Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary may refer to a number of different religious communities which all trace their roots to the St. Benedict Center, founded in 1940 by Catherine Goddard Clarke in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1945, Leonard Feeney became chaplain of the center. Clarke and Feeney formed the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, an unofficial Catholic community. The group relocated to Still River, a village in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. After Clarke's death, around 1968, the group separated into two Benedictine houses, St. Benedict Abbey and St. Scholastica's Priory, a diocesan women's religious community; and a Public Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts. A fifth group split from the Stillwater Center and founded a separate self-identified Catholic community in New Hampshire. The latter has no canonical status.

History
Main article: Leonard Feeney

Cambridge

In 1940, Catherine Goddard Clarke and several associates founded the St. Benedict Center in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a student center for students attending college in the Boston area. Leonard Feeney, S.J., became chaplain at the center in 1945. Feeney held rigid views regarding the doctrine Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation"). Feeney criticized Boston Archbishop Richard Cardinal Cushing for, among other things, accepting the church's definition of "baptism of desire".

In January 1949, a number of individuals who attended the center formed, under Feeney's guidance, an unofficial religious community. That same year, Cushing declared the St. Benedict's Center off-limits to Catholics.[1] Boston College and Boston College High School dismissed four of the center's members from the theology faculty for promoting Feeney's version of Extra Ecclesiam doctrine in their classrooms, and after they had sent a letter to the administration accusing the theology department of teaching heresy.[2][3] In light of his controversial behavior, Feeney's Jesuit superiors ordered him to leave the center for a post at the College of the Holy Cross, but he repeatedly refused, which led to his expulsion from the order. Cushing suspended Feeney's priestly faculties in April 1949; Feeney continued to celebrate the sacraments, although he was no longer authorized to do so.[4] After Feeney repeatedly refused to reply to a summons to Rome to explain himself, he was excommunicated on February 13, 1953 by the Holy See for persistent disobedience to legitimate Church authority.[1]

Still River, Massachusetts

Increasingly isolated in the Boston Catholic community, in January 1958, the group moved from Cambridge to a farm in the town of Harvard in Worcester County, where they settled into a semi-monastic life. With the death of Clarke in 1968, the group began to fragment. (Feeney died in 1978.) The Still River property was divided among the three groups.

  • Sisters of St. Benedict Center, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Saint Anne's House), a canonically recognized religious community in the Diocese of Worcester.[7]
Chapel, Immaculate Heart of Mary School, Still River, MA
  • The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (MICM) of Saint Benedict Center, Still River, Massachusetts, which Bishop McManus raised to a Public Association of the Faithful in the Diocese of Worcester in 2017. The sisters of the community teach at the school.

Immaculate Heart of Mary School

Immaculate Heart of Mary School is a private school located on the Saint Benedict Center property. It was established in 1976[8] and accommodates about 135 students in grades 1-12.[9] Every school day begins with the Latin Tridentine Mass.[10]

Richmond, New Hampshire
See also: Feeneyism

The "Feeneyites"[11] moved to Still River in 1958 and, because of doctrinal-canonical disputes with ecclesiastical authority and divergent views on the future of the group, later split into three separate groups. A civil court divided the Still River real property among them. After an internal electoral struggle, and having lost a suit in civil court to compel his superiorship of the original group,[12] Dr. Fakhri Boutros Maluf,[13] who had taken the name Brother Francis, M.I.C.M.,[14] founded a branch of the group within the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire as "founding superior"[14] in the mid-1980s.[12][15]

Maluf, a Melkite by ascription,[13] had given Tuesday-night lectures in philosophy at the Saint Benedict Center in Harvard Square starting in the early 1940s.[16] It was Maluf’s September 1947 article "Sentimental Theology", published in the Saint Benedict Center’s publication From the Housetops, that would definitively begin Feeney’s conflict with ecclesiastical authorities.[16]

In January 2019, the vicar for canonical affairs for the Diocese of Manchester advised the group that they were to stop representing themselves as Catholic.[17] "The Diocese of Manchester said ...the theological teachings of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, N.H., were declared 'unacceptable' last year by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, charged with safeguarding Catholic teachings. Specifically, the group preaches that only Catholics can go to heaven."[18] Out of pastoral concern for those who work, live at, or reside near the Saint Benedict Center, the Bishop of Manchester arranged for the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Mass (Latin Mass) at Saint Stanislaus Church in Winchester.[19] The group was further directed to amend its IRS 501(c)(3) filing to remove any representation that it was affiliated with the Catholic Church.[20] The group appealed to the Vatican to lift the precepts of prohibition placed upon them. In February 2021, the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith declined to consider the appeal.[21]

References
  1. Feldberg, Michael. "American Heretic: The Rise and Fall of Father Leonard Feeney, S.J.", American Catholic Studies, vol. 123 no. 2, 2012, pp. 109-115. Project MUSE doi:10.1353/acs.2012.0016
  2. Savadove, Laurence D. (December 6, 1951). "Father Feeney, Rebel from Church, Preaches Hate, Own Brand of Dogma to All Comers – One-Time Jesuit Plans to Use Ex-Harvard Men to Spread Idea". Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  3. Thomas, Evan (5 February 2013). "Tough". Robert Kennedy: His Life. p. 51. ISBN 9781476734569. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  4. Mazza, Michael J. "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus: Father Feeney makes a comeback". Retrieved 2014-03-25. originally published in Fidelity, 206 Marquette Avenue, South Bend, IN 46617
  5. St. Benedict Abbey
  6. St. Scholastica Priory
  7. "Religious Communities" Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester
  8. Immaculate Heart of Mary School
  9. "Immaculate Heart of Mary School", Saint Benedict Center
  10. "Immaculate Heart of Mary School", Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester
  11. CatholicHerald.co.uk, “Why is the Vatican taking action against the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary?”, accessed 30 July 2019.
  12. SaintBenedict.com, “Saint Benedict Center History: Contested Authority”, accessed 20 July 2019.
  13. Catholicism.org, “About Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.”, accessed 20 July 20, 2019.
  14. Catholicism.org, home page, accessed 17 July 2019.
  15. Catholicism.org, “A Brief History of Saint Benedict Center”, accessed 30 July 2019.
  16. Catholicism.org, “A Latter-Day Athanasius: Father Leonard Feeney”, accessed 20 July 2019.
  17. Fisher, Damian. "NH-based 'only Catholics go to heaven' group sanctioned by Church; aspiring nun allegedly held against her will", New Hampshire Union Leader, January 8, 2019
  18. Casey, Michael. "N.H. Catholic Group Ordered Not to Hold Services', Valley News, January 09, 2019
  19. "Diocese says Catholics not to receive sacraments at Saint Benedict Center in Richmond", Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, January 9, 2019
  20. de Laire, Georges. "Precepts of Proscription", Diocese of Manchester, January 7, 2019
  21. Fisher, Damien. "Vatican rejects Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary appeal", New Hampshire Union Leader, February 02, 2021
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