Malachi Martin vs. This Rock?

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First, a brief paragraph on the background of this post.

Always searching on the web for good Church audio on all subjects of interest, I found a May 4, 1998 interview of Malachi Martin on Art Bell’s show. In short, Martin is a former Jesuit removed from his priestly duties in 1965. I’m not aware of his reinstatement, although in the interview, he claimed to say mass daily and was under the authority of “a bishop.” For over 2 hours the 2 men discussed a bleak future for the world, Y2K, the Church, murder, UFO’s, the Third Secret of Fatima, et al. I found myself at an advantage listening to this in the present day, because Martin claimed Y2K would bring on at minimum some form of Marshall Law. He also described the Third Secret of Fatima in nearly apocalyptic terms (he claimed he couldn’t be specific because he was under oath not to reveal the secret). And now that the Third Secret has been revealed, I was able to listen to his cryptic descriptions with a more knowledgeable ear.

Going from there, I took the time to transcribe an exchange toward the end of the interview. It follows:

Art Bell (reading from an emailer’s letter): “‘I think in cases when people have a dark sense of foreboding that something terrible is going to happen to the earth or society as a whole, it’s often because they are projecting scenarios occurring within their own psyches and personal lives out onto that world, seeing them unfold out there where they truly are not, rather than within the realm of their own personal lives where they are actually occurring.’”

Malachi Martin: That does happen. That’s a true statement of a lot of people. The only thing, Art, is that an earlier point in this broadcast, you and I both agreed that the general feeling was malaise.

Art Bell: I do agree. I do agree. I don’t think this is internalizing on my part or your part. It’s absolutely real.

Martin: it’s true [untelligible]. If you read a sober journal, like the Wall Street Journal for instance, I mean, my God, you know. You know all right they’re not pessimists. But their realism is very stark. [laughter] You know?

Bell: Very stark. yes.

Martin: Very stark. Or take the normal big newspapers and the magazines. There are some Pollyannaish people, you know, everything’s the best for…and we have them in the Catholic Church too. We have a man called Karl Keating, who writes rapturously about the new evangelization. There’s nothing going on at all in the Catholic Church except decadence. Well, we have those people like Karl Keating, and we’ve got to put up with them because they feel happy that way. They do attack the rest of us. But no…I take that criticism very, very well. We do incline to project things. But in this case it’s co-confirmed by millions of others that I do not feel it’s subjective on my part.​

According to a letter printed in the December 1997 This Rock, Martin had endorsed This Rock as recommended Traditional Catholic material.

The writer of the letter then referenced a bit on Martin in the July/August 1997 This Rock, in which some of Martin’s history and propensity for doomsday speech are described.

One thing I am wondering is if Martin was favorable to This Rock prior to July/August 1997. I think Karl is one of the most brilliant speakers and authors I’ve ever read. I consider his efforts perhaps most central to the growth of Catholics who can explain their faith in the world today. For this reason, I wondered if there were personal motives for Malachi Martin in this regard.

This all reminded me of when I heard one of the phone recordings of Vincent P. Lewis, an aggressive Catholic “apologist.” After I heard this man, I wanted to learn more about him, thinking to myself that his style was debatably detrimental to the Church. With regard to Lewis, I found that Karl had written a fascinating article in the November 1991 This Rock about a personal encounter. I found the article most enlightening.

Similar to that I was wondering if anyone knows more of a history between Karl and Martin or This Rock and Martin as to why Martin may have singled out Karl in the Art Bell interview I quoted.
 
I probably should add this shorter timeline since my first post is so long:

Prior to July 1997: Malachi Martin endorses This Rock

July/August 1997: This Rock describes Martin’s doomsday tendencies

May 1998: Martin speaks of Karl Keating negatively

Did something happen that may have switched Martin’s opinions of Karl’s publication besides the July/August 97 article?
 
One thing I am wondering is if Martin was favorable to This Rock prior to July/August 1997. I think Karl is one of the most brilliant speakers and authors I’ve ever read. I consider his efforts perhaps most central to the growth of Catholics who can explain their faith in the world today. For this reason, I wondered if there were personal motives for Malachi Martin in this regard.
It’s just speculation on my part, but his personal motives could have been financial. He was an author trying to sell his own books. See link here. starharbor.com/fr_martin/books.html. Maybe he felt that Karl was selling more material than he was. In any event, we will not ever know, since Malachi Martin is dead, and we cannot ask him.
 
Malachi Martin’s most trustworthy book on the Church itself is in my opinion his book, THE JESUITS: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church.

I learned a lot from that book.
“Hostage to the Devil” is interesting,
but “The Keys of This Blood” greatly scandalized me
as a catechumen back in 1992 when I read it and contributed to turning me against the Catholic Church which I was just beginning to embrace.

