No. 4: Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & the Capitalist West
by Peter J. Leithart
July, 1991
Open Book: Views & Reviews, No. 4
July, 1991
Copyright (c) 1991 Biblical Horizons
Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & the Capitalist West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Reviewed by Peter J. Leithart.
The subtitle of this massive volume gives a good idea of its major theme. Martin, the hard-hitting former Jesuit, examines the three major players involved in the "millennial end game" to determine the future geopolitical shape of the world. Gorbachev, Martin argues, is seeking the "Marxification" of Western Europe and America; the most powerful of the various Western globalists have a democratic-capitalist globe as their aim; John Paul II, whom Martin insists is a figure of immense geopolitical significance, has a vision that is "religious and specifically Christian from a Roman Catholic perspective" (p. 492), and hence John Paul specifically rejects the secularisms of East and West.
So much could, of course, be surmised from the book’s subtitle. No subtitle — nor a brief review, for that matter — could begin to capture the impressive range of issues and figures that Martin discusses. Several important themes emerge.
Martin stresses that, for all his global significance, the current Pope has no control over his Church. In a provocatively titled chapter, "The Judas Complex," he bluntly charges that many Roman Catholic officials are guilty of malfeasance. The abuse of office involves generally the refusal to teach and enforce Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, and centers on four specific issues: the Eucharist, the uniqueness of the Roman Church, the supremacy of the Pope, and a range of reproductive issues. Martin is a hyper-traditionalist Roman Catholic; he launches an attack on Vatican II’s emphasis on the Church as the "people of God," and summarizes the Catholic teaching that the Mass "presents the real live Sacrifice of the body and the blood and physical life of Jesus consummated on Calvary" (p. 667), a formulation that even Aquinas would be hesitant to endorse. For all his admiration of John Paul, Martin chides him, as he did in his earlier book, The Jesuits, for not weeding his own garden.
