A FIRST-HAND TESTIMONY TO SUPPORT THE THEORY THAT MALACHI MARTIN WAS "FATHER DAVID"
When I was writing my piece where I theorized that Malachi Martin wrote himself into his book, Hostage to the Devil as "Father David", I relied on Martin's books and his radio interviews with Art Bell and the set of interviews he gave Bernard Janzen. Never did I come across an admission that Martin was definitely one of the priests under pseudonym in his book that has 5 accounts of exorcisms. I was just working off my own deep-reading of the text, and the fact that the Malachi Martin who wrote the heterodox Jesus Now seemed an intellectual replica of "Father David" who, before he performs an exorcism, is wedded to wrong ideas about Christ, nurtured by an infatuation with Teilhard de Chardin.
I had not yet listened to the Hostage to the Devil podcast, hosted by Marty Stalker who directed and co-wrote a film about Malachi Martin that was released in 2016.
In the past week, however, I listened to the Hostage to the Devil podcast because I was looking for interviews with people who had known Malachi Martin so that I could refute the false notion that Father Malachi Martin had never done exorcisms. In Episode 1 of the podcast, I heard Bob Marro hold forth on his time as "Malachi's driver", the man who drove Martin to all the places along the eastern seaboard where he went to exorcize people of demons. Bob Marro's great affection and love of Martin shines through, he says of his time as Martin's chauffeur, "I was always happy to do it, because I got to spend hours and hours and hours with him." Martin became Bob's best friend, and according to Bob, Malachi Martin admitted that he was one of the priests under pseudonym in Hostage to the Devil.
There are several other exorcists in Hostage, but none other than "Father David" have the exact same conversion story as Malachi Martin, from devotee of Teilhard de Chardin to Traditional Catholic priest.
I read Hostage to the Devil years ago after hearing an interview between Malachi Martin and the late Art Bell. The interview was incredibly intriguing, and the book was nothing short of terrifying. Many people have kept Malachi Martin at a distance because of the controversy surrounding his priesthood, but I think he was a holy man who spoke the truth, even when the truth was hard to hear. Thank you for posting about this book!
ReplyDelete-Damian
It couldn't be. In the preface David M was dead. We have no way to validate what you claim about his believe in de Chardain because the beloved Fr Martin is already dead. It does no justice to Fr Martin by adding bits and pieces adding claims from here and there to his story. The only thing (and most important) that I got from Fr Martin is my return to the Catholic faith and to tradition and to the truth about fatima.
ReplyDeleteActually, Akyatpanaog, it still could be the case that "Father David" was really a stand- in for Malachi Martin, because Martin may have been using the elements of a composite and spiritually he may have died to self, and thus he could have said that the old him represented in Father David was dead.
DeleteI beg to differ with you that it does no good to theorize as to Malachi Martin's faith development. As you saw in your own life, he influenced your return to the Catholic faith.
But have you read Jesus Now? It's the work of a heterodox Jesuit and I hold that there needs to be investigation fine as to how Martin became a Traditional Catholic priest who was loosed of his infatuation with de Chardin.
"Jesus Now" was not heterodox, as is often repeated, and unfortunately now cemented by the proven charlatan Dr. T.M. The idea that he was an acolyte of de Chardin seems to come from the publishers remarks on the inside cover, and not the actual content. In the book he is critical of de Chardin (see chapter "Universe") for any theories that reduce Christ to anything besides the transcendent God incarnate. In this book he argues for the real presence, and errancy of scripture, tradition, etc. I think sometimes the confusion is he writes in a semi stream of consciousnes form like Joyce, but in the voice of those he is arguing against. I feel that he wrote this book to some degree as cover in his early days, because it is oddly written and can easily be confused with heterodoxy but at the same time is orthodox and is true to Martin's later views. I appreciate what you have written about him in your blog. I wonder if you'd be willing to take a second look at this book and correct the record?
DeleteDear Unknown,
DeleteYour comment has given me a lot to think about, and I have done as you suggested and revisited Jesus Now and in particular the section that you mention. Yes, you are right to point out that Malachi Martin takes issue with de Chardin and even laments that the endpoint of the de Chardin phony doctrine is that Jesus is viewed purely as a man. But in other sections of the book Martin plays with a very diluted de Chardin reductionism that could give the impression that Jesus was more man than God. As you say, the book is oddly written, but so much of the text relies on Martin's own definitions such as his concept of "the Jesus Self" which are never integrated fully into the truly Catholic understanding of Jesus as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to Whom all power in heaven on earth has been given. Martin relies on prompting the reader to self-actualization (a hot trend in the 1970s), "The invitation of the Jesus Self is to overleap oneself, to transcend the petty and insufficient independence of the human self."
This push to self-actualization by way of the Person of Jesus has no real foundation in Jesus Now precisely because Martin downplayed Jesus's Divinity - Our Lord's power to give us grace that allows us transcends our human nature - and Martin failed to restore the Divine Image of Our Lord in the mind of the reader this at the expense of his creating a new school of viewing Jesus that is ultimately just clever jargon.
It was like that for a time Martin was more influenced by de Chardin than he realized, and this is the key error of Father David, who was not a fanboy of de Chardin but nonetheless had been so infected that he did not rely on Jesus's Divine Power when he was trying to exorcise a fellow priest and his first attempt at exorcism ended horribly because he was relying on his own power and not Our Lord's Divine Power which he had lost faith in.
I sense Martin was trying to compete with de Chardin in making the Person of Christ clearer for the modern Christian, but the irony of Jesus Now is that at the time it was written the Person of Christ seemed to be very unclear for Martin, who had a contempt for traditional theological norms so much so that he dispensed with them altogether in writing the book.
And the reason I hold Jesus Now is heterodox is that it denies the Second Coming of Christ so that He may kill the Anti-Christ with His breath. That is the bold claim of the book, that Jesus is not coming again because He never left us! But we know from St Paul that Jesus will come from heaven to extinguish the Anti-Christ, "the Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of His mouth and annihilate him by manifesting His own presence."
Also, I'm not sure you can say unequivocally that Martin held these views 'til the end of his life. On Art Bell's show, Martin held forth on the Anti-Christ will be slayed by Jesus. All that said, Robert Marro gave an interview on the Hostage to the Devil podcast where he said that Malachi Martin held that the Anti-Christ was alive but would manifest in a later age. This is in contradiction to the Church Father St Ambrose who held that the Anti-Christ will be born of Jewish parents in a time yet to come. St Robert Bellarmine SJ explained that the birth of the Anti-Christ will only happen after the Gospel has been preached to all nations.
I hold you are unfairly criticizing Dr Taylor Marshall, and I think Dr Taylor Marshall has done a lot of good, he has promoted devotion to the Most Holy Rosary and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. That said, Marshall let himself down badly with his poorly researched video on Martin that reduced Martin to a charming Irish lad and not as the literary genius and superb priest that he truly became - and yes I think Martin had a deeper conversion between the time of Jesus Now and Hostage to the Devil and that is the backbone of my theory on the man.
God bless you and yours.