Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:12 pm Post subject: AQ Exclusive: Malachi Martin a 60s liberal? No, FAR worse
Malachi Martin wasn't a 60s liberal, he was far worse
John Grasmeier
March, 2007
Angelqueen.org
September 20, 1996
Milt Rosenberg of WGN in Chicago interviews Malachi Martin. Earlier that day, Rosenberg had been reading through Edmund Wilson's memoirs ("The Sixties", 1993, Farrar Straus and Giroux) and became puzzled by what he read. Below is the audio file and the transcript of the exchange that follows:
Rosenberg: Only today and I pulled out, uh, my copy of Edmund Wilson’s memoirs from the 1960s…
Martin: Yes
Rosenberg: which I had read when they first appeared a few years ago, and uh...
Martin: He was a friend of mine.
Rosenberg: I know he was, and I was quite delighted when I found it in my original reading of it that you show up as a man he was very interested in. But I looked you up in the index and went back to the pages, and in his first encounter with you, he reports you as saying to him, that your Jesuit colleagues were beginning to stay away from you because you overtly spoke in doubt about the central items of faith. They too shared those doubts, but it was sort or normative in that Jesuit culture, not to directly confront…
Martin: Not to ask questions.
Rosenberg: Not to ask questions.
Martin: Not to (unintelligible)
Rosenberg: Even though they didn’t believe in the full divinity of Jesus either, and were you were questioning that, and questioning….
Martin: I was not… I was not in question to it. I was asking question after question about everything.
Rosenberg: Yeah.
Martin: About everything.
Rosenberg: And it was on that basis that you left. As I’ve known you for many years.. .
Martin: Yes.
Rosenberg: …I would classify you as just about the most conservative, the most traditional and the most angry of all, uh, angry at the Church.
Martin: That’s right. That’s right.
Rosenberg: Angry because they have abandoned the traditions which you take to be central to the faith.
Martin: Yes that’s right. Woo..yeh, I - I can’t add one thing to that Milton.
Rosenberg: But you, what you di…Yes you can, you need to explain it.
Martin: Well what happened was…
Rosenberg: You left the liberal and now you’re a staunch defender of the eternal faith.
Martin: Yes, I…I..
Rosenberg: You are defensor piti-dei.
Martin: I’m dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist, fuddy-duddy conservative. To put it in (unintelligible).
Rosenberg: Well…
Martin: Why..
Rosenberg: Answer the question why did that happen.
Martin: Why… Uhhhh. Well Milton, eh eh, prepare to sort of, uh, mentally absorb this. The the, ah, ah, as a car absorbs the shock. I had personal revelations. Not the visions of my eyes no, I never had any visual things. But I had enlightenment inside of me, a lot of enlightenment. I went very low in my socio-economic condition, I was as poor as a church mice. I really lacked… I was hungry.
Rosenberg: For a while you were riding, you were driving a taxi cab in New York.
Martin: Yes I was. I was only living on apples, and chocolate and chocolate éclairs and coffee. I had nothing. And then I had a (unintelligible)…
Rosenberg: Chocolate éclairs is an unusual item in a starvation diet.
Martin: Well actually. The, the because ge the glucose helped me give me energy for work. I slept in the cab and things like that. Ehhh (unintelligible)… I knew nobody…(unintelligible) Two years before I had been the head doctor. I was “professore narte.” I was honored and I had always the Vatican shadow sanctioning whatever I did and said. I was honored everywhere. Suddenly I became a non-entity, despised by our former bre… by my former brethren, who wouldn’t even talk to me. And I had no possessions in the world, I had no friends really. (Unintelligible) in the jungle called New York like a cork bobbing in the water. And just, it.. it brought me down to the basics.
I suddenly realized (swallows) what I was and what a wo.. and where I came from, and what richness I had in heritage. And what uh, it meant to be a believer and t… to be chaste and to be poor in spirit, really poor in spirit. Not to avow poverty where you enjoyed all the riches of the land as supplied by the Jesuit Order of the Vatican. I really practiced poverty, I couldn’t buy a pair of socks. I didn’t know how to pay my rent. Ya know. Ah..ahhh.ahh..ah, so that brought me to reality. And then I started um practicing the faith as I always had practiced it, but never with the same fervor. And I got an enlightenment of mind that is still working out in me. I have two or three more books to write about it if I have the life in my body to do so.
February 13, 1967
Setting:
Famed literary critic Edmund Wilson attends a dinner party. Roger Straus, the host, is owner of the renowned New York publishing firm Farrar, Straus and Company and wealthy heir to the Guggenheim fortune. Also in attendance are various hoi polloi of the New York literary scene including Robert Silvers, a writer for the “New York Review” and Pulitzer Prize winner Jean Stafford. Straus is Wilson’s publisher who also would later publish of several Martin’s books. Straus had already published “The Pilgrim”, a tell-all book on the behind the scenes activities at the Second Vatican Council which Martin had penned under the pseudonym “Michael Serafian”.
The "Davis" Wilson refers to below is Fr. Charles Davis, a priest from England, who like Martin, acted as peritus (expert) during the Second Vatican Council. In late 1966 Davis left not only the priesthood, but the Catholic Church altogether, planning to marry an American woman who was also leaving the Church. Said Davis in the December, 1966 Issue of Time Magazine, "I do not think that the claim the church makes as an institution rests upon any adequate Biblical and historical basis. I don't believe that the church is absolute, and I don't believe any more in papal infallibility. There is concern for authority at the expense of truth, as I am constantly shown by instances of the damage to persons by the workings of an impersonal and unfree system."
