Martin, Malachi B, 1921-1999, former Jesuit priest, writer

Person

Martin, Malachi B, 1921-1999, former Jesuit priest, writer

• Malachi Brendan Martin

• Michael Serafian

23 July 1921-27 July 1999

Born: 23 July 1921, Ballylongford, County Kerry
Entered: 07 September 1939, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 15 August 1954, Leuven, Belgium
Final Vows: 02 February 1957, Leuven, Belgium
Died: 27 July 1999, New York, NY, USA

Left Society of Jesus: 15 May 1965

Pseudonym: Michael Serafian

https://www.dib.ie/biography/martin-malachi-brendan-a5484

Martin, Malachi Brendan

Contributed by
Maume, Patrick

Martin, Malachi Brendan (1921–99), priest and writer, was born 23 July 1921 at Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, the fourth of ten children of Conor John Martin, gynaecologist, and his wife Katherine (née Fitzmaurice). Three of his four brothers became priests, including F. X. Martin (qv) OSA, historian, and Conor Martin (1920–80), professor of politics and ethics at UCD. Martin was educated at Ballylongford national school and Belvedere College. In 1939 he joined the Jesuit order as a scholastic (novice). He studied at UCD, took doctorates in Semitic and Oriental languages and archaeology at the University of Louvain, and was ordained on 15 August 1954. He travelled in the Middle East and published a book on the scribal character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Between 1958 and 1964 Martin worked at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. During the first two sessions of the second Vatican council (1962–4) he associated with theologically liberal bishops and commentators, acting as a source for the New York Times and for Robert Kaiser, Rome correspondent of Time. In 1964 Martin published The pilgrim under the pen-name ‘Michael Serafian’; in it he described intrigues surrounding the council's decree Nostra aetate, which formally denied that the Jews were collectively guilty of deicide, and later claimed credit for the decree's ratification. Kaiser claimed that The pilgrim was largely fantasy.

In 1964 Martin left Rome and was subsequently released from his vows as a Jesuit; he claimed that he retained priestly faculties, reporting only to the pope. According to his own account he had resigned from his order after realising that new developments were undermining the catholic faith, whereas Kaiser states that he fled after the exposure of his affair with Kaiser's wife Mary. (Martin had responded to Kaiser's initial suspicions by persuading friends that the journalist needed psychiatric treatment.) In 1965 Martin moved to New York. Kaiser claimed that Martin's family in Dublin were subsequently approached by four women (one of them Mary Kaiser) and a man, each of whom believed that Martin had left the priesthood for them. On his arrival in New York Martin allegedly worked as a taxi driver and restaurant dishwasher while building a new career as a writer on church-related subjects. He wrote for the conservative weekly National Review and occasionally published articles in the New York Times. He eventually took up residence in a Manhattan apartment with Kakia Livanios, the former wife of a Greek shipping tycoon; Martin claimed their relationship was innocent.

In his writings Martin aligned himself with discontented traditionalist catholics, making conflicting statements on the validity of the revised liturgy. Hostage to the devil (1976) offered a typology of exorcism through five anonymous case studies: the subjects of these studies were said to have been possessed through sexual perversion (described in prurient detail) but were freed by exorcisms in which the priests involved suffered severe injuries. Appearing soon after the book and film The Exorcist, Martin's Hostage popularised exorcism among American protestants as well as catholics. Martin appeared frequently on television talk shows as an expert on exorcism, displaying considerable charm. In 1996 he claimed to have participated in eleven exorcisms, and a traditionalist friend claimed that Martin performed monthly exorcisms until his death. He also claimed a supernatural gift of discerning demonic possession, and saw Satan in his apartment. Martin's admirers thought him an instrument of the archangel Michael, risking life and health in a personal battle with Satan, but his claims were questioned even by theologically conservative catholic demonologists.

