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Rating: 
Summary: A Real Eye Opener and a Twist of Trust.
Review: A very open and honest book of one mans life destroyed by someone that everyone trusted and loved. I can imagine the author has carried this sadness and yes perhaps bitterness most of his life. The worst part of carrying something like this is the fact that no matter how good or honest or how well someone knows you, even all of your life, someone else who is so charming and enthralling can convince others YOU are the one lying and will doubt you but believe them. Those are the tools a sociopath uses. Fr. Malachy Martin used others in any way or fashion to serve his own ends. From the church, to the women he abused, to the friends he deceived, to the loyal listeners or readers of he himself. Now none of what he said or wrote is believable to me. I wasn't shocked about some of the goings on within the church, that's life, but to go as far as a mental institution for the author?? to go 'that' far? Let alone to find out who the main antagonist was, Fr. Malachy Martin; a well beloved(up till now) and well known priest and the dastardly deeds that lurked deep within him. THAT was the shock! I've read most of Fr. Martins books and thought of him as this wonderful Irish grandfatherly type, a wise man figure who knew much of the interior workings of the vatican. I now believe that most of what he spouted definitely was his own political agenda. I guess I've been as duped as the author and was glad to have my eyes opened about Fr. Martin's true personality. This book shows how easily we can all be deceived. What a tragedy Mr. Blair suffered, not only the adultery, the loss of his wife and children, but the horrendous loss of support from his own peers in the church who knew him so well, yet didn't believe him and chose to believe Fr. Martin. I will say that the background of his life in the seminary at times was just a little long of tooth and drawn out, though I did find it interesting, but half way through is when it became fascinating and I couldn't put it down till I finished it. I know of one illustrious name in particular that lent absolute credence to the whole book for me and I believe it to absolutely true, no doubt in my mind. Good book, good read, and if you want to know how a sociopath's mind works and manipulates, this is one of them from a personal viewpoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Kaiser has a clear agenda
Review: From The
History of Vatican II by James Hitchcock: Time magazine, which was a much more influential journal then, than it is now, was represented at the Council by a reporter whose name was Robert Blair Kaiser. He had been at one time a Jesuit. He was not a priest but he had been a Jesuit, had studied for the priesthood, and was therefore somebody who knew something. He wasn't an ignorant man who had to learn it all from scratch; he was fairly sophisticated in religious matters. But Robert Blair Kaiser's reporting was very much along the same lines as that of Xavier Rynne, the good-guy liberals versus the bad-guy conservatives. Every day there was a shootout at the O.K. Corral over some issue or other. Fortunately most of the time the good-guy liberals managed to disarm the bad-guy conservatives. They shot the guns out of their hands. But unfortunately the bad-guy conservatives kept getting more guns, and so there would be another shootout maybe a week or two later. As it turned out in some of the autobiographical things which he later wrote, Kaiser had a very clear agenda from the very beginning. One major part of that agenda was birth control. He had been poking around in that area and making contact with certain theologians who were privately or secretly supportive of birth control before the Council. He had made contact with certain influential Belgian and Dutch theologians. When he went to the Council he understood that there was a liberal agenda, the modernist agenda as we've called it, and he was going to use his magazine, Time magazine, to push it. And he did so, and very effectively. Unfortunately the average American Catholic, and this includes most priests and most nuns, learned what the Council was all about more from Time magazine and The New Yorker than from any other source. There is a massive failure of education here on the part of the Church. One would assume that given an event like the Council that the hierarchy would have put into gear a massive educational project. They would have been lining up books, they would have been training teachers, they would have been announcing schools, workshops in every parish, whatever. And they would have insured the fact that what was presented to people as the authentic teaching of the Council really was the authentic teaching of the Council. To an amazing degree this task was neglected. There was, in fact, as far as I can see, practically no systematic effort to educate Catholics as to the meaning of the Council. They were left to discern its meaning in just about any way they could. And if they were reading the New Yorker they got it from Xavier Rynne, and if they were reading Time magazine they got it from Robert Blair Kaiser. Some variation on the views of those two men appeared in most of the secular press. So not only did there persist a good deal of confusion as to what the Council was all about, but there was even a completely skewed, even false notion of what it was all about. Victories that could not be won on the floor of the Council itself, victories that could not be ratified in the Conciliar decrees, were won after the Council in terms of what people thought the Council said as opposed to what it actually said. The obligation of obedience was used over and over again to get reluctant people to go along with the Council's changes, until such time as obedience had outlasted its usefulness and then the shift was to independence and freedom.