The "woman from Crete" mentioned is Kakia Livanos, the wealthy widow of a shipping tycoon who Martin would go on to live with for over 30 years. From Edmund Wilson's memoirs:
Dinner at the Strauses'. I was at Dorotheas's right, and across from me was a man who talked politics with great vigor and who turned out to be Robert Silvers of The New York Review. Jean Stafford was on my right and at her right was a Dr. Malachi Martin, whom Roger had described to me as a "Jesuit Dropout." He had worked for Cardinal Bea and when the movement for reform was frustrated at the 2nd Vatican Council, he had resigned from the Jesuit order - very much as Davis in England resigned from the priesthood. Roger said that there had been some scandal about him, and it seemed clear that he had taken up with a woman from Crete - formerly married to a Hungarian - who runs a jewelry store. Roger had met him in Paris and seems to have brought him over. Why? He has done one book for Roger about the Vatican and is suspected of being the author or part author of the books signed Xavier Rynne.
Wilson, a well known atheist, had already written several articles for “The New Yorker” regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls and had also compiled a book on the subject. Wilson held the view - which has since fallen out of favor among the vast majority of scroll scientists and scholars - that the scrolls were the sole work of the Essenes in Qumran. Wilson, who was not a scholar, was also pushing flawed hypothesis that the early Christians hijacked the concept of the Messiah from the Essenes. This highly heretical and unsupportable view was being pushed by a handful prominent scroll scholars of the time who were attempting to develop the manufactured Messiah theory. Among them were Andre Dupont-Sommer and the highly polemical and often wrong (to the point of retraction) John Allegro. The fabricated Gospel hypothesis was not then, and is not now in any way supported by solid scholarship or science.
Among the those who rejected the “invented Christ” hypothesis was the respected Dead Sea Scroll project manager, Fr. Roland de Vaux and the lesser known Fr. Geoffrey Graystone who wrote the book “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Originality of Christ”.
At dinner, Wilson brings up the subject of Fr. Graystone’s book to Martin. Wilson gives the following account of the exchange:
When I (Wilson) mentioned the book by Graystone, that was dated from Rome and which seemed to have been written to combat my possible influence, he (Martin) said. “Oh Graystone! Even de Vaux can’t stand him” – which raised a laugh. But they could not have appreciated his crack when he added, “He dedicated it to the Virgin Mary, didn’t he? Graystone is a Marist, and the Marists are a recent order. I think this remark was due to as Jesuit snobbery toward Marists.
Late April 1967
Edmund Wilson meets Malachi Martin for lunch . He notices that Martin is undergoing a “crisis”, which Wilson believes to have been brought on by two factors; One being that Martin was struggling with the circumstances that led to him being forced out of he Jesuits, the other being that Roger Straus related to him (Wilson) that Martin’s “Greek Girlfriend" was causing him grief. Wilson writes:
He talked about the scrolls, but also what it meant to be a Jesuit. I can see he is going through a crisis on account of leaving the order and, also, Roger thinks, because his Greek girlfriend is a "ball-crusher." He expressed himself not hysterically, but I could see that he was full of emotion. The Jesuit has to learn obedience and learn to like obedience; he must suffer, but must believe that his suffering is a sacrifice to promoting Christianity. It is obvious that he is now for the first time giving expression to the scorn and resentment that must long have been rankling with him. He ridiculed the sacred relics: The arm of St. Theresa, the bones of the Magi on the ceiling at Cologne, the foreskin of Jesus, which he says caused a war (I thought this was an invention o Peyrefitte’s). He told of an operation, after which he asked what he had said under ether. The doctor laughed and told him that he was certainly a normal man. You couldn't keep nature down. I had learned from Roger that Martin had had an affair with the wife of the Time-Life representative, and that he had been exiled by the Church to Jerusalem, where for two years he edited a magazine.
Later, after Wilson notes that Martin is “obsessed by the scrolls”, he continues:
But he was evidently suffering from bafflement at the lack of evidence for a transition from the Essenes to Jesus. Originally, there had only been Jews, some of whom had accepted Jesus as Messiah, then something quite new appeared: the idea that the blood of a certain man could gain salvation for anyone, Gentile or Jew; and Paul organized the movement. What happened in between? In the case of Allegro, this bafflement has evidently given rise to his theory that all the names in the New Testament really have an esoteric meaning and are connected with the Essene sect. His article in Harper’s and a recent letter to me sound like the ideas of someone who thinks he has discovered a cipher that proves that Shakespeare was written by Bacon.
Graystone, the Marist priest who had written a book dated Rome, with a chapter directed against me and perhaps provoked by my book, Martin said had been a pupil of his and was terribly stupid, couldn’t even read Hebrew. I had first taken Martin’s compliments as Irish blarney, but he now told me that that since I had met him, he had read my book through three times, and that I had stimulated him to think about the scrolls again. I believe he is the only person of any intellect that my book has ever influenced.
April 9, 1968
Wilson and Martin go to dinner. Wilson offers the following account:
As seems inevitable, he got later on the subject of his ordeals as a Jesuit priest. The three things that a Catholic priest has to accept were the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul. If your colleagues in the priesthood began to be aware that you were entertaining doubts, they avoided and eventually ostracized you. They themselves might be loyal to their faith only by observing its ritual, and keeping its creed in a shut-off compartment rather like the doublethink of Orwell. They might interest themselves in other things, but they had always in their thoughts, this permanently paralyzed area.
June 9, 1969
Wilson attends a dinner party for another author, Lillian Hellman. He tells of how the restaurant reminds him of one he had been to recently with Malachi Martin:
The next night (Monday), Lillian Hellman's dinner given by Little, Brown to celebrate the publication of her autobiography. It was a very grand, somber, expensive, high-ceilinged restaurant of the kind that Malachi Martin had taken me to lunch a few days before. Both with several floors, many steps and no elevators; both more or less labyrinthine; both incredibly expensive. When Martin learned about my teeth, he suggested and "omelette aux fines herbs", which turned out to cost $6; (he was evidently an habitué, talked familiar French and Italian to the waiters - Roger tells me that his present lady thus keeps him in style - he seemed now less a defrocked fish out of water than a maturing man of the world).
