Back in the 1990's I used to pick up some Malachi Martin works on occasion. He provides insider information about the Jesuits and the Vatican and while I've never agreed with him, I've always found him to be interesting.
I stumbled on his 1984 work 'Rich Church, Poor Church' in a pile of discount books and since it was only $1.50, I decided to pick it up. It was a work I had never encountered before.
Overall it was a bit disappointing but there were some points of interest. He covered the broad strokes of the Vatican Bank scandal which had only taken place a few years before its writing, but more importantly he sketched out how the Vatican, once it lost its temporal power in the mid-to-late 1800's was able to re-orient itself in light of the 1929 Lateran Treaty and assume a new capitalist empire. I found myself being stirred as I might have been back in my Fundamentalist youth, reading about the vast holdings and power of the Catholic Church - truly a force with global reach. It's financial power is on a scale few realize and its holdings and investment portfolios are impressive to say the least. The idea that the modern papacy is one of the top players in the world re-embedded itself in my mind.
Martin offers some interesting commentary speaking about how the secular gospel is little more than a hope for the 'good life' and thus it easily falls prey to materialism. And philosophical materialism is at the heart of not just Marxism but Capitalism as well. He states:
'It may appear unjust to equate capitalism with Marxism in this fundamental respect, but the basic presumption of capitalism is the same as Marxism: The spiritual and supernatural have no function in the socio-economic and political development of men and women.' (p.97)
He then states that, 'The one real advantage the Church can see in capitalism over Marxism is that democratic capitalists have no interest in inhibiting religious preferences. Marxism in its sociopolitical version, Communism, aims emphatically at the the opposite: the total destruction of all religion and its practitioners. Catholicism nevertheless flourishes under attack by Marxism and Communism. Paradoxically, it tends to be corrupted, weakened, diluted, and finally choked by the professed liberalism and freedom of capitalism. Capitalism's exclusion of the spiritual and supernatural and its mandate to all and sundry to seek the "good life" - these are far more effective enemies of religion than the whips of the commissars and the threat of isolation on the Gulag. Thus capitalism's basic prejudice against Catholicism is no less lethal than Marxism's.'
I found this commentary refreshing to say the least! He's willing to give voice to something I've believed for decades and yet obviously I would extend his statement beyond his Roman Catholic limitations.
And so on the one hand Martin is rightly critical of Capitalism and the corruption within the Roman system but that's as far as it goes. His general narratives are in fact pretty shaky. I appreciated his reference to Constantine as 'The Great Experiment' - one that he seems to have some doubts about, but he's a long way from reckoning the episode as the genesis of apostasy.
His reading of the Middle Ages is romantic - suggesting there was perfect Catholic unity until the Magisterial Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War. This is ridiculous and ignores the Great Schism with Eastern Orthodoxy in 1054 as well as the other Great Schism with Roman Catholicism (1378-1415). He ignores the medieval underground and episodes like the Cathar Crusades as well as the splits within scholasticism, debates over poverty and investiture, and the many peasant revolts - not a few of which were anti-clerical in nature. More could be said about the battles with the Empire, the centuries long Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, and other dynastic feuds with the Papacy - let alone the whole Avignon episode which ultimately spawned the Great Schism and for a time resulted in three concurrent papal claimants. On the one hand there was a unity in Europe during the Middle Ages but he presents the question in absolute and unqualified terms and as such misrepresents the epoch and the catholicity he wishes to emphasize.
He offers some thoughtful critiques of Liberalism but then oddly starts to sound like David Barton conflating the Reformation and figures like Knox and Calvin with the events surrounding the American Revolution. His narrative isn't just a mess - at times it turns into a disaster. He tries to explain how the Catholic countries 'fell behind' the Protestant ones but this too is confused as he celebrates the cultural 'achievements' of Catholicism during this period - the Counter-Reformation and the Baroque epochs. These sections are singularly unconvincing and sadly end up discrediting the whole book. Needless to say his notions of 'achievement' beg the question. To be fair I might say the same about the many so-called achievements and progress of the so-called Protestant nations.
He covers the Black Nobility, Freemasonry, and makes it quite clear that he has no issues with Integralism and the return to a coercive Catholic state and suggests that history would have judged Rome harshly had not the pontiffs exercised such authority in the past. I had to read that paragraph a few times to convince myself that I understood what he was actually saying.
And then the book takes an even more bizarre and by my estimation dark turn. He almost reverses himself from his earlier narrative of decline, decadence, and corruption facilitated by Capitalism. Instead he suggests that Roman wealth is in fact a good thing - which follows if he believes in the Papacy wielding temporal power. He posits a glory-narrative of Western civilization (which he often conflates with Christendom) and he condemns calls for poverty as smacking of utopian delusion. In the end the reader discovers that Martin is in fact a consequentialist - which is ironic given his troubles with the Jesuits - long known for their casuistry. It would seem that the end justifies the means remained his ethic and lens of interpretation.
And so what he offers is a series of rather lame suggestions for reform - which were certainly ignored. He wants the wealth of the Vatican Bank (referred to as the IRA instead of the typical IOR) handed over to lay management - completely side-stepping the issues of mammonism, usury, and the corrupt utilitarian ethics of the markets. He thinks that turning things over to Catholic businessmen will fix the situation - boards, foundations, and trust funds will clean out the moral rot of direct Vatican management.
In one sense you could say that Martin's proposals would be read as 'radical' in say, the Curia, but from the standpoint of someone outside the Vatican apparatus and Roman Catholicism, they come across as empty tokens or placating measures at best. In terms of Scripture, they are paltry if meaningless and he effectively whitewashes the moral issues at stake. In the end he supports Rome's investment portfolio but just wants to see a focus on moral things like coal, oil, and metals in lieu of decadent service and luxury goods. Laughably, investment in the banking and insurance sectors is apparently just fine.
For all of Martin's insight, he proves utterly myopic with regard to the nature of the world system. It's almost as if the Irishman was turned into an American pragmatist. The Great Experiment, the name he gives to the Constantinian Shift fundamentally changed the nature of the Church's relationship to wealth, power, and violence - in other words to the world. Martin sees something of the road that led the Roman Church to a state of moral destitution and corruption but because he insists on retaining the essential elements of Constantinianism, he has nothing to offer. His analysis falls flat and his pleas and solutions ring hollow. His commitments to the sacral order and Catholic Integralism (close cousin to Protestant Dominionism) bind his hands and blind him from a penetrating analysis and the true solution. In his case the solution is too sweeping and functionally impossible. Rome cannot reform itself to that level. It cannot wholly repudiate its past and all that it is.
In the end, the discussion is academic and of no consequence. Rome is apostate and will continue to be so, but the discussions and issues are worthy of consideration because history repeats itself and contemporary American Evangelicalism finds itself in the same place. The road traveled and the packaging are different to be sure, but in substance the decentralized colossus that is American Christianity has bit by bit traveled to same mountain top - which is revealed to be not Mt. Zion but the summit of Babel - a high place where apostates rule and worship.