Word: feeney
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When told about outbreaks that occur after he has gone, Feeney refuses to believe them. "I'm sure my lovely little boys wouldn't do such things," he says. But one of these "little boys," six-foot Hugh McIsaac, whom Notre Dame's Frank Leahy once called the "greatest football possibility" he'd seen in a long time, jumps up on the platform every Sunday after Feeney is through and says if anybody tries to hurt Feeney, it'll be over his dead body. Hugh, and his brother Joe, a former Harvard man, form a bodyguard for the aging preacher...
...fall of 1951, Feeney had become a permanent Sunday fixture on the common. His talks had changed completely from a positive assertion of his dogma to a vicious and negative attack on Jews, Protestants, and the Catholic hierarchy in Boston...
...today, he feels that he is losing much of the popular support he had. Not a single Harvard College student has joined the movement in the last year, though many come to hear him who aren't official followers. Observers think Feeney's decline is due to the completely negative quality of his talks. His audiences have never ceased to grow, but the ranks of heckiers are also enlarging. This has caused frequent disturbances, and now police are present almost every Sunday...
Last spring, Feeney began to let his "boys" do some of the talking. Many were former Harvard students, and they tried to say the same things Feeney had been saying for months. The response to one was typical...
Someone started heckling him in the midst of a stream of abuse against the Jews. Give me a break, will you?" said the young preacher. "This is my first time up here." The heckler replied that Feeney never gave anyone a break...