Kathleen Sebelius's Orwellian Assault On the First Amendment

Kathleen Sebellius this past Friday delivered a commencement address at Georgetown University. CNS.com has a fine article with video of the speech. In her comments she seemed to respond to the criticism of Catholic Bishops by quoting from President Kennedy's famous speech on September 12,1960. She stated:

“In his talk to Protestant ministers,” Sebelius said, “Kennedy talked about his vision of religion and the public square, and he said he believed in an America, and I quote, ‘where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against us all.’” 

George Orwell would be impressed by this brand of double speak. Let's see if I have this right. The federal government is trying to force the Catholic Church and other faith based institutions to violate the most principled tenets of their faith or face sanctions for failure to comply and it's the church that's trying to impose its values?

The most telling part of the quote is her failure to comprehend its double meaning. When JFK, as she quotes said: "and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against us all.’”, JFK was defending the core principle of "Freedom of Religion" as stated in the First Amendment. JFK was alleviating historic sensibilities that held that to elect a Catholic would subject the United States to Papal governance, thereby undoing the first amendment. He expressed himself in such a way as to be true to himself while reassuring all to his commitment to defend people of all faiths. Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama and the rest would have us believe that compelling Americans to violate their faith is an effort on our part to impose our faith on everyone else. In truth those who object to this unlawful compulsion are evoking the true spirit of Kennedy's speech.

Kathleen Sebelius has taken it to another level. With her at Obama's right hand they are engaged in an insidious campaign, the worst effort to undo the First Amendment since the "Alien" and "Sedition" Acts. The HHS Mandate as a critical component of Obamacare and advanced by the HHS Secretary is the most despicable action taken by a President since Woodrow Wilson endorsed D.W. Griffith's "The Birth Of A Nation".  

I am a  child of Irish Catholic parents and an alumni of twelve years of Catholic schools I was fed a steady diet of JFK, the one and only Catholic President. Both of my parents turned twenty one in 1960 and proudly voted for JFK. My mother told me the story of my great grandmother,at the age of 70 staying up to watch election returns until 3AM, because having lived through Al Smith's 1928 campaign she was convinced that a Catholic could never be elected President. My mother also tells of my grandmother who was often required to list her religion on job applications. Then of course there's the infamous "No Irish Need Apply". What would my grandmother and great grandmother have to say if they were compelled to violate their faith? Whatever, they might have said just doesn't matter because Kathleen Sebelius just doesn't care. 

Sebelius Quotes JFK To Defend Unconstitutional HHS Mandate

From: CNSNews.com

Speaking at a graduation ceremony for Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute on Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius quoted President John F. Kennedy in what may have been a rebuttal to the Catholic bishops of the United States who have criticized Sebelius for issuing a health-care regulation that the bishops have described as "an unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and an "unjust law" that Catholics in good conscience cannot obey.

Towards the end of her speech, Sebelius talked about the “very serious debates underway” in America on many issues, including “health care,” and that public policy leaders are needed to move the debates forward.

She then noted that John F. Kennedy had been criticized by some people in his 1960 campaign for president because he was a Catholic.

“Some of then-Senator Kennedy’s opponents attacked him for his religion, suggesting that electing the first Catholic president would undermine the separation of church and state, a fundamental principle in our unique democracy," Sebelius said. "Now the furor over the course of the campaign grew so loud that Senator Kennedy chose to deliver a speech about his beliefs just seven weeks before that November election.”
Kennedy delivered the speech on Sept. 12, 1960.

“In his talk to Protestant ministers,” Sebelius said, “Kennedy talked about his vision of religion and the public square, and he said he believed in an America, and I quote, ‘where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against us all.’”

“And here we are more than 50 years later and that conversation, about the intersection of our nation’s long tradition of religious freedom with policy decisions in the public square continues,” said Sebelius..

Sebelius told the students that to engage in debates, such as ones dealing with religion and public policy, will require them to follow their “own moral compass.”

“Contributing to these debates will require more than just the quantitative skills you’ve learned at Georgetown,” she said. “It will also require the ethical skills you have honed--the ability to weigh different views, to see issues from others points of view, and in the end, to be true to your own moral compass.”

