Tuesday, June 15, 2010

SHOULD THE VATICAN RE- OPEN THE BOSTON CASE? WAS ARCHBISHOP RICHARD CUSHING IN HERESY? ARE THE JESUITS AT BOSTON COLLEGE STILL IN HERESY?


SHOULD THE VATICAN REOPEN THE BOSTON CASE? WAS ARCHBISHOP RICHARD CUSHING IN HERESY? ARE THE JESUITS AT BOSTON COLLEGE STILL IN HERESY?

EWTN’s report by Michael J. Mazza on the Internet EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS: FATHER FEENEY MAKES A COMEBACK states:

Three separate articles appeared on the subject of ,(in From the Housetops) culminating in a piece in the December 1948 issue entitled "Liberal Theology and Salvation," written by Raymond Karam. In discussing the necessity of visible membership in the Catholic Church for salvation, it read:

Our age is witnessing a terrible defection of Christ's word in the minds of innumerable Catholics. Infected with liberalism, surrendering their minds to teachers of error and heresy, they minimize the importance of dogma and of Catholic unity, and they distort the meaning of Charity, changing that sublime supernatural virtue into a sentimental shadow which, at best, can be termed mere charitableness.... The eternal salvation of man is achieved by adhering to the word of Christ, by abiding in the vine. Those alone bear good fruit who have been faithful to the word of Christ.... It is part, therefore, of the doctrine of Jesus Christ that no man can be saved outside the Catholic Church (Pepper, p. 18).
Enough concern was generated by this article that a priest from the Theology Department of Boston College drafted a brief five-page response. The Center, sensing it had struck a nerve, eagerly welcomed the challenge. Raymond Karam wrote a 57-page response, which was published in the Spring 1949 issue of From the Housetops. Fr. Feeney's support for Karam and his position is without question, given the Jesuit's influential position at the Center and with From the Housetops, as well as his later assertion that "what Mr. Karam holds is what I hold" (Pepper, p. 30).

Seeking to bring the matter to a head, three members of the Center who also were on the faculty of Boston College wrote their president on January 26, 1949 notifying him that the Theology Department of their institution was in heresy. One month later, these three were joined by a teacher from Boston College High School in writing to the Jesuit General Superior in Rome with the same accusations. The reaction was swift. The four were fired from their respective positions on April 13, 1949. Now the Center had its martyrs, and the war was on.

The ex cathedra dogma says no man can be saved outside the Catholic Church. This was the position of Fr.Leonard Feeney and St.Benedict Centre. This is the teaching of Fr.Leonard Feeney’s communities today, two of whom have been given canonical status in the diocese of Worcester,USA.
Yet the Jesuit Superior General of that time removed Fr.Leonard Feeney from the community. He was also removed as a professor at Boston College.



Was he really in heresy?

These theological subtleties were apparently lost on Fr. Feeney and his crowd. The renegade Jesuit had, in the meantime, immersed himself in his own cauldron of boiling oil by repeatedly refusing to obey an order by his now extremely concerned Jesuit superiors to leave the Center and go to another assignment at Holy Cross College. In April 1949, Fr. Feeney was visited by a former teacher of his who urged him "for the good of the Society, the good of the Province, and thereby the good of your soul," to comply, but Feeney refused, claiming "it is the Blessed Lady who is keeping me at St. Benedict Center" (Pepper, pp. 29-30).

Archbishop Cushing's subsequent suspension of Fr. Feeney's priestly faculties on April 18, 1949 only formalized what had already occurred, as the rebellious priest had moved out of the Jesuit Residence and into the Center itself some time previous. Fr. Feeney continued to celebrate the sacraments despite the fact he had no faculties to do so.- Michael Mazza
The Archbishop of Boston never affirmed the ex cathedra teaching in public. The Jewish Left newspapers reported that the Catholic Church had changed its teaching on outside the church there is no salvation. There was no clarification from the Archbishop.


Whatever Rome knew about the case came largely from the Archbishop as Fr.Feeney refused to go to Rome to defend himself.


Was he really in heresy? Time shows that the Jesuits at Boston College still reject the ex cathedra teaching.

How could Fr.Feeney or Bro.Francis Malus (Raymond Karam) be in heresy when you read the text of the infallible teaching ?


How can there be a de facto baptism of desire that we can know of?

Time shows that it was not Fr.Feeney or Bro. Francis Maluf who were in heresy.

Perhaps the Vatican already knows this but for political reasons does not want to intervene.

