Saint Benedict Center(in Still River, Massachusetts)

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Thank you so much Irish Melkite.
The tone of sarcasm from some of the posters was starting to wear thin.

A good priest friend of mine, was in washington at the march for life. the Slaves of Mary were also there. He brought me back one of their beautiful traditional calenders. He told me they labor under the difficulty of being labeled Feenyites,
Even though all censures have been lifted. The group headed by Brother Thomas Augustine (Slaves of Mary) Are regularized by the Ordinary of Worcester. His visit to their center is on the website for all to see!

people should check their facts before posting.
it would seem the “Feenyites” have been reconciled, live with it people.
 
QUICUMQUE VULT:
people should check their facts before posting.
it would seem the “Feenyites” have been reconciled, live with it people.
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:amen:
 
Irish Melkite:
To clarify several matters addressed here:

The description of Father Feeney as “an excommunicated priest” suggests otherwise, but when he reposed (in 1978) 6 years had elapsed since he had been reconciled with the Church and the interdicts placed against him had been lifted.

The two facilities cited, Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Still Water and Saint Benedict’s Center in Still Water, are separate, although located adjacent to one another. Both are legitimate spiritual descendents of communities founded by Father Feeney during the period of interdiction. Contrary to Brother Mark’s statement, both are now regularized and in canonical standing with the Church. A search of religious orders functioning in the Diocese of Worcester, at the diocese’s website, will afford links to both communities.

St. Benedict’s Abbey is a Benedictine abbey, as its name suggests.
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Thanks Neil,
I’m on fast from posting for Lent so if I can excuse myself temporarily as having “Righteous Indignation” I just had to post when I happened on this thread…:o

I am so pleased that you have given such a balanced explanation of St. Benedict’s (Center) Abbey.
I know The Abbot Fr. Gabriel personally and remember way back to when"The Pious Union" took place back in I think 1974…

When I was teaching CCD, we took many a Confirmation Class from my former parish on a “Day of Recollection” there–the kids(15-16yrs) didn’t want to leave!
For what it’s worth, I love the place and can’t say good enough about it!👍 St. Benedict’s Abbey
 
MEA CULPA !!!

The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are on the list of religious communities but they are listed under communities for women and not men.

Br. Mark, OSB
 
QUICUMQUE VULT:
Thank you so much Irish Melkite.
The tone of sarcasm from some of the posters was starting to wear thin.

A good priest friend of mine, was in washington at the march for life. the Slaves of Mary were also there. He brought me back one of their beautiful traditional calenders. He told me they labor under the difficulty of being labeled Feenyites,
Even though all censures have been lifted. The group headed by Brother Thomas Augustine (Slaves of Mary) Are regularized by the Ordinary of Worcester. His visit to their center is on the website for all to see!

people should check their facts before posting.
it would seem the “Feenyites” have been reconciled, live with it people.
Click to expand...
As an aside, Father Feeney was not excommunicated due to heresy, which is often claimed. He was excommunicated due to disobedience to the Holy See. He was summoned to Rome on several occasions concerning his teachings and he refused to go. He claimed that he was entitled to know why he was being summoned and what the charges were against him, which apparently were never provided. His followers claim that the excommunication was invalid due to numerous procedural errors, and there definitely appears to be some validity to their claims, in that numerous aspects of the Canon Law then in force were ignored in his case…

Father Feeney was reconciled with the church in 1972 and all interdicts against him lifted. Again this was a curious affair in which the typical requirements for reconciliation with the church were not required or enforced. Father Feeney was merely required to make a profession of faith and he chose the Athanasian creed. It seemed almost as if the entire affair had been some sort of embarrasment that the Church was glad to have over.

He believed in and preached a vigorously strict interpretation of the doctrine of no salvation outside the Church., Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Sallus, and seemed to have a particular virulent streak of anti- semitism in his preaching…

As near as I can determine the excomunication, based on his personal disobedience to Rome, did not extend to his followers, but to him alone. Thus his followers were not excommunicated and still remain in communion with Rome.
 
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Annunciata:
Thanks Neil,
I’m on fast from posting for Lent so if I can excuse myself temporarily as having “Righteous Indignation” I just had to post when I happened on this thread…:o

I am so pleased that you have given such a balanced explanation of St. Benedict’s (Center) Abbey.
I know The Abbot Fr. Gabriel personally and remember way back to when"The Pious Union" took place back in I think 1974…

When I was teaching CCD, we took many a Confirmation Class from my former parish on a “Day of Recollection” there–the kids(15-16yrs) didn’t want to leave!
For what it’s worth, I love the place and can’t say good enough about it!👍 St. Benedict’s Abbey
Click to expand...
For the clarification of those considering going here, I’d like to report my personal experience…

I wanted to say that I knew the Abbot Fr. Gabriel Gibbs when he was still a Brother. How graciously we were received there (according to the Rule of St. Benedict) The Mass we attended w/ the students was NO. How completely happy we were from the time we set foot on the grounds …The sense of Holiness of this place is something to behold! The grounds are just beautiful!
There is a vast library…a relic room… (once one of the Brothers joked "Can you imagine what this place will be like at the Resurrection?)…The building is very old…the floors are uneven and creek a bit…The chapel is small but so “special” I can still hear the beautiful Gregorian chant of the brothers at the different times of prayer …
I attended a Latin Mass there once while on retreat…. it was the Feast of The Annunciation. That was the last time I saw Father Feeney…I still have that beautiful vivid memory of him processing down the aisle w/ others close by assisting him, as he was very feeble…. No matter what is said of him, he was a truly holy man and IMO, sought only to protect Holy Mother Church….
 
