Father Feeney, Rebel from Church, Preaches Hate, Own Brand of Dogma to All Comers

Before he came to St. Benedict's as full-time chaplain in 1943, Leonard Feeney was a distinguished and respected professor of Sacred Eloquence at Weston Seminary, the local Jesult theological school. He had formerly served as Literary Editor of "America," the national Catholic magazine. He was the author of "Fish on Friday" as well as many books of poetry. Before teaching on the Weston faculty, he was professor at the Graduate School of Boston College. Even after the difficulty with St. Benedict's had begun, Archbishop Richard J. Cushing recognized Feeney as one of the great minds of the modern church.

Spring came late to the Boston Common last year. The weak May sun was not enough one Sunday to keep a group of intense young men and women, a scattering of skid row citizens, and a crowd of curious passersby from wearing their Sunday coats.

At the center of an ever widening ring of people, without an overcoat, on a small, rough, wooden platform, stood a short plump man in the black suit of a clergyman, his arms waving in the air, his white hair tossing about above his glasses, his shrill voice carrying over the noise of traffic on nearby Charles Street.

"Brotherhood is the bunk," cried the little clergyman, "the most absolute nonsense. You Catholics out there--do you know the Jews are trying to take over this city? And the Protestants are helping them. Why, everyone knows that. Everybody knows that to be true. The Jews run the business end, and the Protestants, the religious. And this is supposed to be a Catholic city."

A woman's voice said something above the general murmur of the crowd. The little man in black turned to her and gasped. "How dare you say such things. You're disgraceful, I'm very much ashamed to hear you say such things."

The woman trembled, almost cried, but repeated her remark. "Is this what our boys fight and die for, Father? Is this why Protestants and Jews fight to save all of us?"

The white-haired speaker stopped his talk. He called the woman names: "a Jew mistress ... a horrid, degenerate, sexual pervert," and other choice epithets, ending his attack with, "you filthy man, you." The woman almost fainted. She stayed, but said no more.

For over two and one half years, Father Leonard Feeney has been taking his "cause" to the people in similar weekly appearances on the Boston Common. His harangues have gotten more bitten and vitriolic every Sunday, and his audience, larger. His "cause" is to "rid our city of every coward liberal Catholic, Jew dog, Protestant brute, and 33rd degree Mason who is trying to suck the soul from good Catholics and sell the true faith for greenbacks."

Father Feeney heads the St. Benedict's Center on Arrow Street, across the way from the old part of Adams House. The Center used to be a Catholic Club of Harvard and Radcliffe students. Since the spring of 1949, it has become the hub of a nation-wide group of self-termed "militant Catholics" who defy the higher Catholic authorities and adopt a line that has been commended by the American Fascist Union.

The movement was an outgrowth of the famous "Boston Heresy Case." Four Boston College professors were suspended from B. C. for teaching their students the dogma: "There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church." Father Feeney, who had been preaching the same dogma, came to their support, condemned the higher-ups for not following it, took the four professors into St. Benedict's, and expounded the heretical doctrine more loudly than the rest.

For these activities, Father Feeney was expelled from the Jesuit order. Archbishop Richard J. Cushing silenced him, and put St. Benedict's under interdict. By silencing is meant that Father Feeney is not allowed to preach or teach until the ban is lifted. With St. Benedict's under interdict, anyone who goes there is denied the sacraments of the Church and cannot receive the Holy Eucharist.

But Father Feeney has defied this ban, and his tight, loyal band of followers has ignored the interdict. The Center, called by its inhabitants a "Catholic Ghetto," is now a school where his supporters work and study and listen to his preachings.

Most of this group of about 72 disciples are former Harvard and Radcliffe students, who left school, renounced it, and, in many cases, renounced their own families, to join Feeney and work with him. Their faith, love of him, and belief in the cause, is deep, and is constantly drummed into them by the skillful leader of the movement.

There is one case, typical of them all, but perhaps more tragic. It is that of Evelyn, 24 years old, who left Radcliffe to join St. Benedict's. Her parents were against the action. She renounced them.

Daughter Publicly Denounces

After that, her mother and father came to the Common every Sunday afternoon to plead with their daughter to return. They stood in the middle of a large crowd, mostly hostile, while Father Feeney called them names, and their daughter publicly denounced them and called on the crowd to get rid of them. The mother wept and the father pleaded.

The crowds often became ugly and began shoving. But the two people returned every Sunday. They could not break the grip Father Feeney had on the heart of their girl.

By cheer dint of his own personality and wit, Father Feeney has won support and attention with sentiments that have been laughed at when voiced by others. He is training his students, he claims, to carry his doctrine "to every common and public square in greater Boston."

