Criticizes Conant

Many doubt whether stopping his Sunday sermons would stop Feeney and the national movement he has begun at St. Benedict's. He lectures there to anyone who wants to come every Thursday night at 8:30, saying much the same thing he preaches on the Common. Attacks on Harvard and its students and professors make up the meat of his Center talks.

Among other things, he accuses President Conant of being a "33rd degree masonic brute," for having anything to do with the atomic bomb. He claims that Conant once said at a private party that the United States should have dropped ten atomic bombs on Japan "to make a more interesting experiment."

"There'll be a third World War, and another one after that because of these 'sceptical chemists' like Conant." Sentiments like this bring gasps from Feeney's loyal audience of 75 to 100 followers, who consider him a prophet, and wise head noddings from the former Harvard men.

He especially emphasizes the "regardless of race or creed" doctrine, taught in "that atheist post-hole," when referring to Harvard. "That's a blasphemy, that's what it is," he cries.

Cushing Silenced Feeney

Feeney's real fight is with the local Catholic authorities, particularly Archbishop Cushing who silenced him. "We have more trouble with our own kind than we do with Protestants and Jews," he confides in private. "The Archbishop, under the lash of the Protestants and Jews, tried to close St. Benedict's, but 200 people came to me with tears in their eyes and begged me to stay and carry on at any cost. I couldn't leave them," he said.

But he has more to stay for than his 200 misty-eyed followers. With his core of preachers-in-training he claims he is "just breaking the ice" in his present Sunday talks. He plans to send them all over greater Boston to speak, and eventually, to all the points in the country where a similar movement has begun, or where one can be started.

Feeney is also trying to woo more students from Radcliffe and Harvard to study in St. Benedict's. His promises include "Nice boys and girls you'll like," plus free room, board, and tuition. "We do a lot of things here you'll like," he says.

Intensity of Conviction

His disciples study Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and learn the scriptures almost by rote. They interest people in the Center and in Feeney, sell the priest's books, distribute his new periodical, "The Catholic Observer," and carry on a hate campaign with an intensity born of real conviction.

Much of this campaign is carried on by letters to "militant Catholics" and sympathizers all over the country. Feeney himself dictates letters to Mrs. Catherine Clarke, owner of the Center. They go to many of the nation's large cities, including New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He sends them issues of "The Catholic Observer" and advice on how to carry his "message" to the people.

Gordon Hall, the editor of "Countertide," an anti-Fascist monthly, wrote to Feeney under an assumed name as one of his "organizers" in New York. Feeney dictated several letters to Mrs. Clarke which best set forth his doctrines.

'Our Priests are Afraid'

"Our Bishops have grown away from the dogma," he wrote on October 28, 1951. "Emphasis has been put for so long on sociology, inter-racial justice, expediency, politics, and never on doctrine. Our bishops and priests are afraid--afraid that preaching the whole truth, even if they know it, would make them unpopular with the Protestants and the Jews, would bring on persecution, and they would have to give up worldly goods, prestige, popularity, and whatever degree of security they think they have."