EWTN News reports that numerous “Catholic” institutions recommended by the Cardinal Newman Society — itself a creature of the post-conciliar confusion — have conferred honorary degrees upon a roster of businessmen, politicians, media personalities, and “clerics” whose achievements, measured against the immutable standard of Catholic truth, reveal the abyss into which Catholic education has fallen since the revolutionary coup of 1962–1965. The article, dated May 15, 2026, catalogues ceremonies at The Catholic University of America, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the University of Mary, Franciscan University of Steubenville, the University of Dallas, Benedictine College, Ave Maria University, and Walsh University. The honorees include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, businessman Timothy Busch, EWTN host Chris Stefanick, and “Father” Robert Spitzer, SJ. The thesis of this analysis is inescapable: these commencement ceremonies are not acts of Catholic witness but rituals of a naturalistic, worldly religion that has severed itself from the Most Holy Sacrifice, the Social Kingship of Christ, and the supernatural end of man.
The Cardinal Newman Society: Honoring a Heretic
The very framing of the article — institutions “recommended” by the Cardinal Newman Society — should give every Catholic faithful pause. This organization takes its name from John Henry Newman, whom the conciliar sect elevated to the altars under the apostate Bergoglio. Newman was a convert from Anglicanism who spent his intellectual career attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable: the evolution of Catholic dogma with the claims of an unchanging Magisterium. His theory of doctrinal development was precisely the kind of error condemned by the Holy Office under Saint Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejected the proposition that “dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy, both in concept and in reality, are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness” (proposition 54), and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58). Newman was buried, at his own request, in the same grave as his “friend” Father Ambrose St. John — a circumstance that, while not proof of anything in itself, is consistent with the well-documented pattern of his intimate associations. That an entire society dedicated to “Catholic education” bears the name of this figure is itself a confession: the conciliar sect honors those who undermined the faith, and the Cardinal Newman Society perpetuates this inversion. Pius XI taught in Quas Primas (1925) that “if men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society.” The Cardinal Newman Society, by contrast, recognizes the authority of men like Newman — men whose thought is antithetical to the Social Reign of Christ the King.
Ron DeSantis and the Idolatry of Political Power
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis received an honorary degree from Ave Maria University, where he told graduates: “The faith does not depend on what is fashionable or who holds power. It is, in fact, the truth that ultimately will set you free.” On its surface, this sounds unobjectionable. But the context reveals the rot. DeSantis is a secular politician whose public policy record includes support for positions incompatible with Catholic moral teaching. More fundamentally, the act of conferring an honorary degree upon a sitting governor — a man who holds temporal power but has never been noted for submitting that power to the Social Kingship of Christ — is a gesture of servility to the secular order. Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (proposition 77), and that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (proposition 80). By honoring DeSantis, Ave Maria University implicitly endorses the very liberalism and secularism that the Church has condemned. The university is not forming Catholic leaders who will demand that the state recognize Christ’s kingship; it is cozying up to the state as it is — a state that, in DeSantis’s Florida, operates on purely naturalistic and secular premises. The true Catholic position, as Leo XIII taught and Pius XI reiterated, is that the state itself is subject to Christ: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas, quoting Annum Sanctum). Ave Maria University’s honoring of DeSantis is not Catholic witness; it is capitulation.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan: A Shepherd of the Conciliar Sect
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “archbishop emeritus of New York,” will receive an honorary degree from the University of Dallas and deliver its commencement address. The University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford described Dolan as “one of the Church’s most joyful and widely respected shepherds.” Let us examine what Dolan has shepherded. As archbishop of New York, Dolan presided over one of the most spectacularly decadent “dioceses” in the conciliar structure. He was a prominent participant in the synodal process — that neo-pagan parody of ecclesiology in which the “People of God” are treated as a deliberative assembly rather than the flock of Christ governed by the authority He conferred upon Peter. Dolan has consistently upheld the legitimacy of the conciliar “popes” from John XXIII onward, thereby endorsing the entire revolution: the destruction of the Most Holy Sacrifice through the Novus Ordo Missae, the proclamation of the heresy of religious liberty in Dignitatis Humanae, the substitution of ecumenism for the Church’s exclusive claim to be the one true ark of salvation. The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (proposition 16) and that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (proposition 18). Dolan’s entire public career has been an exercise in precisely this indifferentism. That the University of Dallas honors such a man reveals that the university is not Catholic in any meaningful, pre-conciliar sense. It is an institution of the conciar sect wearing Catholic vestments — vestments that, in any case, have been stripped of their sacrificial meaning.
“Father” Robert Spitzer, SJ: Jesuit Apostasy Institutionalized
“Father” Robert Spitzer, SJ, received an honorary doctorate in “catechetics and evangelization” from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Spitzer is the co-founder, with Timothy Busch, of the NAPA Institute — an organization dedicated to the proposition that faith and science can be harmonized on purely naturalistic grounds. The Jesuits, since their founding, have been the Church’s intellectual vanguard; since the conciliar revolution, they have been its most effective destroyers. Saint Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the Jesuits’ modernist successors as those who treat theological matters as philosophical sciences (condemned in Syllabus, proposition 8) and who hold that “philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (proposition 14). Spitzer’s entire intellectual project — reconciling Catholic faith with modern physics and philosophy on modern physics’ and philosophy’s own terms — is a textbook example of the modernist method condemned by Saint Pius X: the subordination of divine revelation to human reason. That Franciscan University honors Spitzer with a doctorate in “catechetics” is a grotesque inversion of the Church’s mission. Catechesis is the transmission of the deposit of faith — the unchanging truths revealed by God and guarded by the Magisterium. What Spitzer offers is not catechesis but accommodation: the dilution of dogma to make it palatable to the modern mind. Saint Pius X warned that “the pursuit of novelty in the investigation of the foundations of things leads in our times to deplorable consequences” and that Catholic authors who “overstep the boundaries set by the Fathers of the Church and the Church itself” under the guise of “historical method” aim at “such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption” (Lamentabili, Introduction). Spitzer is precisely such an author, and Franciscan University is precisely such an institution.
