He served a term as a Provincial Representative for Buenos Aires.
He had a strong impact in the Pedagogical Congress of 1882 where he maintained the position that public education had to be Catholic having a strong argument with Leandro Alem.
He opposed Public Education Law #1420 of 1884, that established schooling for children being free, secular, and mandatory.
He also opposed and represented the position of the Catholic thinkers against the Law of Civil matrimony of 1888, maintaining that the only type of marriage allowed should be the one performed and recognized by the Catholic Church.
He was noted as a good orator.
Goyena taught Roman law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and also worked as a journalist, writing among others for Revista Argentina and La Unión, which he also edited with Estrada and Tristán Achával RodrÃguez, where he defended his opposition to the liberal reforms of the government of the time, whose principal exponent was President Julio A.