Our Divine Saviour commanded His apostles: "Going, therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," adding that "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be condemned." Since then the Church has never lacked heroic men and women who have taken this command literally, despite the suffering and hardship involved, sacrificing even their lives for the love of God and the salvation of their neighbor.
At the present time the need is greater than ever to form apostles who will make known the simple truths necessary for salvation, while opposing the humanistic and masonic ideas spewed out by the devil on the world today. We pray that Mary Immaculate will show her compassion on the world by forming many such apostles, who shall with the pure intention of the glory of god and the salvation of souls, go wheresoever the Holy Ghost shall call them leaving behind them, where they have been, nothing but the gold of charity which is the fulfillment of the whole law.
The Center achieved immediate success, filling, as it did, the spiritual vacuum created by an obvious deficiency in the neighboring academic institutions. It was attended in large and ever-growing numbers.
In 1942 the well-known and loved Jesuit, Father Leonard Feeney, became associated with the work of the Center, counseling students, lecturing, and eventually becoming-by general demand and by appointment from his superiors and the Archdiocesan authorities-the spiritual director of Saint Benedict Center.
The eldest of three brothers who had entered the priesthood, Father Feeney, at forty-five, was already famous. He was acknowledged by his colleagues as a pre-eminent theologian. In fact, his Provincial Superior in the Jesuit Order, Father John McEleney-later to become Archbishop of Jamaica-once referred to him as... "the greatest theologian we have in the United States, by far." His appointment to direct the Center apostolate, therefore, was received universally with joy and gratitude.
Under Father's guidance the influence of Saint Benedict Center continued to grow. As was inevitable, however, the simple Catholic affirmations being taught there began to clash with the atheistic trends of thought at the universities in the vicinity-notably Harvard. Students-a number of them from influential families-began to defend the Faith and protest against teachings contrary to it. Some, especially those converted to Catholicism through the Center, went so far as to withdraw from their respective academic institutions. Predictably, such actions caused no little upset, both to the universities and to many of the students' families.
Nonetheless, with such a mission and against such odds, the Center gradually became an institute of studies of intense interest to a growing number of men and women, who sought to be educated entirely by it. As the students studied the Catholic Faith more deeply, they became aware of the dogma-namely, "Outside the Church there is no salvation"-the displacement of which had made Catholic liberalism possible.
As the late Father Denis Fahey has reminded us. "Satan wants men to forget that there is one true religion." The message of Saint Benedict Center, therefore, was bound to run into opposition.
It was amid those circumstances that Saint Benedict Center became a religious congregation taking as its name "The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary" (Mancipia Immaculati Cordis Mariae). The date of this important development is January 17, 1949, when all those who were then lay members of the Center bound themselves by a vow to the doctrinal crusade. The words of the co-founder, Catherine Goddard Clarke (henceforth to be referred to as Sister Catherine, M.I.C.M.), explain the reason for this common dedication.
"We were beginning to realize the character of the battle before us, not only for the preservation of the sacred dogmas of the Church, but actually for their restoration. It was to prepare ourselves by prayer and discipline, and to secure graces enough to enable us to face such a battle, that we became a religious order."