Rating: 
Summary: Kaiser unknowlingly points out the folly of the New Church
Review: I just finished reading Clerical Error after making copious notes throughout.
As a sedevacantist his book validates my position held by a growing group that the vatican ii council has produced untold damage to the faith of millions of souls.
By recounting the idealogy of many liberals to attempt to change the unchanging doctrines of God's Church Kaiser has unwittingly pointed out that fruits of vatican ii and the new religion (novus ordo) has decimated the true faith throughout the world and brought the full impact of satan and his minions upon the soul of the Church.
I also bought the book to validate some other sources concerning Malachy Martin. I admit being duped into buying Martin books especially during my novus ordo days as a "conservative". Now I will be trashing or burning any books that I still have of his.
Martin, if he did not repent before his death, will be burning in Hell along with the last 3 antipopes and another Martin (Martin Luther).
This book should bring to those Catholics of good faith still trapped in the novus ordo religion that the purpose of vatican ii was to CHANGE Jesus' teaching as well as impose a new religion.
The Fruits of vatican ii are evident: widespread apostasy, priests shortages, homosexuals in the seminaries. The devil couldn't be more proud of his handiwork.
There are two websites I would recommend to give a better understanding of the new religion and its antipopes:
http://www.novusordowatch.org/archive.htm
http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/
Rating:
Summary: Kaiser has a clear agenda
Review: I read this book because I wanted more insight into the
Jesuits and the Roman Catholic Priesthood before I consider
joining either. YIKES!!!
4 big stars -- I would have given 5 stars if RBK could explain
how he went from dedicated Jesuit celibate to having premarital
sex with a complete stranger. Other than that odd sequence of
unCatholic events, RBK wrote a great account of his life during
the Vatican II Council. Is the book damaging to the Vatican
heirarchy? Maybe. Highly damaging to ex-Jesuit ex-Fr. Malachy
Martin? Absolutely!...Martin lovers and ArtBell Coast2Coast
fans take notice!! Liberal, progressive Catholics will love
this book.
Rating:
Summary: Potential Catholic Priest hesitates BIGTIME!
Review: I read this book because I wanted more insight into the
Jesuits and the Roman Catholic Priesthood before I consider
joining either. YIKES!!!
4 big stars -- I would have given 5 stars if RBK could explain
how he went from dedicated Jesuit celibate to having premarital
sex with a complete stranger. Other than that odd sequence of
unCatholic events, RBK wrote a great account of his life during
the Vatican II Council. Is the book damaging to the Vatican
heirarchy? Maybe. Highly damaging to ex-Jesuit ex-Fr. Malachy
Martin? Absolutely!...Martin lovers and ArtBell Coast2Coast
fans take notice!! Liberal, progressive Catholics will love
this book.
Rating:
Summary: From Rome a Former Jesuit Reports from the Heart
Review: In "Clerical Error" a Time reporter starts off slowly relating the story of seminary days. He finds love and the story peaks with a kaleidoscope of famous names and fascinating people in a setting of the Church and the city of Rome. It culminates in fascinating revelations of naivete and pathological intrigue. You can tell the author was a Time reporter, since you cannot put the book down.
Rating: 
Summary: a bizarre tale: where does the truth really lie?
Review: Robert Blair Kaiser's book is a quick read- as he is a good writer overall and the matter is fascinating for someone who is interested in an existential account of pre-conciliar Jesuit religious life- if this is a true picture- even if it isn't, it reads like good fiction- and the inner conflicts of a young man. However, he tries to present himself in a very positive light and his "enemies" as all evil. It's a bit of a stretch if you critically look at the big picture. I just have many questions for the author: he claims the famous Malachy Martin seduced his wife and has him committed to a mental institution: that raised two questions in my mind: Why only make this charge after M. Martin is dead and can't defend himself? (I'm not a big M. Martin fan, but this is a logical question) And why do you blame Martin and others for getting you committed to a mental institution when you agreed to it? You could have said no. And if so, why blame your problems on others?
