I do not myself believe in explicit Baptism of Desire, but I do acknowledge it to be an open question that has not been definitively settled by the Church's magisterium.

Both pro and anti BoD people have absolutely conflated the two issues, i.e. EENS and BoD.  I have LONG argued that to both sides.  What has happened, however, is that the anti-EENS people have redefined BoD into implicit BoD, i.e. the BoD of non-catechumens.  Implicit BoD absolutely guts EENS and renders it a meaningless formula.  Which is in fact why the anti-BoD folks have felt the need to attack BoD in order to salvage EENS.  In order to do so, however, they have to attack St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus, etc.  In other words, by going after BoD in order to defends EENS, they're tacitly GRANTING the redefinition of BoD by the anti-EENS crowd and thereby inadvertantly making EENS much harder to defend.  St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus etc. only considered BoD in the context of catechumens.  St. Robert Bellarmine asks the question:  "Whether catechumens who die before receiving the sacrament of baptism can be saved?"  There's no backing anywhere in the Church Fathers or Doctors of the Church for the implicit BoD of infidels.  It's a complete novelty.

As for everything else in the OP, point #2 is complete hogwash.

There's absolutley no way that explicit BoD is de fide or dogma.

BoB is held by a handful of Church Fathers.  BoD if I recall is hinted at only by St. Augustine.  Even for BoB, the Fathers who hold it cite Our Lord's reference to His own "Baptism", i.e. His Passion.  But obviously that passage proves nothing, for Our Lord did not require Baptism.  And it's unclear in most of these Fathers whether BoB can replace sacramental baptism or acts as a means to have all sins blotted out (in a manner analogous to baptism).

I have a real problem with the fact that all theologians admit that only sacramental/water baptism imparts the sacramental character.  What is that character?  Well, it's nothing other than the CAPACITY to receive the supernatural life of God in our souls, a capacity which we utterly lack in nature.  Otherwise, sacramental character becomes trivialized into some "badge of honor" that some people in heaven have and others do not.

Good thoughts, would add one of my own-ultimately we have to leave this up to God, who knows the hearts and minds...this article is posted not to slam Feeney himself, who may have had disagremtns with his own followers for al lwe know.....

I agree that Father Feeney probably made some theological mistakes.

Remember though that he was struggling under Cardinal Cushing, who once stated (in an authorized biography of his):  "No salvation outside the Church?  Nonsense.  No one's going to tell me that Christ came to die for any select group."

I agree that Father Feeney probably made some theological mistakes.

Not probably.  He did.  He misread Trent Session 6, Chapter 4.

What it actually says:  "...cannot be effect without the laver of regeneration or the desire thereof..."

What he must have thought it said: "...can be effect with ONLY the laver or ONLY the desire thereof..."

Big difference.  He failed to understand that this definition simply says that justification cannot take place when one or the other is absent.

Maybe he didn't pray the Rosary enough?