"Heresy!" The ancient cry, heard last week in the corridors of Boston College (enrollment: 6,600), was aimed at the Jesuits who direct Boston College. The cry was raised by three young laymen teachers who protested that the Jesuits were teaching doctrines that were against Roman Catholic tenets. For months the laymen teachers had been growing more & more disturbed at what they regarded as too-tolerant views among the Jesuit members of the faculty.
In January they wrote to President William L. Keleher, S.J.
to tell him that heretical doctrines were being taught. Joined by a teacher in Boston College High School, they next wrote a letter to the Pope himself. Then the four wrote to the General of the Jesuit order in Rome. Students in Boston College classes, they said, were being taught "implicitly and explicitly" that: 1) salvation can be won outside the Roman Catholic Church; 2) a man can be saved though he does not hold that the Catholic Church is supreme among churches; 3) a man can be saved without submission to the Pope.
Exclusive View. The laymen teachers, brashly willing to take on their Jesuit associates on a doctrinal matter, had a much more exclusive view of the road to salvation. "There is no doctrine that has been more often denned than that having to do with the salvation of the soul," said Lebanon-born Dr. Fakhri Maluf, 36, assistant professor of philosophy, who became a member of the Roman Catholic Church nine years ago. "Pope after pope has spoken on it. The Athanasian creed opens with the statement: 'Whosoever wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.' "
Said solemn Charles Ewaskio, 31, assistant professor of physics and a Catholic for slightly more than two years: "There's no doubt that [Methodist Bishop] G. Bromley Oxnam is right about us ... It has been made very clear that unbaptized babies don't go to heaven."
"Why give other people a better chance?" demanded Philosophy Instructor James R. Walsh, 31.
"Secondary Source." Last week, the three college teachers were summoned to Father Keleher's office. Did they withdraw their charge that the Jesuits were teaching heresy? No? Then, said President Keleher, they were fired.
"They continued to speak in class and out of class on matters contrary to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church—ideas leading to bigotry and intolerance," explained President Keleher later. "Their doctrine is erroneous . . ."
The Church's famed Baltimore Catechism* states explicitly that those who remain outside the Roman Catholic Church "through no grave fault of their own and do not know it is the true Church can be saved by making use of the graces which God gives them . . ." Each man, the Catholic Church holds, gets enough grace to achieve salvation. Only God knows how he uses it.
But last week Philosopher Maluf airily dismissed the Baltimore Catechism. "It's only a secondary source of doctrine," he announced. "It has some authority, but the authors are not saints."
*No. 3 Baltimore Catechism (St. Anthony Guild Press, $1) published this week.