Feeney Insists He'll Appeal Excommunication to Vatican

An angry Leonard J. Feeney yesterday proclaimed he would appeal the order excommunicating him "to the Pope himself."

The decree, which denies Feeney the right to administer and receive the sacraments, was issued last Friday by the Holy Office in Rome and published Wednesday in the Pilot, weekly paper of the Boston archdiocese.

In a statement issued yesterday, Feeney said "any ecclesiastical penalties, such as excommunication, imposed without stating . . . the charges preferred . . . are void, and are subject to immediate appeal to the highest court in the church, and to the Pope himself. This appeal, Father Feeney will immediately make."

Asked for a comment by the CRIMSON, Feeney said, "You're all impure and every child in Cambridge knows it and I'm going to ask Our Lady to punish you." Later, he said to reporters, "I have no statements to make to that dirty, filthy CRIMSON."

Describing himself as a "beleaguered Catholic priest," Feeney reasserted his heretical doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.

Bishop Eric F. MacKenzie, Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, said, "Local authorities had nothing to do with it (the excommunication). No one here could do anything with him. We made an appeal to his conscience, but it didn't seem to work.

"The Catholic Church is based on belief and obedience. People can leave it whenever they please. They do so by disobedience. By ignoring Archbishop Cushing's order to be silent three years ago, he (Feeney) placed himself outside the Catholic Church."

The Wednesday Pilot article, speaking of Rome's original rejection of Feeney's views, explained, "The highest authority in the Church had spoken and it confidently hoped that its word would be heeded. It patiently waited that the tempest and strife and vilification would gradually subside, scandal be removed and peace and harmony return to the harrassed members within the fold of Christ." Feeney's persistence in his heretical belief led to a call to Rome, and, following his refusal, excommunication.