Martin wrote numerous best-selling novels and works of non-fiction describing alleged politico-religious intrigues within the Vatican; he claimed that his information (including detailed descriptions of secret meetings and references to the pope's private thoughts) came from old friends in Rome. His books reflected the fears and anguish of people who believed that they were witnessing the desecration of what they held sacred in the face of silence or even connivance on the part of church authorities. Martin portrayed a world shaped by direct conflict between Jesus and Satan, in which well-meaning liberals, who diluted catholicism in the interests of universalist humanitarianism, allowed agents of Satan to pervade church and state. His books insinuate that the author knows more and worse than he can say. Martin told admirers that his novels were ‘80% true’, but did not specify the provenance of the remaining 20 per cent.

Martin's treatment of individual popes combines lavish praise with vicious innuendo. At times he attributed the corruption of the Vatican to the failure of John XXIII in 1960 to reveal the ‘third secret of Fatima’ (the third part of the revelation allegedly made by the Virgin Mary to three children in 1917); Martin claimed to have seen the prophecy under a vow of secrecy – he frequently hinted at the imminence of the apocalypse. Elsewhere he accused Pius XII of passive collaboration with the Nazis. His novel The final conclave (1978), inspired by Vatican banking scandals, accuses popes since Pius IX of making compromises with masonic bankers. At times he suggested that the church had been corrupt since the age of Constantine. From 1990 he claimed that the Vatican had been clandestinely consecrated to Satan by paedophilic episcopal Satanists, and that Antichrist was alive (possibly in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev.) In his last novel, Windswept house (1997), John Paul II is simultaneously an inspiring figure of radiant holiness and a cowardly temporiser whose pusillanimous abandonment of the faithful constitutes mortal sin. Martin hints that traditionalist splinter groups are secretly favoured by a pontiff too feeble to outmanoeuvre the Roman bureaucracy, and that they will soon constitute the true church facing a Satanist on the throne of St Peter.

Martin's portrayal of papal corruption and demonic conspiracies found many non-catholic readers. Protestant exorcists pursuing ‘Roman Catholic demons’ acknowledged his inspiration; Ian Paisley (qv) quoted him; conspiracy theorists and paranormalists adapted his claims. On the late-night radio show hosted by Art Bell, Martin suggested that African witch doctors might do God's work and counselled listeners claiming to be werewolves.

In later life Malachi Martin suffered several heart attacks. He died 27 July 1999 at New York of intracranial bleeding after a fall. Admirers saw later church scandals as his vindication; one alleged seer purveyed messages from ‘St Malachi Martin’. Even after the appearance of Kaiser's memoir, Martin retained many devotees. The secret of his influence was that he exploited his readers’ experiences and fears, reinforcing his influence by his alleged insider status; the demons he described came from within.

Two characters in Windswept house are based on Martin's version of his life story – a young American priest gradually discovering the corruptions of the Vatican bureaucracy, and an older Irish religious superior and exorcist, who is marginalised by his modernist confreres and ends as an ‘independent’ priest clandestinely authorised by the pope. Versions of the Martin–Kaiser affair are reportedly to be found in the novels Naked I leave by Michael Novak and Connolly's life by Ralph McInerney.

Sources
St Michael's Sword (Oct. 1997–Aug. 1998); obituary, Ir. Times, 7 Aug. 1999; Robert Blair Kaiser, UI (New York, 2002); review of Robert Blair Kaiser, Clerical error (2002), The Observer, 17 Mar. 2002; Michael W. Cuneo, American exorcism: expelling demons in the land of plenty (2001); http://www.starharbor.com/malachi/ (accessed 12 Feb. 2003); http://www.unitypublishing.com.newswire/fiore4.html; http://www.ianpaisley; www.cin.org/archives/cet.; www.theharrowing.com/martin.html; www.steamshovelpress.com/spiritualwickedness.html; www.themiracleofstjoseph.org/revs (foregoing websites accessed 10 Mar. 2003)

Interfuse No 104 : Spring/Summer 2000

THE ENIGMATIC MALACHI MARTIN

Michael Hurley

Many members of the Province will remember Malachi Martin who died on 27 July '99 as a fellow Jesuit, whose imagination could frequently run riot, who was always a rather enigmatic character. Others who did not know him may well have heard of him as an Irish ex-Jesuit or former Jesuit (to use today's more “ecumenical” language) who wrote of the Society in quite outrageous terms. This note has a two-fold aim: to recall some details of Malachi's life and to tell the Province something about the Mass celebrated for him at Belvedere on Saturday 2 October last.

