What would Cardinal Cushing do?


What would Cardinal Cushing do?

By James Carroll  |  December 19, 2005

THE DISPUTE OVER whether it is appropriate, in public, to say ''Happy Holidays" instead of ''Merry Christmas" puts me in mind of Cardinal Richard Cushing. He was my boss when I was Catholic Chaplain at Boston University, and I loved him. In the early 1950s, Cushing forced one of the great changes in Catholic theology by excommunicating Father Leonard Feeney for preaching on Boston Common that ''there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church." As is true of today's exclusivist claims for a Christian meaning of ''the holidays," there was an undercurrent of antisemitism in Feeney's exclusivist claim for Catholicism. An inch below all Christian triumphalism is special contempt for Jews who reject the idea that Jesus is the saving Messiah. Robust assertions of the one meaning of the winter celebration are a version of the claim that there is only one way to God. Jews may not accept that, but how dare they forbid the dominant Christian culture from celebrating its dominance.

What made Cushing's excommunication of Feeney astounding was that Feeney's line had been official Church teaching for most of a thousand years: No salvation outside the Church. Feeney confidently appealed to Rome, forcing the Vatican to take a position on the question. When the Vatican supported Cushing and upheld the excommunication of Feeney, the long-held doctrine of Catholic exclusivism was overturned.

Why was Cardinal Cushing the one to force this change? Cushing's sister Dolly, an MTA toll taker, was married to Dick Pearlstein, who, with his father Louis, ran the haberdashery that was on the way to being Boston's best men's store, which it remains. Cardinal Cushing was often in the Pearlstein home, and he had ample occasion to experience his brother-in-law's innate goodness. There came to be no question for Cushing as to whether his sister's beloved husband was beloved of God. That Dick Pearlstein was Jєωιѕн -- a ''non-Catholic" -- ceased to have decisive meaning, and Cushing began to take Feeney's ''orthodox" preaching as an insult to his own family. An abstract principle of theology was upended by the sort of cross-group interaction that had become common in America.

There are religious reactionaries in the world who are suspicious of America precisely because of the religious and cultural elbow-rubbing that occurs in neighborhoods and even families. Upholding the conscience of each individual means refusing to let a particular appeal to conscience dominate public space. But critics can see in such protected plurality of doctrine the top edge of the slippery slope toward ''relativism." One need not share that worry to acknowledge that when people of differing beliefs begin to treat each other with full respect, an elbow-rubbing of the mind always follows.

To encounter another approach to the great questions of transcendence is inevitably to rethink one's own approach. Competing truth claims can yield when emphasis shifts from the claim itself to the idea of truth behind it. The question, ''Is there one way to heaven?" can become the question, ''What is 'heaven' anyway?" Soon enough, believers can recognize that the truth of their own tradition does not depend on the falsehood of someone else's. The next thing you know, as in Cushing's encounter with the Pearlsteins, basic doctrines of one's own tradition may go out the window.

The move in recent years to ''relativize" the Christian character of America's winter holiday, making room not only for ancient Jєωιѕн observance of Hanukkah and recently invented African-American celebration of Kwanza, but also for open acknowledgement of the prehistoric Solstice origins of the entire enterprise -- all of this is the calendar's version of the neighbor-respecting change that Cardinal Cushing initiated within Catholicism. As was true in that most absolute of religions, the result of such repudiation of claims to supremacy is not the mindless watering-down -- Jesus morphing into Rudolph -- of which reactionaries warn, but a renewed embrace of one's own deepest convictions.

As a Christian whose faith is braced by American pluralism, I recognize in the derided word ''holidays" a welcome signal of respect for everyone. The word means holy. How easy, therefore, to imagine it from Cardinal Cushing, who showed that holiness means respect. Happy Holidays.

Carroll wrote:

Quote

What made Cushing's excommunication of Feeney astounding was that Feeney's line had been official Church teaching for most of a thousand years: No salvation outside the Church. Feeney confidently appealed to Rome, forcing the Vatican to take a position on the question. When the Vatican supported Cushing and upheld the excommunication of Feeney, the long-held doctrine of Catholic exclusivism was overturned.

The unsupported making of this statement does not make it true.

When Feeney defended EENS, he was defending the perennial teaching of the Church.  Unfortunately, Feeney did not stop with a defense of EENS, he went further and by that denied other teachings.  But that was not why Rome honed in on Feeney and the SBC.  They were denying implicit Baptism of Desire, a doctrinal error, amd it needed correction by the Holy Office.

As the Feeney movement continued into the 1950s, Feeney refused to report himself to the Holy Office, leading to his excommunication by Pope Pius XII.

Then in the 1950's Feeneyism moved on to target Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.  

Carroll being a modernist, is obviously to inept to follow to these distinctions, and like many clueless bystanders thinks that Feeneyism is all about EENS.  

Carroll has no dog in this fight, he simply speaks the truth. Fr. Feeney preached and defended what was up until that time, the official teaching of the Catholic Church - until the modernist enemy Cushing came on the scene had him excommunicated - for disobedience, NOT FOR HERESY.

