Leveraging the Truth: The Catholic university and the future of Western civilization

The calamity we face is above all a failure of those who, with our full permission and a great deal of our hard-earned cash, have been given free rein over what our children are taught.

University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines (Image: Anna Monina Rafal/Unsplash.com)

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that western culture is under attack. What appeared at first to be a series of isolated skirmishes has turned into a full-frontal assault. The legitimacy and value of a legacy that represents the accumulated wisdom of centuries seems to be dissolving before our eyes. Without shame or hesitation, and on full public display, our intellectual, moral, and even our aesthetic traditions are systematically torn down; heroes from every century and every walk of life are canceled in a heartbeat.

Many of the things we took for granted until the day before yesterday – the binary reality of man and woman, the meaning of marriage, the importance of children and family, the capacity of human reason to discern the truth and discover the intelligence hidden in the order of things – are all now suspect, questioned, or simply denied. Such ancient truths are just more evidence of the oppressive hegemony of the dominant culture, whose time is now up. Those who disagree with this narrative are immediately silenced and ejected from public discourse. Meanwhile, internal squabbles in the Church and the sins of her members make her hesitant or incapable of proclaiming a full-throated defense of the truth.

Is it time to admit that Yeats got it right, to acknowledge, finally, that “the center cannot hold”? Perhaps. It does seem as though that reality is now upon us. The forces that held it together appear to have let go of the rope. One has the sensation of things spinning out of control. As Nietzsche warned us in his Parable of the Madman, when we declare God dead, we unchain the earth from the sun. And what follows is the feeling of vertigo that accompanies a blind plunge into space – a void with no boundaries, no signposts, no true north. Is it time to let ourselves be swept up in the orbit of nihilism so clearly at the center of it all?

Well, no. And that is manifestly the wrong question. The average Star Trek fan knows that when the ship is knocked out of its orbit, the only solution is to resist the gravitational pull with a yet more powerful force. And so, the right question to ask would be: what actually constitutes the epicenter of Yeats’ famous phrase? What is the center of gravity, the point from which some sensible action might be taken in order to recover our hold? Where is the point of maximum leverage? And though our first thought might be to locate it in the millions of Catholic parishes throughout the world, there is a more powerful force available to us. It is hidden in plain sight.

The Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of higher education in the world. According to the Vatican, she oversees, with varying degrees of influence, 1,358 Catholic universities worldwide. There is a Catholic institution of higher education (that is, one designated by a competent ecclesiastical authority) operating in almost every country from Albania to Zimbabwe. It would be a practical impossibility to calculate the total number of students currently enrolled, even more difficult to ascertain the number of graduates. In the United States alone, the Church is responsible for educating 1.7 million school children from kindergarten to high school. Of the students attending these schools, a significant percentage (18.7% during the 2019-2020 school year) are non-Catholic.

In fact, the majority of the students attending Catholic universities are non-Catholic. All of these students represent a mostly untapped potential. They are ours to teach and to form – a virtually captive audience – whether that be for 12 years or for four – or more. What could be more obvious? Here lies the promise of the future: the rebuilding of the Church herself and the recovery of our culture. It is the equivalent of Archimedes’ famous lever. With that type of leverage, we should be able to move the world.

But as we all know, there is a serious problem. Unfortunately, in many cases, the Church’s influence over the Catholic educational enterprise has waned considerably, whether due to the culture’s resistance or its outright refusal to embrace her teachings, or to the Church’s own willingness to dilute them. This is particularly true in the case of higher education. It is a sad reality that, whatever their marketing materials claim, one has to search cautiously for a Catholic university that remains fully committed to the Magisterium and to the great legacy of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Surely this is where we find the point of maximum engagement; here we are at the epicenter.

