Pope makes complete overhaul of Vatican liturgical congregation

I don't understand why he needed to support himself if he hadn't left the priesthood. Couldn't he have requested that he be assigned to a diocese where he would receive a priest's salary? Even if they didn't place him in a parish, he could have done some kind of administrative or research work.

 

Here are two interesting articles about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachi_Martin

https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/aug/10/guardianobituaries3

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They really don't answer the questions about whether or not he died a priest in good standing and why he wasn't attached to any particular diocese. Newspaper obituaries, especially from the likes of the Guardian or the Independent are not very reliable sources of information this case or, indeed, anything Catholic. The Wikipedia page doesn't really clarify it either. A death notice from his family giving funeral arrangements, etc. would be more reliable because his family would have known his status in the Church.

It does appear that he went OTT in his claims about the Church, perhaps based on some facts mixed with instinct and speculation. I suppose that we will never know the whole truth. It doesn't seem right to be speculating about his status in the Church when he isn't alive to defend himself but for me his status as a priest matters.

 

If you are mostly concerned if he was defrocked, then don't worry. Nobody ever disputed his status. He chose to be secularized, he was not thrown out of the priesthood. With all of the difficult things he said about Rome, the easiest thing for them to do would have been to simply point out that he was defrocked. They never even came close to doing that. He died in good standing. Leaving the priesthood doesn't disgrace a priest.

The Vatican also never denied that he read the Third Secret either. An easy thing to do if it were true and something they surely would have done. He was a bit of a thorn in the side of the modernists.

 

That's really the answer I was searching for. Thank you Praetorian. Had the Vatican thought he was pretending to be a priest when he had had his priestly faculties removed, they would have said so. They also would have said that he hadn't read the Third Secret. As far as I can see, even his fiercest detractors haven't been able to prove that he was not a priest in good standing. On this feast of the Holy Souls, may Our Lord Jesus Christ grant him eternal rest, sharing in the Beatific Vision with the Blessed Virgin Mary for whom he professed great devotion during his time on earth.

 

No problem
Yes, even his enemies (and he had many) couldn't deny either of those two points.
They both would surely have been brought up by people who opposed him if either were the case.

 

I'm currently reading Windswept House and am at the point where the followers of 'The Prince of This World' have decided to force Pope St. John Paul II to resign, with the intention of replacing him with one who would be amenable to their globalising aims. Of course, this is nonsense, a pure invention. JPII didn't resign. Popes don't resign...

 

That's in Windswept House?? Looks like I should read it then.

 

And, of course, modernists would never be guilty of clericalism or conspiring to give the sitting pope the elbow and selecting a ready made replacement and then blaming it all on the Holy Spirit.

 

In several of his radio shows with Bernard Janzen, in particular his 1990 show, Catholicism Overturned, Fr. Martin explained his situation very specifically, he was not laicized, but he was secularized. I have the transcript which Triumph Communications and Bernard Janzen had transcribed.

"I had asked my superiors for permission to leave the Jesuits, and in 1964, Pope Paul IV granted me the permission to leave the Society Of Jesus. He secularized me. I did not want to be laicized. I did not want to be under a bishop incardinated in a diocese, to belong to a religious order, or to join Opus Dei, the only three alternatives for a priest in the Catholic Church. So he gave me a general commission to write and to be active in the field of communications." [p.1]

Given the critical nature of some of Fr. Martin's works, it made sense for him to take this option. I doubt that he would have been allowed by a bishop to write the type of works he wrote.

 

Perhaps Pope Paul saw it as a way of striking back against the wolves.

Be ready for the beginning-it is disturbing.

 

Did you notice that the third secret ...the vaticans version, was not released until after Fr. Martin's death. If the two versions were different, Fr. Martin could have said so. Waiting until he died, it was not disputed . His last manuscript that he was working on when he died was never found.....

 

I did notice this
Fr. Martin died on July 27 1999 and the Third Secret was released in June of 2000 less than a year later.
Pretty coincidental

 

I always thought that was strange, too. Also his one obvious "enemy" Robert Kaiser never made his accusations until Malachi Martin was dead. Just very smoky.

 

I take what Father Martin stated on the 3rd secret as truth. Even though he could not reveal the whole message being under oath, he wisely gave us enough to know that what we got from the Vatican was very incomplete. He spoke of the great apostasy that we are now within and clearly confirmed that "the last pope would be under the influence of Satan". This he confirmed because he was told this from a person who heard an old Jesuit priest say this. He simply acknowledged it was within the 3rd secret.

 

Yes.

 

I bought a book (at some expense) by Fr. Martin in which he predicted that the Church would be saved by the offices of the notorious 'Legionaries of Christ'! That finished him for me.

 

Oh dear. Well in fairness to M Martin he was an observer/Vatican insider and analyst. Not a prophet. In the 90's the more traditional orders did seem a rescue to many of us. Who could know the horrors of the LC order. A lesson in discernment. An uber orthodox person may be nothing of the kind. Examples abound through history. Sadly.

 

Meant

to say he never claimed to be a prophet.

 

I agree. Fr. Martin was human. He made mistakes like all of us do. I have listened to all of his interviews that are available I think. Many times. I have never heard him make that claim. Though if he did it was probably just human judgement.