Twelve couples decided to take religious vows and rear their children communally. This was not under the orders of Father Feeney, and if anything, he was a moderating influence that no one should do so until the youngest child was at least three, which was the age at which Our Lady was given by her parents to be raised in the Temple. Misplaced zeal? Possibly. Sinful? Not if done by mutual consent. Calling it a doomsday cult is definitely slander. The only group who made mistakes in the early days of the crisis? Not a chance. Abp Thuc and the Palmar de Troya bit comes to mind. But at a time when the hierarchy had absolutely failed the faithful and religious orders had begun to crash, the desire to give something huge to God and agree to Josephite situations was an incredible sacrifice. It also did not continue past the original group. The communal raising of the children was not some doctrine of Fr. Feeney and was short-lived. Most of the Center's married supporters, however, did not join the religious order unless it was as Tertiaries, and remained with their families.
As for "Walled In," that family was a sad case indeed, but they likely would have had a sob story without the Center involvement. The situation was that both parents agreed to take religious vows and enter the monastery and convent. The father tired of it, renounced his religious vows, left, got custody of the children via a court order, got a divorce, remarried, then sent the children back to the Center. Obviously, being tossed back and forth into different lives and then abandoned by the father meant that they were discipline problems for the sisters. The punishments used were no worse than any American public or parochial school in the fifties, though they would be abuse by modern standards. And if the Center situation had been truly abusive, the blame lands on the father of the author for handing him back over. Said author also credited his academic and material success to his education in the Center school, ironically.
There is one other individual who also wrote an expose book on her childhood there. And her issue isn't really with the Center, either, but with God Almighty. She publicly refers to herself as a witch, and sits on the board of a transgender activist group and we are supposed to trust her word? Again, every group has their bitter ex-adherents who had something they didn't want to confess and then let it simmer enough to lead them away from the Faith entirely. Meanwhile, I personally know a number of these Center children, now in their 70's, who are happy Catholic grandparents or religious themselves. Their stories are quite different from the two discontents. And for a number of years, there were reunion picnics in Still River where they would get together.
Topic: Feeney the nut job (Read 32836 times)