Malachi was at school in Belvedere, as were his three brothers, FX, the Augustinian who died recently, and Conor and Bill who both pre-deceased him, the former a lecturer in politics in UCD, the latter Archbishop's secretary for many years. Malachi joined the Society in 1939 and after noviceship in Emo under Fr Neary spent four years in Rathfarnham (1941-1945), graduating from UCD with a degree in Oriental Languages. After philosophy in Tullabeg (1945-1948), he spent three years teaching in the Crescent and then went to Eegenhoven-Louvain where he was ordained a priest by Bishop, later Cardinal, Suenens on 15 August 1954. After tertianship in Rathfarnham he did doctorate studies at the University of Louvain and in 1958 the results of his work were published by the University in two volumes under the title of The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was the first of some fifteen books published by him.

After his doctorate studies Malachi went to teach at the Biblical Institute in Rome and during the first two sessions of the council [1962-1963] was universally regarded in Rome as a strong supporter of the so-called liberal wing of the council - so said the well-known American priest and intellectual, Mgr George Higgins, who knew him at the time ,writing in America 21 March 1987 (0.231). In particular Malachi supported Cardinal Bea in his various ecumenical initiatives, especially in his efforts to get a positive statement about the Jews from Vatican II. A strange, mysterious change however then took place and in June of 1964 Malachi disappeared from Rome, arrived in Dublin in July and on the 23rd of that month was granted an indult of exclaustration which forbade any exercise of the priestly ministry qualified exclaustration'). For the rest of that year he lived with one of his sisters in Dublin but said mass at the Benedictine hostel which then existed in Palmerston Park. As he still belonged to the Society, the 1965 Catalogus had him assigned to Manresa but degens extra domum, living outside the house. Early that year however, he left for New York where eventually he had his own apartment and was frequently visited by one of his sisters. Later that same year, on 15 May 1965, a Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, in response to a request from himself, reduced him to the lay state' but the enigmatic Malachi had a private chapel in his New York apartment, said mass and built up an apostolate as a priest.

From 1965 on Malachi became notorious as a staunch traditionalist opposed to all that Vatican II said and did, and in particular to the post-Vatican II Society of Jesus. In 1987 he published The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church. America, the Jesuit periodical, invited Mgr George Higgins, the former acquaintance, if not friend, quoted above, to review the book, and in the course of a review article printed in the 21 March number he did not hesitate to write:

I regret to say that The Jesuits does precisely that (distorting the work of the church and its representatives) and does so with a degree of vengeance that has very few parallels, if any, I should think, in even the most irresponsible of the scores of anti-Jesuit books written during the past four centuries by avowed enemies of the Society... Martin's book is anything but fair and objective criticism. His 525-page attack on the Jesuits is downright savage in both style and substance and almost compulsively judgmental. It reeks of unfairness, bordering at times on hatred directed at distinguished members and leaders of the Society. (p.229)

In Mgr Higgins's view the real target is not the Society of Jesus, but the postconciliar church across the board with the Jesuits serving conveniently as a surrogate part for the whole'.(p.230) Malachi's ferocious antipathy to Vatican II and its aftermath only increased his fervour for pre-Vatican II ways. A close friend, an ex-Dominican, a Fr Charles Fiore, writing an obituary of Malachi in The Wanderer for 12 August 1999, praised him as a man of strong piety', singled out “his fervent love and devotion to the Blessed Eucharist and Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to Our Lady of Fatima and her rosary, adding that :

Over his New York years he [Malachi] heard many Confessions, witnessed marriages, buried the dead, gave converts instructions, and by phone, letters, and occasional meetings, counseled [sic] hundreds.

A few weeks before his death the enigmatic Malachi told one of his sisters that I have always been a Jesuit in my heart'. His obsequies were conducted by a priest associated with the Society of St Pius X (followers of Archbishop Levebre) with full pre-Vatican II ceremonial.

