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Feeneyism is the doctrinal position associated with Leonard Feeney (1897–1978), a Jesuit priest and founder of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who advocated a strict interpretation of the doctrine extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation").

Fr. Leonard Feeney

Main article: Leonard Feeney

Feeney was a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Jesuit order. The order dismissed Feeney in 1949 on account of disobedience, and on 4 February 1953, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known then as The Holy Office) declared him excommunicated "on account of grave disobedience to Church Authority, being unmoved by repeated warnings".[1] He was reconciled to the Church in 1972.[2] Feeney co-founded the group known as the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Salvation and baptism

See also: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

Catholics traditionally believe that sacramental baptism ("baptism of water") is the only way to be properly baptized. In addition, "the Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament."[3]

Feeney felt that, in the previous two centuries, some tended to broaden the notion of "baptism of desire" to cover the situation of all who try to live good lives, even to those who desired no relationship with the Catholic Church. Feeney argued that those who are truly sincere will be led by God to the Catholic Church. He also accepted no form of baptism as opening the way to salvation other than by water and only within the Catholic Church, but he did say that this was an opinion. He denied the salvational efficacy of the mere wish alone, even the explicit wish to be baptized, and held that God must have provided those martyrs who apparently died for the faith without being baptized with a minister and water to baptize them before their death.[4]

Feeney and his followers maintain that there is a contradiction between the Second Vatican Council's document Lumen gentium and earlier authoritative statements that they interpret as saying that non-Catholics are indiscriminately damned. His followers interpret the Catholic Church's declarations that outside of the Church there is no salvation as excluding from salvation people like the American Indians who lived between the times of Christ and Columbus, because they could not have been baptized, except on the hypothesis that some Christian missionaries did manage to reach them and baptize them in the Catholic faith.[5]

Splits

After Feeney's death, his spiritual descendants soon split into several groups due to various power struggles. The two most prominent both use the name Saint Benedict Center.

Three of these groups exist on or near the land Feeney moved to in Still River, Massachusetts:

  • The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a group of men and women in private vows, staff the Saint Benedict Center. Their apostolates include education (operating Immaculate Heart of Mary School), publishing, as well as a summer camp for boys and girls. The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary exclusively use the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. They were raised to a Public Association of the Faithful in 2017 by Bishop Robert McManus.
  • The Sisters of the Saint Benedict Center operate Saint Anne's House, an order of diocesan right in the Diocese of Worcester. The sisters focus on education, and exclusively use the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
  • St. Benedict Abbey is a house of Benedictine monks, using the extraordinary form in Latin.

The other branch, located in Richmond, New Hampshire, has no official recognition from the Catholic Church.[6][7] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) classifies the center in Richmond, as well as the group's publishing arm Immaculate Heart Media, as an anti-Semitic hate group.[8][7] The SPLC wrote that the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary "continue to endorse Feeney and to defend him from charges of anti-Semitism, despite his well-documented hatred of the Jews" and noted that in 2004, Bishop McCormack had rebuked the group as "blatantly anti-Semitic," and that in 2005, a brother of the Slaves had given a speech calling out the "Jewish nation" as "the perpetual enemy of Christ."[8] The center denies being anti-Semitic.[9][7]

In the 1978, three sisters from Feeney's original group sought to become Benedictine nuns. Nuns from Stanbrook Abbey to help establish their priory, which was formally erected in 1984 as Saint Scholastica Priory.[10] The nuns were later joined by a group of Benedictine monks who were established as Saint Mary Monastery, a dependent house of Pluscarden Abbey.

Condemnation of Feeneyite view

In a 1949 letter approved by Pope Pius XII, the Church condemned Feeney's rejection of the baptism of desire and rejected his simplistic assertion that all non-Catholics automatically go to Hell.[11][12]

Notes

  1. ^ Documents
  2. ^ Patrick Madrid and Pete Vere (2004). More Catholic Than The Pope. Our Sunday Visitor. p. 72.
  3. ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1258.
  4. ^ Father Feeney and Catholic Doctrine — A Reply to Verbum
  5. ^ The Salvation of the Pre-Columbian Amerindians
  6. ^ Buchanan, Susy (Summer 2007). "Trouble in Paradise: N.H. Town Split by Radical Traditionalists". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved June 22, 2008.
  7. ^ a b c Pat Grossmith, Richmond religious sect rejects 'hate group' label, New Hampshire Union Leader (February 25, 2017).
  8. ^ a b "12 Anti-Semitic Radical Traditionalist Catholic Groups". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. January 16, 2007.
  9. ^ "Way off Center: The Southern Poverty Law Center on St. Benedict Center". Crusade of Saint Benedict Center, Richmond. August 8, 2007. Retrieved June 22, 2008.
  10. ^ "St. Scholastica Priory". stscholasticapriory.org. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
  11. ^ Letter of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office Archived March 11, 2000, at the Wayback Machine "The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, in as far as she is the general help to salvation. Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he beincorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God. These things are clearly taught in that dogmatic letter which was issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943, <On the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ> (AAS, Vol. 35, an. 1943, p. 193 ff.). For in this letter the Sovereign Pontiff clearly distinguishes between those who are actually incorporated into the Church as members, and those who are united to the Church only by desire." Furthermore: "With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally well in every religion."
  12. ^ Archbishop Richard J. Cushing. Reproduced by EWTN Global Catholic Network. URL: https://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDFFEENY.HTM.

In favor of the Feeney view

Against the Feeney view

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