THE BOOKSHELF

On October 28, 1949 Father Leonard Feeney, Chaplain to St. Benedict Center, was dismissed from the Society of Jesus. That night he held a press conference at which he said, "Now that the decisive step has been taken, I shall begin to write again, and those who were interested in my books...wherein I sought to defend the Catholic Faith in gay and merry fashion will soon see the book in which I shall defend it as a militant son of St. Ignatius Loyola, the Founder of the Society of Jesus, from which I have been expelled."

His defense of the Faith appears today even though he didn't write it. It is contained in "The Loyolas and The Cabots" by Catherine Goddard Clarke, one of the founders of the Center.

The book will make few happy except for the staunch supporters of the Father; to most other Roman Catholics it will probably appear smug and complacent.

Basically "The Loyolas and The Cabots" is a well-documented and one-sided history of the ten year existence of St. Benedict's. Its recurring theme is that all the troubles of the members of the Center have resulted from their belief that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church under any circumstances.

According to Father Feeney "liberal theology," or the theology that says salvation is possible for non-Catholics, has pervaded the hierarchy of the archdiocese if not the entire world, and it is the self appointed task of the 70-odd people connected with the Center to bring these "heretics" back to the "truth." Their five-year struggle to do this against such odds is the basis of the book.

Such controversial material is hard to criticize. It has been my job to report on Father Feeney for the CRIMSON since he first made the newspapers a year ago last April. During that time I have heard him repeat his beliefs over and over again as Mrs. Clarke must have, for Father Feeney's exact phraseology frequently appears in the book. The book accurately presents Father Feeney's side of the controversy; I can make no other value judgments about it.

The remaining grounds for criticism of "The Loyolas and the Cabots" are stylistic. I have heard people say Father Feeney is probably the real author of the book. I doubt this because it is not well written. Parts of it are, it is true, written in clear sentences constantly referring to Scripture. This style of writing is difficult to master; it has been used by theologians since the early days of the Roman Catholic Church. The Father may have had a hand in these passages.

The non-doctrinal passages in the book, aside from the wealth of newspaper clippings, letters, and records of conversations, are often fuzzily, if not confusingly, presented. Nevertheless, "The Loyolas and the Cabots" is an interesting book to anyone already interested in the case.

The book falls into cute ness in at least two places, for one of which Mrs. Clarke feels required to apologize. The first is the title in which the author has taken the famous old poem concerning Boston "Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God," and substituted Loyolas for Lowells "with more than unsatisfactory results." The second occurs in the last paragraph of the book. It depicts the students and Father Feeney studying "The Doctors, Popes, and Saints of the Church with a longing for the day when a newsboy will be heard running down from Harvard Square, with headlines in his hand and a shout in his voice: 'EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! ECCLESLAM NULLA SALUS!'"