Father Leonard Feeney

Baptism with water is necessary for Salvation!

Baptism: Man's Contract With God By Saint John Eudes Saint John Eudes wrote many books and is best known today as the Apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary In fact he composed the masses for those feast days One of his most eloquent and powerful works is this treatise on baptism originally entitled L...

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost ~ St Alphonsus Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Morning Meditation I. -- THE PASSING OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN OUT OF THIS WORLD A Novena of Meditations and Readings for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Build the Rail!

[Error] 16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. — Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” Nov. 9, 1846.

Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors

h/t Kayla Therese Petri

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

We pray that we may become co-heirs with the King of glory and sharers in that same glory 🙏

The Mass of All Time This song is about the beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass and why it is so special to us. The lyrics were written by the Sisters, and were put to the Irish...

But from a later American apostle, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the tireless nun who died at Chicago in 1917, we can learn that most important lesson for contemporary Catholics. It has been preserved for us in Mother Cabrini’s own words: “We let ourselves be overcome by human respect, and cease to show ourselves true followers of Our Lord before the world … We see truth trodden underfoot, and we remain silent. Why? Because we are cowards. Oh, how we need to renew our faith, to rekindle our hearts in the sublime principles of our holy religion.”

The Point – January-February 1958 Edited Under Fr. Leonard Feeney M.I.C.M. — Saint Benedict Center January-February, 1958 SOLDIERS OF THE CHURCH MILITANT Our Canonized Saints At War “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and …

Despite representations made by the modern school of hagiographers, the saints are not always smiling, are not always mild-mannered and consoling, do not have a good word for everyone. The saints find this world a far-from-rosy place, and are breathtakingly blunt in announcing their findings. Whether they are berating the enemies of Christ, or giving Christians a needed prodding, or simply insisting on the truths of the Catholic Faith, they leave no doubt that one requirement for being an exemplary member of the Church Militant is a measure of militancy.

Pray for the fragile daughter,
And the frail, infant son,
Whom, at the font, the baptismal water
I pour upon.

The cycle has swung to sorrow,
Our ranks have begun to fail;
We know not what gate of Hell tomorrow
Will not prevail.

The foam-at-the-mouth is frothing
In the Beast with the flashing tooth;
The Hound that was sent on the scent of Nothing,
Has found the Truth.

The guns will be hard to handle
In the forts we will soon forsake.
Pray for the light of the single candle
On the birthday cake.

"It is the Church’s clear teaching, codified in the Councils of Florence, Trent, and Vatican, that God is the true author of all that Saint John, or any of the Bible’s human writers, has recorded. Pope Leo XIII summarizes this teaching by saying that the books of the Bible, “with all their parts, have been written under the dictation of the Holy Ghost.” This in no way deters Monsignor Knox from the following description of Saint John at work on his inspired Gospel: “He will recall, as if conjuring them up with difficulty, details about names and places and relationships which have nothing much to do with the story. He will give us little footnotes, as if to make sure we are following; often unnecessary, often delayed instead of being put in their proper place. He will remember fragments of a conversation, passing on from this utterance to that by mere association of memory, instead of giving us a reasoned precis of the whole. He will alternately assume that we know the story already, and narrate it in meticulous detail … Probably no author but John could have begun his story in this topsy-turvy fashion … But, as we have seen, this is the way in which John’s memory works.”"

Excerpted from The Point Catholic Newsletter. Edited by Father Leonard Feeney.

The Leaving of Boston The Leaving of Boston – (“The Leaving of Liverpool”)by the Sisters, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. facebook.com/SistersMICMSaint Benedict Center, St...

The fruit of the Annunciation was the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Eternal Son of the Father, Who became in time the Child of Mary the Virgin. In him there is one Person and two natures, the nature of God and the nature of man.

The Incarnation took place in the country of Palestine, in the province of Galilee, in the town of Nazareth, in the house of Joseph, in the womb of Mary, on the twenty-fifth of March, nine months before the birth of Christ. The twenty-fifth of March is a day well to remember. It was on the twenty-fifth of March, at three o’clock in the afternoon, that Adam, the first man, was created in the first week of creation. The day was a Friday.

It was on the twenty-fifth of March, we repeat again, at three o’clock in the afternoon, that Mary the Virgin said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word” — at which moment, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” The time was three o’clock. The day was a Friday.

No one can ever forget these days, or dates, or hours, or events, who truly loves God in eternity, the Word made flesh in time, and Mary, the Mother of God.

His cheeks grow red from the candle heat
As the carpet under his noiseless feet.

And no two stars could be half too bright
As his deep brown eyes in the candle-light.

An angel he seems with his surplice wings,
Who knows when God is to come, -and rings.

And the clouds from the censer swinging there
A fragrance leave in his golden hair.

It fills us all with a wondrous dread,
His nearness unto the Holy Bread.

Now I wonder what path in life he'll plan:
A doctor-a lawyer-a merchantman?

God keep him always there we pray,
Treading the altar's plush highway.

