Feeneyism

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Feeneyism is a derogatory interpretation associated with the Reverend Leonard Feeney, M.I.C.M. (1897-1978). Fr. Feeney had originally been a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Jesuit order. The Jesuit order allegedly dismissed Fr. Feeney in 1949 on account of disobedience, and on 4 February 1953 the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) allegedly declared him excommunicated "on account of grave disobedience to Church Authority, being unmoved by repeated warnings". This alleged declaration was not signed nor approved by Pope Pius XII in 1953 nor published on the following day. Fr. Feeney co-founded the group known as the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

It is traditionally believed that sacramental baptism ("baptism of water") is the only way to be properly baptized. Fr. Feeney felt that, in the previous two centuries, some tended to broaden the notion of "baptism of desire" to cover the situation of all who try to live good lives, even to those who desired no relationship with the Catholic Church. If taken in this context, this broadened interpretation would be practically the equivalent of the notion of universal salvation.

Father Feeney, on the other hand, accepted no form of baptism other than by water and only within the Catholic Church as opening the way to salvation. He denied the salvational efficacy of the mere wish alone, even the explicit wish to be baptized, and held that God must have provided those martyrs who apparently died for the faith without being baptized with a minister and water to baptize them before their death.^[1]

Father Feeney and his followers maintain that there is a contradiction between the Second Vatican Council's document Lumen Gentium and above-quoted earlier authoritative statements that they interpret as saying that non-Catholics are indiscriminately damned.

Followers of Father Feeney interpret the Catholic Church's declarations that outside of the Church there is no salvation as excluding from salvation people like the Amerindians who lived between the times of Christ and Columbus, except on the hypothesis that some Christian missionaries did manage to reach them and baptize them in the Catholic faith. ^[2]