Catholics United for the Faith is known among the orthodox as a trustworthy defender of the faith and among the heterodox as a sharp-tongued underminer of “the spirit of Vatican II.” Founded by the late H. Lyman Stebbins, CUF over the years developed twin reputations: It was well respected in some circles, castigated in others. It became an icon to conservatives and a bogeyman to liberals. Under its new president, Curtis Martin, the apostolate has seen substantial changes in its staff, in its activities, even in its location. The group’s reputation is now more positive.
When Martin visited the Catholic Answers offices recently, I asked him about the changes and about his own background. Although raised Catholic, he spent his high school years “drifting.” In college he discovered Evangelicalism, but returned to the Church and went to study at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. He took a summer job at the CUF headquarters, then in New Rochelle, New York. He ended up being invited to join the staff as vice president.
KEATING: Did you perceive any liabilities?
MARTIN: I had come to meet the members of the board of directors of Catholics United or the Faith and realized that it was their great desire to win the hearts and minds of people for Christ and his Church. At the same time, some of the difficulties that had risen in the ’60s and ’70s had placed them in a situation where they had a bad public image. They were viewed as reactionary or ultra conservative. In fact, nothing could be further from the essence of CUF. But I also had looked and seen that one of the problems was that there was a lack of formation in the chapters.
KEATING: How was CUF organized?
MARTIN: We had about 150 chapters, plus groups that were not chartered as chapters.
KEATING: What would a typical chapter do?
MARTIN: Members would get together to pray the rosary and discuss some teaching of the Church. The difficulty came in that as Catholics woke up to the realization that not everything was the way it should be in the Church, it was hard not to become angry and frustrated. What CUF neglected to do was to implement a program of formation to help members not be trapped in frustration. Complaints are cheap. I think we have to admit that mistakes were made. Some people allowed their zeal for the truth to make them a little difficult to get along with.
KEATING: In other words, you had a loose cannon problem.
MARTIN: Right.
“A Reactionary Organization. Horrible.”
KEATING: This is one concern that we at Catholic Answers have too. People ask, “Are you going to have chapters or branches?” So far we’ve said “No,” because we haven’t been able to figure out a good way to maintain quality control. Whenever you have somebody out there representing Catholic Answers, Catholics United for the Faith, or any other group, if he stumbles, if he says something incorrect or doesn’t quite say it the right way or with the right tone of voice, that all comes back to the home office.
MARTIN: Absolutely. I spend a significant amount of my time dealing with the image issue. It’s not our goal to be loved by everyone, but we don’t want to be hated by people of good will. We allowed ourselves to be characterized in a false way. What we’re doing now is trying to go out and reintroduce ourselves to people. Many of the people who have a negative impression of Catholics United for the Faith have a vague impression of what we are in the first place. I was speaking with a friend not too long ago when he asked what I was doing, and I said I was now working with CUF. He said, “That’s a reactionary organization. They’re horrible.” I asked, “Do you know anybody who is a member?” “Well, no.” “What specifically has CUF done that is so bad?” “Well, I don’t know.” I said that sounds an awful lot like prejudice, not like an opinion.
KEATING: CUF was a chief defender of Humanae Vitae in the years immediately after the promulgation of that encyclical. CUF defended the whole teaching of the Church, so it had to be demonized if its arguments were to be undercut.
MARTIN: We live in an age in which many think the last mortal sin is judgmentalness. One of the roles that CUF has played, while providing formation, has been to help people who call or write and who say, “Something’s going on in my parish-is this correct, or am I going crazy?” When Matthew Fox, as a Dominican priest, was teaching all sorts of things associated with witchcraft, people would contact us and ask, “Is this Catholic?” We would write back and explain what the Church’s teachings were. Fox was silenced and later left the priesthood. . .
KEATING: . . . and even left the Catholic Church.
MARTIN: When he left, he said, “I would still be a priest in good standing today if it weren’t for Catholics United for the Faith.” I wrote a brief note to him and said, “Father, you give us too much credit. You did all the work yourself.”
KEATING: What about the charge of negativity?