But when this "hard core of lovely, pure young boys" stands up and speaks in Boston, they are booed and heckled off the platform. Father Feeney is listened to in silence and awe. After his meetings, the crowd splits into little groups to argue the points they had just heard, and violence in these debates has been frequent.

'No Salvation' Dogma

When Father Feeney began his Sunday sermons, he admits his idea was merely to dramatize his expulsion from the Jesuit order and his silencing. He was content, in his early lectures, to preach the dogma of "no salvation" and prove by the gospel that this was the basic dogma of the Church and the present hierarchy was ignoring it. He claims he did not expect popular support and did not intend to carry on the Sunday meetings for very long.

But by late August, 1949, he was attracting close to 2,000 people to his talks. St. Benedict's was becoming a national symbol to groups of fanatic-Catholics who took Feeney as their martyr and repeated his line in their own communities. Letters poured into the Center supporting the clergyman. Some even offered suggestions for his attacks.

But Father Feeney needed no help. He had begun to preach a doctrine of hate that encompassed everyone who did not believe as he did. He organized a core of faithful that followed and protected and fought for him. He had gained no little power.

By the fall of 1949, his lectures had become a series of name-calling bouts. The procedure is simple.

There are several skid row citizens around every Sunday to start the all rolling. Feeney has names for all of them: "Wallpaper Willie," Mustachioed Louie," "Frothing Joe," "Foamin' Roman," "Muggsy Malone," and "Benny Balloon." His group of devotees stand around him in a circle. The crowd, and the sight of this small, black-frocked, white-haired man standing above it, attracts others, and soon, there is a sizeable mob of people listening intently, whether they agree or not. Feeney is there every week, no matter the weather, and so is the crowd.

Last spring and summer, he attracted more hecklers than usual. He doesn't give them a chance to say more than a short sentence before he drowns them out in a stream of names and insults.

One annoyed man once yelled at Feeney,, "This is a Protestant country and don't you forget it."

"Oh, you horried person," the priest shouted back. "I can see by your horrid, filthy, sexually degenerate face what you are. You're a horrible example of a Protestant fraud, everyone knows that, it's a wonder any decent girl will look in your face. Everyone in the park knows you."

Description of Hecklers

Feeney usually punctures each attack with an "everyone knows that." His favorite description of hecklers are, "sexually degenerate, fairy, lewd, obscene, dirty, filthy, rotten, pawns, pimps, and frauds." He calls his supporters, both male and female, "dear."

Despite his attacks on the Jews, Feeney claims to be their friend. "I like a Jew better than a Protestant," he says. "You never know where a Protestant stands, but you know where a Jew does. He tells you and you can take sides, but those Protestants!"

And, "The Jews know that all the Protestants hate them. Everyone knows that. But right now there is a sort of alliance with the Jews and the Protestants, ganging up on the Roman Catholics here in Boston. And the Greek Orthodox (latest group to be vilified by Feeney) are helping out."

More and more, the meetings have ended in volence. Several Sundays ago, a group of hymn-singing, guitar-playing evangelists started up with a mike (Feeney uses none) about 30 yards away. Feeney began mocking their sermon, but eventually the noise was too loud for even him to overcome.

Several of his "boys" went over to the mike and attacked the evangelists. The crowd surged over and fighting broke out. The more rational element in the mob gained the upper hand, and soon restored order. But during the entire scene, Feeney merely stood on his podium and grinned impishly. He later commented how "wonderfully my boys help me."

'Graveyard Religion'

"Father Feeney is going to have a riot on his hands here one of these fine Sundays," said a middle-aged man in the crowd. Ten minutes later, a 50-year-old weekly reckler named Jeff was struck on the mouth by another of Feeney's supporters. Jeff has always yelled to Feeney that the priest was "teaching a graveyard religion."

When told about outbreaks that occur after he has gone, Feeney refuses to believe them. "I'm sure my lovely little boys wouldn't do such things," he says. But one of these "little boys," six-foot Hugh McIsaac, whom Notre Dame's Frank Leahy once called the "greatest football possibility" he'd seen in a long time, jumps up on the platform every Sunday after Feeney is through and says if anybody tries to hurt Feeney, it'll be over his dead body. Hugh, and his brother Joe, a former Harvard man, form a bodyguard for the aging preacher that rarely leaves his side.

No Recent Harvard Converts

By the fall of 1951, Feeney had become a permanent Sunday fixture on the common. His talks had changed completely from a positive assertion of his dogma to a vicious and negative attack on Jews, Protestants, and the Catholic hierarchy in Boston.

But today, he feels that he is losing much of the popular support he had. Not a single Harvard College student has joined the movement in the last year, though many come to hear him who aren't official followers. Observers think Feeney's decline is due to the completely negative quality of his talks. His audiences have never ceased to grow, but the ranks of heckiers are also enlarging. This has caused frequent disturbances, and now police are present almost every Sunday.

