Thanks for the pleasant conversation.
The solution to those who want to kill EENS is to preach EENS more strongly than ever before. Do you have an objection to how Pope Pius XII preached EENS: "Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth."
Preach this Truth to your non-Catholic friends, whether Protestants, Orthodox or Atheist, especially ex-Trads. You will do well, and will be well. I am not aware of any traditional Catholic who would attack you for preaching the above.
You would be surprised. But also, let's not read into what Pius XII said, something that isn't there. He doesn't say that ignorance is salvific. You'd also be surprised at how many trads believe this, in the face of dogmatic definitions. One needs to be very careful and precise in this area. Because the Church is.
Fr. Feeney should have gone to Rome and made his case. It would have been the ideal opportunity to preach the Gospel and present the faith to the widest possible audience in Rome. This is the reason given by Fr. Pagliarani as to why the SSPX leaped at the opportunity to present the faith in Rome. I read the letter from Rome to Fr. Feeney. They agreed to pay for his expenses in everything. They gave him every opportunity to come to Rome and do the right thing. Yet, I have nothing personal against Fr. Feeney. He seemed to be a good Priest with perhaps some errors.
Archbishop Lefebvre also did not go to Rome because he did not think it was prudent. As he said at the consecrations, "Yesterday evening, a visitor came, sent from the nunciature in Berne, with an envelope containing an appeal from our Holy Father the Pope, who was putting at my disposal a car which was supposed to take me to Rome yesterday evening, so that I would not be able to perform these consecrations today. I was told neither for what reason, nor where I had to go! I leave you to judge for yourselves the timeliness and wisdom of such a request." And then he was excommunicated.
It's easy for us to sit here decades later, when we have our Latin Masses and trad periodicals which those who came before us fought for, and armchair guess what those in the moment should or shouldn't have done. Both the Archbishop and Fr. Feeney tried in the normal channels for as long as they could. Like the Abp, Father Feeney's disobedience came after heroic efforts to submit and then being backstabbed many times. It makes no sense for a man who believed "too rigidly and dogmatically" in the doctrine that his salvation rested on submission to the Holy Father to take the decision of disobedience flippantly. Both men also were aware, by the time that they made their decisions, what sort of men they were dealing with in the hierarchy and who they were working for. Fr. Feeney stood on canon law and asked for the charges. They were not given. Even the canon lawyer assigned to defend him said that they can't do that.
There are more parallels here, however, that you may be unaware of. Like the SSPX, some of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart did jump at the chance to make their case heard in Rome and become regularized, without giving up the doctrine of EENS. Think of them as the Fraternity version of the Slaves. Others in the order disagreed with what they saw as useless compromising with modernists. It's very similar to the SSPX/SSPV/FSSP/Resistance divisions amongst the followers of Abp Lefebvre, but they just had these disagreements a little earlier than everyone else did.
Topic: Feeney the nut job (Read 32658 times)