If he was a good Catholic, then why was he excommunicated.

From wikipedia:

"Excommunication
On 8 August 1949, Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani of the Holy Office sent a protocol letter to Archbishop Richard Cushing on the meaning of the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation"). This protocol had been approved by Pope Pius XII on 28 July 1949. The docuмent states: "[T]his dogma [extra Ecclesiam nulla salus] must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Saviour gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church".^[13][14][15]
After Feeney refused twice to oblige to the Holy See's summons to Rome to explain himself, he was excommunicated on 13 February 1953 by the Holy See for persistent disobedience to legitimate church authority due to his refusal to comply. According to Cardinal John Wright, Pope Pius XII personally translated the edict into English.^[9]"


Why would we still try to listen to him today?  Maybe he was right in addressing some issues, but to be overly dogmatic can also be a sign of great pride.

Is it really worth my time to figure out the ins and outs of Father Feeney? or is this just another distraction put before us to not work out our own salvation with fear and trembling?

And Gunter, why would you purposefully put a topic title on the board that would rile up those who like Father Feeney?  Couldn't you have written something like interesting information on Father Feeney? 

Because he started an illegal cult that separated parents from their children.  History tends to repeat maybe in slightly different ways with different circuмstances. Traditional chapels are the breeding grounds of clicks and whisper campaigns. 

Slandering the man out of obvious ignorance.  He was anything but dogmatic, clearly stating that his position regarding BoD was his opinion only.  Nor was BoD even the issue in the beginning.  He was dealing with the Heresiarch "Cardinal" Cushing and heretical Jesuit superiors who explicitly, verbatim, and pertinaciously rejected EENS dogma.  Cushing:  "No salvation outside the Church?  Nonsense."

So, yeah, he was dogmatic about ... dogma, a dogma that's been defined 3 times.

Again with the hypocrisy of proudly accusing him of pride ... when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Father Feeney was THE ONLY ONE who realized that there was something rotten in the Church in the 1940s and 1950s.  Seminaries and convents were full, conversions at record levels, schools going up left and right ... so everyone was complacent.  But Father Feeney realized that something stunk.  He reflected on it for years and understood that the problem had to do with the rejection of EENS dogma and the resulting anti-Tridentine ecclesiology.  He basically saw Vatican II coming before anyone else thought it possible.  Obviously Vatican II didn't just come out of nowhere, or fall out of the sky ... as the root causes had been festering in the Church for decades and, to some extent, even for centuries.  We didn't have a perfectly sound Church and then all of a sudden on one sunny morning in, oh, 1962, the Church just apostasized en masse.

In fact, most "Trads" even with the 20/20 of hindsight STILL have no clue about the actual theological root cause of Vatican II:  EENS dogma.  In fact, many of them effectively hold the very same ecclesiology that they with the other side of their mouth denounce as heretical in Vatican II.  Karl "Anonymous Christian" Rahner marveled that the conservative fathers at V2 didn't make a peep about what he realized was the most revolutionary aspect of V2, the soteriology.  Clueless wonders are most "Trad" clergy ... as we see also with regard to the voting issue.

This is why Tradism has floundered and not spread, why the SSPX is being sucked inexorably back into the Conciliar Church, others are thinly-vailed Old Catholics.  If you accept the 1940s/1950s Modernist-heretical ecclesiology, you really don't have a leg to stand on in condemning the teaching of Vatican II.

I might be naive on Father Feeney's particulars, but I know that disobedience is the root cause of the fall of man.  It has been from the time Adam fell in the Garden of Eden.  If God wants success he requires obedience.  You want this Crisis to come to an end, then stop finding everything to disagree with and start finding the authority you wish to follow, and stick to it.  It sucks that there are so many to choose from right now.

St. Athanansius, pray for us!!!!