The nation’s colleges and universities “have a critical and substantive role to play in arresting the eclipse of the order of grace in our society,” Cardinal Robert W. McElroy said in his homily at the Jan. 31 opening Mass of the 2026 annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
The archbishop of Washington referenced director Terrence Malick’s 2011 film “The Tree of Life,” which he called a “religious allegory of life and death” that highlighted “two things that move the hearts of men – the order of nature and the order of grace.”
Cardinal McElroy connected those two concepts with current U.S. policymaking and public conversation on issues including immigration, the threat of military power, abortion restrictions and polarization across the political spectrum.
In his homily during the Mass at the Grand Hyatt Washington, the cardinal contrasted those two concepts, noting that “the order of nature thrusts itself upon us. It compels us to obey. It is self-seeking and overrides the well-being of others. It rests upon power and the ability to dominate.”
He added that, “The order of grace, on the other hand, teaches us to find God’s beauty in the hearts and lives of others. It rejoices in forgiveness. It does not seek dominance as a source of contentment but community and peace. It values embrace and dialogue over the accumulation of power.”
Cardinal McElroy then said, “I fear we as a nation are experiencing a moment in which the order of nature is eclipsing the order of grace. For us as Christians this is a crisis which we cannot ignore.”
Noting that day’s Gospel reading from Matthew 5:1-12, where Jesus proclaimed the Beatitudes during His Sermon on the Mount, the cardinal said, “The Beatitudes present the fundamental inversion of the order of nature that is at the heart of the Christian mission. Blessed are not those who seek to dominate and seek massive wealth and power. No, no blest are they who have no power. Blest are the poor who have no wealth. Blest are they who show mercy. Blest are the peacemakers. Blest are the persecuted.”
Then the cardinal warned about a conception of the world that now seems “to dominate vital elements of our policymaking and public conversation. Principles of human dignity and compassion are discarded in favor of a calculus that values the acquisition of wealth, military power and the stoking of racial, ethnic and economic divisions.”
Jesus’s Beatitudes, he said, offer a counterpoint to this worldview and “a moral framework for our personal lives and our public lives as citizens… It is by living the Beatitudes that we strengthen the order of grace all around us and in our nation.”
Cardinal McElroy then addressed the Trump administration’s policy of the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, which he has strongly criticized since becoming Washington’s archbishop in 2025.
“Solving our immigration problems will have to include controlling our borders and deporting undocumented individuals who have been convicted of violent crimes,” the cardinal said. Then he added, “But solutions rooted in the order of grace cannot countenance the vilification of the undocumented or the indiscriminate deportation of millions of undocumented men and women and families who have lived productively and peacefully in our land for decades and who contribute to our society so many of the values that we are desperately in need of.”
Then Cardinal McElroy echoed moral concerns about U.S. foreign policy that he and Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, and Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., the archbishop of Newark, had made in a Jan. 19 statement that drew on principles set forth by Pope Leo XIV in his Jan. 9 address to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
The three cardinals in their statement noted, “We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy. We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world, especially through economic assistance.”
In that statement, the cardinals referenced U.S. actions in Venezuela, which have included a Jan. 3 military operation that captured the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and an ongoing naval blockade, the seizing of oil tankers and the sinking of boats and the killing of the occupants on board suspected of trafficking in drugs.
The cardinals’ statement also referenced U.S. policies in regard to Greenland, which included threats of economic sanctions and possible military action unless the United States was given authority over that island, which is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally with the United States. President Trump recently said that military action would not be taken in Greenland, and that a framework of an agreement had been reached, but details of that have not been resolved or announced.
Speaking in his homily at the opening Mass for the national meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, Cardinal McElroy said, “The United States by reason of its military and economic power can achieve much good in the world. But the order of grace cannot be built upon military and economic threats used to advance narrow national goals at the expense of the vital well-being of others and the solidarity among nations that its essential for the well-being of all.”
Cardinal McElroy in his homily then echoed a concern that he and Cardinal Cupich and Cardinal Tobin had made in their recent statement about wealthy nations reducing or eliminating their humanitarian foreign assistance.