March 6, 1970
Wilson attends a cocktail party for Martin's latest book, "Three Popes and a Cardinal" at the home of publisher Roger Straus. He writes:
A mob, the kind of party I had managed to avoid for years and that I did not expect. I supposed that it would be simply for a few learned men. Got Wilfred Sheed sitting in a corner and had a conversation with him, spoke of religion for the first time. I said that I couldn't even understand the idea about Christ: Sent down by the Father to suffer and redeem the human race. If you believe this you will be forgiven. What sense does that make? Wilfred modestly replied that this doctrine had the advantage of providing a Christian intercessor.
I said to Malachi that, after his admirable exposition of the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their obsolescence, their impossibility at the present time, he had left the impression of a vacuum, had barely mentioned Marxism, the substitute religion that had come to fill it. He said that he had never thought of this, that he wished I had spoken of it to him.
Observations:
During the time of the council in the mid 60s, up through the interactions with his friend Edmund Wilson in the late 60s, Malachi Martin was not merely a liberal Catholic, but he may not have been a Catholic at all. According to the first hand accounts of Wilson, Martin ridiculed the sacred relics of Holy Mother Church. He calls a priest author, who wrote a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls from a Catholic perspective, "terribly stupid" and makes a "crack" in an attempt to diminish Fr. Graystone for dedicating his book to the Blessed Virgin Mary. However, he read Wilson's book on the scrolls - which adheres to the "fabricated Christ" theory - three times. Martin was baffled by the fact that the Essenes believed in a Jewish Messiah and according to Wilson, couldn't understand how the "new" concept arose where the Messiah sheds his blood for the gentiles. Martin relates to Wilson that he ran into problems with his Jesuit colleagues by over his views on the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.
We now have yet another conflicting account from Martin himself as to why he left the Jesuits. The above account, as related by Edmund Wilson, has him leaving because his Jesuit brethren were beginning to reject Martin because over his heterodoxy or heresy. Martin by default confirms this with Milt Rosenberg when he says that he was "questioning everything" and then goes on about his supposed conversionary experience brought on by the "revelations" he had at the time he was driving a cab and eating chocolate éclairs. The account given by Martin to Ben Kaufman of the Cincinnati Enquirer has him leaving the SOJ because of a "clear understanding" of the "malicious joy" Martin took from digging up dirt on Cardinals in order to coerce them if they opposed Cardinal Bea during the council. According to Father Fiore, Martin told him that he left the Jesuits because he saw "first hand the escalating battle between traditionalists and modernists" and that if he stayed with the Jesuits, Martin would be "constrained in his orthodoxy." Leaving the Kaufman interview aside, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Martin was either being deceptive with Wilson and Rosenberg, or he was being deceptive with Father Fiore.
Regarding Martins move to New York, according to the above account from Edmund Wilson, he gets the impression that Roger Straus brought Martin to New York because he had already written "The Pilgrim" as Michael Serafian and because Martin was suspected of being involved with pseudonym Xavier Rynne. At least one of Rynne's identities was later discovered to be Father Murphy - another Council insider who was feeding information to many of the same publications that Martin was. However in regard to Martin's relocation Father Fiore writes: "...his life was at risk from some who felt he knew too much and feared his zeal for the Church. He was literally tracked from Rome to Paris, and thence to Ireland, where Jesuit friends of his family attempted to convince them that he was mentally ill. He fled to New York to escape them, where--still a priest--for a time he drove a taxi and washed dishes to support himself." Father Fiore relates this version of events as fact, but he could only have been relying, likely innocently, on what Martin had told him. Father Fiore had no contact with Martin until the 1980s. Further, according to what Father Fiore writes, Martin's life was literally "at risk" and he was being internationally pursued by the Jesuits because of his supposed "zeal for the Church". Again, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Martin was either not being truthful with Wilson and Rosenberg, or he was not being truthful with Father Fiore. One can't be heterodox and orthodox at the same time. Fr. Fiore's letters defending Martin after his death can be seen as an admirable defense of a friend, but they seem to rely solely on what he was fed by Martin himself.
In the mid to late 60s, Martin was living the high-life, attending cocktail parties and dining with the wealthiest of the New York elite. According to the Federal Reserve consumer price index calculator, the $6 omelet at the "incredibly expensive" restaurant where Martin was a regular would cost $33.60 today. Edmund Wilson believes Martin was brought from Paris to New York by Roger Straus, the extremely wealthy sole heir to the Guggenheim fortune and owner of a prominent publishing firm. He's living with Kakia Livanos, who is also very wealthy. Yet Martin could barely feed himself and couldn't buy a pair of socks?
Roger Straus via Edmund Wilson's memoirs, offers another documented account of Kakia Livanos being more than Martin's "landlady" and also offers another documented account of him having an affair with Robert Kaiser's wife. As to the latter, those who have went on the record with this claim now include Joe Roddy, Editor in Chief of Look Magazine, Robert Kaiser former Time-Life Bureau Bureau Chief and husband of the woman, and Roger Straus, owner of Ferrar, Straus and Company publishing. The New York Times obituary has her as his "companion." According to Father Fiore, who didn't even know Martin until the 1980s, Kaiser's wife "had requested Malachi's counsel about her husband's drinking and her unhappy marriage, and she coincidentally left Rome to return home at the same time that Malachi went to Paris."
When Edmund Wilson first meets Martin in early 1967, one of the first things he learns from Straus about Martin is that he wrote "The Pilgrim." This indicates that it was becoming known in certain circles that Martin and Michael Serafian were one in the same quite some time before it was formerly disclosed in any of Martins books.
Malachi Martin wasn't just a 60's liberal, he was far worse.
Last edited by servitium on Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
Personal failings aside (we all have 'em, and we shouldn't bring attention to those of others without a grave reason), there's no reason to think that Martin's oft expressed anti-liberalism wasn't sincere. The more sensationalistic aspects of his writings should not be automatically believed--this is nothing new. On the other hand, if there were any truth behind some of the claims he made it would stand to reason that he knew of them because of his past liberalism or worse-than-liberalism. Men in whom there is no guile are kept in the dark about the darkest goings-on in the church for obvious reasons.
