Fr. Feeney ran afoul of Cardinal Cushing because Cushing felt that Feeney was attacking his sister and brother in law and because young Bobby Kennedy complained about him. Cushinf was unjust.
But Fr did wrong by not obeying his superior and going to his new assignment. He was wrong in setting up that cultish living arrangement with his followers. He was wrong to break up married couples. He was wrong to forbid the children of his followers to be raised by their parents. He was wrong in attacking Maisie Ward his former friend and publisher. He was wrong in making fun of Mother Cabrini.
So, I checked who Mother Cabrini was, found out she is a saint, and also that in Fr. Feeney's The Point there is only praise for her.
Protestant America is a land where children are either pampered or prevented, and grow up to be either divorced or mercy-killed. It is a land which, having many religions and no certitudes, demands that a child get dogmatic about democracy and make a creed out of the slogan that creeds are of no importance. A determination to protect the Italian-Catholic children of America from this kind of enslavement was what forged our only American saint, Mother Cabrini. She said, “I shall have no peace until I have wrested every last infant from Protestant hands.”
From the beginnings of our country, Mother Cabrini’s purpose had been anticipated by Our Blessed Lady. In her mercy toward America, Our Lady arranged that most of the Protestantism of our land should be the Baptizing kind. Thus, in thousands of water-pourings, validly administered, New World babies with Protestant parents became members of the Church and subjects of the Pope. And countless of these infants were soon after taken up to heaven by Our Lady — where they remain happy hostages for the conversion of the land they, happily, never grew up in.
But from a later American apostle, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the tireless nun who died at Chicago in 1917, we can learn that most important lesson for contemporary Catholics. It has been preserved for us in Mother Cabrini’s own words: “We let ourselves be overcome by human respect, and cease to show ourselves true followers of Our Lord before the world … We see truth trodden underfoot, and we remain silent. Why? Because we are cowards. Oh, how we need to renew our faith, to rekindle our hearts in the sublime principles of our holy religion.”
As for "attacking" Maisie Ward and her husband, whose last name she didn't want to take, here is what Fr. Feeney said:
Publisher F. J. Sheed, a disappointed lawyer from Australia, who wandered into New York by way of London and an English wife (whom he affectionately calls “Ward”), has finally decided to go all out for the salvation of any Protestant who likes Sheed & Ward books. Even a Protestant minister can make the grade, as Mr. Sheed affirms in the following announcement:
“We were very sad indeed to hear that Dr. Hobart McKeehan, a Protestant minister who loved books and gave Sheed & Ward many excellent reviews, died last month in a car accident. Although we’re sure he spent Easter in Heaven, we had a Mass said for him.”
It turns out Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sheed are rank heretics. Here's some more:
Catholic Bible Week will be observed from September 28th to October 4th. In anticipation, Sheed & Ward has been plugging a publication called The Knox Bible. Here is one of Sheed’s plugs: “The Knox Bible is the first Catholic Bible since Gutenberg (now having its 500th anniversary) to be praised alike by Catholics and Protestants. 500 years is a long time to wait, but still it’s nice it’s finally happened.”
True, Frank Sheed, 500 years is a long time to wait. But aren’t you getting too little credit for the fact that “it’s finally happened”? It takes an awful lot of publishing know-how to get out a Bible that will be praised by both Catholics and Protestants, both papists and Baptists, both Hail Mary sayers and Blessed Virgin despisers.
Monsignor Ronald Knox’s British lack of faith is suspected by everyone who meets him. It ought as well be suspected by everyone who reads him. Often, though, as he writes, he has a way of concealing just what exactly is his meaning. If you squeeze Knox hard enough for copy, as his publishers, Sheed & Ward, seem to do, you will ultimately get him to reveal the shallowness that lies at the bottom of his thinking and the heresy at the bottom of his beliefs.
Having previously rephrased the Bible to suit his own doubts, and reduced the Holy Sacrifice to the Hollywood speed of The Mass in Slow Motion, just published by Sheed & Ward, Monsignor Knox innovates as follows: “We all know that a spiritual Communion, faithfully made, produces all the effects of sacramental Communion; God might have decreed that no Communions be made at all except spiritual ones.”
This statement marks the end of belief in our incorporation into the Body and Blood of Jesus, and makes the eatable reality of the Fruit of Mary’s Womb merely a ritualistic luxury. Just whom Knox means by the “we” in his “We all know … ” is hard to say. Possibly he means his Anglican friends and himself. For these friends are sure to be delighted by this statement and will make it to mean that as far as Knox is concerned, whether you have the Real Presence in your tabernacles or the “real absence,” it all amounts to the same thing.
There is cause for much rejoicing among Interfaith Catholics who have been embarrassed by the fact that canonized saints are an exclusively Catholic concern. By next fall, publisher Frank Sheed will have on the market an interdenominational treatment of the lives of the saints appropriately entitled Saints for Now.
Edited by that eminent authority on sanctity, Mrs. Henry Luce, the book will contain evaluations of well known saints by prominent English and American, Catholic and otherwise, authors.
Saints for Now should have a good sale. A great many people will be curious to read about Whittaker Chambers’ ardent devotion to Saint Benedict; and Bruce Marshall’s “world, the flesh, and Fr. Vianney” treatment of the Cure of Ars; and most curious to learn from Mortimer Adler just how a Jєωιѕн Thomist feels about the Catholic Saint he has been making his living on.
Congratulations to Sheed & Luce for sensing that this kind of text must have a few illustrations by Salvador Dali.
The way you phrased your post made it sound like you know quite a bit about Fr. Feeney, yet, upon investigating the points raised, only a vindication of Feeney could be found. Obviously I cannot just trust your other claims now, either.
Do you have any sources to back up your claim that Fr. Feeney mocked a saint or do you retract it?
Topic: Interesting comment on Fr. Leonard Feeney by his Jesuit superior (Read 7107 times)