[7] Robert F. Kennedy, then a Harvard undergraduate, met with Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston requesting Feeney's removal.
Feeney began speaking on Boston Common, gathering large crowds of up to 2,000 people to his public meetings, both supporters and hecklers.
[12] Feeney would frequently throw visceral barbs back at his hecklers, describing them as "sexually degenerate, fairy, lewd, obscene, dirty, filthy, rotten, pawns, pimps, and frauds".
[12] On 4 February 1953, the Holy Office declared him excommunicated "on account of grave disobedience to Church Authority, being unmoved by repeated warnings".
[14][15] The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary later split in two, one of which became the Still River Branch, in good standing with the Catholic Church; the other is a schismatic group that holds to Feeney's views on Salvation.
In a 1949 letter to Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, the Holy Office condemned Feeney's teaching that only those formally baptized in the Catholic Church can be saved.
These things are clearly taught in that dogmatic letter which was issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943, On the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ (AAS, Vol.