Showing posts with label Malachi Martin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Malachi Martin. Show all posts
Sunday, August 21, 2011
8:39 AM
It was St. Cajetan's feastday again, and it would unfold well nigh identically to the year before. It would begin with a pleasant morning cool that in spite of our newly broken-in feet, we would embrace with
gusto, stopping for a pleasant second breakfast on the way. Later, the heat would be scorching one of our longest routes (22 miles that day), and in spite of my best efforts (more food and more hydration than the year before), I would still nearly faint in the church of Goszczyn during Mass, though knowing what was happening that time, I remained for Holy Communion. Aï! It would appear that what is past is indeed prologue.
Still, even if events do not change, we do. I cannot speak for the whole group, but as the heat intensified, those around me seemed to grow more silent, turning their thoughts towards personal ruminations of their own choosing. That is certainly what I did, and I found myself thinking more fervently than ever of Brother Cajetan Gavronich.
All those of the Slavic tongue would be amused at my family's American way of saying our dear friend's name, /Kædʒetæn Gævrənɪtʃ/, but the homeliness of the pronunciation suited what he was in life. He was like an immortal ray from the moon momentarily imprisoned in flesh, yet never varying according to the flesh. I knew him when he was old, and from the first day to the last, his face was as smiling and unwrinkled as that of a child's. His spirit was as energetic and joyful, yet he was as selfless and giving as a column of the Earth. He had a massive impact on my spiritual life, and he was forever entangled with my personal devotion to the Church, so I found myself that day thinking more of the second Saint Cajetan than the first. And a saint he is indeed.
I met him when my mother took me as a little girl to say rosaries outside the now vanquished abortion mill of our city. He was the only cleric of the group that I remember ever being there, an Alexian brother not allowed to bury the victims of that place, but at least piously rendering them recognition. At that time, he was but to me a nice, old man, who I remember giving me holy cards of Saint Faustina Kowalska and who instructed me concerning the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
Rosaries would become the Koronka do Miłosierdzia Bożego if Protestants should come to join us in prayer for an end to abortion. They could not say an Ave perhaps, but they could ask God for mercy. They even swallowed their scruples in repeating the request over and over again. I suppose that is when the seed was planted in me, which would one day become a vine, pulling me into Poland. Yet, devotion to Our Lady of Częstochowa had not yet been instilled. That came later.
My mother and Brother Cajetan had a great deal in common on the grounds of promoting the Gospel of Life over the Culture of Death, but there was more to the intellectual nature of their friendship. At the age of twelve, I was soon to be acquainted with the word 'geopolitical.' That year, my mother gave me a book she had bought years before, one with a title that had always intrigued me: The Keys of This Blood, to read for my history class that year (I was homeschooled from twelve to seventeen). Whenever she and Brother Cajetan met, there was often an exchange of taped i
nterviews and books by the same author, and so I came to have the greatest faith in--and personal attachment to--the man who would become my spiritual father, Malachi Martin, S.J.
It was this Irish priest who introduced the 'Primate of the Millenium' to my family, and as my child's mind was beginning to comprehend the diabolic, global political and social mechanisms in place against all that I held most dear, it was to these words of Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński that I clung:
Certain historical developments are willed by the Lord of History, and they shall take place. About many other--mostly minor--developments, that same Lord is willing. He allows men the free will to choose between various options, and He will go along with those choices; for, in the end,
all human choices wll be co-opted as grist into God's mill, which grinds slowly, but always grinds exceedingly fine.
(Malachi Martin, The Keys of this Blood, Prologue: The Servant of the Grand Design)
all human choices wll be co-opted as grist into God's mill, which grinds slowly, but always grinds exceedingly fine.
As I progressed through the work, I was awed at how the Jesuit delved into the intricate histories of the three major world powers (the Church as headed by John Paul II, Communism as led by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West). Nearing the close of the book, the writer brought me to a place that at the time, I could not have even pronounced the name:
By the time that much prepared date August 26, 1968, rolled around, there was nobody in Poland who was unaware of what would be transacted at the monastery of Częstochowa on Jasna Góra--the Bright Mountain--with Mary as Queen of Poland...