Timothy Busch and the Gospel of Wealth
Timothy Busch received honorary degrees from both the University of Mary and Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is described as a “Catholic businessman and lawyer” and co-chair of the University of Mary’s capital campaign that raised over $100 million. The article notes his co-founding of the NAPA Institute with Spitzer. The elevation of a businessman — a man whose primary distinction is the accumulation and deployment of capital — to the status of honorary doctor at “Catholic” universities is a telling symptom of the conciliar sect’s captivity to Mammon. Our Lord declared: “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matt. 6:24). The Church has always taught that the accumulation of wealth is morally perilous, not something to be honored with ecclesiastical distinctions. The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure” (proposition 58). While there is no suggestion that Busch is a formal adherent of this proposition, the act of honoring him primarily for his financial acumen and fundraising success implicitly endorses the subordination of Catholic mission to financial power. The Church’s mission is the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the propagation of the Social Kingship of Christ. When “Catholic” universities honor businessmen for raising $100 million, they confess that their true god is not Christ the King but the donor class.
Chris Stefanick and the Reduction of Faith to Self-Help
Chris Stefanick, host of EWTN’s “Real Life Catholic,” received an honorary doctorate of “applied theology” from Walsh University. Stefanick told graduates: “Your formation as men and women of character is the primary end of Catholic education. The secondary end is the formation of useful citizens.” This statement is a precise inversion of Catholic teaching. The primary end of Catholic education is not the formation of “character” — a purely naturalistic concept drawn from the world of self-help and corporate training — but the salvation of souls through Jesus Christ and His Church. Pius XI declared in Quas Primas that the Church’s mission is “to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ.” The formation of “useful citizens” — citizens of what? of the secular liberal state? — is not the secondary end of Catholic education; it is a purely incidental byproduct of a life ordered toward God. When Stefanick inverts this order, he reveals the naturalistic, horizontalist theology that pervades the conciliar sect. “Applied theology” is itself a suspect term: theology is the science of God; it is not “applied” to worldly ends but is pursued for the sake of knowing and loving God. The very name of the degree conferred upon Stefanick exposes the utilitarian, anti-supernatural orientation of Walsh University.
The Absence of the Supernatural: Silence as Apostasy
What is most striking about the entire article — and about the commencement ceremonies it describes — is not what is said but what is omitted. There is no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the center of Catholic life. There is no mention of the Social Kingship of Christ over the state and over education. There is no mention of the necessity of the true faith for salvation. There is no mention of the conciliar apostasy, the invalidity of the Novus Ordo Missae, or the duty of Catholics to resist the modernist destruction of the Church. The honorees are recognized for worldly achievements: founding businesses, raising money, hosting television programs, holding political office. The “Catholic” identity of these institutions is reduced to a brand — a marketing distinction that sets them apart from secular universities without requiring any substantive submission to the authority of Christ and His Church. This is precisely the “dogmaless Christianity, that is, a broad and liberal Protestantism” that Saint Pius X identified as the logical endpoint of modernism (Lamentabili, proposition 65). These Newman Guide schools are not forming Catholics who will fight under the banner of Christ the King; they are forming useful citizens of the liberal order who happen to attend a “Catholic” chapel on Sundays.
The Linguistic Register: Bureaucratic Banality as Theological Symptom
The language of the article is itself a symptom of the disease. Honorees are described in the flattened, promotional register of corporate communications: “distinguished individuals,” “notable,” “renowned for his charitable contributions,” “widely respected shepherds.” This is the language of public relations, not of Catholic theology. When the Church honors a saint, it does so with language drawn from the supernatural order: martyr, confessor, doctor, virgin — categories that express the person’s relationship to God. When the conciliar sect honors its favorites, it uses the language of the world: CEO, chairman, governor, founder. The linguistic register reveals the theological reality. These institutions do not inhabit the supernatural order; they inhabit the naturalistic, horizontal plane of secular achievement, garnished with Catholic imagery. Pius IX warned that the errors of modern liberalism lead to the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Syllabus, proposition 55). The Newman Guide schools have achieved something worse than separation: they have absorbed the values of the state and the market while retaining the outward forms of Catholicism. This is not separation but syncretism — the very “broad and liberal Protestantism” condemned by Saint Pius X.
Conclusion: The Abomination in the Schools
The commencement ceremonies of 2026, as reported by EWTN News, are not Catholic events. They are rituals of the conciliar sect — a sect that has destroyed the Mass, denied the Social Kingship of Christ, embraced religious indifferentism, and reduced the faith to a vague theistic humanism compatible with the liberal democratic order. The honorees — a politician, a cardinal of the conciliar structure, a Jesuit modernist, a businessman, a media personality — are not Catholic leaders but leaders of a naturalistic enterprise wearing Catholic masks. The true Catholic position was stated with luminous clarity by Pius XI: “Christ possesses, in a word, dominion over all creatures, not by force but by essence and nature… From this it follows that Christ not only is to be adored as God by angels and men, but that angels and men are to be obedient and subject to His dominion as Man” (Quas Primas). Not one of these institutions, judging by their commencement programs, professes this truth. They are schools of the abomination — not because they teach formal heresy from every lectern, but because they are silent about the one thing necessary: the absolute, total, public, and private reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, over every soul, every family, every nation, and every school. Regnet Christus Rex.
Source:
Newman Guide schools honor Catholic leaders at 2026 commencements (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.05.2026