AN UPDATE ON LEONARD FEENEY

...Industrialism is being portrayed as the solution to the plight of Vermont's un- and under-employed...

...Obviously the old suspicions of "outsiders" lingered...

...The Feeney story is the story, of course, of St...

...Nearly all the politicians in the recent election were speaking of bringing in industry to "solve" the state's unemployment problems...

...It's all so dull, the way it's done now...

...Naturally, the execution programs should take place in the family hour, the young being so much more impressionable, it is thought...

...It was a near-traumatic concern for a group so fundamentalist, and undoubtedly it helped influence the reconciliation decision...

...But the story isn't quite closed...

...Nature here is often cruel and technology is gaining strong footholds on the 'heels of the transformation of this state from agrarian-pastoral to industrial-suburban...

...Benedict Center off in those Central Massachusetts hills...

...There would be an occasional newspaper story that members of the group, now known as Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, had been arrested here or there for hawking salvation tracts or Feeney books without a license, or that they had beon chased out of some Catholic office, or off some Catholic campus...

...It was snowing...

...New ideas have a hard time in Vermont...

...I was kept at arm's length...

...Everyone knows that industry exists to make jobs for the people...

...But with the infinitely knottier problems involving Rome and Chancery worked out, .most Feeney watchers are optimistic that the issues of member-unity and propertyownership can be resolved too...

...Second to Nixonism proper would come crimes that partake of the spirit of Nixonism, including most so-classed white collar crimes and cost overruns in military contracts...

...The Feeneyites were too proud, too convinced of their theological ground ever to recant...

...I could ask questions, but the answers were monitored by a third party...

...as one was being dragged off, he shouted, "The first sign of your approaching damnation is that Notre Dame has Protestants on its football team...

...Feeney placed ownership of the 146 acres and buildings in the names of all members of the community, and there are those who would carve up the property now...

...Like the predators they are, the men travel in packs, packing their guns, gunning their cars, carrying their six packs by the armload...

...It was sick and irrational, and the consequences were predictnble...

...And business is what's good for Vermont...

...Right in there with Michigan...

...Most of the talk was about the Center's bric-a-brac--its ancient ikons, its more modern saccharine art, its 685 first-class relics, a virtual graveyard--and little about the Center's philosophy...

...Avery Dulles, for instance...

...These other neighbors allegedly hunt whenever the spirit moves them...

...In hanging, the celebrity simply stands on a platform, all bound up like a mummy...

...But the now-middle and senior generations will not have forgotten Leonard Feeney...

...It's action, no doubt, but not very much...

...His was a wistful thought, but, as it turned out, a prophetic one, Soon the wheels of reconcilation were turning, and toda~ they virtually hum with synchronization...

...Since there' are quite a few of them and no shortage of spirits, the woods are fairly well depleted of deer...

...In 1952, Notre Dame had several Feeneyites hauled away by police, allegedly for attempting to incite a riot...

...Connally, no small boon...

...They complained of other of my neighbors' lack of observance of the dates of the hunting season...

...The police edged in, fearful of a riot...

...They will bring nearly $20 million into Vermont this fall and that is considered important especially in light of the declining fortunes of other "industries"--like skiing...

...Feency had carried his crusade to the Boston Common, where he drew large crowds of hecklers and has slers, many of whom would turn surly under the weight of his invective...

...It was a curious sort of visit...

...If the hunters like the place enough, it is hoped they will return shortly to test their mettle on the slopes, meantime bringing in still more money...

...If public televised executions are to have any deterrent effect ---or indeed any effect at all other than to move people to switch channels to "Kojak" or other more satisfyingly violent shows---the methods of execution are going to have to be rethought with an eye on the ratings...

...The rest either hunt the deer or each other...

...A whole new generation of Catholics has grown up without knowing his name or the events that made him and his militants the "bad boys" of the American church, the ogres of the budding ecumenical movement, the frightening Jew-baiters, who for some evoked nightmares of the holocaust and for a few momentarily stirred fears that the impossible might leap an ocean...

...A lot of them are young people from big cities...

...It's the kind of thing Samuel Beckett can get away with because he writes the lines to go with it...

...They even elected a Republican Governor because, as everyone knows, the Republicans are good for business...

...Feeney wasn't budging, however, and his obstinacy led him to excesses of denunciation and excoriation that had sensitive Catholics hiding their heads in shame, police sweating, and officials at Chancery pulling their hair in exasperation...

...Within two years of my visit, the Feeney excommunication and other sanctions were lifted by Pope Paul VI, thanks to discreet interventions by Bishop Bernard Flanagan of Worcester, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston, and Cardinal John Wright of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy...

...My neighbor was out this morning, the second day of the "season," before dawn...

...Nearly 200,000 of them...