For make no mistake, the calamity we face is above all a failure of those who, with our full permission and a great deal of our hard-earned cash, have been given free rein over what our children are taught. It is the result of corruption in public schools, in higher institutions of learning, in academia itself, promoted by an intellectual elite with an ideological agenda that manifestly seeks the deconstruction of the person, the breakdown of the family, and the ruin of souls. We need to put our focus on the recovery of the Catholic University. It is where we will find the greatest leverage.

In Ex Corde Ecclesia, his Apostolic Constitution on the Catholic University, Pope St. John Paul II declares that the Catholic University is “born from the heart of the Church…recognized as an incomparable center of creativity and dissemination of knowledge for the good of humanity” (#1). He states unequivocally that It “is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic University to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth” (#5). It has been so for centuries. The search for truth is embedded in its DNA.

Though forgotten or ignored by those who currently populate the academy, it is a historical fact that the modern university began as an overtly Catholic enterprise. Its origins can be traced to the late 11th century and the founding of the first university in 1088, the University of Bologna, followed in rapid succession by several others, among them the University of Oxford (1096), and of Paris (1160), now known as the Sorbonne. Indeed, most of the universities established in Europe during the medieval period were founded as Catholic. Of the ten oldest still in operation, nine were the result of the partnership between the Catholic Church and the State that had begun centuries before.

When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 A.D, it marked the last formal step in Charlemagne’s campaign to unite the Germanic tribes of Western Europe and to transform the kingdom into a Christian empire. But Charlemagne’s goals were not only political; he had in mind the expansion and preservation of Christendom. His reign inaugurated the cultural and intellectual revival known as the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intense renewal of the classical works of antiquity, marked by a concerted effort to preserve the ancient texts. Which led to the development of a legible script. Which led to an upsurge in new works of literature, increases in the arts, and in jurisprudence. There was a wave of liturgical reforms and a revival of the monastic schools already in operation. And the rest, as they say, is history.

This was the beginning of a cooperative effort between the Church and the State which, though certainly stained by missteps and tragedy, safeguarded the treasury of the faith and our intellectual tradition for centuries. And it marked the beginning of the historical trajectory that led directly to the establishment of the university system.

The university was created by the Church, for the Church. First, we need to reclaim that. Then we can reclaim the culture.

Now this will not require a grand strategy. Archimedes’ principle can be put to work here: the Catholic University is the lever; the Magisterium is the fulcrum. We do not need the permission of the Vatican (though cooperation from the local Bishop would be a great help). All we need to do is “leverage” what we already have in place. And a critical mass of Catholic Universities led by those who understand.

There is already one university at work on this project. The Franciscan University of Steubenville*, led by Father Dave Pivonka, TOR, made the connection first. Father Dave’s insight shed light on what sensible action might look like in the face of the enormous challenges of our time. In 1205, God called St. Francis to “rebuild my Church.” More than 800 years later, Father Dave has declared that God is calling Franciscan University to do the same. This vision, that the Church will be rebuilt by leveraging the unapologetically Catholic identity of a University “consecrated to the cause of truth,” is the lynchpin of Steubenville’s strategic plan. It is not a short-term solution. It is a down payment on the future of the Church – and that of the legacy of our intellectual tradition. Father Dave knows that the only way to “pay it forward” is to step out in faith. And in doing so, he has taken another page from history.

Without a doubt, the central figure in Charlemagne’s effort to preserve and extend the legacy of the Western intellectual tradition was a now forgotten scholar and monk: Alquin of York. It was Alquin who developed the script that would transform the written word into language comprehensible to others. It would be impossible to overstate his significance in the Renaissance that took place at a critical turning point in history. But perhaps his most important contribution was a single strategic decision. He ordered the planting of a vast forest of trees, to be stocked with deer and wild boar. We will need lots of paper, he said, and bristles with which to write; there will be a great deal of writing to do. For one thing, we will need many copies of the Bible. The trees were planted, the forest was stocked and, years later, they became the concrete means by which our legacy was preserved.

We all need to think like Alquin of York – to plant something now even though we know that the harvest will likely come only after we are gone. We need to rise above the daily skirmishes that keep our attention on the trees and not on the forest. We may win one occasionally – but without a broader vision we will lose the war.

