Ralph Martin’s new book clarifies what the Council actually taught about salvation outside the Church.
Ruefully observing statistics showing that only 6 percent of American Catholic parishes considered evangelism a priority, the late Cardinal Avery Dulles once lamented, “The Council has often been interpreted as if it had discouraged evangelization.” Ralph Martin’s new book, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization, aims to explain why this interpretation has taken root despite the fact that the Council documents, particularly the keystone documentLumen Gentium (LG), are brimming with talk about evangelization as the Church’s main job. In fact, Paul VI’s encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi stated that the objectives of the Council were summed up in one statement: “to make the Church of the 20th century ever better fitted for proclaiming the Gospel.” Yet the opposite happened.
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