...Had the nation seen Ehrlichman and Haldeman swinging from the end of a yardarm of a man-owar tied up at the Anacostia naval yard, it is reasonble to suppose that embryo Nixonians would think seriously about going into some other line of work...

...If suddenly I found myself alone with a member of the community, he went mute...

...The large, unspoken question seemed to be, W'hat can be done to redeem the past...

...Never mind good logic...

...Las' month two members of the group were ordained to the priesthood-----one according to the Latin Rite...

...Of course, if industrialism really were the answer, New Jersey should be sailing along...

...Armed to the teeth against the ferocious deer, they peer from behind their wheels, feeling the rigors of the sport of the hunt...

...One brother explained the accommodation by noting there is more room for disparity of opinion and more latitude for discussion in the Church today...

...Another complication in the way of a full happy ending is litigation pending over the property...

...It was almost as though the Dulles formula had become prescription...

...Jews, worst of all, were "frauds," "filthy demons," "hate[rs of] the water of baptism," people on whom Feeney called down the wrath of the Blessed Virgin...

...Meanwhile the deer and the mountain slopes are all that stand between here and catastrophe...

...Television, then, may he counted on speedily to bring back the rack, drawing-and-quartering, the auto-da-f~, the axe, perhaps---although quick, it is marvelously bloody--flaying and stoning...

...And bear, too, for that matter...

...As things are, they most likely will simply acquire the best literary agent available and plunge into crime...

...It was a proposition enunciated in bull and syllabus through much of Catholic history, but it was a proposition from whose literal interpretation the Church had begun to move by 1940...

...Life is precarious for the deer...

...ligious institute of the Order of St...

...Still it was apparent that the bitter hates were gone--"We have mellowed," one of the Brothers commented, almost plaintively...

...Leonard Feeney was the Center's gurumlecturing, entertaining ('he was a marvelous mimic), preaching, making converts, at the same time building a dazzling, if superficial, reputation as a poet and author...

...The Utah method of a volunteer firing squad summons up memories of the Old West, perhaps, but still, essentially, the celebrity is standing there---or even sitting there----suddenly jerks taut, falls over...

...Chancery cracked down, placing St...

...Still," said Dulles, "there must be a wa) by which the excommunication can be lifted without their having to make a formal recantation, and without the Church seeming to accept their position" on salvation theology...

...We may therefore begin to sketch out a revised theory of televised executions as crime deterrents with the idea that Nixonism in all of its many manifestations should be the prime crime for prime time family viewing executions...

...It will just take time, they say, and more tact...

...In time even these stories disappeared...

...If all these are applied as they ought to be, we may count on future protection from the friends of Mr...

...They split from the larger group and took up residence in another building on the St...

...That's what I call deterrence...

...Dulles, like others once close to the Center, to Feeney or the movement, discounted the possibility of a recantation...

...What strung Feeney and his followers out, it will be Commonweal: 5 remembered, was Extra eccltsiam nulla salus, the proposition that outside the Catholic Church there was no salvation...

...There were words with Leonard Feeney, but only a few...

...Gratifying as is the thought of the ex-Chief swinging in the breeze from that yardarm, the actual spectacle probably wouldn't have much effect on that average eight-year-old so accustomed to so much gaudier takings off...

...one chapter remains to be written...

...That seems to have gone the way of the windmill, though there are a few hardy souls in these parts who still hold out for the old ways...

...The future political criminal tempted to Nixonism, as things have worked out, has no deterrent consideration at all: except at the very lowest level of the actual burglars, the Nixonites have gone on to fame and fortune, becoming famous authors and richly rewarded celebrities...

...It :brings in jobs...

...Benedict Center, the student headquarters in Cambridge that was gathering place in the 1940s for Catholics attending Harvard, Radcliffe and other nearby "secular" colleges...

...Benedict Center refused to make that 1974 profession of faith, holding that their orthodoxy to Catholic teaching made even the most perfunctory gestures unnecessary and humiliating...

...Four years ago, on an assignment for The Critic, I visited St...

...Feeney and his people tried living in tenement quarters, and were harassed by building inspectors and neighbors...

...I mulled over impressions with Father Avery Dulles one sparkling Manhattan afternoon when the world seemed alive with hope for everyone, including Leonard Feeney...

...Ultimatel) it hopes to become a Benedictine priory or abbey...

...In their new Harvard, the Feeneyites, as the group had come to he aspersed, slipped from sight and gradually from mind...

...But Vermont is tied into it now...

...Under the "logic" of Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, Harvard became a "pest-hole" of atheism and Marxism, its president (James Bryant Conant) a "thirty-third degree Masonic brute...

...The television function brings its own problems...

...Any theatrical producer I know would say: It just needs something in the second act, maybe we can work it out in Boston...

