Theological Schools Sell Soul for Lilly’s Silver
Catholic News Agency reports that the Lilly Endowment distributed $60 million to seven Catholic institutions – including The Catholic University of America, University of Notre Dame, and Jesuit-run Loyola Chicago – as part of its $700 million Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative. The grants purportedly aim to “enhance educational and financial capacities” and train pastors to lead congregations “from wide variety of contexts.”
Poisoned Chalice of Ecumenical Mammon
The very acceptance of funds from secular foundations to shape priestly formation constitutes spiritual adultery against the Bride of Christ. Quas Primas (Pius XI, 1925) declares Christ’s kingship over all creation, demanding that “rulers of states…fulfill public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ.” Instead, these institutions genuflect before Protestant money, violating the Church’s perennial condemnation of religious indifferentism. The 1864 Syllabus of Errors explicitly rejects the notion that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18) – yet these “Catholic” schools willingly join an initiative with “mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Orthodox” institutions.
Mount Angel Abbey’s $10 million grant for “Stabilitas: Renewing Rural Ministry” reeks of the modernist reduction of priesthood to social work. The project’s collaboration with nine modernist dioceses – including the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, which recently hosted blasphemous “LGBTQ+ pilgrimages” – confirms its alignment with conciliar apostasy. True Catholic missions require no Protestant funding, as St. Vincent Ferrer demonstrated when his miraculous preaching converted 25,000 Jews and Muslims without a single ducat from Geneva.
Formation for Apostasy
The Catholic University of America’s “New Wineskins” program exposes the rotten fruit of this ecumenical bribery. Principal investigator Susan Timoney – whose feminist title itself mocks Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education’s (1917) prohibition against women in seminary governance – proposes to “strengthen practical leadership skills” through partnership with The Catholic Project. This organization promotes the very clerical careerism condemned by Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), which warned that modernists reduce priesthood to “a mere office” rather than a sacramental character.
Notre Dame’s $5 million grant continues its century-long betrayal of Fr. Sorin’s vision. The university that once produced saints like Fr. Zahm now partners with Lilly Endowment – founded by pharmaceutical magnates whose birth control pills enabled the sexual revolution. This fulfills Pius XI’s warning in Divini Illius Magistri (1929): “Every method of education founded wholly or in part on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin is unsound.”
Masonic Footprint in Theological Education
The Lilly Endowment’s initiative bears all hallmarks of a Masonic operation against the Church. Its vice president Christopher Coble speaks of “working collaboratively” across denominations – precisely the religious relativism condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (Errors 15-18). The endowment’s 2023 tax filings reveal $65 million granted to organizations promoting women’s ordination and LGBT advocacy – yet “Catholic” institutions lap up its silver like Judas at the Last Supper.
Jesuit-run Santa Clara University’s $10 million grant completes the betrayal. The order that once produced missionaries martyred by Protestants now takes Protestant money to train “pastoral leaders.” St. Ignatius weeps as his sons discard the Spiritual Exercises for leadership seminars. This confirms the analysis in Lamentabili Sane (1907) that modernists reduce sacraments to “merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Proposition 41).
Conclusion: Silver Over Sanctity
When seminaries like Saint Mary’s in Ohio accept $8.9 million from secular sources, they fulfill Cardinal Manning’s warning: “Give us money without principle, and we’ll give you education without religion.” These grants aren’t philanthropy but spiritual euthanasia – killing authentic priestly formation through the lethal injection of ecumenism and modernism. As St. John Eudes proclaimed: “The treasure of the Church is not money, but the truth and grace of Jesus Christ.” Those who exchange this treasure for Lilly’s silver have already written their epitaph: “They sold their birthright for a mess of pottage” (Genesis 25:34).
Source:
Lilly Endowment announces 45 multimillion-dollar grants for theological schools (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 03.12.2025