inundado por um mistério de luz que é Deus e N´Ele vi e ouvi -A ponta da lança como chama que se desprende, toca o eixo da terra, – Ela estremece: montanhas, cidades, vilas e aldeias com os seus moradores são sepultados. - O mar, os rios e as nuvens saem dos seus limites, transbordam, inundam e arrastam consigo num redemoinho, moradias e gente em número que não se pode contar , é a purificação do mundo pelo pecado em que se mergulha. - O ódio, a ambição provocam a guerra destruidora! - Depois senti no palpitar acelerado do coração e no meu espírito o eco duma voz suave que dizia: – No tempo, uma só Fé, um só Batismo, uma só Igreja, Santa, Católica, Apostólica: - Na eternidade, o Céu! Malachi Martin: visionary priest, Cold War spy or notorious womanizer?
Malachi Martin, author & former Jesuit priest
The year was 1962 and the Catholic Church was going through some of its most profound and turbulent changes in its 2,000 year history: Vatican II. Father Malachi Martin, at that time, a 41 year-old brilliant Jesuit priest, was making his own undercover history: meeting, influencing and negotiating with the world’s spiritual and political power brokers.
The frail and diminuitive Martin allegedly travelled the world on clandestine missions for the Vatican seeking peace, reconciliation and concessions for part of his brief and tumultous 11 years as a Jesuit priest.
Allegations that Martin was a Cold War spy, even a double agent, and an Israeli informant can be traced to at least one source.
In his 2007 book, American Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel, author Edward K. Kaplan said that Martin cooperated with the American Jewish Committee during the Vatican Council “for a mixture of motives, both lofty and ignoble.” He “primarily advised the committee on theological issues, but he also provided logistical intelligence and copies of restricted documents.” Catholic author, William H. Kennedy, denied the allegations as well as non-Catholic blogger Marnie Tunay.
Unfortunately, so much of the commentary on Martin’s clandestine years were written with decidely anti-Catholic sentiment, that it’s difficult to get a clear snapshot of Martin’s complicated mission. In fact, there only seems to one photograph of the priest at all (the one in which a 60ish Martin is wearing a well-tailored overcoat, suit, tie and no Roman collar). A few other photos are around, but they’re rare.
One of Martin’s many gifts was his visionary gift of reading the “signs of the times” and understanding that Vatican II was part of the first tremors of a colossal sesmic shift shaking old edifices and changing attitudes of the times to the shock of some and the delight of others.
In a Foreword written for the 1993 book, The Thunder of Justice, by Ted and Maureen Flynn, Martin wrote …
“The most pathetic among us are those who are especially skillful in analyzing material trends like the weather, the stock market, the latest political omens, and the most up-to-date vogue in fashions and sexual mores, but who cannot read what Christ emphasized as those telltale ‘signs of the times.’”Martin’s reputation was smeared with the 2002 publishing of the Robert Blair Kaiser book, “Clercial Error, A True Story,” in which Kaiser, a party-host journalist from Time magazine, was covering the 3 1/2-year long Vatican II conclave. In his book Kaiser claimed that Martin seduced his wife thereby destroying Kaiser’s marriage. The Time journalist also alleged that Martin was a notorious womanizer leaving behind a trail of broken hearts in various Roman villas.
Incidentally, Kaiser has published a new book, Cardinal Mahony, a somewhat uncomfortable offering to the creative art form called “faction” or “fiction-nonfiction” in which the Cardinal of Los Angeles is kidnapped by terrorists, whisked away in a helicopter, then resorts to street-talk profanities.
In this fictional portrayal of a foul-mouthed Cardinal Mahony one wonders if Kaiser’s attempt to arouse readership interest in a fiction-nonfiction genre, did he also fictionalize Martin’s alleged affair with the journalist’s wife? At the time of the alleged affair, Kaiser was supposedly undergoing mental treatment for paranoid schizophrenia, a charge that Kaiser says had nothing to do with the allegation of a “clerical error.” And if Kaiser was boiling mad about the alleged tryst between Martin and his wife, why did it take Kaiser 40 years to publish the book? He must have been on a really slow boil.
Malachi Martin’s novels are masterpieces of grand and provocative storytelling especially Windswept House with its famous account of the Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer on June 29, 1963, simultaniously performed secretly at St. Paul’s Chapel at the Vatican along with a mirror luciferic enthronement at the same moment in South Carolina.
Martin, who was an exorcist and claimed to see demons alongside people walking by on sidewalks, was very much aware of demonic activities and sacriligious celebrations.
When Pope Paul VI uttered his memorable statement that “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church,” many believed that it was Martin’s account that the pope was referring to.
While many Catholics were stunned by Martin’s enthronement account, evangelical Christians and other detractors were falling out of their chairs ecstatically claiming, “See. See. We told you that the Catholic Church was Satanic.”
What these anti-Catholics failed to understand was that Satan is trying to destroy the Catholic Church because it is Catholicism that is the dark one’s greatest enemy. Catholicism and Satanism are exact polar opposites. Why do you suppose there’s a “black” mass? Because it’s the perfect antithesis of mankind’s ultimate homage to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
Martin’s genius understood this and was trying to warn the world that a tiny, yet very powerful band of luciferic, pedophiliac intruders, were trying to snake their way into the corridors of the Vatican.
The Catholic Church is one, true, holy and apostolic, but there’s still a serpent at its heel ready to strike. Malachi Martin knew this and through his writing he tried to alert us.
Toward the end of his life, Martin was interviewed by author, Michael Cuneo, who reported in his book American Exorcism, that the priest was perplexed and more than a little annoyed by the swirl of rumors surrounding his personal life. Cuneo quotes Martin as saying:
“Look, I’ve had three heart operatons, recently open-heart surgery, and I’m at the point where I’d like to put some of these stories to rest. I’ve been accused of everything: speculation on my life is a veritable cottage industry. I’m a lecher, a wife-stealer, and a spy; I’m secretly married with children; I’ve sexually abused little girls –it’s all nothing but fancy.”
In conclusion, Malachi Martin might be considered by some to be the archetype for 21st century Catholicism…exploding with life, incandescent intellect, passionate about his faith, dazzling in his writing, swirling in mystery; but always, always, always a crusader for truth and justice struggling to use the prodigious gifts God gave him to advance the Kingdom of God and be of significant service to his Church.
The South Coast Report is an investigative journal reporting on the events, trends and persons affecting our nation and our nation’s largest denominational family … the Catholic Church.