“These debates can also be contentious. But that’s a strength of our country, not a weakness,” she said, adding, “The conversations can be painful, But it’s through this process of conversation and compromise that we actually move forward, together, step by step, towards that ‘more perfect union.’”

The regulation issued by Sebelius will require virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover, without any fees or co-pay, sterilizations for women as well as all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortion. This regulation will force Catholics individuals to purchase health care plans that violate the teachings of their faith and Catholic institutions and business owners to either violate church teachings of drop health-care coverage for their employees.

Some Catholic institutions--including EWTN and Ave Maria University--have already sued the federal government saying that the regulation violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religions.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest judicial authority, has said that Catholic employers cannot obey the regulation because doing so would constitute "formal cooperation" in evil. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked Sebelius to rescind the regulation but she has refused. Both President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have boasted about the regulation in campaign speeches.

The bishops have argued that the amendment is a straightforward violation of the basic constitutionally protected right of the individual not to be ordered by the government to act against his or her conscience or religious beliefs. Advocates of the regulation have depicted the bishops' opposition to it as an effort by the bishops to impose on American women their views on sterlization and contraception.

This week, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., where Georgetown is located, criticized the university, which describes itself as a Catholic school, for honoring Sebelius by inviting her to give a graduation address.

In a May 15 statement, the office of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., said, “Given the dramatic impact this [health care] mandate will have on Georgetown and all Catholic institutions, it is understandable that Catholics across the country would find shocking the choice of Secretary Sebelius, the architect of the mandate, to receive such special recognition at a Catholic university. It is also understandable that Catholics would view this as a challenge to the bishops.” (Note: the statement from the archdiocese was not signed by Archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who oversees the diocese.)

In its May 10 editorial, the The Catholic Standard (Archdiocese of Washington) said,  “As is well known, Secretary Sebelius is the architect of the ‘HHS mandate,’ now federal law, which requires all employers -- including religious institutions -- to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraceptives for its employees and redefines religious ministry to exclude Catholic social services, hospitals and universities if they serve or employ non-Catholics. Given her position, it is disappointing that she would be the person that Georgetown University would choose to honor.”

“… Georgetown has undergone secularization, due in no small part to the fact that much of its leadership and faculty find their inspiration in sources other than the Gospel and Catholic teaching,” stated the editorial.

“Many are quite clear that they reflect the values of the secular culture of our age. Thus the selection of Secretary Sebelius for special recognition, while disappointing, is not surprising.”

The editorial in The Catholic Standard, which was unsigned, accused Georgetown of not standing with the Catholic bishops.

It read: “With all of the people struggling so hard to preserve freedom of religion, and with all that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has said in defense of this important value, Georgetown's choice of the architect of the radical challenge of such freedom for special recognition can only be seen as a statement of where the university stands -- certainly not with the Catholic bishops.”

“One can only wonder how the selection of Secretary Sebelius for such a prominent role as a featured speaker can be reconciled with the stated Catholic mission and identity of Georgetown University,” said the editorial.  “Secretary Sebelius' vision on what constitutes faith-based institutions presents the most direct challenge to religious freedom in recent history.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has said the HHS contraceptive mandate is an “unprecedented” attack on religious freedom and therefore it should be rescinded. In a Mar. 2 letter, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of the USCCB, wrote: “religious freedom is under attack, and we will not cease our struggle to protect it. … We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans. We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”

In a May 14 statement, Georgetown President John DeGioia said, “Some have interpreted the invitation of Secretary Sebelius as a challenge to the USCCB. It was not.”

“The Secretary’s presence on our campus should not be viewed as an endorsement of her views,” he added.

Oscar-Winning Screenwriter Calls for Making His Alma Mater Catholic Again

From: CNSNews.com

Novelist and filmmaker William Peter Blatty, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay he based on his own novel, The Exorcist, is leading a movement to formally petition the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and, if necessary, the Vatican, to act under the authority of church law and discipline Georgetown University for violating the norms the church expects from institutions of higher learning that call themselves Catholic.