And so perhaps we need to consider anew John Paul II’s advice – that we concentrate, not on fighting evil, but on building something good. We need not reinvent the foundations. The only means available to us is to reclaim our intellectual and spiritual heritage – without hesitation or apology. This will not be accomplished without leveraging something with the power to reverse the direction of what may appear to be an irreversible spin. Perhaps only the renewal of the Catholic university has the gravitational pull to right the ship.

(*The author serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Steubenville.)


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About Deborah Savage, PhD 4 Articles
Deborah Savage, Ph.D. is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. She previously taught both philosophy and theology at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota for the past thirteen years. She received her doctorate in Religious Studies from Marquette University in 2005; her degree is in both theology and philosophy. Dr. Savage is the co-founder and acting director of the Siena Symposium for Women, Family, and Culture, an interdisciplinary think tank, organized to respond to John Paul II’s call for a new and explicitly Christian feminism.

29 Comments

  1. The Catholic faith of its nature generates culture; or, as Dr Savage, following Pope John Paul II, recognises, is committed to “building something good”. WH Auden put it well when he said: “Our apparatchiks will continue making/the usual squalid mess called History:/all we can pray for is that artists/chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it. . .” With the sacramental presence of Christ among us in the power of Holy Spirit, we have the “fons et origo” of creative life accessible and waiting to be tapped “to renew the face of the earth.” Beauty, goodness and truth are available to us if we have the humility to ask.

    • A wonderful article and I stand behind it wholeheartedly. What worries me is that everyone seems to think that the USA will still be a FREE country in the future. All the signs are that little by little we will be blocked by new laws and that we will turn into a new Socialist country which will be as strict against the Church as in any Communist country ever was. ALL of us have to pray and continue praying that this will never happen.

  2. Getting a good fix on our global predicament, we notice that the first university was actually Al-Azhar in Egypt, predating the Christian realm’s Bologna (1088 A.D.) by a century and Aquinas by nearly three centuries.

    Founded in c. 970, al-Azhar remains the center of Islamic thought. By earlier Western standards and stunted by the Qur’an and Islamic Law, even in the beginning it included grammar, rhetoric, logic and some astronomy. (More non-religious subjects were added in the mid-20th century.) In the West, of course, most substantive religious core subjects seem to have been deleted and displaced by a hoard of often trivial faculty specializations and now the needs of the educational-industrial complex: STEM.

    Of al-Azhar, the influence of the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb on both the Abu-Dhabi Declaration (2019) and Fratelli tutti (2020) is elemental. For better in terms of fraternity, yes, and possibly for worse, too, on the meaning(s) of “fraternity”(?). The point here is that a failure to regenerate Western culture is not only surrender to radical secularism, but also abdication to long-term absorption by Islamic natural religion.

    On this global drift/threat, here is what Pope Benedict had to say even back when the ink on Ex Cordia Ecclesia (1990) was barely dry, summarizing the Muslim mind:

    “We [Muslims] are somebody too; we know who we are; our religion is holding its ground; you don’t have one any longer. This is actually the feeling today of the Muslim world: The Western countries are no longer capable of preaching a message of morality but have only know-how to offer the world. The Christian religion has abdicated; it really no longer exists as a religion; the Christians no longer have a morality or a faith; all that’s left are a few remains of some modern ideas of enlightenment; we [Muslims] have the religion that stands the test” (Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, Ignatius, 1997).

