Some of my Evangelical friends argue that the Catholic Church is not a missionary Church.

Amy Welborn has a post with statistics on the number of Catholic missionaries who gave their life for the faith in 2006.

When we take the trouble to read the history of the Catholic Church we learn that in every age it has been a missionary church, and that in every age these missionaries gave their lives for the gospel.

This is not to say that our separated brethren do not have their own batch of courageous missionaries and martyrs. They do. This is simply correcting the illusion that Catholics are not involved in cutting edge missionary work.