He writes,' Rev. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved.’
It may be mentioned that Fr. Leonard Feeney taught that defacto everyone needs to enter the Catholic Church through Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water to go to Heaven and avoid Hell –and there were no exceptions.
This was the dogma of the Council of Florence and the Bull Sanctum of Pope Boniface. This was the ex cathedra dogma of Pope Innocent III, Lateran Council IV (AD 1215), Unam Sanctam, Papal Bull of Pope Boniface VIII, 1302, Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441. According to Ludwig Ott, this teaching has been solemnly defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and affirmed by the Union Council of Florence, by Popes Innocent III, Boniface VIII, Clement VI, Benedict XIV, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XII and many other popes
So Fr. Leonard Feeney affirmed the dogma. He said that de facto everyone needs to enter Catholic Church, with no exception to the baptism of water, to avoid Hell and go to Heaven. If they did not enter the Church he would say, and so did the dogma, they would be oriented to Hell.
So if Fr. Leonard Feeney was allegedly excommunicated for heresy then Pope Pius XII who approved of the excommunication as it is reported, would be in heresy and error. It would mean he was fallible on this faith-issue.
Yet Fr. William G.Most on the EWTN website states Fr. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for heresy.
Is this statement based on a new Revelation in the Catholic Church?
It could not be Vatican Council II since Ad Gentes 7, is in agreement with the dogma and Fr. Leonard Feeney.
If Fr. Leonard Feeney was in heresy then it must have been a new interpretation of the dogma.
But how can a dogma change?
When did this change happen?
I think the change happened when the Vatican and Boston’s secular newspapers were told that the dogma is now being re-interpreted. It is being changed they were told.
The Vatican was informed in the 1940’s that de jure (in principle) Fr. Leonard Feeney and the St. Benedict Center do not believe that there could be exceptions to Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water, for going to Heaven.
The Vatican (Holy Office/CDF) was told that some professors at Boston College and the St. Benedict Center of Fr. Leonard Feeney, in principle do not teach that the baptism of desire and implicit salvation exists.
Then-the secular newspapers were told, or allowed to think, that Fr. Leonard Feeney and the St. Benedict Center were teaching that de facto, everyone with no exception, needs Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water to go to Heaven and avoid Hell-so they were excommunicated.
The Archbishop of Boston did not make public the Letter of the Holy Office (1949) which affirmed ‘the dogma’ of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The Letter referred to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus as the ‘infallible’ teaching. This point was in favor of St. Benedict Center which had been placed under interdict by the Archbishop of Boston.
Neither did the cardinal-archbishop of Boston issue a clarification when the newspapers reported that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching on the dogma. The newspapers instead said no more does every one have to convert to avoid Hell.
So this was when ‘the dogma changed’.
So when apologist Patrick Madrid was asked a call-in question on EWTN radio, if non-Catholic’s need to convert to go to Heaven-he gave the de jure answer from the Catechism and Vatican Council II.
Non Catholics with the baptism of desire and implicit faith can be saved but de facto everyone needs to enter the Catholic Church with no exception, as the thrice defined dogma taught.
So the confusion still continues on a wide scale among Catholics.
If one says de facto any non Catholic can be saved in invincible ignorance or with a good conscience it is heresy. It is rejecting an ex-cathedra teaching like the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. It would also mean rejecting the Church teaching on the infallibility of the pope which is a dogma defined in the First Vatican Council of 1870. It would also mean rejecting the teaching that a dogma is irrevocable and unchanging.
It would also be contradicting the saints like Maximillian Kolbe and Francis Xavier.
Imagine St. Francis Xavier before the natives in Old Goa, saying to them, “Many of you must convert to go to Heaven and avoid Hell. But not all of you. Those of you who have a good conscience or are in invincible ignorance can be saved. So stay where you are!”
Unthinkable?! But this is what good Catholics are saying on a large scale, including apologists.
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