So we are now to believe the musings, rumors, tainted observations and possible lies of an athiest and multiple Jewish sources that disparage the reputation of Fr. Malachy Martin (may he RIP) based on 30-35-40 year old documents? And this is news? Or is it merely another example of those who attempted to destroy Fr. Martin when he lived and now attempt to destroy his reputation after his death?
Is there perhaps, just perhaps, another agenda here?
cal·um·ny /ˈkæləmni/ Pronunciation Key [kal-uhm-nee]
–noun, plural -nies. 1. a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something
synonyms 2. libel, vilification, calumniation, derogation.
So we are now to believe the musings, rumors, tainted observations and possible lies of an athiest and multiple Jewish sources that disparage the reputation of Fr. Malachy Martin (may he RIP) based on 30-35-40 year old documents? And this is news? Or is it merely another example of those who attempted to destroy Fr. Martin when he lived and now attempt to destroy his reputation after his death?
Is there perhaps, just perhaps, another agenda here?
cal·um·ny /ˈkæləmni/ Pronunciation Key [kal-uhm-nee]
–noun, plural -nies. 1. a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something
synonyms 2. libel, vilification, calumniation, derogation.
This isn't the last you've heard of Malachi Martin's shenanigans.
For God's sake give it a rest. Let Fr. Martin rest in peace. There must be better things with which to occupy our minds without desecrating the memory of someone who is not able to defend himself. Calumny and Detration? Indeed yes!
For God's sake give it a rest. Let Fr. Martin rest in peace. There must be better things with which to occupy our minds without desecrating the memory of someone who is not able to defend himself. Calumny and Detration? Indeed yes!
Why? So well intentioned Catholics will be able to justify teeling others that there are Satanists in the Vatican because Malachi Martin said so(Milingo said that as well. Would people justify saying it because Milingo said it)....
OR that an elaborate Satanist ritual was held over phone conference in Rome and Charleston, SC because Malachi Martin said so.
OR that we should be open to the possibility of UFO's because Malachi Martin said so.....
OR we should pay attention to some ridiculous observatory because Malachi Martin said so.
I'll venture a prediction Serv. You are going to undergo a great deal of abuse because you've just started to knock down one of the icons of the trad movement. Naturally you can handle it but...........since Malachi Martin said all the right things and pushed a lot of buttons many trads will resent anyone who says the emperor is naked. That is what is truly sad. But let me pose a rhetorical question.
Is it slander and detraction to mention the failings of Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503)?
Is it slander and detraction to mention the failings of William Cardinal O'Connell as Randi Engel has done?
What about Cardinal Bernadin and others as Randi Engel did?
Just because someone says the right things like Malachi Martin did does not render them immune from criticism. Randi Engel was right to write what she did as was Serv about Malachi Martin.
Sixupman wrote:
"For God's sake give it a rest. Let Fr. Martin rest in peace."
It would be far easier to let him rest in peace if his work had died with him....but it didn't. His work continues to affect the hearts and minds of Catholics, and for that reason the red flags need to be investigated.
Thanks for going through the time and effort in putting all of this together, Serv.
With his permission from Paul VI to leave the Society, he was laicized (reduced from the clerical state) but retained his priestly faculties, thus explaining his lay dress).
Does that statement not make sense to anyone? I e-mailed 3 priests about this quote because it seems that Fr Fiore is stating that a laicized priest can still be a priest with faculties. I asked them if there was a proviso in canon law for this hybrid state.
All 3 gave the same answer namely that a laicised priest is relieved of the priviliges and burdens of the priesthood. Of course in extreme situations a laicized priest must absolve someone in danger of death like a carwreck victim. As one of the priests told me "Anyone who studied canon law could have told you that."
Later on the same website someone states that Martin was explicitly dispensed by Pope Paul VI from the requirement that a priest must be a cleric. Is this possible? Of course if it is possible then a Pope can do anything like...........radically reform the liturgy.
So we are now to believe the musings, rumors, tainted observations and possible lies of an athiest...
Martin: He was my friend.
Here we have a bunch more reputable sources that the Martin lemmings will claim as tainted, part of the vast conspiracy to smear poor father Martin. They'll accuse them or me of calumny, forgeting that it is they who are calumniating every single person - literally to a person - who threatens to shake them out of their virulent case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Wilson can be called many things, but calling him a liar or accusing him of making stuff up is laughable. He had abslutely no reason whatsoever to invent stories about Martin. He liked him, hung around with him and was simply writing about his experiences with him at the time.
Get as hysterical as you care to, but Wilson's memoirs are not considered "rumors". It's called a first hand account, which for historians is considered the best possible source available. Martin doesn't dispute Wilson, then admits to having an eclair/taxi cab conversion.
Quote:
... and multiple Jewish sources that disparage the reputation of Fr. Malachy Martin ...
Now this is the Jews fault? You're saying that Milt Rosenberg or Roger Straus had it in for Martin because they were Jewish? Martin did nothing but help "the Jews" during the council by feeding Jewish interest groups and lobbying organizations mobs of inside information on the council.
Martin feinds remind me of battered women. No matter what they, they're always ready to submit for their next black eye.
Tell you what ya'll can start your own forum, where you can call me a calumniator.
From the last post one other question. It would seem to me that if there was an explicit dispensation there would be a public record. Would that be found in Acta Apostlicae Sedis?
For God's sake give it a rest. Let Fr. Martin rest in peace. There must be better things with which to occupy our minds without desecrating the memory of someone who is not able to defend himself. Calumny and Detration? Indeed yes!
Not, the "poor dead priest" defense again.
I guess we should forget Martin's actions during the council when he was feeding info to millions of readers and giving info to the American Jewish Committee. I guess we should forget about all of those books he wrote, especially the one where he claimed Satan was enthroned at the Catholic Holy eternal city of Rome.
No, sorry. I'm not all that bright but I'm not THAT foolish. The ripping apart of Malachi Martins work will continue in earnest, as I continue to pray for his soul in earnest.
