Georgetown University, America’s oldest Catholic institution, has named Eduardo Peñalver as its next president — a man who, by his own admission, “rejects the Church’s teachings on homosexuality,” according to LifeSiteNews.
The announcement has reignited urgent questions about what it means to be a Catholic university in 2025 — and whether Catholic education in America has already lost its soul.
“I Reject the Church’s Teachings”
In a 2014 Commonweal article, Peñalver wrote:
“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.”
He even said he takes “inspiration” for his own marriage from same-sex couples.
During his tenure as dean of Cornell University’s law school, Peñalver publicly opposed President Trump’s 2017 decision to bar transgender individuals from military service, calling it an “unprecedented step backwards in the progress towards greater tolerance and inclusion in our nation’s military,” according to LifeSiteNews.
In 2022, he signaled disapproval of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, lamenting its “far-reaching consequences for many, particularly low-income women and women of color, [so-called] LGBTQ people, and for society at large.”
This is not a Catholic leader defending the faith. This is a man publicly dissenting from the Magisterium while preparing to lead one of the most visible Catholic universities in the world.
“Leading Lambs to the Slaughter”
Catholic education leaders have sounded the alarm. Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told LifeSiteNews:
“Every Catholic educator should vigorously oppose what this man embraced. Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, but Georgetown is leading lambs to the slaughter.”
Reilly warned that Georgetown has long drifted from Catholic identity. The Newman Society once filed a 126-page complaint with the Vatican outlining the university’s hiring of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT faculty, among other issues.
John Ritchie, director of Tradition, Family, Property Student Action, added:
“Appointing someone who admires what the Church rightly calls sin is like handing a student a scorpion when he asks for an egg (Luke 11:12). Our universities should form saints, not scandalize the faithful.”
The Collapse of Catholic Education Is Real
This is not an isolated crisis. It’s the result of decades of decay.
From 13,000 Catholic schools and 5.2 million students in the 1960s… we’ve fallen to fewer than 6,000 schools and just 1.6 million students today.
Entire generations have walked away from the faith. Catholic identity has been watered down, replaced with secular ideologies.
On too many campuses, including Catholic ones, students are taught that truth is relative, that gender is fluid, and that sin is “inclusion.”
This is not education. It is indoctrination.
Reclaim Catholic Education Now
The Church in America still operates 230+ Catholic universities — but most have become infected with the same ideologies that now dominate Georgetown.
Transgenderism. Homosexual activism. Radical gender studies. DEI. Wokeism. Atheism.
The “new catechism” of our age is not the Creed — it’s the culture.
But we are not powerless.
The Answer: Catholic Online School
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