    • Thank you for your comment. I am aware of these facts but couldn’t figure out an elegant way to mention Al-Azhar in the body of the article. And in any case, the essay is concerned with the recovery of the Western tradition. So I am not exactly certain what your point is. But in my mind, the same thing would hold true for the Muslim tradition. If they wish to preserve their legacy, they would be wise to pay attention to what is being taught in their Universities. This could permit their students to expand their horizons (just like in the West) to include a vision of human life that could provide a broader context for their hope in the future. It is a little known fact that we owe a great deal to the contributions of the Persians and other Muslim scholars whose work has played a significant role in our own history. China would fall into this category as well. Perhaps we can acknowledge that any culture that loses touch with its own authentic legacy runs the risk of devolving into chaos. As Charles Taylor puts it in “Multi-culturalism and the Politics of Recognition,” the choice is not between a multi-cultural paradise and Western hegemony. All cultures have elements of what is most excellent – and what constitutes barbarism. The issue is how we determine which ideas and practices fall into one or the other of these categories – and agree together on what constitutes progress – and what leads to decline.

      • My “point”, exactly as I stated: “The point here is that a failure to regenerate Western culture is not only surrender to radical secularism, but also abdication to long-term absorption by Islamic natural religion.” Any possibly implied parallelism with Islam as another (and equivalent?) “tradition” falls under scrutiny. The “authentic legacy” of Islam, itself, is a matter of obscure history…

        While there is much room for deepening and debate, and while I value your added comments, I also propose my 2017 author interview with Catholic World Report:

        https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/04/29/the-mosque-the-manger-and-modernity/

        • Actually Peter, I owe you an apology. I reread my essay and realized I wrongly stated that the first university was that of Bologna. That was not adequately nuanced! I will fix that. And re your point, maybe I just don’t understand what this statement means “The point here is that a failure to regenerate Western culture is not only surrender to radical secularism, but also abdication to long-term absorption by Islamic natural religion.” I understand that there is some obscurity around the “authentic legacy of Islam” – I wasn’t really trying to draw an exact parallel. Only to indicate the great tragedy it is when any culture loses touch with its roots. In any case I am happy to look at what you sent.

          • Deborah,

            No need for apologies. In short, for the reasons you develop, our teens all moved on from the distant Pacific Northwest to Franciscan University, in the 1990s. Also, the extended family. So, unpacking my thinking, it might go something like this:

            FIRST, before anything formally transmitted by universities, the human mind and heart (if such exist) arrive at original questions like this: (1) Is there a God other than ourselves (yes/no); (2) if yes, then is this an inaccessible god of arbitrary WILL, or instead, the LOGOS?
            SECOND, in my implied critique of Islamic “tradition” and its origin, I used the single word obscure. What really happened at Mt. Hira where the first “revelations” (“roots”?) are reported? What does it mean when the basic symmetrical comparison is not between the Qur’an and the Bible (from which it borrows/edits heavily), but instead between the (“uncreated”) Qur’an and the eternal Second Person of a Triune Oneness—incarnated in the historical figure of Jesus Christ?

            THIRD, regardless of what the Second Vatican Council says about non-Christian religions, the separate Dei Verbum (n.4) also clarifies: “The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation [Islam 610+ A.D.?] before the glorious manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf 1 Tim 6:14, Tit. 2:13).”

            FOURTH, is it a kind of Western myopia and historicism for Charles Taylor to frame history (all these “traditions”) as a sorting-out process between “excellence” and “barbarism”? Or, is it more about whether the transcendent God has in fact spoken to men, definitively, in the Word made flesh, in Judea where He suffered (some strange excellence, that?) under Pontius Pilate? And, therefore, whether faith involves intimate/interior LOGOS more than exterior WILL? Yes, there is a God; Yes, He is not us; Yes, He is not even like us, but we are remotely like Him; and yes, the harmony of faith and reason, and Church and state are occasionally possible apart from absorption into the (con)fused mosque/state…and, yes, there is real Redemption, rather than not.

