After that, her mother and father came to the Common every Sunday afternoon to plead with their daughter to return. They stood in the middle of a large crowd, mostly hostile, while Father Feeney called them names, and their daughter publicly denounced them and called on the crowd to get rid of them. The mother wept and the father pleaded.

The crowds often became ugly and began shoving. But the two people returned every Sunday. They could not break the grip Father Feeney had on the heart of their girl.

By cheer dint of his own personality and wit, Father Feeney has won support and attention with sentiments that have been laughed at when voiced by others. He is training his students, he claims, to carry his doctrine "to every common and public square in greater Boston."

But when this "hard core of lovely, pure young boys" stands up and speaks in Boston, they are booed and heckled off the platform. Father Feeney is listened to in silence and awe. After his meetings, the crowd splits into little groups to argue the points they had just heard, and violence in these debates has been frequent.

'No Salvation' Dogma

When Father Feeney began his Sunday sermons, he admits his idea was merely to dramatize his expulsion from the Jesuit order and his silencing. He was content, in his early lectures, to preach the dogma of "no salvation" and prove by the gospel that this was the basic dogma of the Church and the present hierarchy was ignoring it. He claims he did not expect popular support and did not intend to carry on the Sunday meetings for very long.

But by late August, 1949, he was attracting close to 2,000 people to his talks. St. Benedict's was becoming a national symbol to groups of fanatic-Catholics who took Feeney as their martyr and repeated his line in their own communities. Letters poured into the Center supporting the clergyman. Some even offered suggestions for his attacks.

But Father Feeney needed no help. He had begun to preach a doctrine of hate that encompassed everyone who did not believe as he did. He organized a core of faithful that followed and protected and fought for him. He had gained no little power.

By the fall of 1949, his lectures had become a series of name-calling bouts. The procedure is simple.

There are several skid row citizens around every Sunday to start the all rolling. Feeney has names for all of them: "Wallpaper Willie," Mustachioed Louie," "Frothing Joe," "Foamin' Roman," "Muggsy Malone," and "Benny Balloon." His group of devotees stand around him in a circle. The crowd, and the sight of this small, black-frocked, white-haired man standing above it, attracts others, and soon, there is a sizeable mob of people listening intently, whether they agree or not. Feeney is there every week, no matter the weather, and so is the crowd.

Last spring and summer, he attracted more hecklers than usual. He doesn't give them a chance to say more than a short sentence before he drowns them out in a stream of names and insults.

One annoyed man once yelled at Feeney,, "This is a Protestant country and don't you forget it."

"Oh, you horried person," the priest shouted back. "I can see by your horrid, filthy, sexually degenerate face what you are. You're a horrible example of a Protestant fraud, everyone knows that, it's a wonder any decent girl will look in your face. Everyone in the park knows you."

Description of Hecklers

Feeney usually punctures each attack with an "everyone knows that." His favorite description of hecklers are, "sexually degenerate, fairy, lewd, obscene, dirty, filthy, rotten, pawns, pimps, and frauds." He calls his supporters, both male and female, "dear."