Training Assistants

Last spring, Feeney began to let his "boys" do some of the talking. Many were former Harvard students, and they tried to say the same things Feeney had been saying for months. The response to one was typical.

Someone started heckling him in the midst of a stream of abuse against the Jews. Give me a break, will you?" said the young preacher. "This is my first time up here." The heckler replied that Feeney never gave anyone a break.

In a desperation move, the movie preacher led the crowd in prayer. The heckler didn't shut up. At the end of the prayer, the young preacher said "See, you Catholics out there. This faker wouldn't even be quiet while we were praying to Mary."

After the speeches, there is always an hour or more of argument among Feeney's listeners. The people split up into three kinds of groups. One group uses his bigotry line to support its own ideas, and enlarges on his. Some think he should be locked up or refused freedom of speech in a public place. Others think he should go back merely to preaching the "non sulla ex-Catholica" dogma, as he did two years ago.

Criticizes Conant

Many doubt whether stopping his Sunday sermons would stop Feeney and the national movement he has begun at St. Benedict's. He lectures there to anyone who wants to come every Thursday night at 8:30, saying much the same thing he preaches on the Common. Attacks on Harvard and its students and professors make up the meat of his Center talks.

Among other things, he accuses President Conant of being a "33rd degree masonic brute," for having anything to do with the atomic bomb. He claims that Conant once said at a private party that the United States should have dropped ten atomic bombs on Japan "to make a more interesting experiment."

"There'll be a third World War, and another one after that because of these 'sceptical chemists' like Conant." Sentiments like this bring gasps from Feeney's loyal audience of 75 to 100 followers, who consider him a prophet, and wise head noddings from the former Harvard men.

He especially emphasizes the "regardless of race or creed" doctrine, taught in "that atheist post-hole," when referring to Harvard. "That's a blasphemy, that's what it is," he cries.

Cushing Silenced Feeney

Feeney's real fight is with the local Catholic authorities, particularly Archbishop Cushing who silenced him. "We have more trouble with our own kind than we do with Protestants and Jews," he confides in private. "The Archbishop, under the lash of the Protestants and Jews, tried to close St. Benedict's, but 200 people came to me with tears in their eyes and begged me to stay and carry on at any cost. I couldn't leave them," he said.

But he has more to stay for than his 200 misty-eyed followers. With his core of preachers-in-training he claims he is "just breaking the ice" in his present Sunday talks. He plans to send them all over greater Boston to speak, and eventually, to all the points in the country where a similar movement has begun, or where one can be started.

Feeney is also trying to woo more students from Radcliffe and Harvard to study in St. Benedict's. His promises include "Nice boys and girls you'll like," plus free room, board, and tuition. "We do a lot of things here you'll like," he says.

Intensity of Conviction

His disciples study Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and learn the scriptures almost by rote. They interest people in the Center and in Feeney, sell the priest's books, distribute his new periodical, "The Catholic Observer," and carry on a hate campaign with an intensity born of real conviction.

Much of this campaign is carried on by letters to "militant Catholics" and sympathizers all over the country. Feeney himself dictates letters to Mrs. Catherine Clarke, owner of the Center. They go to many of the nation's large cities, including New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He sends them issues of "The Catholic Observer" and advice on how to carry his "message" to the people.

Gordon Hall, the editor of "Countertide," an anti-Fascist monthly, wrote to Feeney under an assumed name as one of his "organizers" in New York. Feeney dictated several letters to Mrs. Clarke which best set forth his doctrines.

'Our Priests are Afraid'

"Our Bishops have grown away from the dogma," he wrote on October 28, 1951. "Emphasis has been put for so long on sociology, inter-racial justice, expediency, politics, and never on doctrine. Our bishops and priests are afraid--afraid that preaching the whole truth, even if they know it, would make them unpopular with the Protestants and the Jews, would bring on persecution, and they would have to give up worldly goods, prestige, popularity, and whatever degree of security they think they have."

On October 13, 1951: "Their (the people's) support is not yet loud, but hidden. We have so far been able to win their love and trust.

"The American bishops sit in a Washington conference and agree on a course of action; they inform their priests at home who take care, in turn, of the Catholics in the parishes. They tell them we are everything and anything they feel like."

In following their scheme, it is true, the inhabitants of St. Benedict's have been persecuted. Building inspectors made them add costly improvements to the Center under penalty of having it condemned. Lately, these same men have tried to get into the homes of Feeney and several of his teachers for the same reason. The cases are now being fought out in court.

The police once tried to close the Center. Mrs. Clarke tells the story in one of her letters to Hall.