This movement is asking the church to consider taking actions against Georgetown that could include declaring “that Georgetown University is no longer entitled to call itself a Catholic or Jesuit university.”

But the movement's highest aim is to begin a process that ends by reclaiming Georgetown as a university that is truly Catholic in that it teaches and exemplifies the true teachings of the church to which it professes to belong.

"The goal is simple," Blatty said in an interview with the Cardinal Newman Society. "It is to do as John Paul exhorted us to do: to preserve for the Church the highest places of culture."

Georgetown’s website currently says it “is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institute of higher learning in the United States.”

The movement Blatty is leading was ultimately triggered by Georgetown’s decision to invite Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at the graduation ceremony for the university’s Public Policy Institute. The ceremony was held this morning.

Sebelius’s archbishop in Kansas has banned her from taking communion until she repudiates her position in favor of legalized abortion and makes a worthy confession. Last August, Sebelius released a proposed regulation—under the Obamacare law—that would require virtually all health-care plans in the United States to provide women with sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives (including those that can cause abortion) without charging any fees or co-pay. Sebelius finalized the regulation in January.

Because the Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and Catholics cannot be involved in them, the regulation, combined with the individual mandate in Obamacare, would require virtually all Catholic lay people in the United States to purchase health insurance plans that violate the teachings of their faith. It would also force Catholic business owners and Catholic institutions--including schools, hospitals and charitable organizations—to act against the teachings of their faith if they purchase insurance for their employees.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared Sebelius’s regulation an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty,” and asked HHS to rescind it in its entirety. Most Catholic bishops in the United States also asked their priests to read a letter from the pulpit stating: “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”

Blatty, who graduated from Georgetown in 1950, posted a letter online on Friday asking Georgetown alumni and others with a stake in the university and the Washington archdiocese to join him in “making Georgetown honest, Catholic and better.”

Specifically, Blatty is asking Catholics to sign a document appointing him as their “procurator” to pursue an action against Georgetown under Canon Law--the legal code of the Catholic Church—for violating the norms of a Catholic university as laid out by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter, Ex corde Ecclesiae.

Article 4 of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, cited in the petition, says: “The identity of a Catholic University is essentially linked to the quality of its teachers and to respect for Catholic doctrine. “

“All teachers and all administrators, at the time of their appointment, are to be informed about the Catholic identity of the Institution and its implications, and about their responsibility to promote, or at least to respect, that identity,” said the pope.

In his online letter, Blatty pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI had reminded U.S. Catholic Bishops of Pope John Paul II’s Ex corde Ecclesiae just two weeks ago.

“On May 5, 2012, in a speech to American bishops, Pope Benedict XVI called on America’s Catholic universities to reaffirm their Catholic identity,” Blatty wrote. “The Pope noted the failure of many Catholic universities to comply with Blessed John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae. The Pope said that preservation of a university’s Catholic identity 'entails much more than the teaching of religion or the mere presence of a chaplaincy on campus.'

“For 21 years now. Georgetown University has refused to comply with Ex corde Ecclesiae (‘From The Heart of the Church’), and, therefore, with canon law,” said Blatty. “And, it seems as if every month GU gives another scandal to the faithful! The most recent is Georgetown’s obtuse invitation to Secretary Sebelius to be a commencement speaker.

“Each of these scandals is proof of Georgetown’s non-compliance with Ex corde Ecclesiae and canon law,” said Blatty. “They are each inconsistent with a Catholic identity, and we all know it. A university in solidarity with the Church would not do these prideful things that do so much harm to our communion.”

At the same time that he is rallying Catholics to petition the church to discipline Georgetown, Blatty expresses his gratitude for the Catholic education he himself received from Jesuits at Georgetown five decades ago.

“Like many men of my generation, I owe much to the Jesuit fathers and to Georgetown University,” wrote Blatty. “My hard-working mother had faith that I could win a scholarship to attend Georgetown, a ‘rich boys school.’ Georgetown gave me that scholarship, and I am ever-grateful. With it came a rich liberal education that included the keys of reason to unlock the mysteries of my Lebanese mother’s Faith.