All in all, without judging the man’s interior motives, I believe that Malachi Martin was for the most part a sensationalist.

Jaypeeto3 (aka Jaypeeto4)
 
It’s just speculation on my part, but his personal motives could have been financial. He was an author trying to sell his own books.
That is not a bad theory…I see that he had 2 books published in the first part of 1998.
 
I only read one book from Malachi Martin and that was Windswept House.

Even though Martin says its fictional, and it is fictional, he only says that to protect himself from lawsuit, in his mind he believes what he wrote in that book to be the truth.

The book was a terrible representation of Pope John Paul II. It portrayed the main characters as SSPX Priests who associate with sedevacantists.
 
Martin: Very stark. Or take the normal big newspapers and the magazines. There are some Pollyannaish people, you know, everything’s the best for…and we have them in the Catholic Church too. We have a man called Karl Keating, who writes rapturously about the new evangelization. There’s nothing going on at all in the Catholic Church except decadence. Well, we have those people like Karl Keating, and we’ve got to put up with them because they feel happy that way. .
O Karl
O joy
O rapture
O happy day
woo woo
the picture of KK prancing about strewing daisies is simply irresistable, thanks for my laugh of the day.

whoa, Karl, you guys are having way to much fun. Can we have a little starkness please.
 
IMO, Fr. Malachi was trying to point out that there is evil within the Church, especially in the form of liberals, modernists promoting false ecumenism. and people were not taking him serious or called him a sensationalist because other Catholic writers, such as Karl, in their defense of the Church, fail to inform readers of this false ecumenism. or what Karl and others perhaps view as a “new evangelization”. perhaps he read something by Karl that made him think Karl has bought into the false notion of universal salvation being promoted by liberal modernists. or that Karl was unaware of it.
 
In my view, anyone, ANYONE, whosoever speaks out against the Church, in any aspect, way, or media is insulting the unity of the Church. How are people to overcome teh vocations crisis etc. if people such as this cause so much confusion, so much disunity, so much of a lack of integrity.

“Decadence” 🤷

If serving God through majesty is wrong, perhaps we shouldn’t even have art in parishes, no ceremony, no vestments, no “go-get-em” attitude, no evangelization. I find God, as most people do, in either of two ways-through complete beauty or through complete simplicity.
 
In my view, anyone, ANYONE, whosoever speaks out against the Church, in any aspect, way, or media is insulting the unity of the Church. How are people to overcome teh vocations crisis etc. if people such as this cause so much confusion, so much disunity, so much of a lack of integrity.

“Decadence” 🤷

If serving God through majesty is wrong, perhaps we shouldn’t even have art in parishes, no ceremony, no vestments, no “go-get-em” attitude, no evangelization. I find God, as most people do, in either of two ways-through complete beauty or through complete simplicity.
Fr. Malachi wasn’t speaking out against the Church he was speaking out against the evil within trying to take down the Church. because he loved the Church.
 
There I go, reading negatively again.

Still, I think my previous post still holds merit in this discussion. 😉
 
I think we need to bring to peoples attention the problems in the church. why? Because we need to correct it. You can’t sweep the problems of the Church (usually the people within) because it might cause a lack of vocations, that is nonesense. I think more people leave the Church because they don’t feel like the Church is doing enough to change the things, because they have swept things under the rug, eg. pedophilia scandal.
 
I listen to Art Bell’s show occassionally. It’s a sensationalist, goofy, scarey show that lacks credibility. The fact that Martin was on there to begin with takes a lot of credibility away from him, imo.
 
I’ve been reading “whidswept house” and I must say, I like it and do not see the bad portrail of PJPII that another poster meantioned.

It seems that MM loved the man and was trying to explain (through fiction) some of the things that he did that have been considered liberal. I’m not done with the book, though. It’s very long and I don’t get a chance to pick it up that often.

Do you not believe that the devil himself is drooling and panting at a chance to distroy the church? He has but a short time, and knows it and is working hard. I once heard someone say that satin’s best trick is to make people think he’s not there. It seems to me that MM saw that the devil lurks and prowls about our church, even at high levels (a couple of unnamed cardnles from New England come to mind).

why, when people start talking about the evil among us, does everyone say “oh what a wack job! he’s CRAZY!”? I wonder what people said about Elisia, Isiah, John the baptest. I’m not saying that MM was a prophet, but don’t discredit everything he says because thought things in the church were bad and that there are evil people within it.

He might have been a little gloom and doom, but some people are way too optamistic about the state of the church as well. There has to be a middle ground somewhere.
 
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