Leonard Feeney

This position is called Feeneyism, coming from his last name. Fighting against what he perceived to be the liberalization of Catholic doctrine, he was excommunicated by the Holy See in 1953. Feeney reconciled with the church in 1972, though never recanted his controversial views on salvation. He was described as Boston's homegrown version of Father Charles Coughlin for his antisemitism.

• Name — Leonard Edward Feeney • Honorific Suffix — SJ • Born — 18 February 1897 • Birthplace — Lynn, Massachusetts, U.S. • Died — 30 January 1978 • Place of death — Ayer, Massachusetts, U.S. • Ordained — June 20, 1928 • Occupation — Priest, poet, lyricist, editor, chaplain • Known for — Feeneyism • Honorific Prefix — The Reverend

In the 1930s, as a Jesuit, Feeney was a literary editor at the Jesuit magazine America.

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 document 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". 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. The decree of excommunication was later published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. His followers claimed that his excommunication was invalid. Following his excommunication, Feeney co-founded a community called the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with Catherine Goddard Clarke. This group later split in two, one of which became the Still River Branch, in good standing with the Catholic Church; the other is a schismatic group that holds to Feeney's views on Salvation.

Feeney reconciled with the Catholic Church in 1972 without any recantation from his part on his positions on salvation. This reconciliation without Feeney's recantation, reports the National Catholic News Service, "came about at least in part through the intervention of Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston who had attended lectures at St. Benedict's during his days as a seminarian. Cardinal John Wright, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, reportedly personally brought the matter to the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith". Feeney made few public appearances in his final years, because he was suffering from Parkinson's disease and a chronic heart ailment. He died in Ayer, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1978. For Feeney's death, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who had previously been a pupil in Feeney's lectures, shared his reflection on and personal experience with Feeney.

Feeney was editor of The Point, which ran a mixture of theological and political articles, some of them branded anti-semitic by Feeney's critics. The newsletter frequently contained sentiments such as: the Church has never abandoned her absolute principle that it is possible for an individual Jew to scrap his hateful heritage, sincerely break with the synagogue, and cleanse his cursed blood with the Precious Blood of Jesus. (October 1957) Those two powers, the chief two in the world today, are Communism and Zionism. That both movements are avowedly anti-Christian, and that both are in origin and direction Jewish, is a matter of record. (September 1958) As surely and securely as the Jews have been behind Freemasonry, or Secularism, or Communism, they are behind the "anti-hate" drive. The Jews are advocating tolerance only for its destructive value — destructive, that is, of the Catholic Church. On their part, they still keep alive their racial rancors and antipathies. (July 1955) The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith monitored The Point magazine for at least 14 editions. In 1955, the League exchanged correspondence with the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding possible criminal investigation of Feeney and his followers, but no investigation was started.

As a Harvard undergraduate, Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy attended a meeting of students at which he stood up and challenged Feeney, later storming out following the priest's assertion that there was no salvation outside the Catholic faith. A similarly negative reaction to Feeney's teaching was recorded by British novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh, who wrote of visiting the priest while in the United States: A few years later Feeney wrote critically of Knox and Newman in his collection of essays London is a Place, with an unsympathetic passing reference to Waugh's biography of St. Helena: on the list of [Knox's] recurrent callers, was Mr. Evelyn (pronounced Evil-in) Waugh, whose father, a London publisher, supplied his sons with early printing privileges in pornography, before one of them (Evelyn) turned to hagiography, and whitened his sepulchre with the life of a saint. In 2003, in an article for The Jewish Week newspaper, editor Gary Rosenblatt wrote:

Leonard Feeney is recorded as poet, theologian, catholic priest, lyricist and songwriter.