North of the Shire

…regardless of how I understand the doctrine Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, whether in the strict sense of Fr. Feeney or in a more nuanced sense that seems to prevail in the thinking of the Magisterium including Benedict XVI and John Paul II, as evidenced in encyclicals and the CCC.

Let’s say just a word about EENS. The confusion, to my way of thinking, is between theoretical and practical.

A theological possibility which can only be unknown to us until the final judgement says that God is not bound necessarily by the rules and norms that he prescribes for us. He can save who he wishes in his divine mercy.

At the same time, on the practical side, as far as we are concerned the Church is the means which Christ gave us to come to him for salvation. If there is anybody outside of her that is saved, we don’t know who or when they are and cannot know their hearts and the mind of God. So for all practical purposes, the point is moot. As far as we are concerned, our job, as Fr. Feeney practiced, is to seek the salvation of anyone and everyone through Holy Mother Church. Practically then, on this doctrine, the Feeneyites are right to hold to it and not compromise.

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. The Church has never and will never canonize someone who is outside the Church.

The Problem With Feeney

It is therefore not the doctrine of EENS that is at issue for me. What is?
Anti-Semitism.
Here’s a document that gives us ample evidence, but there are many more. From this document of February 1959 here is an excerpt (by all means read the entire document, and the many other issues of the Point edited by Fr. Feeney. This is not at all out of context. Indeed it is mild);

Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M. — Saint Benedict Center
————————————————————————
POINT OF THE POINT
Readers of the foregoing reflections may have observed that one topic especially has occupied The Point ’s attention during the past seven years: the problem, in its many aspects, of the Jews.
Why this emphasis? Because we think it is imperative that American Catholics wake up to the fact that the Jews, as an organized force, are the implacable, declared enemies of Christianity — of its tenets, its traditions, its moral code, its very culture. We think it is vital, too, for American Catholics to realize that the Church has always known this fact about the Jews, and, to the extent of her influence, has counseled and decreed regulations for curbing their malice. And since American Catholic publications, in general, seem determined to say little about these basic matters, we have tried to make up for their negligence by our own insistence.
Our solution to the Jewish problem, however, is not merely a series of warnings and exposures to let American Catholics know what their enemies are up to. For we will be able to withstand no enemy, however well informed we are, if we are not strong from within. The ultimate point of The Point is therefore to inject American Catholics with a crusading zeal for the truths and traditions of their Faith, and thus to foster in America a strong, militant Catholicism, worthy of a country that is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

Here’s the list of issues of the Point; http://www.fatherfeeney.org/point/index.html
Check out the monthly titles from 1954 as an example;
http://www.fatherfeeney.org/point/index.html#1954

So, as I say, I could never be a disciple of Fr Feeney. I have no idea whether he recanted this anti-Semitism before he died or not. It is difficult to say whether today’s Feeneyites reject that part of the teaching of their spiritual leader, but let us say this; one could hold to a strict interpretation of EENS without attaching himself to Fr. Feeney so that it seems to me that the burden of explanation belongs to those who wish to identify with him.

Perhaps there are some who would try to evade the anti-Semitism charge by claiming that the issue is a religious one, not racial. Well, let us look at that for a moment.

Here’s just one statement among many that can be read in the November 1954 edition of Point;

1. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the authors of the Communist Manifesto, and the codifiers of all previous Communist thought, were both Jews.

To make that a religious issue one would have to demonstrate that communism is either promoted by the Jewish religion or at the very least compatible with it. Otherwise, it is obvious that the issue is strictly communism, irrespective of the racial or religious heritage of its inventors. And, one would also have to show that Marx and Engels were practicing Jews who considered themselves orthodox. Indeed, there have been those who were nominal Catholics who were also communists, and I think it should be obvious by now that communism and Catholicsim are quite incompatible, to put it mildly.

So then, the issue must be racial. Of what significance does race carry when it comes to religion or political philosophy? There are Catholics of every race. Indeed, in Scripture St. Paul tells us there is now neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, meaning that those distinctions do not enhance or degrade anyone’s opportunity to find salvation in the Church of Jesus Christ, the Holy Catholic Church. Indeed, from a racial standpoint, all of the apostles and most of the early Christians were Jews by race. Jesus was a Jew by race. So it is very clear that condemning anyone on the basis of race is anti-Catholic. Period. End of story.