We really don't need to defend Martin, nor to refute the accusations against him. Once we have rendered our personal testimony, we can just stand back and let those who never met Martin, never spoke to him, never recieved his notes in the mail, but perhaps now are a little jealous or whatever for having missed out, we can let them have their little fun with it.
If he brings some small pleasure to some small people, he would probably be pleased. What good is an author if he can't bring enjoyment to his readers? _________________ Intercednte smper Vrgine Dei Genitrce Mara
BTW, Eulogious (if you've cleared your cookies and can read this)
The Fr. Fiore letter is already linked from the article, along with several other of his letters regarding Martin. There's no need to dirty up the thread by posting it for the umpteeth time. Father Fiore's is a good egg, but his sole source in them is Malachi Martin.
If anyone would like to defend Martin in a rational manner be my guest. If you want to turn the thread into an emotional food-fight, make baseless accusations or "help" me run AQ by announcing what I shouldn't be discussing, you're going out... quickly.
Just a heads-up. This is an extremely important issue, and it will be treated as such.
If anyone would like to defend Martin in a rationally be my guest. If you want to turn the thread into an emotional food-fight, make baseless accusations or "help" me run AQ by announcing what I shouldn't be discussing, you're going out... quickly.
Just a heads-up. This is an extremely important issue, and it will be treated as such.
I'm perfectly willing an able to defend Fr. Martin rationally and everyone who's read the last two threads knows it.
And it didn't take me long to find the first few flaws in your article and some of your conclusions.
The question is: Will you allow it?
I've found that sometimes the authors of articles and books like Patrick Madrid aren't too willing to have their work put under the microscope.
We also have the precedent of the "Two Sr. Lucies" to consider.
And it didn't take me long to find the first few flaws in your article and some of your conclusions.
The question is: Will you allow it?
As long as it's factual and not hyperbolic Gerard be my guest but see...
Quote:
I've found that sometimes the authors of articles and books like Patrick Madrid aren't too willing to have their work put under the microscope.
... we're off to a bad start here. I'm already like Patrick Madrid. That's even worse than being accused of calumny by the other poster.
Quote:
We also have the precedent of the "Two Sr. Lucies" to consider.
This is what I mean. I don't want the Sr. Lucia was absconded/killed/exiled nonsense on AQ, ergo the article about Martin is flawed.
Discuss the article and defend Martin all you like, but if you want to disuss me however, then I'll start discussing you, and this won't turn out well. By all means, use the "microscope", just leave the proctoscope where it is.
Last edited by servitium on Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:55 pm; edited 2 times in total
Call me dense, but I don't get it. I mean, if someone were the worst sinner on the planet, and repented, what is the point of dragging up their sins from the past to the present? Many saints (not that I'm in any way insinuating that M. Martin is a saint) were grand scale sinners who later repented. Wasn't most of what M. Martin wrote in the genre of fiction anyway? Was there something hideous he did in the decade before his death that would indicate that he did not repent? I don't know, it just seems so, he said this about him, and they said this about him...I mean people accused him of having an affair. Unless someone actually witnessed him doing the deed, or he admitted it to someone, how would they know this without doubt? No, I would not trust it coming from the woman allegedly involved.
Can someone explain why this is so important? Another question, I thought a priest was a priest no matter if he did leave the priesthood, unless he was never a priest in the first place?
Okay. Let's start with the alleged "affair" with Mary Kaiser.
Quote:
Roger Straus via Edmund Wilson's memoirs, offers another documented account of Kakia Livanos being more than Martin's "landlady" and also offers another documented account of him having an affair with Robert Kaiser's wife. As to the latter, those who have went on the record with this claim now include Joe Roddy, Editor in Chief of Look Magazine, Robert Kaiser former Time-Life Bureau Bureau Chief and husband of the woman, and Roger Straus, owner of Ferrar, Straus and Company publishing. The New York Times obituary has her as his "companion." According to Father Fiore, who didn't even know Martin until the 1980s, Kaiser's wife "had requested Malachi's counsel about her husband's drinking and her unhappy marriage, and she coincidentally left Rome to return home at the same time that Malachi went to Paris."
This is from William H. Kennedy's defense of Fr. Martin. (He gave me permission to post it. )
Part Four: Kaiser’s Queen Dream
Robert Blair Kaiser proffers a most bizarre account of Martin's life and work in his book Clerical Error [Continuum 2002]. Kaiser, a one time Jesuit Novice turned journalist, claims that Malachi Martin was having an affair with his wife Mary during the Second Vatican Council. For this reason, Kaiser contends, Martin was forced to leave the priesthood. Now that Martin is dead and Kaiser's ex-wife Mary has dropped out of sight having remarried, there is no one around to refute Kaiser's vicious claims.
Kaiser did not go public until long after Martin was dead - most likely as to avoid a libel case.
According to Kaiser, Martin and his wife had an affair behind his back while Martin was a houseguest. Oddly, Martin's reason for being with the Kaisers was to aid Robert Kaiser in his journalistic account of the Second Vatican Council. Martin had helped Kaiser before as evinced in Kaiser's own account:
"I was under terrific deadline pressure. I took his [Martin's] offer and he began feeding me dozen-page memos on the history of the Church (a subject I was weak on)"...[Kaiser: 147]
Even a cursory glance at Kaiser's charges makes one question the validity of his assertions and, at times, his very sanity. Kaiser's narrative demonstrates what can only be described as paranoid thinking. An extreme example is as follows:
"While the customs officers were making little chalk marks on my bags I watched Mary and Malachy with their heads in earnest conversation. For an instant, I stiffened. I thought of two other times when I had seen them with their heads together. It happened first when returning from a trot on the beach with our infant daughter on my shoulders. Another time I had driven to Lavinio one afternoon and had come upon them unexpectedly on our patio. On both occasions they put on smiling faces as soon as they saw me. I had wondered about that then; I feel a pang of resentment now. I asked myself why Mary hadn't gotten someone else to come with her to the airport, or why she came at all." [Kaiser: 172]
In an even more bizarre and disturbing section Kaiser demonstrates his homosexual feelings for Father Martin:
"I had a primal dream. I was in a large room kneeling on the floor in a large circle of Novices. One of them was unmistakably Malachy Martin, who stood and announced to the group that I had been rejecting him. He proceeded to remove his cassock, lay it down and put his arms around my neck. Just as he was about to kiss me I woke up.
