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U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 6, Number 11
 November 1995 
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As the Internet world watches you back out of another debate, this time to your demise, I would like to rebuke you in [sic] your whinings from your last letter." That's how the latest e-mail message started. It was from one of the brothers at the Saint Benedict Center, an offshoot of the movement started by the late Fr. Leonard Feeney, who taught that only those visibly within the Catholic Church have a chance to be saved.
I had been challenged to debate the doctrine Extra ecclesiam nulla salus - ("No salvation outside the Church"). The original message to me included an insult, but I ignored the uncharitable remark and wrote a noncommittal reply. Only then did I turn to the Saint Benedict Center World Wide Web site, where I found a string of uncomplimentary remarks about my orthodoxy and intelligence. I was termed, of all things, a "Liberal Apologist," and it was said I disavowed the faith in my public lectures.
This was not an auspicious beginning to our e-mail exchange: a low-level insult in private correspondence, topped by blatant (and even ludicrous) insults in a public posting. Where did these guys learn their manners-and did they really think the way to obtain an affirmative response was to insult their prospective debate opponent? Somehow I couldn't imagine myself walking across a wet tarmac in Casablanca, my arm around the shoulders of one of the brothers, saying, "Louie, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship."
We exchanged further messages. Their proposed debate formats were impracticable, and I told them so. I asked for information about their proposed standard bearer. That seemed a modest request, since any debater should know in advance something about his opponent-at least his name. In answer I received another rude letter, and I complained about it.
The next message to me said, "You further complain that the name calling was ungenerous (I agree), undiplomatic (who needs to be diplomatic when the truth is at stake?), and gratuitous (not gratuitous at all, but indeed well deserved as we shall see)." All this was uploaded to their Web site, as were the previous and subsequent exchanges. A Saint Benedict Center supporter wrote to me independently, saying, "Who cares if they weren't courteous?"
Well, I cared. I figured their treatment of me online might presage their treatment of me in a debate. I had been through that kind of mess before when I debated a minister from the Iglesia ni Cristo, a sect from the Philippines. He and his "seconds" (there weren't even supposed to be any "seconds"- the debate was supposed to be one-on-one) kept interrupting me during my remarks and did their best, largely successfully, to foster a circus atmosphere in the overpacked gymnasium. I was concerned the people from the Saint Benedict Center might attempt something similar.
Even if they wouldn't, I still had to consider whether debating their representative would be prudent. I don't mean I was concerned whether I might lose the debate. The clumsiness of their letters led me to conclude, perhaps unwarrantedly, that the odds would be in my favor. After all, if they handled themselves in debate with the same aplomb they displayed in correspondence, I figured I'd have a lock on the sympathy of the audience.
Still, I had so ask myself, Cui bono to whose advantage? The personal advantage of the debaters? Maybe. I imagine the Saint Benedict Center would welcome any publicity it could get. For decades it has received a bad press (largely deserved, it seems), and a debate with a somewhat-known opponent might tend to legitimize the group. But what about the audience? Would it profit from a debate in which basic civilities were not maintained? Could the truth make its way to the ears of the listeners if the debaters were constantly at one another's jugular? Thinking of the Iglesia debate, I concluded it couldn't-which is too bad, since the issue of salvation needs to be aired
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Over the last few years, but a little more intensively recently, I have been engaged in research on the question "Who can be saved?" The more I read, the more I see that the Feeneyites have taken a Protestant approach in formulating an answer. They exalt their own interpretation of "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" over the interpretation of the magisterium. They dismiss as errors the teachings not just of Vatican II and John Paul II, but even of such a conservative pope as Pius IX. Like Modernists, they dismiss teachings of the last few centuries unless they can be shown to have been issued with the full panoply of infallibility.
The Feeneyite interpretation of salvation needs to be shown up for what it really is, a misinterpretation. Perhaps the best way to do this would be in a book (I am in the early stage of writing such a book now, with no claim to being the right person to do the job), but a debate might help too- if it weren't reduced to a zoo.
Some people may revel in zooish debates. If I ever did, I no longer do. I would like to have a public exchange with someone who knows the topic and who would grant me at least as much courtesy as he grants to a panhandler. I hope that's not asking for too much.
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