One of the most familiar forms for presenting Christian doctrine is the question-and-answer pattern of the catechism. And of all the compilers of catechisms, none has been more honored by the Church than the Jesuit theologian, Saint Peter Canisius. Writing at the time of the Protestant Revolt, when the unity of Christendom was being sundered, Saint Peter Canisius swept aside all cloudy notions of just who in Europe was still entitled to the Christian name. In his Catechism, he asks: “Who is a Christian?” And answers: “He who confesses the salutary doctrine of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, in His Church. Hence, he who is truly a Christian condemns and detests thoroughly all cults and sects which are found outside the doctrine and Church of Christ everywhere, and among all peoples, as for example, the Jewish, the Mohammedan, and the heretical cults and sects; and he firmly assents to the same doctrine of Christ.”

To a Pessimist

I will not walk or talk with you
Nor comfort your despair.
It not at all impresses me
The way you tear your hair.

For I suspect all utter gloom
As I suspect at night
The chapel walls wherein there burns
No sanctuary light.

Extra Ecclesium Nulla Salus. The foundational dogma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqA1LkYSf7o

THE NEW SOCIETY OF JESUS
(from The Point - November 1952)

Saint Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus in the year 1534. This society preached the Catholic Faith, fought heretics, converted pagans, and produced twenty-six canonized saints during its two hundred thirty-nine year existence. In 1773, a bull of suppression, issued by Pope Clement XIV, marked the end of the Society of Jesus.

There is, in the minds of contemporary Catholics, an understandable confusion with regard to the designation, “Society of Jesus.” This confusion dates from the year 1814. In that year, Pope Pius VII attempted to revive the original Society of Jesus, the one founded by Saint Ignatius. Worthy as the project was, and with all respect for the Pope’s efforts, the order which Pius VII got back was, unhappily, the wrong one. What could be more confusing, therefore, than to believe, however sincerely, that the present-day Society of Jesus is the same Society founded by Saint Ignatius in the sixteenth century!

To eliminate any further difficulty with these two religious orders, The Point presents, below, a review of the New Society of Jesus. Any student of history, and all lovers of Saint Ignatius, will see that there can be no more than a nominal connection between this 1814 order and the one that produced Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Francis Borgia, and Saint John Francis Regis.

The New Society of Jesus has nowhere produced a canonized saint. It has contented itself with begetting the “Jesuit,” a type which, though recognizable the world over, allows of variation according to nation. In England, the Jesuit is often a convert and invariably odd — which may be demonstrated even from his most considered English statements, his published ones. This is the way Father C. C. Martindale, looking back on his conversion, sums up: “Hence, became a Catholic, hating it.” And here is how Father Gerard Hopkins, looking ahead to his resurrection, prophesies:

“I am all at once what Christ is, since
He was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch,
matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.”

The French Jesuit is much more articulate, but in much foggier pursuits. One of his specialties is discursive theology, a kind of mental ju-jitsu which enables him to be loyal to both Evolution and Genesis, without being accused of talking through his beret. It is the French-style Jesuit which prompted Mr. Webster to list “jesuit” (with a small j) as meaning, “a casuist; a crafty person; an intriguer.”

In close-by Belgium, the Jesuit truly makes the grade when he is invited to become a “Bollandist,” a member of that patient group of researchers who can cast doubts on the hagiology of almost any saint since the time of, and including, the Apostles. If he can’t be a Bollandist, the Belgian Jesuit would just as soon leave the country. Few non-Bollandists, however, have left as gracefully as Father J. B. Janssens, who went to Rome and became the present General of the New Society. In Italy, the General has made a hit by fostering such local Jesuit talent as Father R. Lombardi, the itinerant peddler of lots-more-love-for-whatever-God-you-believe-in.

Education is the chief assignment of the American Jesuit. His teaching is done in schools with rest-home names (Shadowbrook, Fairfield, Spring Hill, Rockhurst), schools where a Catholic boy can lay in a supply of rote and rational answers to Alexander VI, chained bibles, and indulgences.

Found apart from his chalk-and-blackboard setting, the American Jesuit is of no predictable pattern. He may be Father Edmund Walsh, living in Washington, wearing a cape, and giving the government sacerdotal go-aheads on deadlier atomic bombs. He may be Father Daniel Lord, the apostle of musical-comedy Christianity, whose sustained levitical levity makes the Catholic Church about as inviting as a midwestern clambake. He may even be Father Robert Hartnert, who puts out a magazine in which he protects his fellow-Americans against Colombian Catholics and Spanish Cardinals.

In no case will an American member of the New Society of Jesus be mistaken for a priest like Saint Isaac Jogues, an original Jesuit who kept telling the original Americans that they had to love Jesus and Mary, until, one day, he literally lost his head.

https://fatherfeeney.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/the-point-november-1952/

There is a Holy House of Bread
Where friends may feast and foes are fed,
And none is starved, none surfeited;

Where souls can relish the ideal
And bodies revel in the real
Where mind and mouth can make a meal;

Where simpletons who suck their thumbs
Can share the carvings and the crumbs
With Constantines and Chrysostoms.