But just in case this problem of Fr. Feeney is not completely clear, let us look at another example.
From the December 1954 issue of Point (http://www.fatherfeeney.org/point/54-dec.html);

THE PRESENT POSITION OF CARDINAL NEWMAN
Q. What is it about John Henry Newman, English convert and Cardinal, that Catholics chiefly remember?

A. His mastery of English prose.

Q. What is it about John Henry Newman that Catholics of our day generally forget?

A. They forget, or never have been told of, his Jewish descent.

Q. If we Catholics were to bear in mind Newman’s real ancestry when we are appraising his literary ability, could we not then boast that we have had in our fold the greatest Jewish writer in the English language?

A. We could — except for the fact that there have been in the English language other Jewish writers, like Robert Browning, Max Beerbohm, and Philip Guedalla, who never once thought of joining the Catholic Church.

Q. Apart from his literary abilities, did not Newman make a good conversion to the Catholic Church?

A. He made a nostalgic conversion.

Q. What sort of conversion is that?

A. It is a conversion effected in a typical Old Testament manner, in which one is always sighing after the “flesh-pots” of things one has abandoned, and which in Newman’s case required an Apologia Pro Vita Sua, an apology for his own life, to justify.

Q. After his conversion, and his ordination to the priesthood, is it really true that Newman used often to forego theological studies and pastoral pursuits in order to devote more time to reading from the pagan Greeks?

A. Biographers disagree. Newman’s only comment in the matter was his repeated remark, “I shall never be a saint, for I love the pagan classics too intensely.”

Q. Did not the blood which he inherited, from the Jewish moneylender who was his father, allow Newman to bring to the Faith some of those same racial qualities possessed by the very earliest Christians, by Our Lord’s own Apostles and disciples?

A. The Jewish qualities which Newman brought to the Faith have been very tidily set in order by Canon William Barry, S. T. D., the eminent English authority on Newman. Canon Barry reports that to Newman’s “Hebrew affinities” the following qualities are attributed: “ … his cast of features, his remarkable skill in music and mathematics, his dislike of metaphysical speculations, his grasp of the concrete, and his nervous temperament.”

Q. What was it that Newman called those fellow Catholics of his who, at the time of the Vatican Council, were in favor of having the Pope’s personal infallibility defined?

A. Newman nervously called them, “an aggressive and insolent faction.”

Q. Was this attitude toward the definition of Papal infallibility the reason why Pope Pius IX so totally mistrusted Newman?

A. It was one of the reasons.

Q. If Pope Pius IX so frowned upon him, why was Newman made a Cardinal?

A. Newman was made a Cardinal after Pope Pius IX died, when the Catholic Duke of Norfolk prevailed upon the newly installed Leo XIII to brighten the aged Newman’s final years with a red hat.

Q. Is it in England that Cardinal Newman’s spirit best survives today?

A. It is not. Modern Catholic Englishmen, without analyzing it, sense that Cardinal Newman was, religiously, the kind of interloper in their midst that Prime Minister Disraeli was politically.

Q. Where then have Newman’s name and fame been most perpetuated?

A. In America, in the form of clubs. Newman Clubs, they are called.

Q. What is a Newman Club?

A. It is an organized excuse for the presence, the sinful presence, of Catholic students at secular universities founded and fostered by Masons and, lately, indoctrinated by Jews.

In this case, Newman’s catholicity, his orthodoxy is questioned simply because of his racial heritage. It must be remembered that he did not come to the Catholic Church from Judaism, he came from the Anglican communion. In other words, while coming from outside the Church, he had already accepted that Jesus was/is the Messiah, contrary to the Jewish religion.

No, it is clear that the problem is one of race, and racial hatred. If one is peruse the rest of the Point articles on file that racial hatred is re-enforced over and over.

And that is why I could never be a Feeneyite. The racial hatred, it appears, has never been repudiated; and it is a direct link to Fr. Feeney because even if written by someone else, it was approved by Fr. Feeney as editor. Therefore, to identify with Fr. Feeney is to identify with racial hatred and its promotion, which is itself against the Church and our Lord Jesus Christ regardless of one’s interpretation of EENS.