“America cannot end poverty in our world. But the order of grace cannot tolerate the richest nation in the world, decimating the less than one percent of our federal budget that our nation gives to international humanitarian aid. For compassion lies at the very heart of the Beatitudes. No country can call itself compassionate if it retains even the scraps from its table rather than providing economic assistance to those who are starving, hungry or sick in our world,” the cardinal said.
In a November 2025 report, Oxfam America – part of a global organization that works to end poverty – noted the impact of the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), “which funded the majority of U.S. humanitarian and development assistance worldwide to people in some of the worst crises. The effect of these cuts on people is dire,” the organization warned.
Oxfam America estimates that shutting down USAID could lead to 23 million children losing access to education and as many as 95 million people losing access to basic healthcare, and that could potentially lead to “more than 3 million preventable deaths per year.”
Cardinal McElroy in his homily also criticized how U.S. political parties are addressing the abortion issue, saying neither major party “is willing to support critically important actions necessary to protect the unborn children of our country. And Jesus weeps.”
Washington’s archbishop also called for “the healing of the polarization that creates false and amplified divisions in our culture. Our community and institutional life have been crippled by the toxic drive to judge and ostracize others on all sides of the political spectrum.”
Addressing the participants at the ACCU annual meeting, the cardinal in his homily underscored how Catholic colleges and universities have a crucial role in halting the “eclipse of the order of grace in our society. For part of your core mission is precisely to advocate for the inversion of values that the Beatitudes represent.”
Cardinal McElroy said that for Catholic institutions of higher learning, “That means, as Pope Francis stated so often, going to the peripheries, seeking the marginalized and the vulnerable in our midst, and trying to understand how proposed policies impact and benefit or hurt them. Every Catholic university should seek to form in its students a constant search to improve and protect the position of the most vulnerable in our society, the undocumented, the unborn, the poor, the elderly, those with mental illness.”
The cardinal then emphasized that, “This mission of Catholic colleges and universities requires placing the order of grace at the heart of college life. It means being unapologetic about Catholic social teaching… Discussion and debate lie at the heart of college and university life, and to true moral and spiritual conversion.”
Concluding his homily, Cardinal McElroy said, “Pope Francis stressed that key to authentic dialogue is accompaniment, the willingness to truly embrace the other and walk with them in profound respect for their dignity and opinions. Catholic universities must truly accompany their students with respect, caring for their deepest needs and beliefs and carrying the torch of the order of grace to help light the way in our troubled world.”
Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, was a concelebrant at the opening Mass for the 2026 ACCU national meeting.
The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, founded in 1899, serves as the collective voice of Catholic higher education. The ACCU website at https://www.accunet.org/ notes that “through programs and services, the association strengthens and promotes the Catholic identity and mission of its member institutions so that all associated with Catholic higher education can contribute to the greater good of the world and the Church.”
According to the ACCU website, there are 230 Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States. About 675,000 students were enrolled in U.S. Catholic colleges or universities in fall 2023, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The theme of the Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, 2026 annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities was “Through the Lens of Mission.”
At the opening banquet on Jan. 31, the ACCU’s 2026 award recipients included:
- Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC Awardee – Father Dennis Holtschneider, a Vincentian priest who previously served as the president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and as the chancellor of DePaul University, which he led as president from 2004-2017. The award was given “for outstanding and broadly sustaining leadership service to Catholic higher education.”
- Monika K. Hellwig Awardee – Lisa Sowle Cahill, the J. Donald Monan Professor in the Theology Department at Boston College. The award was given “for outstanding contributions to Catholic intellectual life.”
- President’s Distinguished Service Awardee – Thomas F. Flynn, the president emeritus of Alvernia University in Reading, Pennsylvania, who serves on the boards for the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. The award was given “for exceptional contributions to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and its member institutions.”
The ACCU national meeting’s opening plenary session on Feb. 1 was on “Religious Liberty: Our Constitutional Right to Protect the Catholic Mission.” Other sessions for that day included the topics “Refugees and Migrants in Our Common Home: Our Mission Calls to Action;” “Leading with Wisdom and Mercy in These Disruptive Times;” and “Incorporating Respect for Human Life into the Curriculum.” The closing plenary session planned for Feb. 2 is “An American Pope: Opportunities for Catholic Higher Education.”
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