E
entelechy1
Guest
Fr. Amorth vs. Malachi Martin…an interesting question.
I read Amorth first, and was utterly terrified. It deepened my faith a lot, because it gave me an appreciation for what they call “primary evil” (i.e. the diabolical), without which so much of Catholicism rings hollow - why pray “deliver us from all evil” when there is no such thing, right? What Amorth gives us is a collection of anecdotes from his own exorcisms, sprinkled with some useful sermonizing. Indeed, it is the looseness of his writing that makes him more convincing to me. I further see no reason to doubt Amorth’s orthodoxy.
Malachi Martin on the other hand is a consummate writer and, I would say, a dazzling mind in general. And an enigmatic figure. He left the Jesuits, while remaining a priest answerable to a bishop, just as the Jesuit order was losing its original mission of papal fidelity and embracing Modernism, that is, in the 1960’s. As he describes those years (read his excellent book entitled Jesuits) individual Jesuits faithful to the magisterium and to their extra vow of papal fidelity were effectually muzzled and treated with animosity. No surprise, then, that some of them left the order for the sake of living out the Jesuit vision - and this is what M.Martin did. I have no idea how he managed it, who he knew, what connections he had, but he scored a Guggenheim Fellowship to write Hostage to the Devil. How that came to be would be a fascinating story all its own.
Nothing I have read by Malachi Martin leads me to doubt his orthodoxy either, but it’s worth noting that neither Jesuits nor Hostage to the Devil bear the imprimatur.
I read Amorth first, and was utterly terrified. It deepened my faith a lot, because it gave me an appreciation for what they call “primary evil” (i.e. the diabolical), without which so much of Catholicism rings hollow - why pray “deliver us from all evil” when there is no such thing, right? What Amorth gives us is a collection of anecdotes from his own exorcisms, sprinkled with some useful sermonizing. Indeed, it is the looseness of his writing that makes him more convincing to me. I further see no reason to doubt Amorth’s orthodoxy.
Malachi Martin on the other hand is a consummate writer and, I would say, a dazzling mind in general. And an enigmatic figure. He left the Jesuits, while remaining a priest answerable to a bishop, just as the Jesuit order was losing its original mission of papal fidelity and embracing Modernism, that is, in the 1960’s. As he describes those years (read his excellent book entitled Jesuits) individual Jesuits faithful to the magisterium and to their extra vow of papal fidelity were effectually muzzled and treated with animosity. No surprise, then, that some of them left the order for the sake of living out the Jesuit vision - and this is what M.Martin did. I have no idea how he managed it, who he knew, what connections he had, but he scored a Guggenheim Fellowship to write Hostage to the Devil. How that came to be would be a fascinating story all its own.
Nothing I have read by Malachi Martin leads me to doubt his orthodoxy either, but it’s worth noting that neither Jesuits nor Hostage to the Devil bear the imprimatur.