....Wyszyński himself presided over the ceremonies at Częstochowa. Over a quarter of a million pilgrims gathered on the hillside around the monastery and again responded to the words of national dedication. True, the militia was present. Extra government troops, police battalions and teams of Zomos--bully boys--stood by watchfully, but not daring to make any move. While the voices of that quarter million rang out again and again--''Yes! We swear it!''--in response to the ritual requests for their assent to the dedication, the same ceremony was being performed at literally thousands of locations throughout Poland...
...It was Archbishop Wojtyła's function to piece all of it together in words. He spoke of the ''supernatural current'' let loose by the millenial celebrations of Jasna Góra...he hammered home the supreme lesson: "Our temporal theology demands that we dedicate ourselves into the hands of the Holy Mother. May we all live up to our tasks."
(ibid., Book II: The Geopolitics of Faith, Part Six: The Vision of the Servant, Chapter 30: Papal Training Ground: Under the Sign of Solidarność)
Half a year before I was reading this, my mother had been in a religious article shop in Memphis, Tennessee. We were all suffering while one of my younger sisters was heroically battling childhood cancer, and thus we were constantly searching the realm of Sacraments and sacramentals for consolation. The store was owned by a convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, and perhaps that was what had lured my mother in, as we none of us had a liking for religious kitsch, and saccharine Virgin Marys dressed in anæmic pink and baby blue are not the stock and store of the Eastern churches.
My mother did tell the man she was Catholic (and proud of the fact on seeing his adverse reaction) and asked if there was anything he would recommend her purchasing. She walked out of his store with an icon of Our Lady of Vladimir and the Black Madonna. He had not exactly been very informative about the latter, saying mostly that she was a 'bridge between East and West,' but that is how she came to be in our family. As a girl, I only knew that her image and Our Lady of Guadalupe's dominated my mind and devotions with a fearful power. It was the serene, regal face with a delicate nose, oriental eyes, and pensive mouth that I beheld during the family rosaries. The then unpronounceable name of the city from whence she presided was as distant and exalted in my imagination as Eden.
My mother did tell the man she was Catholic (and proud of the fact on seeing his adverse reaction) and asked if there was anything he would recommend her purchasing. She walked out of his store with an icon of Our Lady of Vladimir and the Black Madonna. He had not exactly been very informative about the latter, saying mostly that she was a 'bridge between East and West,' but that is how she came to be in our family. As a girl, I only knew that her image and Our Lady of Guadalupe's dominated my mind and devotions with a fearful power. It was the serene, regal face with a delicate nose, oriental eyes, and pensive mouth that I beheld during the family rosaries. The then unpronounceable name of the city from whence she presided was as distant and exalted in my imagination as Eden.
And now, I was going there on foot for the second time! I find that
discomfort has a dual tendency in me to either render a trial more mundane or more mystical by its presence. Amidst my contemplations, I seesawed between the two extremes the whole day, sometimes humourously setting each visibile landmark as my next goal before I would ask someone to carry me, then putting off the question until the next landmark.
Other times, I thought of the past that had brought me on the journey again, and wondered if a certain Alexian religious brother might be gazing down on me and using my efforts for some purpose dear to him on Earth.
God love you, Brother Cajetan!
(Evidence of the aforementioned heat, as Father Grzegorz here rather fittingly looks the part of Lawrence of Polonia :)
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be. Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return into his earth: in that day all their thoughts shall perish. Blessed is he who hath the God of Jacob for his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God. (Psalms 145:2-5)
Thou shalt not speak ill of the gods*, and the prince of thy people thou shalt not curse. (Exodus 22:28)
*'gods' has often been interpreted here as magistrates, judges, or priests
I had had my share of fallen stars, just as any other teenager does, when I was talking one day in 1999 with a fellow disciple of Father Malachi Martin.
'Rachel, it looks bad.'
'Meaning?
'It looks like he was living with that woman in an intimate way.'