...the trap-door opens, the mummy drops...

...Women were off at a distance...

...I was welcome, but when lunchtime approached I wasn't offered so much as a glass of water...

...Benedict's under interdict and Feeney under silence---which he ignored...

...The hunters are all here, however...

...In electrocution, apparently the most widely used, or non-used, form, the celebrity just sits in a chair, suddenly stiffens, then just as suddenly slumps...

...No recantation was demanded, nor were the 29 required to disavow their former ideas on salvation...

...The Jesuits dismissed him from the order...

...Dulled senses are another...

...At last they gave up Cambridge and Boston for the solitude of a farm in Central Massachusetts...

...the other 7 January 1977:6 the Maronite Catholic Rite--thus settling the community's worries about their sacramental future...

...Throughout their three decades, Feeney had been the community's only priest, and as he aged concern grew stronger about being left priestless...

...He didn't "get" anything and he was disappointed...

...In March, 1974, 29 members of the community made a "simple profession ot faith" before Flanagan, and for them the ordeal with Rome was over...

...some of whom were lucky or wise enough to escape St...

...Eighteen members of St...

...Or sometimes themselves...

...Still, things are looking up for the skiing industry as the winter has come unseasonably early this year...

...I could observe, but I could not take notes...

...Benedict property: There has been little contact between the two groups since, apart from the sharing of Feeney's priestly ministry and the kitchen facilities...

...Archbishop Cushing became a sell-out for dining at Harvard's Lowell House...

...Credibility is one...

...Had we executed the entire crew of Nixonians, not to mention other criminals, the total would hardly have compared with the carnage, slaughter and all around violent death the average eight-year-old sees in the course of a week's watching on the tube...

...JOHN DEEDY 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 The Greening Of Vermont All day long the hunters have been driving up and down my road...

...The other stuff, putting the killers and rapists to death on the tube, won't deter a thing, will merely lull people into a false sense of security by making them think the murderers and rapists in our midst are being deterred while the honest folk are enjoying an evening's entertainment...

...And finally Rome issued a formal decree of excommunication...

...The farms are drying up as fast as you can whistle Old Macdonald, and the .people are hurting...

...As with the rest of the country, ~he prevailing thought about matters of relative value comes to final rest at the doorstep of the dollar...

...The Feeneyites stayed close to home, and the rest of the world pretty much forgot that they existed...

...the binding has eliminated the lively dances in the air once common to the form...

...Benedict community unsettled for months, maybe even years...

...A few chipmunk and skunk amble by now and then, and this year there seemed to be more than the usual number of Canadian geese honking south, but the deer seem in short supply, despite the glowing statistics by the government dopartments responsible for issuing them...

...The farm, ironically, was located in the town of Harvard...

...evidently committed, and so on through a congeries of calculations, they were no less capable of calculating that if the possible end result of all this was getting hung, or electrocuted, or shot, or garroted and in short killed, the game wasn't worth the candle and the hell with it...

...Benedict...

...Benedict's and make lives of their own...

...Either or both of these issues could keep the St...

...And the result is that the swings of the economy are more readily felt now that cash-flow consciousness has taken root in the collective mind of a people once proud of their self-sufficiency and independence from the rest of the country and the vagaries of the national economic scene...

...Occasionally there will be a dead deer tied to the hood of the vehicle in the traditional manner, but mostly not...

...He was with two friends and two boys...

...Benedict's was a stimulating place, and the Center attracted as habitu~ the best and the brightest on campus---some of whom got hooked on Feeney and are with him still...

...He looked grizzled as most of the men do around this time of year, letting their facial hair grow, though heaven forfend, not anything else that might let them be regarded as "hippies...

...people seem to feel that knocking off the deer will make life less precarious for them...

...What may surprise them is to learn that Feeney, almost 80, is alive and active, that his community is still grouped around him, and that their storymwhich began so hopefully and turned so sordid--is close to having a surprise happy ending...

...FRANK GETI~iN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 An Update on Leonard Feeney It is thirty years count them--since Leonard Feehey, the Boston Jesuit, was the problem priest of American Catholicism...

...Paradoxically, the excommunication was based not on the doctrinal issue of Extra ecclesiam nuUa salus, but on Feeney's "stubborn disobedience" to a Holy Office order to appear in Rome "before the authorities of the Sacred Congregation...

...After all, Vermont has the highest suicide rate in the country, ffONATHAN EISEN Commonweal: 7...

...This group--lately grown to 26 male and 19 female members, as well as some who do not live at the house but who participate in prayer, study and work aceordinlE to the Benedictine tradition--has formed a new community known as the Pious Union of Benedictine Oblate., of Still River, and has started about the ecelesial process, by which it can develop into a canonically erected re...