Now what, I asked myself, was this all about? A Freudian Psychiatrist would undoubtedly call this a homosexual dream. If it was, however, I didn't see it as a sign of my homosexuality, but of Malachy's. My dream was a warning that Malachy wanted me." [Kaiser: 178]
Nowhere does Kaiser [or anyone else] ever accuse Martin of homosexually seducing them in the real world. Kaiser does not seem to realize that the dream world means nothing in reality. For Kaiser to project [yes I am using Freudian psychology] his own homosexual [or bisexual] feelings onto Father Martin is laughable. It was Kaiser's own perverted dream not Martin's. Any reasonable person can clearly see that Kaiser was sexually attracted to men. His own words are proof enough. Perhaps Kaiser's own inability to come to terms with his own same sex orientation caused him to lash out at Martin many years later. This leads to what perhaps constitutes the real reason Kaiser attacked Martin's character after the death of the popular priest. Father Malachi Martin, S.J., Father John Courtney Murray, S.J. and Archbishop T.D. Roberts noticed Kaiser's disturbed nature and, in the early 1960's, performed what is now known as an intervention. The three clerics persuaded Kaiser to seek psychiatric treatment and, consequently, Kaiser checked himself into a mental institution - a fact he enjoys making light of in his various public talks. However, the psychiatric hospital where Kaiser was interned evaluated his mental condition and a team of psychiatrists diagnosed Kaiser as suffering from acute paranoia and schizophrenia. [Kaiser: 261]
It is a common trend for former psychiatric patients to harbor strongly held resentments against those who suggest they seek professional help. Rather than concede that they suffer from deep-rooted psychological problems such disturbed and unbalanced individuals often lash out against their interveners and accuse them of fantastical conspiracies waged against them.
Perhaps this accounts for the real motives behind Kaiser's attack. It is a case of a paranoid attacking the intentions of someone who tried to help him. All of Kaiser's other claims about his wife and Father Martin must be taken with a large grain of salt. It is really hard to take anything Kaiser says seriously after reading his elongated crazy rant which he published as a book. Kaiser even alludes to an alcohol problem that further added to this break with reality:
“IN THE DAYS that followed, I lived mainly on gin, spent most of my nights staring at the ceiling in my bedroom, trying to process everything” [Kaiser: 239]
As mentioned, after leaving the Vatican and the Jesuits Father Martin continued to say Mass privately and for those who requested attendance at his services. Kaiser claims he did not have permission to do so. [Kaiser: 297] When Father Martin was later to move to New York he came into conflict with then Cardinal O'Connor who claimed Father Martin had no faculties [right] to act as a priest in the Archdiocese of New York. As mentioned Cooke accepted Martin's faculties but O'Connor tried to revoke Martin's status. When Martin threatened to sue O'Connor over this issue the Cardinal backed down and consequently conceded that Martin had the right to act as a priest under the dictates set forth by Pope Paul VI. Even the EWTN Catholic cable station - which has no love for Martin - concedes that one should take Father Martin at his word concerning his status as a bone fide Roman Catholic priest. [see sources section for EWTN official statement on Martin's authentic status]
Kaiser completes his rant with the following:
"Malachy Martin fled to New York City, a renegade liberal as well and soon became the darling of the Church's lunatic fringe, which lionized him for a series of fantastical books about demonic possession and the skullduggery of traitorous prelates within the Vatican itself. He died of a stroke in 1999." [Kaiser: 297]
The 'lunatic fringe' that Kaiser speaks of is what Father Martin referred to as the 'underground church' during his many appearances on the Coast to Coast radio show hosted by Art Bell. This 'underground church' constitutes those who prefer the Tridentine Mass over the New Mass, those who feel that the Church's ancient teachings concerning the Devil's influence in the World is true and those who do not trust the Vatican's alliance with Global Elites who launder drug money and undertake other nefarious activities. These beliefs are far from being deemed 'lunatic'.
The real 'lunatic fringe' in the Roman Catholic Church consists of Cardinals who give safe harbor to child molesters posing as priests [Law, Egan et al], the predatory homosexuals who run and enroll in Roman Catholic seminaries and form bizarre sex cults and the power brokers who have allied the Vatican's vast financial resources with organized crime. It is the skullduggery of these sorts of Catholics that causes the most harm. The devotional practices and beliefs of Traditional Catholics harm no one.
Father Martin merely exposed the vile undercurrent in the Roman Catholic Church which, since his passing, has erupted in the popular media. Martin was a 'spiritual refuge' from the clearly insane activities of the 'lunatic fringe’ which has taken over the Vatican .
If Kaiser were a journalist of integrity he would focus on this real 'lunatic fringe' and not on Father Martin and the many harmless people who subscribe to an older and more humane form of Roman Catholicism which Malachi Martin so loved and actively promoted.
"The Fr. Fiore letter is already linked from the article, along with several other of his letters regarding Martin. There's no need to dirty up the thread by posting it for the umpteeth time. Father Fiore's is a good egg, but his sole source in them is Malachi Martin."
Right. And Wilson's 'sole source' was Fr. Martin. And I would prefer a great priest like Fr. Fiore's interpretation than that of a professed atheist.
Could we get Mr. Kennedy's background so that we could evaluate things like whether he has any personal stake in one side or the other or whether he is truly a disinterested third party?
I ask because it was my understanding that Mr. Kennedy is very active in selling books and materials promoting the idea that we have satanist crime running rampant. So I can't help but wonder if that doesn't predispose him to a desire to shore up someone else making claims that could be seen as supportive of his. But perhapst the simple practice of giving his background would clarify things.
When someone is being held up as an authority that should be given more credence than the opposite party it would be within the norms of discourse to provide background information. I'd be interested in Mr. Kennedy's credentials or what his authority on the topic is being based upon.
