The Catholic Church in Crisis

The New American, June 9, 1997

Catholic priest Malachi Martin does not reside in a rectory, seminary, or any other typical locale for a cleric. In the 1960s, after leaving his post as an official in the Vatican, he obtained release from his vows as a member of the Jesuit order and began living the life of a lay person with canonical approval.
Father Martin is still a Catholic priest who offers Mass in private, but he is deeply troubled by the wholesale alteration of “virtually everything Catholic” over the past three decades. His most recent book, a novel entitled Windswept House (published by Doubleday in 1996), depicts political and religious intrigue by a small group of highly placed Church officials within the Vatican who seek to steer the Roman Catholic Church into the new world order. The novel depicts the efforts of disloyal cardinals who work feverishly to subvert the Pope and the Church, and have no reluctance to use murder, blackmail, and satanism.
Father Martin was interviewed at his New York City residence by John F. McManus, publisher of THE NEW AMERICAN.
Q. You state that your book is neither fiction nor fact, but a “factional” work. What do you mean?
A. Windswept House is a novel. But it is 85 percent based on actual fact, and most of the personages appearing in it are real even though I have given them fictional names. There are also some living persons mentioned such as Mikhail Gorbachev who appears as himself. And a few key characters are actually composites of several real persons.

Q. You left the Jesuits and the ordinary priestly life more than 30 years ago. At that time you were assigned in the Vatican as a close personal associate of Pope John XXIII and Cardinal Augustin Bea. What caused you to leave?

The "Black Pope": Jesuit Superior General Jean-Baptiste Janssens 1946-64

A. I found it increasingly difficult to see Christ in any of my immediate superiors. There was no liberal cause Cardinal Bea didn’t pursue. I even regarded the head of the Jesuits at the time, Father Jean Baptiste Janssens, as an enemy of the faith. My colleagues believed that the formal Oath Against Modernism, required of every priest at the time but since discarded, was a joke. That oath bound all of us to oppose the “updating” of dogma so as to bring it in line with “the attitudes of the day.” In essence, modernism holds that dogmas change — a total absurdity. I could no longer lend my name to such subversion.
Q. So you left the Jesuits. But that didn’t relieve you of your duties as a priest. What is your status today?
A. At my request, Pope Paul VI granted me a universal status where I would not be under the supervision of any bishop. I don’t dress like a priest and I don’t hold any priestly assignment. But I am still a priest.
Q. When you sought to leave the Vatican, was there any attempt to ralk you into staying?
A. Yes, I was told that I could expect to made a cardinal, that I had biblical knowledge, a facility with languages, youth, excellent health, and a good memory, all of which made me a candidate for advancement. But I didn’t want to stay because I saw that the faith was being compromised by many.
Q. Your book begins with a vivid description of a sacrilegious “Black Mass” held in 1963 in Charleston, South Carolina. Did this really happen?
A. Yes it did. And the participation by telephone of some high officials of the church in the Vatican is also a fact. The young female who was forced to be a part of this satanic ritual is very much alive and, happily, has been able to marry and lead a normal life. She supplied details about the event.
Q. You refer to one of your chief characters as the “Slavic Pope” and another as the “Cardinal from Century City.” Do you mean Pope John Paul II and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago?
A. I can’t say yes to such speculations. I have written a book of “faction.” It is not a documentary. There is a glossary floating about that purports to provide the real names of dozens of my characters. I did not compile it and do not concur with its claims although I must say it is well done.
Q. In addition to the “Cardinal from Century City,” you depict numerous other cardinals and bishops in a very bad light. Are these characterizations based on fact?
A. Yes, among the cardinals and the hierarchy there are satanists, homosexuals, anti-papists, and cooperators in the drive for world rule.
Q. Is there as much intrigue and disloyalty within the Vatican as your book seems to indicate?
A. There is more than I have provided in the book. The Pope is surrounded by men in clerical garb who do not possess the Catholic faith; they are working with foundations, organizations, international groups, financial institutions, governments, academia, and other agencies to bring a new world order into existence.
Q. Your book claims that subversive influences in the highest clerical positions of the Church are working to bring it into the new world order. What do you mean by “new world order?”
A. In it’s completely planned form, there will be a total globalization of money, and the flow of capital and capital goods will be managed from a single, centrally directed entity such as the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland. Any nation that does not submit to the globalized system will perish.
In addition, there will be an expanded United Nations which will spread its new ethical structure, already championed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong. This will replace the Ten Commandments and become the basis of a new universal and godless religion.
All serious Christians, Catholics above all, will be forced to endure a dry martyrdom where they will be required to abandon everything they believe, They will be pressed to accept the new form of the state with its new religion.
This new world order will not be centered on a group of buildings from which emissaries are dispatched to give orders to the world. There will still be national legislatures, but the governments of the world will be directed by those who have climbed there way into the capstone.
Q. What do you mean by the “capstone”?
A. The underlying force I have written about in Windswept House is structured very much like a pyramid. It is wide at the bottom where many individuals work for its goals and hope to be elevated to a higher place. There are fewer and fewer inhabitants in each of the ascending steps in the structure. Only a very few form its ultimate directorate, the capstone of the pyramid. These individuals have no loyalty to the nations they came from; they are a new type of human being, an internationalist who seeks to control mankind. Each is a godless and, collectively, they intend to use religion, governments, and anything they find useful to impose their will.
It is my opinion, for instance, that the USSR didn’t disintegrate naturally but was ordered to collapse. Gorbachev was told to vacate his power base, and also to inform other leaders of the Soviet bloc nations to do likewise. Those orders came from the capstone.
Q. Do you foresee physical repression in this new world order?
A. Yes I do, though a completely new kind. The forces determined to achieve total power will indeed create detention camps, but the individuals sent into them will always be victims of completely legal proceedings; they will be found guilty of breaking fully enacted laws.
Q. Is the Catholic Church more their target than other churches?
A. Yes, because it is a separate international organization that cannot be allowed to exist as a competitor. The Catholic Church has its own diplomatic corps of ambassadors posted in the highly industrialized nations of the world. There are 180 nations that have sent their own ambassadors to the Vatican. No other church commands this attention. Those who are working for the new world order must bring this unique organization under their control. The process by which they are attempting to accomplish this is described in Windswept House. In the book I state, “The Church is the sine qua non for the advent of the new world order.”
Q. You have depicted a near complete disintegration of the Catholic Church which includes a refusal on the part of the Church leaders to expel heretical and apostate theologians, stop phony marriage annulments, oust homosexuals, force bishops to adhere to church laws and dogmas, etc. In a previous book, you excused the Pope for not taking action to stop these abuses, intimating that he had good reasons for his perplexing tolerance. Now, however, you have adopted a much tougher attitude that no longer offers excuses for his inaction. Why the new attitude?
A. It is too late to try to find excuses. The Pope should use his authority to save the Church from its internal enemies. The problem within the Church today is apostasy, the standing apart from basic dogmas, especially by those who hold high places. This is not the same as heresy and schism. Apostates should be expelled. When they are not ousted, the people gradually fall into the same apostasy.
Q. Won’t some Catholics be angry with you because of your criticism of the Pope and your condemnation of the Church’s highest officials?
A. Some already are. But the popes are ordinary men who are elevated to an extraordinary level and given extraordinary powers. In all but a very narrow area, they are as fallible as were Judas and Peter. As for cardinals and bishops, there are many great saints but the church has long been inflicted with intrigue and disloyalty from some of them.
Q. Does what you describe have anything to do with the plans of the 19th century Italian Carbonari? Didn’t that group set out to infiltrate the Church so the clergy and the Catholic people would follow its directions?