On Saturday 2 October a requiem mass for Malachi was celebrated in the community chapel at Belvedere in the presence of his four surviving sisters and two of their husbands. In welcoming the visitors at the beginning, the Headmaster, Fr Leonard Moloney, one of the concelebrants, paid tribute to the Martin family, all the boys of which (Liam, Conor, Frank and Malachi) had been distinguished pupils of the school. A contemporary of Malachi and a fellow Kerryman , Fr Bill McKenna, who was also concelebrating, then spoke recalling among other things Malachi's mastery of languages, his irrepressibility, his fluency in speech, his vivid imagination, the affection in which his fellow scholastics held him. Being another contemporary and Malachi's companion during the four years of theology at Eegenhoven-Louvain, it fell to me to preside at the Mass and in my introduction I said:

Today is the ancient, traditional feast of the Guardian Angels, a feast which reminds us in a particular way of the mystery of God's providence in our world and in our daily lives and in Malachi's life in particular; so it seemed appropriate to take the prayers and readings of the day, adding a special prayer for Malachi. This I went on) is a gathering of the Martin family and of the Jesuit family, Malachi belonged to both our families: he was a Jesuit for a quarter of a century, from 1939 to 1964. We gather to say Mass: to give thanks for the gifts which both families have received from God, in particular to give thanks for Malachi who was an intellectual giant, in particular a linguistic genius but perhaps above all a charmer. We gather however not only for thanksgiving but for mutual forgiveness: to ask for and to offer forgiveness. Tensions and rifts can arise within families and between families. That happened in Malachi's case. As a result he felt he had to part company with the Jesuits. When there's a row it's rarely if ever that the faults are all on one side, anyway today is not a time for assigning blame. Malachi and the Jesuits hurt and offended each other and we are here to say sorry and to ask forgiveness from God and from each other and from Malachi for the ways in which we failed and hurt each other.

The readings for the feast-day were Exodus 23:20-23, Psalm 91 and Matthew 18:1-5 and in the course of my homily I said:

The first reading and the psalm remind us of the mystery of God's providence: God is a father and mother to us all,

watching over us, protecting us out of love for us. However in these days of ethnic cleansing and earthquakes and typhoons when the problem of evil is only too starkly obvious and it's not at all clear that God has the whole world in his hands, this saying about God's provident love ‘is hard and who can hear it, who can stomach it?' - that you may remember was the remark made by the disciples when according to the 6th chapter of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus spoke about the mystery of the eucharist... In particular the providential character of Malachi's own life, his departure from the Jesuits and his subsequent career is hard to accept: It is nothing less than a mystery and all we can say is: 'we believe, Lord, help our unbelief". The last verses of John's gospel may be relevant. Peter had made his apologies and been reconciled to Jesus for his triple denial and been invited to "Follow Me'. Peter saw John and said: 'Lord what about this man?' Jesus told him more or less to mind his own business and 'follow me'. Our vocation is to follow Jesus and not to be too preoccupied by the mystery of Malachi's life or anybody else's.

The gospel reading for today reminds us that to enter the Kingdom of heaven, or as Matthew puts it, the Kingdom of God, we must be childlike and the passage we heard sets us wondering again about what this childlikeness consists in. Childlikeness is certainly not childishness. Perhaps it is the way children are totally dependent on their parents. The gospel command to be childlike is perhaps a caution against being self-centred and self reliant, a reminder that, even though we can do all things in him who strengthens us, without him we can do nothing, that we must put all our trust in God not in ourselves. There is a definite Jesuit temptation to put your trust in yourself but the temptation affects everyone else too. Let us pray for each other that we overcome this temptation and come to rely not on ourselves alone but on God and each other and so be childlike and ready for the Kingdom.

In the Prayers of the Faithful, remembering that it was the Jewish Sabbath and how much Malachi had worked to overcome Arab-Christian resistance to a positive statement about the Jewish People from Vatican II, we included a reference to the progress in Jewish-Christian relations since then. After Mass Malachi's family joined the community for lunch and subsequently wrote moving letters of appreciation and thanks, for one of the most memorable and happy days that I personally experienced, one that will mark a special milestone in the annals of the family'. It was a moving event for the concelebrants also, a Jubilee occasion of forgiveness and reconciliation between the Martin family and the Jesuit family, a precursor of the Province Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany also at Belvedere.