The Top 5 of 2025: ‘Newman Guide News’ Stories

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This year, EWTN Catholic Radio invited The Cardinal Newman Society to launch a “Newman Guide News” weekly segment. Host Teresa Tomeo is joined by Kelly Salomon, vice president of Newman Guide programs at The Cardinal Newman Society, every Tuesday at 10:25 a.m. ET to discuss the latest in Catholic education and the Newman Guide difference.

Below are some of the top stories discussed by Tomeo and Salomon in 2025.
While some schools and colleges are leading students astray, Newman Guide Recommended institutions are forming students in faith, virtue and wisdom.

Recordings of the Newman Guide News segments can be heard at this link.

Highs

  • John Henry Newman, whose vision of Catholic education has guided the work of The Cardinal Newman Society for thirty years, was named a Doctor of the Church and Co-Patron of Catholic Education with St. Thomas Aquinas. CNS President Patrick Reilly, an expert on Newman, is speaking across the nation and globe to advance Newman’s arguments for faithful Catholic education. Plus, two new saints were canonized to inspire young Catholics: Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati.
  • Pope Leo XIV released an apostolic letter on Catholic education, Drawing New Maps of Hope, in which he addresses the use of technology in education, arguing that it must “serve, not replace, the person” and that “no algorithm can substitute what makes education human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery and even learning from mistakes as an opportunity for growth.” Newman Guide Recommended schools and colleges, such as Faustina Academy, prioritize the integral formation of the human person in a digital age.
  • Twenty-three states, the NCAA, and the U.S. and International Olympic and Paralympic Committees have banned biological males from participating in women’s sports. Newman Guide Recommended schools and colleges not only keep men out of women’s sports, but also view sports as part of their mission of evangelization and sanctification through virtue development.
  • While many colleges are struggling, Newman Guide Recommended Colleges are flourishing in 2025-26, with many boasting record enrollments while upholding strong Catholic identity.
  • Bill Thierfelder dedicated twenty-one years of faithful service as president of Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C. Some of his accomplishments at the college include building an Adoration chapel, opening a home for pregnant unwed mothers from across the country on campus, and championing the integration of sports and faith.

Lows

  • What Emily Torres found at her ‘Catholic’ college will shock you — drag shows, free condoms, pro-abortion activism, and more. She is featured on The Cardinal Newman Society Podcast.
  • The University of Scranton, a Jesuit institution in Pennsylvania, hired Bob Casey, Jr., former U.S. Senator, as its Leahy Distinguished Fellow in Public Service. As a part of his role, Casey will mentor students. Unfortunately, on his campaign website in 2024, Casey is endorsed by the organization Reproductive Freedom for All and is quoted as saying: “Women’s rights are at stake in this election, including access to reproductive health care, IVF, and contraception. The difference between me and my opponent is clear: When Roe v. Wade was overturned, my opponent said it made him very, very happy. I voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act to restore the protections of Roe.”
  • Despite multiple student petitions, the University of Notre Dame continues to allow pornography on campus wi-fi. “This raises a serious question about Notre Dame’s complicity in the spread of a grave evil,” writes the Sycamore Trust.
  • Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., chose Dr. Mary McAleese, a self-professed Catholic and the former President of Ireland who supported the repeal of Ireland’s pro-life amendment in 2018, as commencement speaker in 2025. Dr. McAleese has publicly supported same-sex marriage and is quoted as saying that a Church hierarchy that is “homophobic and anti-abortion is not the Church of the future.”
  • Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the oldest Catholic university in the country, recently announced a new president who has publicly expressed his rejection of Church teaching on homosexuality. “Of course, I reject the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, so I would favor an even easier way out by treating committed gay relationships as morally valuable,” wrote Eduardo M. Peñalver, J.D., for Commonweal in 2014. He was responding to a situation that involved an administrator at a Catholic school entering into a same-sex marriage. “I take inspiration in my own marriage from the committed gay couples I have known.”

For families seeking a pathway to faithful Catholic education, explore the home and school curriculum providers, schools, colleges and graduate programs that are Newman Guide Recommended.

Copyright © 2026 The Cardinal Newman Society. Permission to reprint without modification to text, with attribution to author and to The Cardinal Newman Society, and (if published online) hyperlinked to the article on the Newman Society’s website. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Cardinal Newman Society.