As someone noted, the interdicts were imposed against Father Feeney personally (together with several others, notably the 4 professors from Boston College who had thrown in their lot with him). The religious bodies did not yet exist in formal status when those interdicts were proclaimed. The St Benedict’s Center - then in Cambridge - was interdicted as a juridical entity. ’

Father Feeney’s anti-Semitism struck a particularly painful chord with then-Archbishop (later Cardinal) Cushing, of blessed memory. Despite having been brought up in a third-story cold-water tenement in the unforgivingly ethnically/religiously/racially prejudiced Irish neighborhood of South Boston, Cushing was a man principled with incredible tolerance.

He was an administrator and a politician, neither a theologian nor an academic. His sole speech at VII was a heartfelt but tortured presentation (he was not particularly adept at Latin) in support of the document that absolved Judaism of guilt for Christ’s crucifixion. When he finished, proclaiming “Dixit” (I have spoken) and sat, there was a moment of absolute silence, followed by a sustained standing ovation by the hierarchs. His sister Mary was married to a Jew, whom Cushing loved dearly and once described as the most Christian man he’d ever known.

It is probably doubtful that the reconciliation could ever have been achieved in Cushing’s life. Credit for it belongs rightfully to Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, of blessed memory.

Many years,

Neil
 
Does the Saint Benedict Center in Still River believe in Baptism of Desire/Baptism of Blood, or does it not? Yes or no?:confused:
 
xxxxx xxxxx wrote
TRADCATH November 30, 1999

Bill * wrote:*
It is true as far as I can determine that Fr. Feeney was officially excommunicated for a narrow interpretation of “The Dogma” >
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No, he was excommunicated solely for his refusal to obey an order to report to Rome and be questioned by the Holy Office. (He refused, he claimed, because he had been convinced by Mrs Clark that once there he would not have been questioned, but summarily forced to live out his days in an Italian retreat center - in hindsight a prepostrous notion, but at the time Feeney as so close to being a nervous wreck he may have believed it).

At any rate, Feeney was never disciplined by anyone for his teachings.

The Holy Office, it is true, had three years earlier issued a letter a letter to Cardinal Cushing attacking Feeney’s position. Feeney considered that letter to be rank heresy.

He appealed to the Pope. When subsequently Pius XII issued “Mystici Corporis”, Feeney said it matched his views entirely. In fact, when that encyclical came out, there was jubilation at Feeney’s headquarters. They thought that he had been vindicated.

But so long as Cardinal Cushing remained alive there was no effort by anyone to mend things with Feeney.

Pius’s Vatican was not about to encourage any kind of priestly disobedience. Pius was, remember, faced with pressure all across the Communist world on priests to lure them into front groups opposing the hierarchies and serving the leftists. Whatever Feeney’s motives had been for disobeying his superiors, there was no way that in the 1950s Pius would let signals go out that priests might buck their bishops.

As soon as Cardinal Medeiros replaced Cushing, though, everything changed.

Medeiros immediately made it a personal mission to reconcile Feeney. Pius by then was long dead, and the world was so awash with disobedient priests that mending things with Feeney would mean nothing bad for Church discipline.

Feeney, though, had by then moved out of the Archdiocese of Boston to the Diocese of Worcester. Medeiros, nonetheless, prevailed on Bp Harrington of Worcester to work everything out. Feeney insisted on, and got, explicit assurance from the Holy Office that he could continue advocating his strict interpretation of “extra ecclesia…” I have a copy of a letter from the Diocese of Worcester attesting to that.

continued:
 
continued:

At the formal reconciliation between Feeney and the Diocese, which took place on a sidewalk, not in any church or chapel, because Feeney was adamant that it not appear he was being juridically rehabilitated or anything, Feeney neither apologized for, nor recanted, anything.

Nor was he asked to do so.

All that happened was that Feeney and the Bp’s representative said a prayer together and then Feeney recited a profession of his faith.

He deliberately chose for that profession the Athanasian Creed, because it - alone of all the official Creeds - includes the provision saying “the Apostolic Catholic Church outside of which there is no salvation”

The position of Thomas Stark on our List, at least as far as it comes across to the List, is not Feeneyism. Whatever it is, it’s not Feeneyism.

Thomas seems to be saying that even within the Catholic Church there is no salvation for those not meeting Thomas’s standards. In particular, last minute joiners are neither wanted nor welcome. And supposedly God isn’t interested in getting any deathbed conversions.