But really beyond that for me, the matter of the alleged affairs are the least of the problems with Martin. The conflicts in Martin's explanations, which seems to be the theme of Serv's article, is far more troubling and far more worthy of discussion. It would seem picking out this one allegation, that I've not seen anyone here insist upon, merely distracts from the more important elements.
So, if we are to believe this account, Fr. Martin left the Jesuits and the active priesthood because of doubts about the faith. Then, when he later returned to orthodox belief and the Catholic faith, he regretted what he had done and fabricated his personal history in order to make it less embarassing. I've never been impressed with Fr. Martin, but I do not see why these revelations are so terrible.
Fr. Fiore by the way is the source for the information in "Windswept House" so the defense of Fr. Fiore being the person fed information by Fr. Martin doesn't hold up.
I have Fr. Fiore on tape saying that he provided the documents and other info that Fr. Martin wrote Windswept with.
Fr. Martin's funeral was held at St. Anthony's Chapel with Fr. Paul Wickens as the celebrant for the Requiem.
Fr. Wickens was also Fr. Martin's confessor. Fr. Wickens also defended Fr. Martin from the accusations that Kakia Livanos was anything more than a landlady.
So, if we're to believe that Fr. Martin was shacking up with Kakia Livanos then Fr. Paul Wickens would have to have had no problem with that particularly by allowing him a Requiem in his Church and being the celebrant.
So Kennedy is claiming (with a straight face) that Kaiser is making all of this up about Martin because he's gay? He sure doesn't sound like a psychoanalyst and he doesn't make his case well. A lot of babble and nearly nothing empirical. An opinion piece.
Ever been to his site? I feel like I'm in hell when I go there.
I'll grant you Gerard that Kaiser is rather goofy and extremely liberal. You're not going to get any argument from me whatsoever on those points. As someone who has spoken with him and is reading his book, I'll say that he's confirmed much of what you've told me about him previously.
However, whatever his reason - an affair or otherwise - Kaiser is someone who absolutely despises Martin in a very deep way. This is not the type of enmity that comes because Martin tried to "help" him as Kennedy ridiculously tries to assert, and it's not the type of detestation that could possibly come from political differences, as a liberal not liking a conservative, as some (I believe you once) have alluded to. It's much deeper than that. Whatever it was that Martin did to him, it made him a life long, very much detested enemy.
Also, after reading his book, I can't see how Kaiser could possibly have made all of this stuff up. Yes there's a lot of hyperbole and Kaiser doesn't come across well either, but he also uses a bunch of real bodies with real names and real places that could easily have blown up in his face if there was no truth to his claims. To my knowledge nothing substantial has surfaced in the several years since his book came out to discredit him on the facts.
To be candid Gerard, for me, the alleged affair is not really concern per se, only in that if it were true it would go to Martin's credibility. In fact, I didn't mention it in the three accounts of why Martin left the Jesuits. I only mentioned it because it is part of the equation and because Straus mentioned it to Wilson.
It's not just Kaiser either. Does William Kennedy believe that Roger Straus and Joe Roddy are gay and insane also? Or is the problem with them one was a Jew and the other an (unproven) liberal? They seem sane and credible to me. At least I haven't seen otherwise.
In any case the affair, while it is an issue (not just for sensational purposes) it is granted a minor one in the larger picture.
Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 2259 Location: Jacksonville, FL
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:22 pm Post subject:
Very interesting. I confess that something just didn't seem right with Fr. Martin. If, as he claimed, all he did was obtain the freedom from having to obey a bishop or religious order, and he was still a priest in good standing, then why did he dress as a layman? I always had my doubts about him, and being Cardinal Bea's secretary isn't a good sign. One thing is for sure: he is not a secret Cardinal. HOW does a brilliant man like Coomaraswamy get caught up in that rubbish? Hutton Gibson, yes, but... _________________ Now starring as Redbeard the Pirate, suitor of Rapunzel
Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 2259 Location: Jacksonville, FL
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:25 pm Post subject:
Gerard wrote:
Fr. Wickens was also Fr. Martin's confessor. Fr. Wickens also defended Fr. Martin from the accusations that Kakia Livanos was anything more than a landlady.
If that is true, that's a compelling case that Fr. Martin converted _________________ Now starring as Redbeard the Pirate, suitor of Rapunzel
Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 2259 Location: Jacksonville, FL
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject:
I meant the whole argument (just padding my numbers: on a mission to get back in the Top Ten) _________________ Now starring as Redbeard the Pirate, suitor of Rapunzel
Then, when he later returned to orthodox belief and the Catholic faith, he regretted what he had done and fabricated his personal history in order to make it less embarrassing.
Maybe it's just me but that is a lot of what just doesn't add up.
See I was a lost Catholic that bought into all the leftist poison lock, stock, and barrel too. It's only through the grace of God that I'm not still lost in the dark woods.
The last, and I mean last, thing I would do now is lie about the MIRACLE Our Lord performed in saving me from myself. And that would be precisely what it would be if I lied about my background to avoid embarrassment. It would be denying God's infinate mercy.
Heck I'll point it out anytime anyone will sit still for five seconds to listen to it, I'm just so overwhelmed with gratitude that I'm no longer lost in the dark woods.
And I've seen precisely the same behavior consistently from those here that are Catholics that had been lost.
So I have a ton of sympathy for someone that was lost and then found, but his behavior sets off major warning bells for me with this denial of God's mercy. Which likely is not the case for someone that hasn't been an idiot themselves and therefore experienced first hand the overwhelming feeling of joy at being found. In other words I don't know if "good sons" see this the same as us "prodigal" children do. The claim he's one of us "converted" "prodigal" children just doesn't sit right because he does not react like us.
I picked Kennedy's statement not because of his website but rather because it had the quotes and an argument against what Kaiser wrote.
One question: Who does Joseph Roddy source as the reference for the affair?
Answer: Robt. Blair Kaiser. The guy who publicly writes about his sex dreams with Fr. Martin.
