He was allowed to function as a priest in NY by Cardinals Cooke and O’Connor, both of whom were completely orthodox.
I am confident he was both a priest and a Catholic in good standing until the end of his life.
God Bless
I used to be a bit of a MM fan - although I took everything in Windswept House with a grain of salt.
I just finished “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church” - and this book, written in the early 70s, simply wasn’t written by a man who loves the Catholic Church. It’s true that everything he reports is factual (it’s mainly about the sin & decadence in the clergy through the 4th through 16th centuries), but the spin is just decidedly negative - as one can reasonably deduce from the title alone.
There are a group of Traditionalists who believe MM was a fraud, and some of his statements do appear to be rather implausible. He reported that he’d done hundreds of major exorcisms, for example, those taking days to weeks, yet he had no faculty to conduct any in New York, where he lived, and I believe the diocesan exorcist there reported never working with him.
I listened to his taped interviews - there were some contradictions and odd statements. For example, in one he stated that Satan and Lucifer were different beings, and expanded on that pretty extensively, but in others he clearly speaks of these monikers as two names for the same being.
That might not be so bad if he were engaging in speculation, but he clearly speaks as if from a position of certainty and authority.
At this point, I take the view of a friend who commented that he considers him as “entertainment” and not to be taken too seriously.