That’s simply not Feeney’s position. He fully accepted the Catholic doctrine that since the Atonement God will somehow provide everyone with whatever graces are needed to be saved. For Feeney the only issue was insisting that all such providing had to include sacramental baptism. Somehow, somewhere.

Regards, …"
 
One of my very good friends who is now a canon lawyer wrote:

Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 09:00:31 -0800 (PST)

Dear Bill and John,

Just to give you guys the background, Fr. Feeney made more than a few mistakes – I`m not among the hardcores who think he was perfect, but among the group who think he was a gifted thinker, but all too human. In the end, he and the majority of his followers were reconciled with the Church.

Yeah, we still take a strict view of the dogma “Outside the Church no Salvation.” (EENS) With regards to Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood (BOB/BOD), this is not generally well known outside Feeneyite circles, but there was never uniform denial of its existance. Ray Karam, later Fr. Cyril, was mostly concerned about its wide interpretation and abuses. Fr. Feeney denied BOB/BOD, but always stated that this was merely his personal opinion. Rather, his main effort was the dogma EENS.

My debt of gratitude goes back to the Feeneyites, particularly Mother Teresa of St Annes House in Still River (reconciled in 1988), Mother Mary Clare Vincent of St. Scholastica Priory in Petersham, MA (reconciled circa 1973), Br. Charles Coulombe in Monrovia, CA (never came under censure, but his superior Br. Leonard Mary was reconciled with Fr. Feeney), and Br. Thomas Augustine of St. Benedict Center in Still River (sacramentaly reconciled, and soon to be canonically reconciled). It is my sincere hope that Br. Francis community in New Hampshire will seek regularization soon as well, but this is still at a difficult stage because there is a lot of sympathy in NH for Lefebvrism.

It was in fact Fr. Lafittes (SSPX)infamous claim that Pope Paul VI acted invalidly in removing the excommunication of Fr. Feeney, that both sparked my interest in canon law, but more importantly, alerted me to the anti-Catholic nature of the SSPX. What struck me was not so much Feeneys strict interpretation of EENS, but that the SSPX would deny Vatican I`s Dogmatic Constitution on Church, which dogmatically defined the pope had universal ordinary jurisdiction. …
 
Those wanting some further insight into the history and some observations of the interactions between Archbishop Cushing and Father Feeney, both of blessed memory, might want to read Chapter 3 of Transcending Boundaries: Boston’s Catholics and Jews, 1929-1965, a rather well-written thesis completed a few years ago by a young woman named Jenny Goldstein, an undergrad at Brandeis University.

Actually, I highly recommend that anyone interested in Boston history or the history of Catholic-Jewish relations read the entire paper. From the perspective of a very critical reviewer (me), it is extraordinarily well-documented and well-written for an undergrad piece - rivaling many graduate-level papers and its occasional bias is more than offset by the wealth of info and insights that it offers.

Fans of Father Feeney are fore-warned, the presentation isn’t complimentary to him, although Ms. Goldstein acknowledges that what is often labeled as anti-Semitism on his part should be better acknowledged as anti-Judaism. Those who knew or know of Archbishop Cushing will re-discover fond memories of a man who thought little of flaunting convention and treading waters previously untested and who was, without question, as beloved by the Jewish as the Catholic community.

Many years,

Neil
 
How can the modern Saint Benedict Center(in Still River MA) admire Father Feeney, if he DENIED Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood? There were martyrs who died before Baptism, but they most definitely desired it! How sad that Father Feeney believed that BOD/BOB would not gain salvation!

I believe that Father Feeney also hated the Baltimore Catechism, because it explicitly teaches Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.
 
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GoLatin:
How can the modern Saint Benedict Center(in Still River MA) admire Father Feeney, if he DENIED Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood? There were martyrs who died before Baptism, but they most definitely desired it! How sad that Father Feeney believed that BOD/BOB would not gain salvation!

I believe that Father Feeney also hated the Baltimore Catechism, because it explicitly teaches Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood.
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I dont know where you are located, But it seems that A trip to Still River Ma. should be somewhere in your future. My priest friend, who visited with them (Slaves of Mary) at the March for life. found the experience quite edifyiing. they all, priests Brothers and Nuns, wear the Traditional habit and celebrate exclusively the TLM.

They answer questions freely, and are very proud of being reconciled, (Or whatever you want to call it) And me and my friend learned something from them. That they are in communion with Rome. I never knew this. I only heard horror stories about “Feenyites” and that they were some kind of ultra trad cult. So perhaps you should go check them out. i think you will be pleasantly suprised. While youre there pick up one of their beautiful TLM calenders. I have one I am enjoying right now!
God Bless
 
Would somebody be able to say definitely whether or not Saint Benedict Center in Still River accepts Baptism of Desire/Baptism of Blood?

And do they believe that ALL non-Catholics will most definitely go to hell?

Thank you!
 
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