The Life and Times of the Exorcist, Fr. Malachi Martin

I have previously taken a quick look at Fr. Malachi Martin's best-known book, 'Hostage to the Devil:'
http://fakirscanada.blogspot.com/2009/03/malachi-martin-and-hostage-to-devil.html
a summary embedded in my own subjective commentary on its theme of possession.

One of my siblings has asked me to do a more objective look at the man himself, as part one of a three-part special-request-series on possession and counter-terrorism, the second part to be published in a few days on http://fakirsca.blogspot.com/ and the third part to be published soon after on http://fakirscanada.spaces.live.com/blog/

Here then, is part one of that series:

If there was an award for "most controversial priest of all time," then Fr. Martin would be a shoe-in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachi_Martin

His book, 'Hostage to the Devil,' published in its final edition seven years before his death in 1999, together with his critical and even defamatory writings on the Vatican and the Catholic Church, sparked a tidal wave of venomous counter- attacks on his character.

His two best-known detractors, ex-Jesuit Robert Blair Kaiser and Domincan priest Richard Woods, both found fame and fortune by means of their attacks on Fr. Martin, in a controversial, ultra-tradionalist publication, the 'National Catholic Reporter:' http://www.picosearch.com/cgi-bin/ts.pl wherein both men were canny, and cowardly, enough to wait until years after Fr. Martin's death, to publish highly defamatory claims regarding their interactions with him some three or four decades previously.

One of their allegations, that Fr. Martin was a defrocked priest, has been convincingly refuted, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachi_Martin#Laicization_dispute

and here:
http://www.biblio.com/author_biographies/2016142/Malachi_Martin.html
Thanks to those NCR attacks on Fr. Martin, and also on M. Scott Peck, about whom I have also previously written:

http://fakirscanada.blogspot.com/2009/04/glimpses-of-devil-by-m-scott-peck-md.html
http://fakirscanada.blogspot.com/2008/06/people-of-lie.html

the priest-cum author Richard Woods has a tidy religious-publishing sideline going:
http://richardwoodsop.net/site/Publications.html

Ditto, former Jesuit and conspiracy-flogger Robert Blair Kaiser, who inexplic-ably waited forty years, - and three years after Fr. Martin's demise, - to tell the world what a "wife-seducer" and all-around nefarious character Malachi Martin was:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_18_38/ai_84054150/

Kaiser has other credibility issues, - besides the fact that his latest offering, 'Cardinal Mahony,' reads like an ex-priest's wet-dream: http://www.robertblairkaiser.com/

His Kennedy-assassination conspiracy-fantasy, 'R.K. must die!,' which claims that Sirhan Sirhan was "programmed to kill and then to forget that he killed" Robert Kennedy, is both whack - and convincingly refuted by the assassin himself: http://www.moldea.com/Sirhan-HeyPunk.html

Moreover, if Fr. Martin did indeed "seduce" Blair's wife during the Second Vati-can Council, as Blair claims he did, then he must have been a very busy boy, (must be those steel-cut Irish oats); because, according to yet another conspir-acy theory set out by one John Grasmeier, Martin was a nefarious "double agent who could never turn down work," on behalf of Jews, during the Second Vati-can Council: http://angelqueen.org/articles/07_06_martin_ajc_connection.shtml

What is true in Grasmeier's set of claims is the claim that Fr. Martin wrote a book called 'The Pilgrim,' under the pen-name Michael Serafian: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:k6GiFQYWnU8J:www.faqs.org/copyright/the-pilgrim-library-of-world-religions-vol-5-sacred-texts/+Michael+Serafian.&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk

As for the rest of it, the interesting documents that Grasmeier provides to sup-port his claims make a good circumstantial case that Fr. Martin was paid to lobby on behalf of Jewish lobby groups during the Council who wished to make their religious interests heard. There is no evidence whatsoever to support Grasmeier's allegation that Martin was a spy who leaked confidential informa-tion from the Council to those lobby groups.

I recognize the ethical dubiousness from a Catholic perspective of Martin's doing lobbying at the Council on behalf of anyone, Jew or Catholic; however, not being Catholic, I'm personally okay with it, from a moral standpoint.

When I read of Fr. Martin's claims and innuendo regarding the Vatican, I would love to say that he was suffering from paranoid dementia. Maybe he was, at the end, who knows?

But what I see in his face: http://www.starharbor.com/malachi/
is a quality of spiritual authority, and a lack of arrogance, aggression, and ruthlessness.

As for his writings other than 'Hostage to the Devil,' I have no opinion on their credibility. I know little about them and even less about their subject matter. I know a little about possession and exorcism. That's all.

But I hope this blog-post helps others to sort out the truth of the matters pertaining to Malachi Martin's difficult reputation.