"Two years ago, the police captain in charge of crime prevention in Cambridge actually set the stage for the perpetration of a crime, as far as we were concerned. He threw a cordon of police cars around the Center. He placed one of our most belligerent enemies (Evelyn's father) on the steps of St. Paul's across the street from the Center.

"This man for months had accosted our students, parked in front of our houses, and scared our professors' little children. A few nights before the set up, Hugh McIsaac, a wonderful, upright, American boy, a veteran, had told this man that if he didn't stop his persecution of us he would 'push him through the wall,' He said it in righteous anger, not meaning it literally, but as any red-blooded man would.

'Enemy Set Stage'

"Our enemy and the police captain, as a result of this, set the stage. Monseigner Hickey, (Msgr. Hickey presides at St. Paul's Church opposite St. Benedict's. An eminent leader in the Boston clergy, he has no connection with St. Benedict's.) our pastor, abetted them. He turned on the porch lights of the church, and waited behind the front doors.

"And so here was our sworn enemy, with his arms folded, standing on the church steps--a man in plain clothes on either side of him. T.M. recognized them as policemen. He told Father and Father said, 'Go out and say, 'Good evening, officers,' and see what happens.' He did and much happened.

"For, in the meantime, Hugh came along, saw only Evelyn's father on the steps, and said to him, 'Are you hanging around here again? Didn't I tell you to stay away the other night? I have a mind to push you through the building.' Whereupon the two men at Evelyn's father's side came to life and arrested Hugh for assault and threat. There was no lecture that night."

The school also had their G. I. approval taken away suddenly so that veterans could no longer receive government aid if they studied there. The boys who belonged to the Center and worked on the outside for money were all fired from their jobs. According to Hall and Feeney's supporters, the New York Times and Herald-Tribune were asked by Cardinal Spellman not to publish reviews of Feeney's latest book. Cushing has similarly silenced the Boston press, Feeney claims.

Money from Whom?

One might wonder how the Center is supported and its followers clothed, fed and housed. In answer to questions, followers will look upward and say. "We don't know where it all comes from. Our Lady takes care of us. Isn't it wonderful?" Further questioning shows their sincere belief in this answer.

Actually, Feeney receives contributions, mostly from local areas, from priests, businessmen, and devotees, who, according to Feeney, "like what I'm saying, but don't dare say it themselves."

When he finishes his Sunday sermons, and passes out through the crowd, many people gather around him to touch or kiss him, and pass money into his hand which he quietly pockets. He brags openly, "right over there on Charles Street there's a car full of priests, waiting for me and giving me moral support from a distance, too cowardly to come out in the open like I do."

Finally, Feeney's influence through his books is large. The Ravenagate Press, set up to publish his works exclusively, said that his best known work. "The Loyolas and the Cabots," sold 3,500 copies in the first printing, 12,000 more in the second, and the plates are being held for a third.

An Inter-Faith Group

The book contains such material as: "An inter-faith meeting is a place where a Jewish rabbi, who does not believe in the divinity of Christ, and a Protestant minister, who doubts it, get together with a Catholic priest who agrees to forget it for the evening."

However ridiculous it may seem to Harvard readers, there is danger in what Feeney preaches. The movement of which he is a symbol is large and growing. Richard Hamel, head of the American Fascist Union, has openly supported his views. His followers now wear special black suits and dresses to mark them off as a beet apart.

The Church's "silencing" of 30 months ago has not stopped Feeney's sermons. Archbishop Cushing has received hundreds of complaints about Feeney, and as many demands that he be excommunicated. Cushing says merely that Feeney is one of the great minds of the modern church, even though he went wrong, and should be prayed for. He will say no more about what Monsignor Hickey calls "nobody's business."

Constant Rebuffs

Feeney, however, is beginning to feel the constant rebuffs he has been receiving off the Common during his name-calling speeches. He no longer answers hecklers with the same force he used a year ago. He seems deeply hurt that Jews and Protestants should hate him because he hates them. All his shouting is no longer as effective as it used to be.

But Feeney has started something that has found popular support in many circles, both Catholic and non-Catholic. This is an organized hate movement, reminiscent of the American fascist movements before the second World War. It no longer needs Feeney--in fact, would probably rather use him as the martyr to the cause.

But the plump little clergyman is not through yet. "They call me a hatemonger but I'll show them all," he warns. "They can never stop me. No matter what they do to me, I'll never take off my Roman collar and I'll never stop preaching."

Mr. Savadove attended Father Feeney's lectures and speeches and had private conferences with him for three months while gathering material for this article. He spent much time at St. Benedict's Center talking to students and teachers there and learning Feeney's ideas. Much of the background was obtained from the files of Gordon Hall, editor of "Countertide."As the photographer started to take this picture last Sunday on the Boston Common, the crowd turned toward the cameraman after Father Feeney had shouted, "There's a Jew photographer taking my picture new!"