Thirty years ago I asked a question to a good priest regarding the validity of a certain line of Bishops. He asked me the question "do you think that Fr. so and so is so smart he couldn't possibly be wrong on this issue"? I know the priest that asked me the question is sincere in instructing souls to avoid doubtful orders so I don't hold any bad feelings towards him, but I felt he didn't give me enough evidence to suggest doubts on the matter. I have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears many naive Catholics looking for instruction and direction for the most mundane things. So the story fits in many cases. Father so and so said this so he speaks for the Church. Very dangerous times indeed.
Exactly. Look at the words of Fr. Feeney himself, the actual docuмents involved in the debacle, the lives of those who "disciplined" him, and the results of what they did. Don't just trust the trad clergy on this because most of them had their opinions on it formed by Fr. Laisney and they are misinformed at best and malicious at worst. The only group that uses "Feeneyite" to mean denial of BOD/BOB are trads. The rest of the world understand it as holding that "There is No Salvation Outside the Church." Even wikipedia defines it in this way because that's the way that any NO clergy mean it when they say it. They, at least, are honest that the case was not about BOD/BOB but about Church doctrine. BOD/BOB wasn't an issue in the excommunication at all. It came later. Cardinal Avery Dulles, who later succuмbed to modernism but was involved in the Center early on wrote of Fr. Feeney: He was convinced that Catholics must not hesitate to present the full challenge of the Gospel, which for him included the whole system of official dogma. He felt that too many tended, out of politeness and timidity, to evade the task of forthright witness. As long as any person was alive, Father Feeney used to say, we should urge the necessity of his accepting the fullness of the faith. But after death, the situation was different. We could confidently leave our loved ones to the unfathomable mercy of God, to which we could set no limits. “I would infinitely rather be judged by God,” Father Feeney would say, “than by my closest friend.” Isn't that nuts?
But in the minds of the average NO Catholic, or Catholic in the pew in the 1950's, Fr. Feeney invented the idea that there was no salvation outside the Church and that's a heresy and he was excommunicated for it.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/no-salvation-outside-the-church This is the Novus Ordo religion and it happened before V2. That the Father Feeney case changed Catholic understanding of the necessity of the Church for salvation is undeniable. The irony here is that Fr. Cekada, any of the SSPX priests, etc... would all be radical Feeneyites under interdict if you transported them back in time to Boston, 1952. They certainly would not agree with 'Fr.' Ryland or 'Fr.' Most or Karl Rahner's interpretations of this doctrine.
https://x.com/RorateCaeli/status/928318989582905344?prefetchTimestamp=1729182565332.
From biography of Bobby Kennedy: "Back in his undergraduate days, he joined other Harvard Catholics at lectures by Fr. Leonard Feeney, an influential Jesuit priest who warned that the Jєωs "are trying to take over this city" and preached that only Catholics could be saved. Bobby was embarrassed enough by those diatribes to discuss them with his brother Ted and his father, who arranged for him to meet with Archbishop Richard Cushing to convey his concern. Even a Kennedy found it difficult to confront a prelate in those days, and Bobby's courage likely played a role in Feeney's eventual expulsion from his order and excommunication from the church."
Side note: it took no courage for Bobby to talk to "Uncle Richard." He was over at the Kennedy compound for drinks with Joe all the time.
Fr. Feeney was a threat to Kennedy political aspirations. You can't get people to vote for you if you tell them they are part of a false religion. This is also detailed in Ted Kennedy's autobiography where he brags about how his family took out Fr. Feeney and the Kennedy family's role in "changing Church doctrine." Go check it out in the library. And then ask yourself if what the Kennedy's hated Fr. Feeney for and persecuted him for was BOD. No, it wasn't. It was EENS. Would you have had the courage to stand up and say "Hang on, this actually IS what the Church teaches! Look at Trent! Look at Florence!" Those professors at Boston College did just that. And they put their names to it. And they lost their livelihoods and reputations for recognizing the creeping liberalism that was happening in Catholic higher education. Fr. Feeney didn't invent anything. He stuck up for them like a good father would do. Like every priest in Boston should have. Those are real men, but you give us an anonymous lawyer who wasn't there and has clearly cherry-picked information. Just don't.
And that's what is so insane about the position of these trads who want to continue to mudsling the man. Even the words of his enemies at the time exonerate him, but we are supposed to trust clerics who came along decades later and know the real story? Please.