When Catholic Colleges Abandon Theology, They Sacrifice Souls on the Altar of the Market
National Catholic Register portal reports (June 4, 2026) that Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York, has reduced its core curriculum theology and philosophy requirements from two courses each to one, effective 2031. The author, Stephen G. Adubato, laments this decision as emblematic of a broader trend among Catholic universities to prioritize STEM funding and market demands over their Catholic mission. He cites declining theology credit-hour requirements across U.S. Catholic institutions and warns that such shifts reflect not merely “liberalization” but “neoliberalization”—the subordination of sacred mission to economic survival. Adubato appeals to a recent address by “Pope” Leo XIV urging Catholic colleges to ensure the Christian vision permeates every discipline. Yet the entire commentary, while well-intentioned, operates within the framework of the post-conciliar neo-church and fails to confront the root cause of Catholic higher education’s collapse: the systematic destruction of Catholic doctrine since Vatican II.
The Symptom Is Not the Disease: The Conciliar Roots of Academic Apostasy
Mr. Adubato correctly identifies a symptom—the erosion of theology in Catholic universities—but misdiagnoses its cause. He attributes the decline to economic pressures, administrative pragmatism, and the allure of STEM funding. These are real factors, but they are secondary effects of a far deeper spiritual catastrophe: the deliberate dismantling of Catholic truth by the conciliar sect itself. The post-1958 Church did not merely fail to defend theology; it actively replaced it with modernist errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907). When dogmas are no longer immutable truths revealed by God but “modes of explanation” subject to “evolution” (Proposition 54, Lamentabili), then theology becomes an empty academic exercise—indeed, a contradiction in terms. Why require students to study what the Church herself no longer believes?
Fordham’s reduction of theology requirements is not a betrayal of its Jesuit heritage; it is the logical fruit of that heritage’s corruption. The Society of Jesus, once a bulwark of orthodoxy under St. Ignatius, was infiltrated and subverted by modernists long before Vatican II. The “Ignatian pedagogy” invoked by President Tetlow is not the rigorous formation of the Spiritual Exercises but a vague, secularized humanism that “finds God in all things” only by denying His transcendence and the necessity of supernatural faith. This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Proposition 19). When Catholic universities bow to market forces, they merely obey the spirit of the conciliar age, which has reduced the Church to a voluntary association competing in the marketplace of ideas.
The Illusion of “Mission” Without Doctrine
Adubato speaks movingly of professors who took his existential questions seriously and led him into “full communion with the Catholic Church.” But what does “full communion” mean in the post-conciliar context? It means communion with a sect that professes religious liberty (condemned by Pius IX, Syllabus, Proposition 77), false ecumenism (condemned by Pius XI, Mortalium Animos), and the evolution of dogmas (condemned by Vatican I, Dei Filius). The “Catholic faith” Adubato discovered at Fordham is not the faith of the Fathers, the Councils, and the pre-conciliar Magisterium; it is the neo-Catholicism of the New Advent, which substitutes dialogue for doctrine, sentiment for sacraments, and social justice for sanctity.
His praise for Seton Hall as a model of balancing mission and marketability is particularly revealing. He admires that it “steers clear from polemicizing the school’s Catholic identity”—that is, it avoids defending Catholic truth against error. This is not prudence; it is cowardice masquerading as pastoral sensitivity. The Church has never “policized” her identity by proclaiming it without compromise: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all patience and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2). A Catholic university that refuses to polemicize is a university that has already surrendered.
The False Remedy: More “Theology” in a Church Without Truth
Adubato’s plea for “more theology, more humanities, more professors with a robust sense of mission” is noble in intention but futile in practice. More theology courses taught by professors formed in the conciar seminary system will only deepen the confusion. The “progressive theological specializations” he criticizes—postcolonial, intersectional, “womanist” theology—are not aberrations; they are the inevitable consequences of the modernist principle that revelation is subject to historical development (Proposition 21, Lamentabili). If dogmas evolve, then theology must evolve with the times—and the times are woke.
Moreover, his appeal to “Pope” Leo XIV’s address is gravely misplaced. Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) is not the Vicar of Christ but a usurper occupying the See of Peter in a line of apostates beginning with John XXIII. His exhortations to Catholic universities carry no authority, for “a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II.30). The true remedy for Catholic education is not more courses approved by the conciliar bureaucracy but a return to the philosophia perennis of St. Thomas Aquinas, the dogmatic certitude of the Council of Trent, and the missionary zeal of the pre-conciliar Church.
The Spiritual Bankruptcy of “Accompaniment”
Adubato credits his professors with saving him from depression by treating him “as a whole person, not just a number.” This language of “accompaniment” and “holistic formation” is the pastoral jargon of the post-conciliar Church, which has replaced the supernatural order with psychologism. The Church has always taught that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 110:10), not therapeutic empathy. True formation requires not merely emotional support but the disciplina of the Gospel: self-denial, mortification, and the pursuit of sanctifying grace through the sacraments.
Yet in the neo-church, the sacraments themselves have been emptied of their propitiatory meaning. The “Eucharist” celebrated at Fordham is likely the Novus Ordo Missae—a rite designed to minimize the reality of sacrifice and maximize communal participation. To speak of “liturgical life” at such institutions is to speak of rituals that may be sacrilegious, not sources of grace. Students drowning in despair need not “accompaniment” but the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, offered by a validly ordained priest with the intention of doing what the Church does.
The Only True Solution: Return to Tradition
The crisis of Catholic higher education cannot be resolved within the structures of the conciliar sect. These structures are not merely flawed; they are apostate. The “Catholic universities” Adubato defends are, in the words of Our Lady of La Salette (a private revelation, but one consistent with the pre-conciliar Magisterium), “the broom of the devil.” They were captured by modernists, then by liberals, and now by neoliberals—each wave further from the truth.
The only path forward is the one trodden by the saints and doctors of the Church: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. Let Catholic education be built upon the Traditional Latin Mass, the Roman Catechism, and the Summa Theologica. Let professors be men of faith, not academic careerists. Let students be formed not for “success” but for eternal salvation. And let the Church reclaim her divine right to teach, govern, and sanctify—free from the tyranny of the market and the lies of modernism.
Until then, every “reform” of Catholic higher education will be a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship is sinking because it has abandoned its Captain. “Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Ps. 126:1).
Source:
When Colleges Cut Theology, Students Lose More Than Credits (ncregister.com)
Date: 05.06.2026