The Boston Case needs to be re opened and even though justice is delayed, it needs to be done.

EWTN’S MICHAEL MAZZA REPORT A POLITICAL FRAUD: SINCE DOGMA, VATICAN COUNCIL II, CATECHISM AFFIRM EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS

Eternal Word Television Network(EWTN) has put out another heretical piece on extra ecclesiam nulla salus and the time seems long over due when this issue should be  taken to Court for a clarification. A Judge needs to be asked if
1) Extra ecclesiam nulla salus is an ex cathedra dogma and
2)does it say that everyone with no exception needs to visibly enter the Catholic Church for salvation.

Answers to these two objective, factually verifiable questions would be useful as EWTN has made available on the Internet a report EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS: FATHER FEENEY MAKES A COMEBACK by Michael Mazza.

It is still difficult for EWTN to say that extra ecclesiam nulla salus is an ex cathedra teaching.This is avoided in Mazza’s report on Internet and that of Fr. William Most on the EWTN’s website.

Pope Pius XII called this dogma the 'infallible' teaching in the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston relative to Fr.Leonard Feeney (1949).

Now, among those things which the Church has always preached and will never cease to preach is contained also that infallible statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside the Church.

However, this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Savior gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church.- (Letter of the Holy Office 1949). Emphasis added.

Here is the ex cathedra dogma.

1. “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). Ex cathedra.

2.“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.).Ex cathedra.

3.“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.” (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.) Ex cathedra – from the website Catholicism.org and “No Salvation outside the Church”: Link List, the Three Dogmatic Statements Regarding EENS http://nosalvationoutsideofthecatholicchurch.blogspot.com/
It says everyone needs to be a visible member of the Catholic Church to go to Heaven and avoid Hell. This is difficult for EWTN to admit.

Mazza like Fr.William Most calls the ex cathedra teachings ‘restrictive texts’ never mentioning that they were ex cathedra definitions. This is EWTN !

Mazza writes,

Just two decades later, the Second Vatican Council further clarified the position of the Magisterium:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation (, #16).
LG 16 refers to implicit salvation as a concept and not explicit salvation that we can personally judge. There is no de facto baptism of desire.This is  clarified in the extraordinary and ordinary teachings of the Magisterium on extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

He writes

More recently, Pope John Paul II's 1990 encyclical repeats this same doctrine:
But it is clear that today, as in the past, many people do not have an opportunity to come to know or accept the Gospel revelation or to enter the Church.... For such people, salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally a part of the Church but enlightens them in a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation. This grace comes from Christ; it is the result of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit. It enables each person to attain salvation through his or her free cooperation (RM, #10)
Pope Pius XII says in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 that ‘in certain circumstances’ those in invincible ignorance etc can be saved. So this is a probability known only to God how can EWTN posit it against the ex cathedra dogma which says everyone needs to explicitly enter the Church ?

He continues

The most current and authoritative magisterial text of all, however, comes from the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, which the successor of Peter describes as a "sure norm for the teaching of the faith." It addresses the notion of the correct interpretation of the patristic formula by quoting the teaching of the Second Vatican Council:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation.... Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church (CCC, #846-7).
Michael Mazza leaves out CCC 845 which supports the ex cathedra teaching.

N.845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood.-Catechism of the Catholic Church n.845
He writes:
Moreover, in its section on baptism, the Catechism explicitly teaches the validity of baptisms of blood and desire:
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 (CCC, # 1258).
This is a repititon : he suggests that the baptism of desire or blood are explicit and not implicit. Do we know how many people have had the Baptism of desire this month in Rome?! No! We do not!

Michael J. Mazza is director of catechetics for the Diocese of Sioux Falls, South Dakota and a frequent contributor to Fidelity.
How can you be a Catholic, reject an ex cathedra teaching in public, misinterpret Vatican Council II and still be allowed to receive the Eucharist at Mass?

How can you slander a priest, Fr.Leonard Feeney, who affirmed the infallible teaching with integrity and courage?

Whatever be ones political views and theological preferences the ex cathedra teaching can be verified objectively, its as they say, ‘in black and white’.

As a teacher of the Catholic Faith he should know that no teachings of the ordinary magisterium (popes statements, Vatican Council II, Catechism etc) can supersede an ex cathedra teaching.So 1) how can he suggest that Vatican Council II and the Catechism does just that and 2) how can he interpret Church documents as contradicting the infallible teaching.Is he also not questioning the dogma of infallibility?