Three weeks ago, my family and a group of Cardinal Newman Society pilgrims were newly arrived in Rome — and what a contradiction we seemed! The whole world was watching the Vatican, anxious to know whether the Amazon Synod would preserve or rupture Catholic tradition. And yet there we were […]
A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that less than half of American millennials—those young adults from age 23 to 38—call themselves Christians. This is the second recent study that should wake up Catholics to the very serious dangers of our secular culture and the urgent need to renew faithful […]
John Henry Cardinal Newman’s vision of higher education has been celebrated for more than 160 years, and it will hopefully get renewed attention after he is canonized this Sunday, Oct. 13. Still, few colleges today closely resemble his Idea of a University. If anything comes close to Newman’s vision today, it […]
Over the course of his lifetime, John Henry Newman was many things: scholar, reformer, preacher, convert, theologian, priest, and cardinal. Through it all, however, he was an educator. Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”) was his motto, and he believed strongly that “personal influence” is the best means of teaching […]
In three amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court filed last month, the bishops and Catholic educators—together with other major religious groups—urged the Court to uphold the meaning of “sex.” It’s one little word. But if the Court gets it wrong, our religious freedom could be quickly eroded. And while all Catholics […]
As the new academic year begins for students around the country, a video on Twitter caught my eye: tutors at the new East Coast campus of Thomas Aquinas College recited the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity at Convocation in front of the College’s students. “In fulfilling the charge […]
“He is truly there in the Eucharist,” says Amelia Shripka. The 8th-grader at Everest Collegiate High School and Academy in Clarkston, Michigan takes delight in the Eucharistic procession that her school holds every year. It’s a “great time to reflect on what Jesus did for us,” she says. But according to […]
The Archdiocese of Indianapolis is the target of yet another lawsuit — this one from a guidance counselor whose contract to help form students at Roncalli High School was not renewed for the coming school year, because she entered into a same-sex marriage. With this and other similar disputes in Catholic schools, Archbishop […]
Recent lawsuits by teachers fired from Catholic schools are part of a growing threat to Catholic education. Our schools and colleges increasingly face harmful lawsuits, legislation, the loss of accreditation, and social rejection if they do not fall in line with ideologies that deny the nature of marriage, sexuality, even […]
The Vatican has reasserted one of the most basic facts of Christian anthropology: “Male and Female He created them,” which is good as far as it goes. The question for Catholic educators is, ”Now what?” They are being challenged by the relentless march of “gender theory” or “gender ideology”—a deception that claims […]