Carbonari Initiation 1821

A. Precisely! But the Carbonari was never any phantasmagoric association operating out of the cellars with hoods and tall hats. If you understand the tactics of the Carbonari, you know that its leaders never intended to destroy the Church; they intended to use it. They recognized the Church as a stabilizing social force in the world and they wanted to control it for their own purposes. Their stated goal was to surround the Pope and the Vatican with their kind and have the Church follow their lead. Their plan always called for co-opting the church by sending their people into the seminaries and convents, not destroying it.
Q. Has anything like what you describe ever happened in the 2,000 years of the Catholic Church?
A. No, nothing like it. There has never been a moment when at virtually every level of the Church, apostasy is fomented, protected, allowed, and never even commented upon. All of this means one thing to me: It doesn’t mean the end of the Church; it means the end of the Church’s structure as we know it.
And I don’t expect the end of the American Catholic Church to break with Rome and create a formal schism. When there is apostasy, the unknowing Catholic people remain obedient; if there where formal schism instead of apostasy, the American prelates — and the prelates of any nation announcing such a formal break — would lose the obedience of the people.
Q. One of the several living persons in your book whose name you actually use is Mikhail Gorbachev. Is he more or less dangerous to mankind now that he is no longer the leader of the former Soviet Union?
A. He is far more dangerous. He is destined for great things in the plans of those who are implementing “the process” that leads to the new world order.
Q. Your book mentions “the evening of NATO.” Do you mean that NATO is about to disappear?
A. No, I mean the evening of NATO as it was constructed. It was originally formed as a military alliance to oppose any possible Soviet advance westward. There is no more Soviet Union and no remaining threat of a Soviet military invasion of the West. NATO should have been dissolved but its structure is useful, so it is being given a new political and economic role.
Q. You mention the Council on Foreign Relations, but only briefly. What is your attitude about the CFR?
A. It is not the brain behind all of this. There is a higher level of authority and planning which draws on the CFR and other groups. This is the capstone I mentioned previously.
Q. How have reviewers treated your book?
A. There have been no bad reviews. But numerous reviewers have done a “gang” review of my book and Andrew Greeley’s White Smoke, which recommends the election of another Pope who will carry on what the Church is enduring today. That, of course, is not what is needed, yet reviewers refer to him as a conservative and me as a radical. It is laughable.
The New York Times hasn’t reviewed my book and I don’t expect its book editors to do so. Not too long ago, another work of mine that made the top of the Times best-seller list prompted one of its reviewers to refer to me simply as “a good read.”
Q. What is next for Malachi Martin?
A. In the 12th century, the Jewish scholar Maimonides wrote a “Guide for the Perplexed” for his people. I hope to write a book somewhat like his to help Catholics during this very perplexing period in history.