Posted on 10/20/2025 5:06:37 PM PDT by ebb tide
The incoming president of Georgetown University has said he repudiates the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality. He also appeared to criticize the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The nominally Catholic, Jesuit university in Washington, D.C., recently announced its selection of Eduardo Peñalver as its new president, to start next year. Peñalver is currently the president of Seattle University, another Jesuit university.
“President Peñalver is an exceptional leader steeped in the Catholic and Jesuit tradition who brings a wealth of experience in higher education, a global mindset, a commitment to social justice and academic excellence, and a bold vision for Georgetown’s future,” the chair of the board stated. “We look forward to him joining our Georgetown community.”
Peñalver has previously said he thinks the Catholic Church erred in its teachings on homosexuality.
“I reject the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, so I would favor an even easier way out by treating committed gay relationships as morally valuable,” Peñalver wrote in 2014 in Commonweal. He was responding to criticism of the Archdiocese of Seattle for removing a Catholic high school’s male vice-principal who “married” another man. “I take inspiration in my own marriage from the committed gay couples I have known,” he said.
As the dean of Cornell University’s law school, the new Georgetown president also advocated for keeping gender-confused men and women in the military. He said Trump’s proposed ban in 2017 on “transgender” troops was an “unprecedented step backwards in the progress towards greater tolerance and inclusion in our nation’s military.”
In 2022, Peñalver also signaled his disapproval of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, saying, “it is clear that the decision and its reasoning will have far-reaching consequences for many, particularly low-income women and women of color, [so-called] LGBTQ people, and for society at large.”
He added:
Our community, like the American polity as a whole (including the American Catholic community), is made up of people with a wide range of perspectives on yesterday’s decision. Some are celebrating Dobbs as a long overdue victory for the protection of vulnerable human beings. Others are mourning an erosion of the autonomy of those experiencing unwanted or unsafe pregnancies or those whose rights may be undermined in the coming years by the sweeping scope of the Court’s reasoning.
LifeSiteNews contacted Georgetown University and Seattle University for comment, but neither responded. LifeSiteNews asked Seattle University and Peñalver on what basis he rejects the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality and if he refrains from receiving Holy Communion since he is openly defying a core Church teaching.
LifeSiteNews also asked Seattle U. how its president reached his conclusion about homosexuality.
Georgetown U. also did not respond to an email on Friday that asked what steps the university takes to ensure hires, particularly those in leadership, are aligned with Catholic Church teaching, if it has any concerns that the incoming president of the university has openly defied the Catholic Church’s teaching on the important issue of sexuality, and if it safe to assume that Georgetown does not prioritize fidelity to Catholic Church teaching in its hiring practices.
Several Catholic leaders said it is clear Georgetown does not prioritize faithfulness to the Catholic Church.
“Georgetown was dangerous for Catholic families even before this,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told LifeSiteNews via email. “What can be expected from a Catholic university president who publicly rejects Catholic teaching on sexuality? This is part of the truth that is foundational to Catholic education.”
“Every Catholic educator should vigorously oppose what this man embraced 11 years ago, and while I hope he has since returned to Christ, I can’t imagine trusting him as a leader of Catholic education,” Reilly said. “Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, but Georgetown is leading lambs to the slaughter.”
He also pointed out that the Newman Society and a now-deceased alumnus filed a 126-page complaint with the Vatican over numerous problems at Georgetown. The complaint, which can be read here, detailed the university’s hiring of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT professors. In one egregious example, the leader of its “Moral Values Project” endorsed homosexual activity.
“If they truly wished to fulfill Georgetown’s mission of Catholic education, the university trustees could embrace the same standards as the faithful Newman Guide colleges,” Reilly told LifeSiteNews. “These include hiring theologians who are uncompromised by dissent, integrating the insights of authentic Catholic teaching across the curriculum, upholding Catholic morals in student life and residences, rejecting false ideologies, and obeying the U.S. bishops’ requirement that a Catholic university president take the Oath of Fidelity.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said university presidents should be faithful Catholics, according to its guidance on Ex corde Ecclesiae. Pope John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution laid out the norms governing Catholic universities.
“The university president should be a Catholic. … Upon assuming the office of president for the first time, a Catholic should express his or her commitment to the university’s Catholic identity and to the Catholic faith,” the USCCB wrote in its decree on implementation.
Another Catholic leader whose group regularly criticizes Georgetown also said the school erred.
“It is scandalous and deeply troubling that the incoming president of Georgetown University—a flagship Catholic institution—openly rejects the Church’s clear moral teaching on homosexuality,” John Ritchie told LifeSiteNews via email.
He is the director of Tradition, Family, Property Student Action, which advocates for morality on college campuses.
“His public support for same-sex unions, in direct contradiction to the Bible and 2,000 years of unbroken Catholic doctrine, undermines the university’s Catholic identity,” Ritchie said. “Faithful Catholic students look to their leaders for moral clarity, not confusion.”
“Appointing someone who admires what the Church rightly calls sin is like handing a student a scorpion when he asks for an egg (Luke 11:12),” Ritchie said. “Our universities should form saints, not scandalize the faithful.”
Ping
Well…ya
Rejecting the Church’s teachings is a requisite for any Catholic college administrator or professor.
How is this news.
Do we know what the current teaching is?
This is a Catholic University. That is the big news.
Sadly the church/Pope is lost in the wilderness.
Looks like Regan and Father Karras didn’t succeed at that exorcism after all...
Merrin!!,
Unfortunately.
Georgetown University has covered crucifixes at least twice in public events: first in 1999, and most famously in 2009 during a speech by President Barack Obama. In 2009, the White House requested that university signage, including the prominent “IHS” symbol, be covered to provide a neutral background for the speech.
2009
Jesuit, not Catholic. Lots of flamers in the order.
Exorcist author and Georgetown alum William Peter Blatty was none too happy with the apostasy at his alma mater. He even filed a canon-law complaint against G-Town with the Vatican... which predictably didn’t care.
https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/exorcist-authors-canon-law-case-against-georgetown-continues/
Eduardo?
So ...
Is he a "bottom" or a "top"?
Well, isn’t he special. And the Word of God apparently means little to him.
In 1794, Pres. George Washington enrolled two of his grandnephews, Bushrod and Augustine, at Georgetown to be educated by the Jesuits... and in order to straighten out the unruly lads. Oh how times have changed...
For an indistinct period of years the Jesuits have been perhaps difficult to distinguish from Masons, erring in doctrine and in intent. They do excel in sophistry though.
He is the perfect sexual hangup, baby killing Democrat.
Am I reading this right?
Are they going to run him for President one day?
of course he does, his university invited bill clinton too, so nothing surprises me. God will judge.
and the stupid parents sill spend a half million to send their children to these liberal democrat catholic universities and wonder why their kids don’t practice their faith and vote democrat, LOL.
bump
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