Guess we both misunderstood each other.  I was referring to ALL the problems in the church today while you were specifying demonic influences.  I don't think trads believe that possession, etc. is out-dated.  At least I sure don't.  The devil is alive & well these days.  When I said we need to look in the mirror I meant that WE the people in the pew need to help fix the problems & not look for everyone else to shape up.  I still say the clergy ARE a big part of the problems but how does that equal I must be a priest?  I was a Carmelite but don't know how that fits in either.
 
I recently read 'The Rite' by Matt Baglio (only because it was recommended by someone - a non-trad) & I've never read such ignorance of the true church.  Obviously Baglio & the priests he wrote about are all NO & totally clueless. I'm going to write to Baglio & try to shed some light. I'm doing my little part!

Same with Michael Hoffmann, whom many trads put on a pedestal.  

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Quote from: Elizabeth

My question is, what good has come from people focusing on "mental illness" instead of the spiritual causes of such widespread and acute problems?  

It's a good question, worthy of investigation, although difficult for laymen (in the proper sense, and in the analogous sense of "laymen to science") to make much headway with.  We just don't have the competence.

I seriously cannot believe that any one would cite Grasamier's slander campaign on Fr. Martin as credible.

For starters-just for starters- he banned scorers of people who offered legitimate evidence contrary to his own admitted agenda.  He also erased all of Gerard's excellent research and proofs to the contrary.  Grasimier is not credible.  Only one who knew he could not back up his claims would resort to such intellectually dishonest tactics.

Certainly we can agree that anyone in possession of irrefutable evidence, facts and so forth would never need to resort to banning each person who presented evidence to the contrary!

Nobody ever proves the calumnies against Fr. Martin.  He was heavily involved in exposing V2 satanists and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ predators.  He made deadly enemies in doing so, and some of his colleagues were murdered for their efforts.

Fr. Martin was a pre-V2 Jesuit, before he got special permission to be released from his order and write a scathing critique of the modern Society of Jesus.  If we understand a little bit about the Jesuits, we may safely say Jesuit=double agent under the strictest obedience.  

I couldn't agree more, bernadette.

 :cheers:

Quote from: Elizabeth

I can't prove that MM did exorcisms, but I have no idea how they are proven.  Not many people would admit they had needed one, would they?

Fr. Fiore, who I insist was not an authority because he only ever repeated what Martin had told him, said that Martin "assisted at" exorcisms.  Maybe that's true, but I wouldn't believe it without evidence.

Certainly I think he never saw an exorcism when he wrote his book describing five cases of possession and a series of exorcisms.  He made it all up.

Quote from: Elizabeth

Yes, I had forgotten about The Decline and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church and it was a weird and depressing read - I think he was calling for the Church to get rid of all her money among other things - I'll go read what you've written.

That's right.  Fr. Sellmair is describing the age-old heresy of gnosticism, as it perpetuates itself as a tendency in every age.  It is rooted in an unbalanced view of man, seeing his body, which is an essential part of his unity, as an evil in itself.  This type of belief always manifests the same characteristics - impurity, denial of the necessity of the visible Church, the denial of the Church's right to own property, and demonology.  And that is Martin to a "T".  If you want examples, read about the Manicheans, the Albigensians, and the Franciscan "Spirituals."  These types tend to disaparage holy matrimony and promote the religious life as the ideal for every man, and they love mystery and the notion that some are "adepts" who have secret knowledge (the gnosis) which is revealed to devotees stage by stage.

Martin's final book, which he said would be the most controversial of all, was to be the revelation of his thesis in full regarding the visible Church, and how it was no longer necessary.  His earlier books had already said everything he would have said in the last book, but in peacemeal fashion, not in one unified theory.  He was drawing trads along, loosening their love of the Church and teaching them to love his mysteries, so that he could establish his new religion more openly.

I regard it as additional proof of this that his followers are so cemented to his cult of personality that even when confonted with the worst heresies they have ever seen, they try and find ways to justify the creature as a good and holy priest.  Tell me honestly, have you ever seen anything as bad as this anywhere?  Luther was not as bad as this open blasphemy:

Quote from: Malachi Martin

The god of Christians was then pictured as making an offering to ‘natural’ man: ‘You do this, okay? And I’ll do that, okay? Don’t eat those apples, and I'll make you tremendously happy for ever.’ The Deal. Naughty man, ‘Adam and Eve’, that miserable primal couple, would go and eat that apple. Original Sin! God’s plans were in fragments. What to do? God decides to tack on something to man: supernature, the supernatural. Hence Jesus, God’s son, jumps into human time and space from ‘eternity’, dies on a cross, thus satisfying God’s anger and offended honour, and ‘winning’ the super-nature for ‘natural’ man. Jesus then jumps out of human time and space back into ‘eternity’. Hence the Church, the Churches, the Sacraments, the Commandments, Hell and Heaven.

I promise you, that is not taken out of context, and believe it or not, it is not the worst material in that book.  It boggles the mind.

I've heard that old cowboy movies usually had the good guys in white hats and the bad guys in black hats.  I'm not sure why some Catholics decided on MM being a good guy based upon a couple of fiction works that seemed to put Martin in the white hat club.

Now we are to understand that proof of his episcopal validity is possession of  the correct costume.

In any case, he is a wispy straw blowing in the wind, a manufactured headliner in his own play.  

The modern world has so few real saints that they grasp at such straws.
The world will little know nor long remember him.