MARTIN: When we accept Christ, we accept his Church and everything that it teaches. That’s not a negative. That’s a very positive thing. But it does mean that you can’t buy into a lot of other silly things that contradict the Catholic faith. Even to be labeled as a negative, it means that there is some kind of a lacking in the perspective of those people. I noticed this when I came back to the Catholic Church. I saw how great the Church was, how wonderful the teachings of the Fathers and the saints and the magisterium were. I saw that the pope was not some old man in Rome trying to ruin my life; he was a spiritual father given to me as a gift of God, that he had nothing but my best interest in mind and heart. When I began to see this and realized that the Catholic Church allowed me to understand the sacred Scripture better and allowed me not only to pray to Christ but actually to receive him in the Eucharist, these were truths that I fell in love with. And when I saw people down playing them or denying them, I was angry. It took me a while to realize that you’ve got to take that anger and elevate it through prayer and wisdom. We have to realize there are people within the Church today, who have a view of the Church which is not Catholic. Many are in positions of authority. They may work in parishes, or they may work in chancery offices, and we can’t just yell and anticipate that we’re going to be heard.
Earning the Privilege to be Heard
KEATING: How do you get along with bishops?
MARTIN: Rather well, actually. I had the opportunity to meet with a bishop who said, “What do you want from me?” I replied, “I don’t want anything from you today, bishop. I hope to earn the privilege to be able to come to you and speak candidly without your thinking that I’m attacking you. I’m here to support you.” Canon law might give me the right to a hearing, it does not give me the right to be heard. I have to earn that.
KEATING: How did you come to be named the president of CUF?
MARTIN: The former president, Jim Likoudis, retired, and the organization had to make a decision. I’m 35 years old, and my age was perceived as a liability. It was thought there should have been an older person taking over as president. But I ended up getting the nod.
KEATING: Tell me about your relations with the heterodox media.
MARTIN: I gave an interview to the National Catholic Reporter several months ago. The man who was conducting the interview had spent his entire life championing liberal points of view, was now in his mid-sixties, and was working for a newspaper whose subscription rates are shrinking because, while liberalism may be capable of keeping people from the Church, it is not capable of winning people over to its perspective. Nobody wants to belong to the Church of the liberals. As we spoke together, there were points of contact. He asked at one point, “Will you continue to criticize catechism texts?” I said, “We will continue to help Catholics pick catechism texts that are faithful to the Church.” “Why do you think you can stand in judgment?” he asked. My response was, “Because I was educated by the text that you encourage people to buy, and I lost my faith. So did all of my friends. When I returned to the Church, I found these truths. I’m looking for a catechism that teaches all of them.
KEATING: How did he respond?
MARTIN: I felt sorry for him, because what had worked for him up until that time was, “I’m the young, up-and-coming guy; I’m the liberal, and I’m on the cutting edge.” That’s been going on 30 years, and he’s no longer young, his liberalism no longer offers anything.
KEATING: He’s no longer on the cutting edge.
MARTIN: He’s looking at CUF and we’re growing. As we finished the interview, there was a certain sense of tragedy. Here had been a man who was very sincere, but was sincerely wrong. He had spent his entire life working for a cause that turned out not to be the right cause.
KEATING: It’s a losing cause.
MARTIN: Yes, a losing cause.
KEATING: What was your impression of the article?
MARTIN: It was fair. It was a three-hour interview without a tape recorder, so the quotations were not necessarily accurate, but I don’t think they were misleading.
KEATING: Of course there will be no inaccurate or misleading quotes in this interview. If something seems to be missing from the tape, I’ll just make it up.
A Flat-Earth Society Attitude
MARTIN: Some supporters were concerned that we were softening. But as I pointed out in the article, even though the members of CUF are open to discussion, they still cling tenaciously to all of the Church’s teachings. This is the kind of openness we have to have. We’re not going to give in on any essential of the faith, but we are ready to talk to anyone.
KEATING: Which is quite different, actually, from a lot of the people who are associated with NCR. Just to look at that paper’s letters column. In the letters is a deep bitterness, especially from priests ordained in the ’60s and ’70s. The writers are beginning to sense that it’s not going to go their way.
