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The Cardinal Newman Society, a national organization to help renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education, issued the following statement: August 1, 2012, marks the formal beginning of the persecution of Catholic colleges and universities that wish to remain faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As of today, the Obama administration is forcing Catholic colleges to help students and employees obtain no-cost sterilizations, abortion-causing drugs and contraceptives, and also “counseling” promoting these practices. And who are the first victims of the Obama administration’s new Sexual Revolution? Catholic colleges and the parents of Catholic college students! One...

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette is reporting that: "Two national religious organizations today will formally ask Bishop Robert J. McManus to reinstate Victoria Reggie Kennedy as the commencement speaker at Anna Maria College. The small Catholic liberal arts school in Paxton withdrew its invitation last month after the bishop raised concerns with college officials about positions taken by the widow of former U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on abortion, gay marriage, contraception and other social issues of interest to the church. The school has yet to announce a new speaker. Representatives of Catholic Democrats are expected to deliver a petition...

The author who turned Georgetown University into a horror scene in “The Exorcist” plans to sue the school in church court, charging that his alma mater has strayed so far from church doctrine that it should no longer call itself Catholic. William Peter Blatty, who graduated from Georgetown in 1950, says the “last straw” was the university’s speaking invitation to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius, who addressed graduating public policy students on Friday (May 18), has been criticized by conservative Catholics for approving a mandate that requires many religious institutions to cover employees’ birth control costs. The...

Today’s Roman Catholic calendar lists May 21st as the feast day of St. Christopher Magallanes, a martyr killed for celebrating Mass during the Cristero War in Mexico. Perhaps Catholics today may want to recall St. Thomas More — the patron saint of lawyers, who was executed for refusing to agree to a mandate that gave Henry VIII the prerogative of defining religious expression in England. Dozens of Catholic institutions filed lawsuits today against the Department of Health and Human Services over its mandate and its narrow definition of religious practice: Catholic archdioceses and institutions filed suit in federal district courts...

In 2009, President Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. Now, Notre Dame is suing his administration over its insistence that Catholic schools and other institutions provide insurance coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives, and other abortifacient drugs without any meaningful opt-out for conscientious objectors. Rev. John Jenkins, the university's president, was given much grief over his commencement invitation to President Obama in 2009. Today, he sent the following email to Notre Dame employees, announcing and explaining the lawsuit.

May 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Professors at four Jesuit-run Catholic universities have recently stepped into the media to voice their disagreement with Catholic bishops on church teachings, including on contraception and the nature of marriage, and condemning the prelates for promoting an “idiosyncratic minority view” as Catholic dogma. The professors’ statements come at the same time that Pope Benedict has emphasized to U.S. bishops that reform of Catholic universities in the United States is the “most urgent challenge” facing the Church in the country. The pope told U.S. bishops who were visiting Rome recently that a lack of progress towards...

“Lavender graduation” events for homosexual students are sadly becoming common on Catholic campuses across the country. Georgetown University president John DeGioia is scheduled to deliver remarks at this evening’s “Lavender Graduation” ceremony. The Jesuit university’s website describes the event as “a special ceremony for LGBTQ and Ally undergraduate and graduate students to acknowledge their achievements, contributions, and unique experiences at Georgetown University.” (For readers unfamiliar with today’s campus jargon, “LGBTQ” means “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer,” and “ally” means any “heterosexual” person who is accepting of those who claim such other sexual “identities.” An “ally” is also commonly expected...

Georgetown University has rejected attempts by liberal pro-abortion activists and Sandra Fluke to reject attempts by her to get the Catholic college to change its birth control coverage policy. Today, Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia released a public letter saying Georgetown will not change its policy unless legally forced to do so. The letter doesn’t take Fluke to task or even mention her directly, but it rebuts many of the claims she made as she gained national notoriety and attempted to use it to force the college to do her bidding. One of Fluke’s biggest points of contention is...

At a hearing of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee yesterday, a single witness — Georgetown law student and “reproductive rights activist” Sandra Fluke — told sympathetic policy-makers that the administration’s so-called contraception mandate should stand … because her peers are going broke buying birth control. “Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception),” Fluke reported. It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her...

VILLANOVA, Pa. — Villanova University has canceled a workshop by a controversial gay performance artist, saying his shows aren't in keeping with the school's Catholic values. Tim Miller tells The Philadelphia Inquirer (http://bit.ly/zjK9s9 ) he was told about the cancellation of next month's planned workshop on Sunday. Miller gained notoriety in 1990 when he and three others had grants vetoed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Miller's work is frequently provocative and he's been arrested in the past for demonstrating for AIDS research funding.