'The New York Times is hardly a paragon of truth, and even they did not dare say it outright. They merely implied she was his companion.'
'Rachel,' she said gently, 'Would it shake your faith if Father Malachy was guilty?'
'No it wouldn't. And he's not.'
Then came Robert Kaiser's book, Clerical Error. 'It really looks like he may have been a great sinner,' many said.
'He's still the man who helped me, and in any case, he's not guilty.'
Even if Kaiser's ex-wife had collaborated that madman's account, or if Mrs. Livanos had claimed to be his mistress and produced photographic evidence, I would still not have believed it. There's something to be said for detachment from our heroes, but there is also something to said for loyalty. Even though cynicism is, alas, often justified, in the case of persons, it may be that, as L. M. Montgomery observes, love has 'the truer vision.' Therefore, the devotees of the renegade Jesuit and priest forever, will inflexibly maintain his saintliness until contradicted by his own shade. Even then, I do not think we will do much more than shrug.
Still, it is good to see that he is defended, and by those who knew him for many intimate years.
Thou shalt not speak ill of the gods*, and the prince of thy people thou shalt not curse. (Exodus 22:28)
*'gods' has often been interpreted here as magistrates, judges, or priests
I had had my share of fallen stars, just as any other teenager does, when I was talking one day in 1999 with a fellow disciple of Father Malachi Martin.
'Rachel, it looks bad.'
'Meaning?
'It looks like he was living with that woman in an intimate way.'
'The New York Times is hardly a paragon of truth, and even they did not dare say it outright. They merely implied she was his companion.'
'Rachel,' she said gently, 'Would it shake your faith if Father Malachy was guilty?'
'No it wouldn't. And he's not.'
Then came Robert Kaiser's book, Clerical Error. 'It really looks like he may have been a great sinner,' many said.
'He's still the man who helped me, and in any case, he's not guilty.'
Even if Kaiser's ex-wife had collaborated that madman's account, or if Mrs. Livanos had claimed to be his mistress and produced photographic evidence, I would still not have believed it. There's something to be said for detachment from our heroes, but there is also something to said for loyalty. Even though cynicism is, alas, often justified, in the case of persons, it may be that, as L. M. Montgomery observes, love has 'the truer vision.' Therefore, the devotees of the renegade Jesuit and priest forever, will inflexibly maintain his saintliness until contradicted by his own shade. Even then, I do not think we will do much more than shrug.
Still, it is good to see that he is defended, and by those who knew him for many intimate years.
Monday, May 16, 2011
'They are not innocents selected at random by passing demons. Most have made a deal with the Devil. Only later do they become aware of the Devil's asking price.'
_Father Malachi Martin
For some reason I have always had a most sensitive fear concerning those strong, spiritual beings that chose to hate the Good, True, and Beautiful. To be reassured as to what they can and cannot do is why an impressionable teenager was allowed by her mother to read parts of a work on exorcism, Malachi Martin's Hostage to the Devil. What set this account apart is that, even though he is a talented and bewitching author, Father Malachy does not write in a lurid or sensational fashion concerning battles with the demons. In fact, it was because of this committment to speak the truth for God's sake and not for Mammon's, that he refused David Berkowitz's offer to write that monster's biography--forever sealing that particular portal of evil into the realm of man.
There is a lesson in that refusal which every writer should heed. When it comes to evil, one should not say enough to fascinate readers with the glamour of thrills and danger that prompt so many to watch horrific films or read frightening books. Yet, for the sake of the sceptical who possess a healthy immunity to the morbid fascination of incubi and succubi, occasionally a word should be dropped to ripple their apathy.
Yesterday was a beautiful day--the weather's masters tinting the spring foliage deep green against pewter skies, spraying everything with the gloss of a gentle rain, and studding every roadside or path with blossoms of lilac of every hue, from ruddy violet to icy lavender to pearl white. I was on my way to an afternoon Mass in a village outside of Warsaw. I was entering the church by the back door, having just dipped my fingers in holy water, and was adjusting my veil in the vestibule before the sacristy when I heard a harsh, shrill scream coming from within the church.