MARTIN: I think we have to pray for them, because they are what I call the “flat earth society.” They’re wrong, but they’re not ready to acknowledge that there’s life over the horizon. They can’t perceive that we could be right, that traditional Catholicism is right. Their read is wrong. You find them treating anybody who holds with the Church’s teachings as an ultra-conservative, reactionary, off the scale. That’s why I refer to them as “flat earth.” They don’t think that there’s any spectrum of thought to people who don’t agree with them.
KEATING: You instituted a kind of metanoia when you became president of CUF. Part of that was a big move. Explain how that came about.
MARTIN: A series of moves took place at the same time. The organization was struggling and had dropped in size. In the ’70s we had about 20,000 members. That did not include maybe five times that many people who attended chapters who weren’t members. It was a very large presence around the Church. By the time CUF moved to Ohio, we were down to 3,500 members. With that came financial difficulties.
KEATING: Where are you now? How is your membership looking?
MARTIN: We’re approaching 10,000 members nationally. This has been a direct response to some of the changes-not of the essentials, but in the way we were going about doing things. I’ve tried to liken it to a game of golf. The object is always to hit that little white ball into the hole. But I may use a driver at the tee and a putter on the green. In fact I should. What we are doing is using a different club to accomplish the same goal. We no longer fight with people. We are trying to limit the quarreling, because the times have changed. In the ’70s, the current approach would not have worked. It was important to stand your ground and try to stave off the collapse. But now we have to admit the collapse has come. A recent survey said that nine out often Catholic high school students stop practicing the faith within one year of graduation. That means that Catholicism isn’t working as an institution.
KEATING: As part of the move, you had a nearly complete changeover of staff.
MARTIN: Our staff, in Steubenville, Ohio, is all new. At 35 I’m the second oldest on staff. Our vice president, at 36, is the old man. It’s a staff of Catholics from around the country. We have people who attended Christendom College, Thomas Aquinas College, Franciscan University of Steubenville.
KEATING: And let’s not forget that major institution of applied apologetics, Catholic Answers-you have our own J. J. Lee on your staff.
MARTIN: J. J. and other current students at Franciscan University are a big help. Our entire staff, full-timers and part-timers, is excited about this. They’re not angry, but are aware that they have to take that excitement and turn it into action, because there’s a lot of work to be done. Granted, there are a lot of reasons to be angry. My first summer at CUF I felt that every day after work I had to go home and take a shower, go to confession, and have a scotch-you know, it was a tough day.
KEATING: You went to confession to have a scotch?
MARTIN: Well, it’s great being Catholic. You would work hard all day long, dealing with people who were really suffering. A lot of people don’t realize that much of what we do is pastoral. We’re dealing with people who are having difficulties. We frequently receive phone calls from people who are ready to leave the Church over some difficulty that they’ve encountered in their local parish.
KEATING: Would it be proper to say that the emphasis at CUF would be more on in-parish difficulties rather than personal doubts or lack of faith?
MARTIN: To a considerable extent, which is why I think there’s a wonderful complementarity in the work of Catholics United for the Faith and Catholic Answers. Our work tends to be one of dealing with people on an individual level to help them be effective. They’re going to utilize tools that Catholic Answers provides to do that.
Overcoming the Bogeyman Image
KEATING: We started out the discussion with public relations. You explained how you’ve refocused CUF. Having seen too high of an anger quotient at one point, which resulted in opponents of orthodoxy being able to use CUF as a bit of a bogeyman, you’ve largely overcome that and have refocused and are expanding the organization.
MARTIN: Things are looking up. It’s a big Church, and we have many more people we need to meet. This is one of the reasons why I try to go out and speak wherever I can and am always looking for the opportunity to go to parishes and to speak at different Catholic organizations. I like to explain what we’re doing, not by sitting down and explaining CUF, but by giving talks on.aspects of the teachings of the Church.