            FIFTH, these are binary understandings—they involve yes/no decisions—but we in the West now live in a radically secularist world which rejects ANYTHING binary, such as true or false, such as male or female, such as even the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction. In such a bubble-universe, even the United States Supreme Court indulges in WILL-fulness: rulings (not decisions) regarding abortion, regarding gay “marriage,” and regarding amorphous and anti-family gender theory (anti-, as in binary after all!).
            All cut from the same irrational cloth as the tradition of Islamic fatwas (!), rather than reasoned conclusions grounded in natural law and nurtured by the LOGOS. In short, (3) a third question for tuition-paying customers: while Catholic universities are often awash in incoherence between faith and reason, are they (and we) also self-absorbed in a deeper pathology dissolving thought itself?

            What is the syllabus for that?

    • Christians have no longer a morality? those who don’t are not Christians. This is the result of secular education and life. Therefore it is a false statement.
      The moral code of muslims is not a moral code, it is not a religion but an ideology based on subjugating the world and all by FORCE. The opposite of the Trinitarian God, who gave mankind the freedom of choice to chose for Him or NOT. This does not exist in islam. Apostasy is punished by DEATH and those are the ways of the EVIL ONE.

  3. It’s too late to save the Catholic university, and even if the Catholic university could be saved, it wouldn’t win the culture war that it has been losing for 50+ years.

    • I am not ready to accept defeat. Lao-Tzu said centuries ago that “a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.” And since it is a long road, we need to start now.

      • Catholic higher education won’t defeat the oligarchy or the cultural revolutionaries, and it has done a very poor job with respect to feminism, as all Catholic schools have capitulated in one way or another. Parents are better off investing in land and vocational training for their children as their children will need to learn how to be as resilient as possible from attacks by the oligarchs and cultural revolutionaries.

        • As it turns out Harmel Academy seems to fit the bill of both college and trades school. It is a post-secondary, Catholic trades school for men, offering a two-year program in the trades.
          .
          Rather ironically, it is hosted by a Protestant college as opposed to a specifically Catholic one.

  4. It is impossible to read “The Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider…” without pausing to listen to the captivating echo of “non-governmental,non-governmental”.But the trance is finally broken when one arrives at the realization that non governmental means fee paying or of the monied classes.

  5. Just one question for Debora Savage about depending on Catholic universities to revive culture:how many took PPP taxpayer subsidy? I would guess even Stubenville could not resist admitting it nothad to be beholden to the state to survive a crisis.

  6. Most Catholic universities are secular; they are catholic in name only (CINOs), and representative examples would include Marquette, Boston College, the Loyolas, Georgetown; the names are legion. If you doubt me, just look up the ‘faithful orthodox’ colleges on the Newman Society’s annual list. I suspect a student is better off at a ‘secular’ school; at least there is no confusion: the secular school is not attempting to claim a ‘Catholic identity’. Until our good orthodox bishops care enough to get involved in this scandal, nothing will change.

  7. DR Deborah Savage’s candidly painful “perhaps”, perhaps says what is virtually impossible in Am since Fr Hesburgh and Land O’ Lakes, similarly in Europe Catholic Universities having taken the Liberal lead of the Louven. It requires determined leadership from the papacy to implement the definition of a Catholic University and likely a century to restore true Catholic scholarship requiring a turnover of staff. And the availability of suitable staff. Experience has left its mark on this. Fortunately, having studied Aristotle then Aquinas under Quentin J Lauer SJ at Fordham, later the Angelicum directed by Fr Richard Mathes rector of the German College, who himself an Angelicum lecturer unlike the Dominican staff was not a devotee of Kant, or a convert to symbolic logic as was the dean of the faculty – knowledge was perceived as the true, the spiritual, and the beautiful. Today the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who is the gold standard for a Catholic instructor, universally knowledgeable due to a wide span of research and elicitation of truth wherever found, faithful to Christ, and an adherent to his Cross. In this morning’s breviary reading Aquinas speaks to us in a lecture on the sanctity of the Cross, the willingness to patiently suffer for what is morally just, to accept the more difficult when it can be avoided. Like Christ to pursue perfection dissuaded to the delights of this life. An exemplar teacher, and saint.