Additionally, the author talks over and over about "growing up" in relation to his Catholic faith- yet he seems to be a perpetual teenager in his faith development in that he seems to be obsessed with sex and rationalized the two adulturous affairs and one attempted one with the BBC producer, despite the fact that they are serious sins- I guess by feeling bad for himself that his wife no longer cared for him. And a bigger question is: Why would you pursue your wife, and once you get her back drop her like a bad memory, unless you are a sociopath yourself and just wanted to prove your superiority. "He wants the rules to work for him, as he says (p. 292). He fails to understand that to be a "mature" Catholic does not mean you can do whatever you want and God says o.k. because "He loves human stories" (p.293), but rather by imiating Jesus who was obedient unto death. Obedience, contrary to the modern secular mentality that the author obviously has bought into, is the way to holiness, salvation and Heaven. As Catholics, the saints show us this over and over again in their example for us of living the Gospel in daily life. Are they immature, Mr. Kaiser? Kaiser is a sad example of a person who has bought into the mentality of the world and has suffered for his rebellion. It's what Cardinal Ratzinger has called the sunny naive optimism of the 60's, and the fruits of that outlook have been bitter in reality: broken families, narcissism, abortion, rampant sexual perversity etc. Kaiser is constantly harping in the book on sexual issues. To cite just one example: I wonder if he can honestly say that advocating artificial contraception has made our world better? It doesn't show in reality to put it mildly. Kaiser lives in a self- created world of his own- in which it is mostly a pity party for Robert. It's hard to distinguish what is true from what is false in this book, but if it tells us anything it is: if you think you know better than the divinely instituted teaching authority of the Church, you are on the road to personal and spiritual diaster. As E. Michael Jones put it in Degenerate Moderns "either you conform your desires to the Truth, or the Truth to your desires." Kaiser has obviously done the later. This book does nothing to undermine the Church's teaching that sexuality is sacred, in fact he proves it in a backhanded way, by showing the chaos of his own life. And to the reviewers of this book who think his book is a revelation on the clerical scandal the Catholic Church has faced in the past year I say this: I suspect those [twisted] priests who have ripped apart the mystical body of Christ, as has come out in the last year, have a very similar rebellous attitude towards Church teaching, as Kaiser does, and thought by following their feelings all would be good: the result has been the destroyed innocence of countless children and adolescents as well as the faith of many. The wages of disobedience is destruction and death. Kaiser needs our prayers.
Rating: 
Summary: What's the real truth about Father Malachi Martin?
Review: The only reason I purchased this book was to find out what Kaiser had to say about Father(?) Malachi Martin. (I'm a middle of the road Catholic). I've read several of Fr. Martin's books and now Robert Kaiser is saying that this seemingly traditionalist (Latin mass, etc.) Catholic, was a serial seducer and more in his younger days! The second half of this book relates the author's experiences as a Time magazine journalist in Rome during Vatican II and if you believe everything Kaiser writes about Fr. Martin, you're bound to hate this priest by the end of this book. He's a love 'em and leave 'em type, with a string of jilted women. Martin also conspires to have the author committed to a mental institution, while sleeping in Kaiser's bed, with his wife, and in his "red nightshirt."
Well, Kaiser can be described as "hell hath no fury like a husband scorned;" he hired private eyes to follow his wife in Rome and London; Kaiser himself even has an affair with another woman who was also seduced and left by Fr. Martin. This would make a good soap on TV, and the second half of the book is a good read.
My basic problem with the book is whether it is believable, and if so, how much is truth or fiction. The author is definitely wrong on one point, he cites Fr. Martin as being 47 when Kaiser first met him in late 1962. However, all biographies state that Martin was born in 1921, making him only 41 at the time.
My biggest problem with the book is the author's veracity in describing the religious views of Fr. Martin. How could Martin be portrayed as an ultra-liberal Catholic priest at the time of Vatican II, only to immediately become ultra-conservative as soon as he left the priesthod, moved to NYC and began his writing career? Usually, it's the liberals who leave the priesthood, and it's not to spend the rest of their lives writing about the virtues of traditional Catholicism. Maybe Martin was as the author stated, a sociopath. I feel, in jest, that maybe Martin was doing penance for the sins of his younger years, or possibly he was just an opportunist. Whom do you believe?
I have two wishes - First, that the author would have at least theorized on how or why Fr. Martin could have almost instantly turned from a religious liberal to ultra-conservative. Secondly, maybe there are readers of this review who know or knew Kaiser and Martin and could offer further insight about what the whole truth really is.
Rating:
Summary: Clerical Error
Review: This book is well worth the read. In view of the fact that it was written prior to the breaking of the current scandal, it seems almost prophetic at times. When the author gives his scathing critique of celebacy, however, he assumed that the indescretions of the clergy involved adult men and women. Even Kaiser could not imagine the depth of horrific betrayal of trust in the abuse of children that so many clergy would be capable of. This book is a "must read" for anyone seriously interested in reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It so speaks of its systemic abuse and misuse of power. One more reason for RCs to get out of our pews and take back the church.
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