Twenty-five Notre Dame faculty members--led by the university’s top ethics expert, and including some of the school’s most eminent scholars--have signed a statement declaring that President Barack Obama’s latest version of his administration’s mandate that all health insurance plans in the United States must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, is “a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand." The statement—put out on the letterhead of the University of Notre Dame Law School--is also signed by leading scholars from other major American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Brigham Young, Yeshiva and...

319 of the nation’s postsecondary schools, 16 of them Catholic, have failed the US Department of Education’s fiscal responsibility test for 2008-09. Four of the schools-- Ave Maria School of Law, Belmont Abbey College, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, and the University of St. Thomas in Houston-- have been praised by the Cardinal Newman Society for their efforts to promote a strong Catholic identity. (Ave Maria University, unlike Ave Maria School of Law, passed the test with the highest possible rating.) The other Catholic colleges that failed the test are the College of Our Lady of the Elms, Brescia...

Why would any Catholic college welcome a radical pro-abortionist?

Marielena Stuart stood in the middle of a quiet street, 120 miles across the swamp from Miami, and stared down the black plastic barrel of a news camera. Behind her loomed a monstrous church, its 100-foot orange-brick façade shimmering like scales in the nighttime spotlights. Stuart glanced up at its one round window — a Cyclops's unblinking eye gazing out over the strange, tiny town of Ave Maria — and shuddered. Her dream town had turned against her, she explained. Stuart, a conservative Catholic writer and blogger who resembles an aging Elizabeth Taylor, explained she felt like she was being...

One Catholic college made the U. S. News & World Report lists of “most popular” among applicants and “most loved” by alumni and it is none of the ones the media like to cover—those institutions that could be called Catholic in Name Only (CINO). “For several years, Thomas Aquinas College has ranked near the top of U. S. News & World Report’s annual measure of ‘yield’—the percentage of applicants who, upon being admitted to a college, choose to enroll there,” TAC proudly announced in its Spring 2011 newsletter. “Although heartening, these findings have told only half of the story.” Additionally,...

Report: 150 Catholic Colleges Have Ties to Planned Parenthood Washington, DC -- A Catholic educational watchdog group released a new report today detailing the connections more than 150 Catholic colleges and universities have with the Planned Parenthood abortion business. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/11/report-150-catholic-colleges-have-ties-to-planned-parenthood/

Students Protest at Planned Parenthood Clinic to Conclude 40 Days for LifeNovember 3, 2009 Christendom College's pro-life student group, Shield of Roses, held its biggest protest in over 30 years of existence. On October 31, over 200 students, faculty, staff, and visitors traveled to Washington, D.C., to peacefully protest their opposition to abortion at the Planned Parenthood clinic, located just north of the White House, on 16th Street. The group protests at this same clinic each Saturday morning during the academic year, but normally only around 20-30 students make the trek into D.C. on a weekly basis. Once a semester,...

On a quick break between classes last week, Reef Al-Shabnan slipped into an empty room at Catholic University to start her daily prayers to Allah. In one corner was a life-size painting of Jesus carrying the cross. In another, the portrait of a late priest and theologian looked on. And high above the room hung a small wooden crucifix. This was not, Shabnan acknowledged, the ideal space for a Muslim to pray in. After her more than two years on campus, though, it has become routine and sacred in its own way. You can find Allah anywhere, the 19-year-old from...

A disheartening report from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property better know as TFP reveals that 101 (41%) of putative Catholic Colleges carry pro-homosexual organizations among their sponsored student activities. Worse still was the news that every single Jesuit university and college was on the pro homosexual school list. These student “clubs” sponsor events presenting and promoting homosexual conduct and culture as well as the redefining of marriage in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Georgetown University, America’s first Catholic college, promotes such anti Catholic activities as “weeks” for National Coming Out,...

NAPLES — Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke of the importance Ave Maria School of Law will have in replacing the current liberal, secular legal system during the law school’s 10th Anniversary celebration held at the Naples Ritz Carlton Beach Resort on Friday night. The potential 2012 presidential hopeful converted to Roman Catholicism in 2009, which is the same year the law school relocated from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Naples. The law school’s students would be prepared to write the laws, defend the laws and defeat the left, Gingrich said. The modern, secular law, he said, can be...