Ralph Martin has spent his life in service of the Catholic Church. Raised a Catholic, it was his participation in a retreat organised by the Cursillo movement, while a university student, that led to a personal conversion. He became involved in the newly emerging Charismatic movement and with Stephen Clarke formed the Word of God Covenant Community.

 

He was invited by Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens to Belgium to nurture the Charismatic movement in Europe. In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation.

In the US he established Renewal Ministries in 1980 and from 1985 was active in promoting spiritual renewal through his television program, ‘The Choices we Face’. He is still active in the media and regularly produces podcasts.

Since 2002 he has been a theology professor and the director of Graduate Theology Programs in the New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Detroit. He holds a doctorate in theology from the Angelicum University in Rome.

In July this year Ralph was terminated from his role at the Seminary by the Archbishop of Detroit. No reason was given.

In the early 1980s Ralph gave a series of lectures on the state of the Church. These were published in book form under the title, A Crisis of Truth. I attended his lectures in Brisbane around this time and his assessment of what was happening in the Church left a deep impression on me.

He wrote in the book, “During my undergraduate years as a student at the University of Notre Dame… the prospect of finding or discovering the truth threatened me. If I found the truth, I would have to submit to it. I saw that I had come to love the ‘search for truth’ more than the truth itself. I had to repent of such idolatry… Indeed, an attitude which lies behind much of the attack on truth in the Church today is a growing doubt that human beings can know anything with clarity and certainty. Perpetual uncertainty is an intellectual posture quite congenial to contemporary, secular culture.”

In the book he tackles a number of issues including what he saw as a growing tendency to approach the texts of Sacred Scripture “on the basis of some previously held ideological commitment”. He expresses concern about the theological view of “anonymous Christians” espoused by leading theologian, Karl Rahner, as weakening the need for personal conversion.

In the book he addresses the issue of attempts to blend Christianity with Marxism, describing such trends as having “completely lost their grasp of the distinctiveness of the Christian mission and its incompatibility with Marxist goals and methods”. He expresses grave concern about efforts to rethink traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality, saying, “They are used to justify … distortions of God’s plan for sexuality as revealed to us in scripture, witnessed to in tradition, and reaffirmed by the pope and bishops teaching in union with him today”.

His was a prophetic voice inspired by a deep love for the Church.

More recently, in 2020, he wrote again on the topic in a book entitled, A Church in Crisis: Pathways Forward. Ralph Martin addresses the rising polarisation in the Church caused by ambiguous teachings. He identifies initiatives that accommodate the culture without calling for conversion and expresses concern at Vatican-sponsored partnerships with organisations that actively contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church.

In the face of the many errors that threaten the faith of Catholics he urges believers to ground themselves in the solid foundation of Catholic teaching expressed clearly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

In these books Ralph identified many issues that he saw as undermining not only the traditional teaching of the Church found in the documents of Vatican II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but he also recognised that various currents of thought were deadening the mission of the Church in our time.

There is one issue that he has returned to on a number of occasions. He was invited by the seminary to undertake a doctorate and proposed that he study at the Angelicum in Rome on the topic of the possibility of being saved without hearing the Gospel.

In 2012 his thesis was published with the title, ‘Will Many Be Saved: What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelisation’.  The book addresses the attitude which is abroad today that hell is empty and most will find their way to heaven.

It is not uncommon at a funeral to hear people say that a certain person is basically a good person. Thus, in their view, they deserve heaven. Indeed, funerals often become ‘celebrations of the life of..’ rather than moments to pray for the repose of the soul, and seeking the mercy of God.

Many today would ascribe to the view that broad and wide is the way that leads to heaven and almost everyone is heading there. But narrow is the way and difficult is the path that leads to hell and hardly anyone is going that way. In theological terms this is known as ‘universalism’. This is the theological opinion that all human beings will ultimately be saved and reconciled with God, through God’s mercy rather than dependent on individual merit or faith.

Yet in the Gospels Jesus said, “Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed” (Lk 13:24).

He follows this teaching with a parable about people who felt they were entitled to enter, saying that they ate and drank with the Lord. In other words, they thought they were on good terms, even familiar terms, with God. But, in the parable, the Master of the House says, “I do not know where you came from. Away from me all you wicked men.”

Many times in the Gospels we read of parables where the Lord speaks of a final separation of the human race at the end of time.

He speaks of the weeds thrown on the fire and the wheat gathered into the barn (Mt 13:30); the wise virgins entering the wedding feast and the unwise virgins kept outside (Mt 25:1-13); the good fish kept and the bad thrown away (Mt 13:48); and the well-known parable in Matthew 25 of the separation of the sheep and goats in the final judgement.

Ralph Martin commented that the view that most people will be in heaven has, “contributed to a weakening of zeal for holiness and for evangelization. If almost everyone is saved, why bother?”

He also commented, “where a climate of universalism began to gain sway in the Church after the Vatican II Council, the missionary effort of the Church virtually collapsed. Mission in many places became redefined as primarily directed to improving the structures of life in this world and even helping people to be better adherents of their own non-Christian religions. The number of missionaries and missionary orders devoted to drawing others to conversion to Christ dramatically collapsed”.

Ralph Martin is of the view that there is a virus of universalism abroad in the Church which is undermining holiness, true worship, vocations and evangelisation. It fosters a laxity about living the faith in its fulness.

Ralph Martin has been a prophetic voice in the Church for over fifty years. Like the prophets of old, his message disturbs and is met with resistance. It seems now that he has had to accept the cost of being a prophet.