I stood in shock; a flurry of possibilities suggested themselves to me, when I heard another scream, this one in intelligible German. I turned and the parish priest beckoned to me from the sacristy. I was informed that Mass would begin in half an hour at the usual time, but at the present moment, an exorcism was taking place.
I hastily went outside to wait, standing at the back of the church, as near to the tabernacle as I could be, and began my prayers. It is my usual wont to think of Christ in the tabernacle as the vulnerable Lover. That day, I saw Him as the commanding Lord. Disturbed as I was, it was impossible to fear in that situation, which only revealed how impotent evil is against the Holy of holies. Glancing at the lustrous leaves of the wet lilac bushes, and inhaling the flowers' scent, I remembered that this was His world--even this world of matter. And it is this realm, as well as that of Heaven, that the serpent hates.
When the patients of the exorcist left (they had of course come of their own accord and asked for the exorcisms themselves) the exorcist himself was exhausted. At Mass, the congregation was asked to offer their Communions up for the ongoing effort of freeing the two people that had come to the church for help.
If you can spare a prayer, remember that an exorcist is always in need. After two heart attacks, Father Malachi Martin had this to say of such holy work:
'Every exorcism takes something out of you that cannot be put back. The demon goes, but it carries a part of you away with it. A little of the exorcist dies each time. It's a permanent mental fight against a powerful, dangerous enemy.'
Let us all remember in our daily toils and pains, which all too often render existence rather mundane, that in many places on this globe, a consecrated man enters into a very dark place, and for the sake of one who has thrown so many graces away, offers himself--trusting in God's protection--as hostage to the Devil.
There is a lesson in that refusal which every writer should heed. When it comes to evil, one should not say enough to fascinate readers with the glamour of thrills and danger that prompt so many to watch horrific films or read frightening books. Yet, for the sake of the sceptical who possess a healthy immunity to the morbid fascination of incubi and succubi, occasionally a word should be dropped to ripple their apathy.
Yesterday was a beautiful day--the weather's masters tinting the spring foliage deep green against pewter skies, spraying everything with the gloss of a gentle rain, and studding every roadside or path with blossoms of lilac of every hue, from ruddy violet to icy lavender to pearl white. I was on my way to an afternoon Mass in a village outside of Warsaw. I was entering the church by the back door, having just dipped my fingers in holy water, and was adjusting my veil in the vestibule before the sacristy when I heard a harsh, shrill scream coming from within the church.
I stood in shock; a flurry of possibilities suggested themselves to me, when I heard another scream, this one in intelligible German. I turned and the parish priest beckoned to me from the sacristy. I was informed that Mass would begin in half an hour at the usual time, but at the present moment, an exorcism was taking place.
I hastily went outside to wait, standing at the back of the church, as near to the tabernacle as I could be, and began my prayers. It is my usual wont to think of Christ in the tabernacle as the vulnerable Lover. That day, I saw Him as the commanding Lord. Disturbed as I was, it was impossible to fear in that situation, which only revealed how impotent evil is against the Holy of holies. Glancing at the lustrous leaves of the wet lilac bushes, and inhaling the flowers' scent, I remembered that this was His world--even this world of matter. And it is this realm, as well as that of Heaven, that the serpent hates.
When the patients of the exorcist left (they had of course come of their own accord and asked for the exorcisms themselves) the exorcist himself was exhausted. At Mass, the congregation was asked to offer their Communions up for the ongoing effort of freeing the two people that had come to the church for help.
If you can spare a prayer, remember that an exorcist is always in need. After two heart attacks, Father Malachi Martin had this to say of such holy work:
'Every exorcism takes something out of you that cannot be put back. The demon goes, but it carries a part of you away with it. A little of the exorcist dies each time. It's a permanent mental fight against a powerful, dangerous enemy.'
Let us all remember in our daily toils and pains, which all too often render existence rather mundane, that in many places on this globe, a consecrated man enters into a very dark place, and for the sake of one who has thrown so many graces away, offers himself--trusting in God's protection--as hostage to the Devil.