Within this Fortress I was brought,
A little thing without a thought,
And given all for giving nought.

I was anointed with a Sign,
And someone’s promise, made for mine,
Attached my branch unto a Vine

Of Immortality and Love,
With Intimations from above
That Wordsworth was not thinking of.

Arriving at the age of two,
I found the faith I held as true
Enhanced my infant point of view.

I could believe a rubber ball,
Although somewhat phenomenal,
Would really bounce against a wall;

A jumping-jack when squeezed would squeak,
As though unwilling, so to speak,
To wait for reason’s pure critique.

When toys were trunked and school begun,
I was, among a many, one
Entrusted to a wimpled nun:

A virgin vestaled with three vows
Who had the Holy Ghost for spouse,
And tried devoutly to arouse

An aptitude for long divisions
Involving cerebral collisions
With theological precisions.

This gentle girl in cape and coif
With softest silver in her laugh,
Prepared me for my epitaph:

“Here lies a Lad whose sins were sins,
Not streptococcic orange skins;
Nor were his virtues vitamins.

He learned the rules and knew the game;
If Hell or Heaven hold the same —
Himself, not spinach, was to blame.”

This is chastity: to keep central things central, to keep the Holy of Holies holy. The one central thing in the temple of the Jews was the Holy of Holies. The courts outside it had significance and meaning because the central thing was kept sacrosanct. Into the Holy of Holies, the High Priest went but once a year. He was the only one who could enter in. The faithful remained outside, watching. We have a Holy of Holies far more sacred than that of the Jews. And when a priest walks into the sanctuary of our Holy of Holies, there should be no other interest in his heart or in his thoughts except that Blessed Eucharist.

The Guardian Angel

Seraph beside me, great Intelligence,
Soft is thy footfall or I should hear;
And softer thy sigh in this deep night silence,
When my own breathing thunders in my ear.

I lit me a candle and searched about me;
I reached in the darkness but found no wings.
Is it I have been disillusioned
In this, alas, as in other things?

Seraph whose breath runs white with music,
Wilt thou no happy song retreat!
Art not ashamed when even the cricket
Sings in my threshold so loud and sweet.

If there be pale princesses,
And ragged royalty;
And monarches without money,
And pompless pedigree;

And queens without courtiers,
And kings without crowns,
Lord, make me laureate
In towns and little towns.

I pity the slender Mother-maid
For the night was dark and her heart afraid
As she knelt in the straw where the beasts had trod
And crooned and cooed to the living God.

And I pity Saint Joseph whose heart wept o'er
The ruined stall and the broken floor
And where the Cherubim-wings withal
To cover the wind-holes in the wall

The Feeney Controversy with Br. Andre Marie T. S. Flanders talks to Br. Andre Marie about the controversy of Fr. Feeney and the dogma of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Savlus. Br. Andre's website: https://catho...

My Little Minister said a strange thing to me the other afternoon when we were climbing the hill that leads beyond the town. "Do you know, Father, there is not a single dogma of the Catholic Faith I am temperamentally opposed to. I wish they were all true. The only trouble is that they are not." This startled me. It was so unlike My Little Minister. We had both tried to be so careful. I stopped and looked at him from head to foot. "And do you know, I replied with great firmness, "there is not a single doctrine of the Calvinistic Faith that I wish were true. Even if your religion were true I should wish that it were not so...."

And the reason I did not lose my Faith during childhood is because no one ever does. One loses it later in life, by wilfulness and sin. Whereupon the temptation is to become retroactive. Never, of course, to ascribe anything to one's own fault; but rather to the conditions of one's childhood. One can be induced to recall, with the aid of a psychiatrist, how one was frightened by a rat, which accounts for one's emotional instability; and then, of course, the horrible story of Dives and Lazarus related by gruesome little Sister Genevieve, which was the root cause of one's religious collapse.

"Is justification the same as salvation? Of course, it is not! Lucifer, the prince of the devils, was once in the state of justification. He was created in the state of justification, and from that state he fell. Justification is only the divine courtyard of salvation: the preparation field, where you are given the grace to be tried out, as you move Godwards. If you have the right stuff, God keeps you. If you have not got the right stuff, God throws you out! “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matt. 25:41.)

Adam was created in the state of justification. He was in the state of sanctifying grace, and in this state he was given a trial — to see if he would persevere in it, to see if his justification ought to be a sealed thing, forever. “Of the fruit of that tree you shall not eat,” God commanded. And Adam went over and ate the fruit which God had forbidden him, and his state of justification was lost."

The Council of Trent, in its second Canon on the subject of Baptism, declares, with the majestic authority of the Church:

"If anyone shall say that true and natural water is not of necessity in Baptism, and therefore shall turn those words of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, "unless one be born again of water and the Holy Spirit" (John 3:5), into some metaphor, let him be anathema."