Is Feeneyism Catholic? - Society of St. Pius X

I NTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION 1
INTRODUCTION TO
THE SECOND EDITION
“We have known and have believed the charity 1 which God
hath to us. God is charity: and he that abideth in charity abideth
in God, and God in him” (I Jn. 4:16). This charity of God for us
is wholly summed up in the mystery of the Church: the most
Holy Trinity calls us to be partakers of the Divine Life, by becoming
members of the Mystical Body of the incarnate Word of God,
Our Lord Jesus Christ. The true Church is more than just a place
where we find the true doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His
sacraments and all the means of salvation; it is the very place
where alone we can live of the life of God in Jesus Christ Our
Lord. It is the Mystical Body of Christ.
That there is only one true Church, the One, Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church, outside of which no one can be
saved, has always been taught by the Catholic Church. This dogma,
however, has been under attack in recent times. Already last
century, the popes 2 had to repeatedly rebuke the liberal Catholics
for their tendency to dilute this dogma, “reducing it to a meaningless
formula.” 3 But in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the
same dogma has been misrepresented on the opposite side by Fr.
Feeney and his followers, changing “outside the Church there is
no salvation” into “without water baptism there is absolutely no
salvation,” thereby denying doctrines which had been positively
and unanimously taught by the Church, viz. Baptism of Blood
and Baptism of Desire.
What is at stake? Fidelity to the unchangeable Catholic Faith, to
the Tradition of the Church. We must neither deviate on the left
1 Credidimus caritati, this was the motto of Archbishop Lefebvre.
2 Pope Pius IX, inThe Sources of Catholic Dogma [hereafter Dz.], tr. by Roy J
Defarrari from the 30th edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion
Symbolourm, (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1957) 1646-1648,
1677, etc.
3 Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis.