a farse, a fake and a fabrication. But that didn't matter because they got what they were after, Vatican II with Fr. Feeney out of the way.
.