Leonard Feeney

Leonard Edward Feeney (February 18, 1897 – January 30, 1978) was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, poet, lyricist, and essayist.

He articulated a strict interpretation of the Catholic doctrine extra Ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the Church there is no salvation"). He took the position that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore non-Catholics will not be saved. This position is called Feeneyism, coming from his last name.

• They put a hood upon his head
     And bound it with a thong.
  Then—England lost a ball of lead
     And Ireland lost a song.
  • "The Gifford Girl", In Towns and Little Towns (1927), p. 64
  • Cf. Joseph Plunkett

• Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy.
  • "A Madonna of the Kitchen", Fish on Friday, and Other Sketches (1934), p. 48

• People who believe in little laugh at little.
  • "How Much Do I Like a Pun?", in America (September 26, 1936), p. 595
  • Collected in You'd Better Come Quietly (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1939), p. 202

• The other day it was reported in the newspaper that a Maine hen had won a prize for having hatched nearly 200 pullets in the course of a single year. Now what ought the faithful youngster to remark on hearing that? He ought to remark that the hen deserved the Pulletser Prize.
  • "The Menace of Puns", You'd Better Come Quietly (1939), p. 171

• As good a pun as was ever spoken, to my memory, was made by a young English Jesuit now teaching at Wimbledon College. He met in a railway train a young man who said he was constructing a philosophy of his own. The young man declared that he set the foundation of his private philosophical system in the following epistemological principle: "I am, therefore I think!" "Oh," replied the young Jesuit, "isn't that putting Descartes before the horse?"
  • "The Menace of Puns", You'd Better Come Quietly (1939), p. 176

• Though art be on vacation,
     The studio remains;
  The well of inspiration
     Is backing out of drains.
  Come, let us daub, my crazys,
     Surrealize the thrill
  Of soapsuds on the daisies
     And skylarks in the swill.
  Ours not to reason whether
     Surprise surpasseth wonder,
  When man hath joined together
     What God hath rent asunder.
  • "The Surrealist", Survival Till Seventeen (London: Sheed & Ward, 1942), p. 100
  • Arnold Silcock, Verse and Worse: A Private Collection (Faber & Faber, 1952), p. 258

James T. Keane, "Leonard Feeney", America Online (March 29, 2022)

• It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chief loves. He has been known to enjoy the tea life of social England and is at present a professor of poetry in a college.
  • On Robert Frost

• Do you know a good way to convince ladies who adore he-men that you are a he-man and not a sissy? Raise a challenging mustache, write a humorless book full of unabridged hells and damns and kindred phrases in the field of sex, and then come out blatantly in favor of the Loyalists' cause in Spain.
  • On Ernest Hemingway

• The only thing worse than him on the radio is all static.
  • On Ed Wynn

• It would have been tragic if Leonard Feeney, the great apostle of salvation within the church, had died an excommunicate. ... There are certain texts from the Bible that I can never read without hearing, in my imagination, the voice and intonations of Leonard Feeney.
  • Avery Dulles, "Encomium for Leonard Feeney", in America (February 25, 1978)

• The Leonard Feeney Omnibus (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944)