  8. I sometimes wonder if the function of the Catholic University with respect to the humanities is only hire professors who could not get a job elsewhere. For example, I have had a run-in with a Catholic priest who specializes in Heidegger and teaches about him at a Catholic University. He runs the class in slow read / walk fashion where the students are pressed to mentally and emotionally genuflect at every word as if the word was coming from Christ Himself and somehow was fulfilling the student with the meaning of existence. Those of us who know how to read will recognize that Heidegger’s entire mental endeavour is a manufactured puzzle with the solution being nothing more than a content-less word: Being. And then, I know a by-all-appearances devout Catholic professor who spends frequent sabbaticals in Rome and teaches Buddhism in a Catholic University as if Buddhism was important to Catholics. However, those of us who understand words and have read a few things from time to time know that Buddha was insistent that there is no God and that his entire ‘teaching’ is a questionable view of how to best get by through life, and how to end it most efficiently if need be. Maybe I have no right to wonder why a Catholic of minimal intellectual skills, enough to earn a PhD in the humanities, should be given authority over students in any setting. Forgive me in continuing to believe that something is wrong.

    • A liberal arts education does provide some sort of intellectual training, but it is over-hyped as to its results by academics seeking to market it to prospective customers.

    • I’m fully in sympathy with the above reader’s comments. The proper study of Heidegger’s publications is not to be found in Philosophy Departments. The author of the article makes a good beginning but the hope of the Church is not to be found in the Catholic University despite its remarkable history. The Franciscan University is a good example of a floundering institution torn between some faithful faculty members and an administration’s attempt to integrate with contemporary neutered academia. The sex scandals of Fr Scanlon and associate, and the more recent Fr Sheridan /William Gorman agenda to radicalize teaching (Case in point: the Stephen Lewis teaching on the sex life of the Virgin Mary)merely herald Franciscan’s joining the already weakened or totally corrupt Catholic institutions.

      The true hope lies in the family, in the faithful homeschooling especially helping those families that need teaching assistance. The biggest obstacle in this is the interests of the professional Catholic educator and those that foolishly put their hopes in a successful revamping of Catholic institution. It is not happening, it cannot, it will not happen. The cancel culture trip will stop them cold. Let them fall and rebuild from the ruins. Our real culture is within.

  9. I believe the primary educators of our children are the parents. The schools, for too long, have been relied upon to pass on the faith, and the failure of education has started well before the college level. Most parishes’ faith formation programs are sorely lacking orthodoxy, and the Catholic school system in general has fallen prey to the secular norms in which it finds itself. Our local school is barely different from it’s neighboring public school in almost every way, right on down to the calendar. The students don’t get any holy days off (much less Masss) but they get “indigenous people’s day” off (Columbus Day, for those outside the “People’s Republic of Washington State”). Ultimately, parents need to take back their rightful duty, and yes, that may mean Mom needs to stay home and place her career on hold (gasp!). Catholic universities are barely affordable with two incomes anyway, so why not kill two birds…

    • Excellent point. Can we trust our parishes to do the remedial work needed? Every time there is a sacrament (beginning with baptism), there is an opportunity to evangelize, catechize, support and guide parents. But if they are allowed to drop off their children, they are being rescued from their baptismal promises. Our parents and children are being well “evangelized” by the father of lies daily in screen time hours that far exceed the hours (pre-Covid) they spend weekly in worship or classes. It seems to me this is a problem that needs episcopal leadership and solidarity. Bishop Konderla in Tyler established 3 pastoral priorities a few years back, and the domestic church was #1. I do not know what the progress on that has been. But at least he sees its centrality and wants to take action.