If you do not agree, go ahead and try to preach the truth today and see what they do to you - the same thing they do and have always done to whoever speaks the truth too boldly.

So thorough was Cushing's defamation and slander of Fr. Feeney and the true teachings of the Church that the lies Cushing fabricated still stand, defended most vigorously till this day by those think they are trads but in reality are fools duped into the Cushing heresy campaign which paved the way for V2 and the Novus Ordo.

You will not accept it because you cannot accept it - least ways not as long as you cling to the Cushingite heresy of salvation via a BOD which is NSAA.

In short, the thing you refuse to accept is that it is impossible to preach Universal Salvation without a BOD, just as it is impossible to preach EENS with a BOD.

Quote from: Ambrose

Carroll wrote:

Quote

What made Cushing's excommunication of Feeney astounding was that Feeney's line had been official Church teaching for most of a thousand years: No salvation outside the Church. Feeney confidently appealed to Rome, forcing the Vatican to take a position on the question. When the Vatican supported Cushing and upheld the excommunication of Feeney, the long-held doctrine of Catholic exclusivism was overturned.

The unsupported making of this statement does not make it true.

When Feeney defended EENS, he was defending the perennial teaching of the Church.  Unfortunately, Feeney did not stop with a defense of EENS, he went further and by that denied other teachings.  But that was not why Rome honed in on Feeney and the SBC.  They were denying implicit Baptism of Desire, a doctrinal error, amd it needed correction by the Holy Office.

As the Feeney movement continued into the 1950s, Feeney refused to report himself to the Holy Office, leading to his excommunication by Pope Pius XII.

Then in the 1950's Feeneyism moved on to target Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.  

Carroll being a modernist, is obviously to inept to follow to these distinctions, and like many clueless bystanders thinks that Feeneyism is all about EENS.  

Carroll has no dog in this fight, he simply speaks the truth. Fr. Feeney preached and defended what was up until that time, the official teaching of the Catholic Church - until the modernist enemy Cushing came on the scene had him excommunicated - for disobedience, NOT FOR HERESY.

If you do not agree, go ahead and try to preach the truth today and see what they do to you - the same thing they do and have always done to whoever speaks the truth too boldly.

So thorough was Cushing's defamation and slander of Fr. Feeney and the true teachings of the Church that the lies Cushing fabricated still stand, defended most vigorously till this day by those think they are trads but in reality are fools duped into the Cushing heresy campaign which paved the way for V2 and the Novus Ordo.

You will not accept it because you cannot accept it - least ways not as long as you cling to the Cushingite heresy of salvation via a BOD which is NSAA.

In short, the thing you refuse to accept is that it is impossible to preach Universal Salvation without a BOD, just as it is impossible to preach EENS with a BOD.

Carroll is misrepresting Caholic teaching, something he is good at by the way.  You must think America magazine was accurate too when it blatantly misrepresented the controversy.

Fr. Feeney was correct when he defended EENS.

Fr. Feeney adopted his first error when he denied Implicit Baptism of Desire.

Feeneyites profess a grave error against the Faith by denying Baptism of Blood.

Feeneyites profess heresy when they deny explicit Baptism of Desire.

Just so you know any knowing denial of Catholic teaching, whether heretical or not is mortally sinful, and leads to Hell.

The significant difference is that heresy severs you from the Body of the Church as well.  Avoid heresy, keep the Faith, as outside of the Church there is no salvation.

God has appointed only two identifiable religions in the history of the world: First, there was Judaism. Second, there is Catholicism. Judaism is fulfilled in the Catholic Church and no longer has any divine appointment apart from its fulfillment in the Catholic Church.

Thus the only religion presently appointed by God is the Catholic religion. There is no other divinely appointed religion. Jews (just as everyone else) must explicitly convert to Catholicism to have a chance of salvation. This last sentence was the reason Cushing and the Vatican which had already been infiltrated by Liberalism, unjustly condemned Fr. Feeney: because the truth, which was taught and defended for almost two millenniums, upset the Jews and the Jews control the world.

Did Fr. Feeney believe that nothing is impossible with God?  IMO he did believe that.  That is enough.  It is up to God to make those decisions for we can not judge souls only outward actions, to bury as if they were a catholic. That is all that is necessary.

The fact that nothing is impossible with God is irrelevant to Catholic teaching on Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.

We as Catholics are bound to believe what the Church teaches.  We are not permitted to deny even one point.  Catholics must believe Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.  This is not optional.  To deny either of these doctrines is matter for mortal sin and if done knowingly, will lead to the loss of one's immortal soul.

The Church does not teach a BOD - the Church teaches the sacrament is a necessity for salvation - that is infallible. Why do you continue to deny that undeniable truth?

Cushing taught that no sacrament at all was necessary for salvation. As a Cushingite, it is understandable that you follow his teaching and the teaching of the conciliar popes, but don't keep deceiving yourself, a BOD is not a Church teaching.

A one minute real life explicit BOD event happening while you watch.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/embed/M14fSoqpOss[/youtube]

This is what you claim the Church teaches.  

These guys do even better since they actually invoke the Lord's name, which is better than your version of a BOD.