St. Benedict's Center will begin a new round in its doctrinal controversy with the Roman Catholic Church at 8:15 p.m. tonight, Fakhri Maluf, one of three professors dismissed last Spring from the teaching staff of Boston College will deliver the first in a series of Tuesday evening lectures entitled "The Boston Heresy Case".

Father Leonard Feeney, S. J., Chaplain of the Center, will follow on Thursday nights lecturing on the topic, "The Dangers of Liberal Theology."

To fully understand the nature of this controversy, which has been raging in the newspapers off and on ever since last April, it is necessary to go back to 1940 when St. Benedict's Center was founded. Among the four people who started it as a religious and social meeting place for Catholics from Harvard, Radcliffe, and neighboring colleges were Christopher Huntington '32, then assistant dean of Freshmen, and Avery Dulles '40, son of Senator John Foster Dulles.

The Center existed in its present location at 23 Arrow Street directly across from Adams House's A entry as a recreation center until three years ago when Father Feeney turned it into a school.

Two years after the founding of St. Benedict's, "bull sessions" were established as a regular feature of the Center, in order that students could learn Catholic doctrine from each other.

It became increasingly evident to the students leading the discussions, however, that the sessions were getting nowhere because there were too many questions that could not be answered by anyone not a theological authority. At one of the meetings, in 1942, Father Feeney happened to be present. The students were so impressed with his answers that they asked him back frequently.

At the time, Father Feeney was professor of Sacred Eloquence at Weston Seminary, the local Jesuit theological school. He had formerly served as Literary Editor of "America", the national Catholic magazine. He was the author of "Fish on Friday" as well as many books of poetry. Before teaching on the Weston faculty he was a professor at the Graduate School of Boston College.

Father Feeney Becomes Chaplain

After making occasional visits to St. Benedict's for one year he was appointed full-time chaplain in 1943 by Archbishop Richard J. Cushing. He left Weston and has been at the Center ever since.

Under his administration the Center was turned into a school in June of 1947, with day time classes in the Holy Scripture, philosophy, Church History, Greek, and Latin. It was around this time that the Harvard and Radcliffe Catholics Clubs stopped using the Center as a meeting place. They claim that, as a school, the Center no longer fulfills its original function.

Three months after the Center became a school, the theological dispute began. Its place of origin was "From the Housetops," a quarterly magazine published by the Center since 1946, which contained contributions from Father Feeney's followers. The offending article was titled "Sentimental Theology," and it was written by Fakhri Maluf, then assistant professor of Theology at Boston College, for the September, 1947, issue.

The Overt Act

The article contained the statement, "The sharp weapons of Christ are being blunted, and the strong, virile doctrines of the Church are being put aside in a conspiracy of silence." Maluf went on to say,

"While talking to a Catholic Group recently, I was shocked to a realization of what is happening to the faith under the rising wave of liberalism. I happened to mention casually the Catholic dogma, 'There is no salvation outside the (Catholic) Church. Some acted as though I were uttering an innovation they had never heard before, and others had the doctrine so completely covered with reservations and vicious distinctions as to ruin its meaning and destroy the effect of its challenge. In a few minutes, the room was swarming with slogans of liberalism and sentimentalism. Taken in their totality and in the manner in which they were used and understood by the utterers these slogans constituted an outlook incompatible with the Catholic faith and with the traditions of the Church."

Some of the slogans mentioned were, "Salvation by Sincerity," "Membership in the Soul of the Church," "Don't Judge," "Don't Disturb the Good Faith of the Unbelievers," and "It is Not Charitable to Talk about Hell or to Suggest that Anybody May Go There."