Slogans can be dangerous. For example, "Remember the Alamo!" rings out with calls for vindictive revenge. To many, the phrase "The immemorial Tridentine Mass" implies that other forms of the Eucharistic Sacrifice (such as the order of the Mass promulgated since Vatican II) just don't cut it historically, doctrinally or liturgically. The phrase, "active participation of the faithful" has been used to justify frenetic activity and odd and even illicit forms of lay involvement in the action of the Sacred Liturgy. Or how about the often heard "We are Church" catch-phrase, which is a mischievous expression usually used to lend an aura of credibility to those who dissent from the authentic doctrine of the divinely ordained teachers of the Church. It's a blatant appeal to American principles of political equality.
The truth is that slogans can be useful, so long as we know that they generally conceal as much of the truth as they reveal. In other words, like all shorthand expressions, slogans have value as far as they go, and as long as those using them realize their limitations.
And so it is with the theological slogan,
extra ecclesiam nulla salus (Latin for "outside the Church, no salvation"). This is a doctrine of the Catholic Church, one that's found in every age of Catholic history, and it's held to by the Church's best and most influential minds. Understood properly, its dogmatic truth is beyond question. The problem arises, however, when this slogan is given a life of its own. And so it was in the 1940s with Fr. Leonard Feeney. For those who don't know, Fr. Feeney was a brilliant and popular chaplain at Harvard University. Unfortunately, he began to preach and teach an extreme form of
extra ecclesiam which the then Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cushing, found problematic. When asked either to modify his position or to be silent, Fr. Feeney responded by accusing the Archbishop himself of heresy, leading to an investigation of Feeney's work by the Holy See, with the attendant decision by the Jesuit Order to silence him. When he refused to accept this decision, he was dismissed from the Society of Jesus and eventually excommunicated, taking with him many men and women whom he formed into a community of religious and laity all committed to his rigorist interpretation of
extra ecclesiam.
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