Friday, April 2, 2010
God's MessengerFive years before the scandal began to emerge in secular print, I had been prepared in my youth by a priest to whom my confidence is forever and irrevocably dedicated, for I do not trust him as a prince, but as himself. He may not be called ‘Venerable.’ The Church has certainly not yet named him ‘Saint’ or ‘Blessed.’ I may only call him ‘Beloved.’ Beloved Malachy—Father Malachi Martin.
As a child of the South-eastern corner of the American States, I grew up surrounded by souls, well-meaning as they were, who brutally assaulted the Church so dear to my heart with the wildest accusations about her practises and the continuous threat of my personal damnation. Their arguments being based on emotion and ill-informed prejudice, I often had occasion to take pride in the pristine philosophy of Roman Catholic theology and the immemorial structure of the Body of Christ.
Though at thirteen, I had been taught more than most and had studied more than most Catholics, I was by no means wise. I certainly could not distinguish between the essence and the accidents of the Church’s rites. To see a divorce between the two would have been most injurious to any young soul, and this revelation was creeping on me day by day as I realized more and more the differences between the post-Vatican culture in which I partook of the Sacraments and the Traditional teachings instilled by my parents.
Scandals committed by clergy and religious against the Church first erupted in my world through the news I read and the pervading ugliness in Novus Ordo churches and Masses. These were revolutions against doctrine primarily. The declining beauty of the churches my family attended (we changed parishes several times) was a necessary evil in fleeing from the heretical dissidence preached by our former pastors. It was either ironic or deliberately unkind that the bishop gave the beautiful sanctuaries to the Leftist priests, but then that Ordinary himself was the object of more egregious scandal but a few years ago.
‘Well before the year 2,000 there will no longer be a religious institute recognisable as the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church of today... There will be no centralised control, no uniformity in teaching, no universality in practice of worship, prayer, sacrifice, and priesthood.’ _Malachi Martin
Just so. Such statements and such facts had the power to wrench my peace into shambles, but Father Martin always had a way of putting me back together. Whenever the Pope bewildered me, or a primate scandalized me, there he was the—true Jesuit, full of Ignatian fire for the papacy and for the truth.
‘We’ve never sat in his chair. He is the man chosen by the Holy Spirit; stop trying to be Pope.’ Such words mean so much coming from a man who looks on the facts unflinchingly and quite willingly discusses them. The same line means very little from the Neo-Conservative Catholics practicing this ignominious rule: ‘never criticize a priest.’
The further addition of Father Malachy’s personal theories and opinions behind papal motives were stunning, humbling, and wholly convincing. Through his works of thinly veiled ‘faction’, I found myself moved not only to forgive, but even to understand the plight tearing Holy Mother Church apart. It is the same condition tearing mankind apart everyday, and it comes back to the grossly simple principle that man is fallen.
He is fickle, weak, self-centred, and choked with sloth. Man’s is the nature that may on one day hail the Great Rabbi as he rides into Jerusalem on a stately ass with palms and praise, and five days late foam at the mouth for his death. In an hour of precious intimacy, he vows to follow his beloved Friend even to death; not a day later he denies every knowing Him.
It is a daunting task, in the wake of these fresh scandals, to turn one’s eyes to the countenance of the Lord. His indignation would surely burn us to cinders, yet if we could look at Him, there would be no surprise in His face. He recoiled in horror already at Gethsemane, underwent the torment required for expiation on the cross, and pronounced the words of forgiveness even in the midst of His Passion.
Yet, one must learn to emulate Dismas and not Gesmas in order to be with Him in paradise. We must not expect God to prove Himself by rescuing us from torment, or that which we love. Malachi Martin made the inexorable point that in trying to play the World's game, even in the name of charity and prudence, leads to servitude of Mammon. It must be a crucified, perhaps marginalized, Church to which we belong, not one exalted in this world.
Accept this then: Judas has manifested himself again. The calumny, torture, and death at the hand of the World are to follow.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.