EWTN News portal reports that U.S. President Donald Trump has dissolved the National Science Foundation’s governing board, which included two senior staff members from The Catholic University of America (CUA). Aaron Dominguez (CUA Executive Vice President and Provost) served as vice chairman of the National Science Board (NSB), while Victor McCrary (CUA Vice Provost) served as its chair before all 22 board members were fired on April 24, 2026. The White House cited constitutional questions raised by the 2021 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Arthrex, which addressed whether non-Senate confirmed appointees can exercise certain executive authorities. The NSB oversees the NSF, advises the president and Congress on science policy, approves funding awards, and publishes influential reports on U.S. science priorities. Both CUA and the affected individuals declined to comment.
The Silence of Catholic Institutions Before Secular Power
The most striking element of this report is not the political maneuvering of the Trump administration, but the total silence of The Catholic University of America when its own officials are summarily dismissed from a position of public influence. CUA “declined to comment on the firings.” Dominguez and McCrary “did not immediately respond to requests for comment.” This is the behavior of men who have no supernatural conviction, no awareness that the Catholic faith demands a public witness — even when that witness is inconvenient, costly, or politically dangerous.
Where is the Catholic university that would once have proclaimed, with Pope Pius IX, that “the Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free — nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” is an error condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 19)? Where is the institution that would assert, as Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, that “the Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority”?
CUA does not merely fail to assert this — it has, by its silence, implicitly conceded the very principle that the Syllabus condemns: that the civil power may define, restructure, and dissolve bodies with Catholic representation at its pleasure, without any objection rooted in the rights of Christ the King. This is not prudence. This is practical apostasy.
The Reign of Christ the King Over Science and Education
The National Science Board oversees the allocation of billions in research funding and shapes federal science priorities through publications such as Science and Engineering Indicators, Vision 2030, and its Skilled Technical Workforce reports. These are not trivial administrative functions. They determine the direction of scientific inquiry, the formation of intellectual elites, and the philosophical assumptions that undergird American research for decades. In short, they shape the formation of minds.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, was unambiguous: “Christ’s reign encompasses all human nature, it is clear that there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” He further stated that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The governance of science — which shapes the intellectual and moral formation of entire generations — is emphatically not exempt from the social reign of Christ the King. Yet nowhere in this report is there any suggestion that CUA’s leadership views their role on the NSB as carrying a Catholic responsibility to ensure that science policy is ordered toward truth, the natural law, and the ultimate end of man’s salvation.
The silence is deafening because it is systemic. It reflects the total capitulation of nominally Catholic institutions to the secularist framework condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, particularly proposition 45: “The entire government of public schools in which the youth of a Christian state is educated… may and ought to appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere.” This proposition was condemned. CUA’s silence is its practical acceptance.
The Constitutional Pretext and the Absence of Catholic Principle
The White House justified the firings by citing U.S. v. Arthrex (2021), a Supreme Court case holding that federal boards whose members wield unreviewable executive power must be subject to review by a Senate-confirmed principal officer. The administration argues that the NSB’s structure raises constitutional questions because its members are not Senate-confirmed.
Let us examine this with the clarity that Catholic principle demands. The question is not whether the U.S. Constitution permits this restructuring — that is a matter of American civil law. The question is whether Catholic institutions and individuals, when participating in secular governance, do so with a formed Catholic conscience or merely as functionaries of the secular order. The behavior of CUA and its officials demonstrates the latter. There is no evidence that McCrary or Dominguez raised any objection rooted in Catholic social teaching, natural law, or the rights of the Church. They served, they were dismissed, and they said nothing.
This is the fruit of the post-conciliar revolution’s demolition of the Church’s social teaching. Before 1958, Catholic universities existed to form men who would carry Catholic truth into every sphere of public life. After the conciliar sect’s embrace of religious liberty (the condemned proposition 77 of the Syllabus: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”), Catholic institutions became mere appendages of the secular order, indistinguishable from their Protestant or atheistic counterparts in their subservience to civil power.
The Deeper Apostasy: Catholic Universities as Servants of the World
The Catholic University of America was once envisioned as an institution that would demonstrate the harmony of faith and reason, producing scholars who would defend Catholic truth in the intellectual arena. Today, its senior administrators serve on federal science boards without any discernible Catholic intellectual contribution, and when those positions are revoked, they retreat into silence.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the systemic transformation of Catholic institutions into what can only be described as secular organizations with Catholic branding. The conciliar sect’s embrace of the “autonomy of earthly affairs” — a concept condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium — has produced generations of Catholic academics who operate within secular frameworks without any reference to the supernatural end of man or the social kingship of Christ.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, condemned the proposition that “philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (proposition 14). Yet this is precisely the operating assumption of every Catholic university that participates in federal science governance without reference to Catholic truth. The “Science and Engineering Indicators” published by the NSB contain no reference to the Creator, no acknowledgment of the limits of naturalistic methodology, no recognition that “all action of God upon man and the world” (condemned proposition 2 of the Syllabus) is denied by the secular scientific establishment.
The Duty of Catholic Witness and Its Betrayal
The Apostle St. Paul wrote: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). The officials of CUA gained positions of influence on a federal science board. They have now lost them. But the deeper loss is not the position — it is the witness that was never given.
Pius XI taught that “rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The duty of Catholic academics in positions of public influence is not merely to advance scientific knowledge — it is to ensure that such knowledge is ordered toward the truth about God, man, and the moral law. When that duty is abandoned, the Catholic character of the institution is revealed to be a mere façade.
The silence of CUA is the silence of an institution that has interiorized the very errors the pre-conciliar Church condemned. It is the silence of an institution that has accepted the secularist premise — condemned by Pius IX in proposition 55 of the Syllabus: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” By failing to assert any Catholic principle in the face of this dismissal, CUA has demonstrated that it operates, in practice, on the basis of this condemned proposition.
Conclusion: The Spiritual Bankruptcy of Conciliar Catholicism
The dismissal of the NSB board by the Trump administration is a political event of secondary importance. What is of primary importance is what it reveals about the state of nominally Catholic institutions in the United States. The Catholic University of America, entrusted with the formation of Catholic intellectual leadership, has produced administrators who serve secular power without Catholic witness and who retreat into silence when that power acts against them.
This is not the behavior of men formed by the integral Catholic faith. This is the behavior of men formed by the conciliar revolution — men who have absorbed the errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, Lamentabili Sane Exitu, and Pascendi Dominici Gregis, even if they have never read these documents. Their silence is the silence of apostasy — not the apostasy of overt denial, but the far more common and far more dangerous apostasy of practical indifference to the social reign of Christ the King.
The remedy is not better political strategy or more astute positioning within secular structures. The remedy is the return to the unchanging Catholic teaching on the social kingship of Christ, the rights of the Church, and the duty of Catholic institutions to bear public witness to truth — regardless of the cost. Until that remedy is embraced, Catholic universities will continue to be what CUA has demonstrated it to be: servants of the world, wearing the mask of the Church.
Source:
Trump fires National Science Foundation board, including 2 Catholic scientists (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.04.2026