That's what it boils down to. Call whatever you want "ridiculous" or "credible" those are simply editorial opinions that anyone can disagree or agree with.
But the facts are: Joseph Roddy's source for the accusation is a guy who writes about his sex dreams about Fr. Martin.
Now, I know that since I'm starting to put a few cracks into the "affair" scenario, suddenly it's not important, but as I said a few posts up.
"Let's start with the alleged affair."
We have all the time in the world to pick through all the data. I'm in no rush. I'm just starting at the edges.
ps.
The world is full of weirdos who go to extreme lengths when they don't get the person they've been dreaming about. Didn't we just have a female astronaut driving in diapers to take out her competition for another astronaut?
Writing a book that blackens a person's reputation goes back a long way.
I seem to remember that Fr. Martin was not laicized, rather he was released from his vows.
If that is the same thing, and I don't think it is, please correct me. A priest who is laicized usually has committed some infraction and laicization is a punishment. That was not the case with Fr. Martin, it was at his request.
I also think that Kaiser's attack on Fr. Martin's may have had something to do with Fr. Martin having consulted (use whatever word you wish) with Mr. Kaiser's wife for reasons we will never know. But I have read some of Mr. Kaiser's rantings and they did not sound rational to me.
Fr. Fiore by the way is the source for the information in "Windswept House" so the defense of Fr. Fiore being the person fed information by Fr. Martin doesn't hold up.
Fr. Fiore would not have been apprised of what went on with Martin in the 60s. He didn't even know him until the 80s.
Father Fiore would not have been able to determine in the 80s that during the 60s the Jesuits were in global pursuit of Martin, possibly with the intent of murdering him. A ridiculous contention by the way.
Father Fiore would have had absolutely no way of knowing that Kaisers wife was only going to Martin for "council" and that it was just "coincidence" that they both bolted out of Rome at the same time.
Father Fiore, in the 1980s, would not have been able to determine Martin's orthodoxy in the 60s. Besides Father Fiore is simply wrong. Beside all of the evidence that's been posted here in the past, when Rosenberg puts him on the spot about Wilson's memoirs, Martin doesn't deny them, but says afterward he had "revelations" and "enlightenment".
BTW, on that Martin didn't check the dates. His eclair conversion he says happened when he first arrived in NY in 65. Wilsons memoirs dates are way past that.
Orthodox priests don't don't act as courriers for the American Jewish Committee. They don't make fun of Holy Relics. They don't doubt or "question" the most fundamental tenants of the faith. They don't believe that the apostles invented the Gospel. They don't dig up dirt on and blackmail cardinals to affect the outcome of the teachings of the Church. They don't make fun of priests who dedicate books to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They don't spend much time rubbing elbows with a bunch of rich, elitist snobby liberals eating $32 omlettes.
If all of this stuff is true, there are a few things that don't add up. Why did Martin have so many priest friends of good reputation-Fr. Fiore, Fr. Wickens, Fr. Paul Marx, Fr. John Hardon, Fr. Winifred Von Straaten, etc.-who didn't know about his true relationship with Kakia Livanos(who I met at Fr. Martin's funeral)? Why didn't the Vatican, or some of Martin's former Jesuit colleagues, torpedo him when some of his more popular books were released? It seems like most of this stuff rose to the surface after his death(ie, Kaiser's book), but this Edmund Wilson material dates back forty years.
Now, I know that since I'm starting to put a few cracks into the "affair" scenario, suddenly it's not important, but as I said a few posts up.
It's important only in that if it were so, it would put to rest all of the varying accounts given by Martin as to why he had to go around in civies for the rest of his life and never again refer to himself as "father".
Granted we don't have the "blue dress" or a video tape, but I haven't seen any real "cracks" in an empirical sense. Kaiser has (rightfully) been called a lefty and a bit screwed up.
Seriously Gerard, I honestly thought about leaving the Straus' account of the alleged affair out, but would have been remiss if I did. I haven't seen this account of it anywhere I've searched so far.
Quote:
Who does Joseph Roddy source as the reference for the affair?
Answer: Robt. Blair Kaiser. The guy who publicly writes about his sex dreams with Fr. Martin.
Do you have a source for this? I'm no doubting you, I just haven't seen that anywhere. The first I'm hearing of it is from you, now.
It's important only in that if it were so, it would put to rest all of the varying accounts given by Martin as to why he had to go around in civies for the rest of his life and never again refer to himself as "father".
One thing that has struck me about this: if Malachi were a true phony, wouldn't he have just put on a roman collar on and played up his priestly status? There are certainly others, including Trads, who routinely do this.
One thing that has struck me about this: if Malachi were a true phony, wouldn't he have just put on a roman collar on and played up his priestly status? There are certainly others, including Trads, who routinely do this.
Okay so he never once referred to himself as "father" or never wore clericals (except at Coomaraswarmy ordination where Coomaraswarmy has him as a bishop) because he just didn't like the formalities?
His clerical status will probably be the subject of another article, but the short answer is the reason why Dr. Martin didn't act as clergy is because he wasn't clergy.
Okay so he never once referred to himself as "father" or never wore clericals (except at Coomaraswarmy ordination where Coomaraswarmy has him as a bishop) because he just didn't like the formalities?
No, perhaps because he was really not allowed to wear them per his superiors. Perhaps because some of what you have uncovered here is true, and he was never again allowed to act as a full priest in public. But he did have faculties to say Mass privately, as many who saw his papers can attest.
I'm not trying to be difficult, but who are the "many who saw his papers."
Fr. Paul Marx(who told me in a letter that he saw them), Fr. Fiore, Fr. Wickens. So, strike the word "many" and replace it with three fairly intelligent priests.
Fr. Paul Marx(who told me in a letter that he saw them), Fr. Fiore, Fr. Wickens.
Both sides of this issue seem to demand that any claims made, pro or con, be substantiated or they're considered hearsay. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.
We've seen the Fiore letters. Do you have any references to Fr. Marx and Father Wickens?
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