The Cardinal Newman Society is an American 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonprofit organization founded in 1993 whose stated purpose is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education. The organization is guided by Cardinal John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University and Pope John Paul II's 1990 Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. The organization publishes The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College. However, it has been criticized for adopting views that Newman would have opposed.
The society was founded in 1993 by Fordham University alumnus Patrick Reilly. After decisions by Fordham to recognize pro-choice and gay student clubs and create a counseling helpline which referred pregnant students to an abortion provider, Reilly used his position as editor of the school paper to express his opinions in defense of Catholic teaching on sexuality and abortion. Reilly launched the society with the help of other recent Catholic university graduates.
The society's leadership included prominent conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell III. It was Bozell, founder and president of the conservative media-watchdog group Media Research Center, who suggested use of direct mail marketing to invigorate the organization at a time when it existed "primarily as letterhead." According to Reilly, “It took a while, but there was such a need, more and more, to engage students and working with alumni and working with faculty and as we went on, it became clear that they were all looking for some kind of national voice to express the concerns that very many faithful Catholics had about the state of Catholic education.”
In 1996 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops invited the Newman Society to advise on guidelines to implement Ex corde Ecclesiae. The bishops approved final guidelines in 1999, consistent with the recommendations of the Newman Society. In 2006, the Bishops' and Presidents' Committee of the USCCB sent a letter to the ten bishops listed as "ecclesiastical advisers" to the Cardinal Newman Society, calling the organization "often aggressive, inaccurate, or lacking in balance" and its methods "often objectionable in tone and substance." It suggested that the bishops resign from the advisory board. The board was subsequently disbanded.
According to journalist Joe Feuerherd, "[A]s Cardinal Newman rolls over in his recently relocated grave, Reilly uses the cardinal’s good name to promote the idea of university as Catholic madrassa...Reilly searches for hot button issues on Catholic campuses... – that will energize their base of donors and activists. Then they highlight these offenses on the Web and through direct mail to generate revenue." The sentiment is echoed by John J. Paris, S.J., professor of bioethics at Boston College and one of the targets of the Society, "I think he is a fraud, a charlatan, and a snake-oil salesman" and of the Society, that its purpose is "whipping up right-wing types to open their checkbooks."
The Society monitors speakers at Catholic universities, and provides a mechanism for online reporting of what it believes to be scandalous commencement speakers and honorees. In 2009, the Society criticized the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to receive an honorary doctorate of law and deliver the commencement speech due to his pro-choice position and record in support of abortion. Nevertheless, the University of Notre Dame stood by its invitation to the President.
The organization also deplored a commencement address given at Notre Dame de Namur University by Sr. Helen Prejean, a nun opposed to capital punishment and author of Dead Man Walking, claiming the Josephite nun "is out-of-line with church teaching on, of all issues, capital punishment." The organization faulted Prejean's critique of a "loophole" in the Church's teaching which permits capital punishment under limited circumstances.
In 2011, due to complaints raised by the Cardinal Newman Society, Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania cancelled a lecture by journalist Ellen Goodman on civility in public discourse because of her views regarding abortion.
In the spring of 2012, the Cardinal Newman Society listed 12 Catholic universities whose commencement speakers were considered objectionable because of their support for abortion or gay rights. Among the speakers was Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, who was invited to speak at Georgetown University. The Society presented a 26,000-signature petition that called the choice of Sebelius "insulting to faithful Catholics and their bishops who are engaged in the fight for religious liberty and against abortion." Sebelius personally supports abortion and has upheld the mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring all institutions, including Catholic colleges, to provide birth control coverage. The Archdiocese of Washington sent a letter of rebuke to Georgetown's president on the matter.
The Newman Society reports on its website that in 2011 it caused bishops to intervene in homosexual conferences at Fordham and Fairfield University.
The Society has on several occasions criticized colleges for awarding Sister Elizabeth Johnson honorary degrees. Reilly said of her, "This is a person who has described the male-only priesthood as a sign of ‘patriarchal resistance to women’s equality. So I think she has officially challenged church teaching in ways that are beyond the pale.'”
The Cardinal Newman Society is often at the center of controversy, as for example when it solicited donations to "finance a major effort to expose the heretics within our Catholic colleges," an effort which was called "red-baiting in ecclesiastical garb" by the Rev. John Beal, canon law professor at The Catholic University of America. It has been criticized for "McCarthyite tactics" and a "fundamentalist agenda."
Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities said that the society's "attacks can no longer go unchallenged," and characterized their work as "a long trail of distorted, inaccurate, and often untrue attacks on scholars addressing complex issues." Michael James, vice president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said the society is "destructive and antithetical to a spirit of unity in our commitment to serve society and the church."
Reilly has been referred to in Catholic publications as the "self-appointed ayatollah to Catholic academia in this country." Rev. James Keenan, a priest and professor at Boston College who was targeted in a fundraising letter sent out by the Society, said "Hopefully, someday our bishops will call us to end this awful conduct, which hurts not only those of us targeted, but more importantly, the unity of the church itself." According to Robert McClory, "If John Henry Newman, by some miracle of grace, were to rise from the dead today and be invited to speak at a prestigious Catholic institution, the most likely organization to protest and picket the event would be the Cardinal Newman Society."
The organization is also criticized for focusing on conservative political issues that are "only tangentially related to issues of Catholic higher education." One "review of 50 of the most recent headlines on the Society’s blog shows that 60% of them were related to abortion (9), homosexuality (10), or sexuality in general (10). That leaves only 40% for all other issues relating to Catholic education." When a group of Catholic scholars issued a statement calling on political leaders to consider the common good, the Newman Society attacked it saying that they were “distorting Church teaching in favor of left-leaning politics to take political shots at vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.” In their critique, however, the Society did not "cite a single instance where the statement strays from Catholic teaching. Instead, the Society makes an ad hominem attack on one of the signatories."