KEATING: You’ve turned the organization around successfully, and it’s growing, and its prospects are very bright. Can we take what you’ve learned, school of hard knocks-wise, and apply it to folks who are not related to CUF or to any other group perhaps, but who, in their local areas, want to accomplish something? If you were to list three things that they should do preparatory to trying to solve a problem at their local level, what things would you suggest?
MARTIN: We’ll begin with what I think they should do. I think we have to cultivate, first and foremost, personal renewal. We have to live a life of prayer and sacraments. Many of the people that we speak with at first say yes, but, if they’re anything like me, I can lead that life and still be missing that boat because of the way that I lead it. I can show up for Mass, even on a daily basis. I can pray the rosary, even on a daily basis. But I find myself, every once in a while, just putting in time, waiting until I get until the end of the beads. We have to change the way we pray, so that we come with hearts burning.
Mimicking King David’s Vomplaint
KEATING: How do we do this?
MARTIN: It takes an act of the will. I’m not talking about emotions. We have to come with a burden. We have to take those things that could make us angry and follow the example of King David in the Psalms, complaining with proper respect to our Lord. One of the recurring complaints of David is, “How long, 0 Lord?” In Revelation the saints and martyrs in heaven are in the great liturgy, and they’re crying out to Christ, “How long, O Lord, will you allow your faithful to go unvindicated?” We have to come before the Lord. If we have family members who have fallen away, if we know people who are not practicing the faith, if we have a non-Catholic neighbor we are trying to lead to the Church, we have to go and plead. That’s the first step.
KEATING: And the second?
MARTIN: The second step is allowing our minds to be transformed. St. Paul says to the Romans, “Be not conformed to this world, but allow your minds to be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). I think we need to allow our minds to be changed by Christ. We are Americans and Roman Catholics. We have to make a decision every day-are we going to think like Americans or think like Catholics? And all you need to do to think like an American is to get up and breathe. It’s all around us. It’s in the air that we breathe. The media teaches how to think like Americans.
KEATING: We need something more.
MARTIN: Yes, we need to have a supernatural outlook. The only way to do that is by regular recourse to spiritual reading. We have to be reading Scripture on a daily basis. St. Jerome told his disciples that they had to read the Bible, that they should fall asleep with their head falling on the page. Some of us have had that experience without trying to. We need to realize that the two great lies about the Bible and the Catholic Church are, first, that the Church doesn’t want us reading the Bible, and, second, that reading the Bible is dangerous. Reading the Bible is dangerous only for non-Catholics because they don’t have the Church to correct them. Reading the Bible for Catholics is safe, because when we come across a verse we don’t understand, we can look to the Church to find the proper interpretation. So we need to be reading regularly, certainly the Bible but also lives of the saints and The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Either individually or in study groups.
KEATING: What’s the third thing we should do?
MARTIN: So we renew our hearts through prayer, we renew our minds through reading, and then I think we renew our attitudes in the way that we deal with people. This is something that Scott Hahn helped me to see. I was at Mass one day, while I was studying in school, and he pulled me aside he said, “Curtis, the key to effectiveness is viewing people as potential converts and not as cafeteria Catholics or as people who don’t accept the teachings of the Church.” When we approach people as cafeteria Catholics, as pick-and-choose Catholics, or as people who don’t accept the Church’s teaching, we already have built into that approach the idea that they have chosen to dissent from the Church, when in fact the vast majority of them have never been formed in what the Church really teaches.
Building on Common Ground
KEATING: We can build on what they have right, however little it may be.
MARTIN: That’s it. We can go out and say, “Look they’ve got some of the.aspects of the faith already. Let’s build, and add what’s missing.” That would be effective. And I would argue, as someone who was led into a Protestant church, that this is why Protestant churches are filled with former Catholics. From the point of view of the Protestant evangelist, the Catholic Church has done some of the work already. It has presented Catholics with a belief in Jesus, but has not formed them in how to live that out effectively. So a Protestant can build on that platform. Conversely, we can use what already exists, whether inside or outside the Church. We want to approach people in a positive light. This is not easy. It requires a firm conviction of the will because people say things that frustrate us, and we need to find the common ground and then build