A letter written by Father Malachi Martin addressing the attacks from critics prior to his death
SOURCE
I am sending you these few lines as my commentary on the abuse and calumnies flung in my direction by certain members of our Roman Catholic Church. Many of my friends and well-wishers have urged me to respond to the abusers and the calumniators; and remember that this abuse and calumnious attack has been going on for over thirty-three years! That is a long time; and I have become a veteran of such oppression, so much so that in a certain sense I know much better than any of my friends and well-wishers how to deal with this sustained harsh treatment.
The
basic lesson I have learnt over those thirty-three years
is: not allow myself be diverted from fulfilling my mission
as a priest and a servant of the Holy See of Peter. This
means not merely refusing to pick up the stones thrown at
me and returning them on the heads of my abusers. It means
principally that I fulfill my duties as a priest—celebrate
daily Mass, recite my breviary, fulfill my pastoral obligations to
those under my care. It means that I never allow the
distortions—doctrinal and other—of these very zealous
abusers and calumniators to enter into my optic or cloud my
angle of vision. It means, of course, praying for their
spiritual welfare—and also that the Holy Spirit grant
them some measure of understanding. For understanding is chiefly what
lacks to them.
Well
over twenty-five years ago, I wrote to my Superior in Rome
complaining about a recrudescence of these attacks, and
suggesting a certain course of action. He wrote back
quoting that passage of John’s Gospel where Christ warns
His disciples that the time would come when they would be
ostracized and persecuted by people who would do that to them and
think they were doing God’s will. “Can’t you suffer, too, for
Christ’s sake?” This was my Superior’s answer.
Besides
all that, all these years have taught me a few central
lessons; you have to have undergone it all to be able to
appreciate the principal lesson. Which is: abusers and
calumniators are not out to get the truth, to build up, to
edify. Their bent is to destroy, to liquidate. Hence, no
matter what information you give them, they will not desist;
they will use it to further their distrustful ambition. Hence, I found
that there was no point in even trying to communicate with
them; anything they learned became merely grist for their
grindstones of hate.
A
second valuable lesson I learned was this: they don’t
really matter in the kingdom of God and in the daily
warfare between Christ and Lucifer. There are too many
Confessions to be heard, too many Masses to be said, too
many souls seeking and needing spiritual direction, too
many confused priests to be enlightened, too many aberrant bishops
to be corralled back into the fold of Christ, too many holydays
in honor of Angels and Saints, too many exorcisms of the
possessed and the obsessed, too many of the faithful dying
and needing Extreme Unction, too many children needing
Confirmation—in a word, too many needy ones for any
priest to hesitate for one moment and to tarry over the
spewings and spittings coming from the unclean mouths, the jealous
souls and the erroneous pens of pigmy men who fancy themselves
upon a solid rock and who crave to ascend to fame and
vanity over the dead bodies and soiled reputations of their
victims.
I
have always let such people know that I personally have no
difficulty in waiting for the final showdown in the
presence of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus, as the Just Judge
of the living and the dead.
In
sum, I have no time to wait—there’s too much work to be
done. I know that many of my friends and well-wishers now
and again answer some of my attackers. I generally
discourage any sustained effort in that direction; the
reason? Nothing will ever change the minds of these people—nothing
except the grace of God. As I said, I am most willing to wait
for God to change their minds. In the meantime, I have far
too much to do. I can’t afford to waste time on them.
+Malachi
Bernard Janzen "Fr. Malachi Martin & Current Crisis"