  10. I became a Catholic because of the ‘Firing Line’ discussions between Malcolm Muggeridge and William F. Buckley, rebroadcast in the mid-1980’s. Having been raised Southern Baptist what a revelation it was to hear a discussion between a Cradle Catholic and convert to Catholicism after a life time of agnosticism. Their humorous, insightful and thought provoking banter, was a dialectic of life, faith, doubt, St. Augustine and why Catholicism was the only true path. It was so gratifying to hear this learned discussion and as a 19 year old, who still believed in Jesus Christ but had no prospects, no direction, low morale and lack of direction it had a big impact, I think of it as the most important seminar I never took in college. And I wonder out loud as a parent of kids attending a Catholic college, high-school and middle-school if automatically dismiss these times as an aberration in the history of Christendom is a mistake. Maybe, looking back nostalgically to the ascent of a superficial, universal Judeo-Christian morals world is actually a disservice to the teachings of Jesus Christ who warned his followers to always be warry of consensus morality, (Luke 14:26 – old Baptist habit). And maybe we should look at these times with the wisdom of St. Augustine as just another very hard stone in order for the Christian faith continue to be sharpened.

  11. I enjoyed this article but it would’ve nice been nice to have seen two things: #1 why not come out and directly name the “Catholic Universities”that are the problem? #2 I agree with another comment that mentioned the Newman guide which Steubenville is part of —-but it would have been nice and beneficial to list out that there are close to 20 U.S. Catholic colleges and universities that are staying true to Catholic dogma. More parents and families and students need to be made aware of the fantastic options that are out there for them if they will look beyond the other 80 to 100 alleged Catholic universities in the country.

    • I totally agree with Nancy. Why not name names, here and elsewhere. If you are speaking the truth about people, ideas, institutions, events, then there is no reason to tiptoe around them. People need to know.

  12. Feast Day of St.Thomas Aquinas today , making the article more relevant ; the EWTN commentary mentioned the occasion of him telling The Lord that ‘all ‘ he wanted was The Lord 🙂 – ? as The Divine Will …
    The revelations around same , to one who only had a first grade education ( sort of like St.Faustina , who can be seen as a ‘twin ‘ to the Divine Will ) possibly is the merciful means given for our times which have become like those who gorged greedily on the quail – having chosen to be ungrateful and be unloving , choking on our self will and its rebellions in vast areas . The related self pity as the evil seeds that the Holy Father has warned us against , with the confusion in those who are to lead the nation into ways of wisdom choosing instead , to go all out , for ways to feed more into the destructive desires .

    Good to see how persons who seem like intellectual giants of our times have not been hesitant to find the truth and the good in advocating the deeper revelations related to the Divine Will –

    https://www.ltdw.org/about-fr-joe.html

    The effects from more persons choosing for such , as courses in seminaries , colleges ,schools and homes can be vast and incalculable world over, including for cultures such as China that have been alien to Christianity . The related revelations being more in a manner to help them to take it in with less resistance , esp. as a people who are used to following the will of those in power –
    https://www.queenofthedivinewill.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Little-Catechism-of-the-Divine-Will-1.pdf
    Islam too , that has been struggling to do the will in the manner they seem to discern could find The Truth as revealed in the above more appealing .

    God bless !

  13. A lot of word gymnastics in the comments. Lots of mention about muslim history (thank you Peter and Deborah). But not one sentence asserting the simple fact that muslims and other oriental traditions are pagan. They are pagans! There, I said it because it needed reminding. Let us join together in prayer, recommending pagans and socialists to the Immaculata.

    We can talk till the cows come home, but no change can happen unless we pray earnestly for it. Make personal sacrifices in private. Do penance and works of mercy, offering all these actions to Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, through the most Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

    Thank you.

  14. Helena is saying what every Catholic and other Christians should say…

    “What worries me is that everyone seems to think that the USA will still be a FREE country in the future.”

    Since January 20, 2021 our hope for a sane and adult administration was dashed. Serious issues requiring intelligent actions were discarded as a HOAX! The COVID 19 pandemic, denying that our planet is warming, removing the US from the Paris accord, The election, the special investigator’s report.

    Elena’s serious concerns about the possibility of an autocratic coup is real. Certainly a more important disaster is the future nation and planet that we will leave for our children and their children.

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