Catholic News Agency reports Curtis Martin’s retirement as CEO of FOCUS after nearly three decades, highlighting the organization’s expansion to 1,000 missionaries across 250 locations reaching 60,000 individuals annually. The article praises Martin’s leadership of this campus ministry founded in 1997, noting mission trips involving 20,000 participants and a 2024 Mother Angelica Award from EWTN. Martin transitions to an emeritus “Founder” role while Tim Thoman becomes interim CEO, with Thoman praising FOCUS’s “tenacity and professionalism, but mostly the love of Jesus.” This glowing corporate narrative omits the fundamental crisis of faith inherent in all post-conciliar ecclesiastical ventures.
Naturalistic Evangelization Replacing Doctrinal Fidelity
The article’s celebration of numerical growth – “more than 1,000 FOCUS missionaries…nearly 60,000 students” – exposes the quantitative naturalism that defines conciliar ministry. Saint Pius X condemned this mentality in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), warning against reducing religion to “a certain experience superior to any theological teaching” (§7). FOCUS operates according to the Vatican II heresy of “subjective religious experience” (Gaudium et Spes §10), never mentioning the sine qua non of Catholic ministry: conversion from heresy and schism.
Nowhere does the report acknowledge FOCUS’s acceptance of the conciliar sect’s false ecumenism, forbidden by Pope Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos (1928): “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it” (§10). The organization’s “mission trips to more than 50 countries” constitute spiritual fraud when they avoid proclaiming extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) – defined infallibly at the Council of Florence (1442).
Ecumenical Compromise in Campus Ministry
Thoman’s description of FOCUS workers “fulfill[ing] the Great Commission” mocks Christ’s actual command: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). The conciliar sect’s “Great Commission” deliberately omits baptismal conversion, replacing it with the modernist notion of “accompanying” students in their existing errors. Pope Leo XIII’s Satis Cognitum (1896) demolishes this heresy: “All who wish to reach salvation outside the Church are mistaken as to the way and are engaged in a futile effort” (§9).
The Mother Angelica Award from EWTN – itself compromised by recognition of antipopes – symbolizes FOCUS’s adherence to the “new evangelization” condemned by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as “a Trojan horse for ecumenism.” True Catholic missionaries follow Pope Pius XII’s mandate in Mystici Corporis (1943): “Let them strive with all their strength to lead back those who are separated from the unity of the Body of Christ” (§103). FOCUS instead practices the religious indifferentism anathematized in Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864): “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Condemned Proposition #15).
Corporate Structure Masquerading as Apostolate
Martin’s transition to “expanded public-facing role” and Thoman’s interim CEO appointment reveal FOCUS’s true nature as a business corporation, not a Catholic apostolate. The article’s corporate lexicon – “board of directors“, “transition“, “professionalism” – betrays the naturalism Pius XI decried in Divini Redemptoris (1937) as “the plague of our age” (§29). Authentic religious orders submit to canonical approval under Canon 492 of the 1917 Code, not corporate boards.
The complete absence of references to the sacraments – particularly FOCUS’s silence on whether it administers valid sacraments given post-conciliar liturgical destruction – constitutes spiritual malpractice. Saint Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology teaches: “The primary duty of the Church’s ministers is to provide the faithful with the sacraments” (Lib. VI, Tract. 1). By neglecting this, FOCUS confirms itself as another conciliar “self-help group” offering psychological comfort rather than sanctifying grace.
Omission of Supernatural Realities
Martin’s farewell exhortation – “be who we are meant to be, so that through us, God can set the world on fire” – exemplifies the empty sloganeering of charismatic movements condemned in Pope Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907). The article never mentions:
- Confession’s necessity for salvation (Trent, Session XIV, Chapter 2)
- Hell as the fate of unrepentant sinners (Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus)
- The Social Kingship of Christ (Pius XI, Quas Primas)
This silence constitutes implicit denial of Catholic eschatology. As Father Felix Sarda y Salvany warned in Liberalism Is a Sin (1886): “Whoever omits to combat error is at heart a traitor to the truth” (Ch. 18). FOCUS’s refusal to confront campus immorality – LGBTQ clubs, contraceptive distribution, abortion referrals – makes it complicit in students’ spiritual ruin.
Symptom of Conciliar Apostasy
FOCUS’s entire model flows from Vatican II’s heresy of “subsistit in” (Lumen Gentium §8), pretending Christ’s true Church exists partially in false religions. Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950) condemned this: “Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church are one and the same thing” (Denzinger 2319). Until FOCUS demands students renounce conciliar errors and return to pre-1958 Catholicism, it remains what Archbishop Lefebvre called “the smoke of Satan in the Church.”
Source:
Curtis Martin steps down as CEO of FOCUS after nearly 3 decades leading ministry group (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 13.12.2025