“Throughout an undeservedly wonderful life, I have been guided by the light of my Georgetown education, grounded firmly, as I knew it was even in my youth, in the unmatched intellectual wealth of the Catholic Church,” wrote Blatty. “Each time I faltered, as I often did, that guiding light never failed me.

“What I owe Georgetown, however, is nothing as compared to what Georgetown owes to its founders and the Christ of Faith, and so it grieves me deeply that my beloved alma mater is failing so scandalously in its debt both to the Church and to the militant Jesuits still buried there who gave it their everything; who made it so special for so long,” he wrote. “It grieves me that Georgetown University today almost seems to take pride in insulting the Church and offending the faithful.”

Blatty has had a long and successful career as a novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker.

In 1984, he won the Academy Award for best screenplay for The Exorcist, which he adapted from his novel of the same title. It was a story about a Jesuit priest from Georgetown who performs an exorcism on a girl possessed by a demon.

The Cardinal Newman Society is assisting Blatty in his efforts to petition the church to discipline Georgetown.
“For 19 years, The Cardinal Newman Society has documented numerous concerns at Georgetown that significantly compromise the university’s Catholic identity,” Cardinal Newman Society President Patrick J. Reilly said in a statement to the Hoya, Georgetown’s campus newspaper.

“We’re thrilled that the distinguished alumnus William Peter Blatty has invited us to assist him and others in their efforts to defend Georgetown’s Catholic mission from those who would undermine or abandon it,” said Reilly. “Such intervention is necessary only because Georgetown’s leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to uphold Georgetown’s obligations under the U.S. bishops’ guidelines, Ex corde Ecclesiae and Canon Law.”

In his interview with the Cardinal Newman Society, Blatty pointed to the fact the HHS Secretary Sebelius had approved the "demonic practice" of partial-birth abortion when she was governor of Kansas.

"Let me speak to the latest scandal, the invitation to Kathleen Sebelius to speak on commencement weekend," said Blatty. "Let’s not shield our eyes or mind from the brutal details of what occurs in a partial birth abortion. First, surgical scissors are banged down into the infant’s head, after which the abortionist scrapes it around in order to widen the hole enough so it can accept a vacuum tube, which is then used to suck out the baby’s brains. You know all this? Good.

"But did you also know," said Blatty, "that a consensus of pediatric neurologists are now agreed that by 20 weeks--and a few say even as early as six weeks!--the infant not only feels the excruciating pain, but feels it far more than would an adult? As governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a bill that would have banned this demonic practice! And a supposedly Catholic university, if not merely a humane one, honors her?"

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has immediate ecclesiastical authority over Georgetown because it is within his diocese. When asked about the timeline of his Canon Law petition, Blatty said that first Canon lawyers and scholars will work on it, then it will be taken to Cardinal Wuerl, and then, if necessary, to the Vatican.

"First our canonists, then our scholars, then the Cardinal Archbishop, then Rome if need be," said Blatty. "We will study everything for a few months more, but our brief is essentially written, and there is no lack of evidence. We are very hopeful that His Eminence Cardinal Wuerl will act as Jesus did when he disciplined the money-changers. As I recall it, the Lord knocked over a few tables."

A Controversy at Post-Catholic Georgetown

From: Minding the Campus

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is scheduled to speak Friday at a Georgetown University commencement event, setting off protests among Catholics and others who believe the Obamacare mandate violates religious liberty. So far, some 25,000 people have signed petitions asking for the invitation to be withdrawn. On campus, the reaction seems more tepid: only 9 of the 1500-plus faculty members and just 3 of the 55 resident Jesuits are known to have joined the protest.

For President Obama, the speech sets up a likely win-win outcome: dispatching a nominal Catholic to a nominally Catholic university that yearns to be secular (the question, "Is Georgetown still a Catholic university?" has been asked since the mid-60s) either provokes an angry response that would fit the "war against women" scenario, or a trifling one demonstrating that the Catholic bishops have bluster, but few troops behind them, even on a Jesuit campus.

Georgetown reacted to the protests by walking the announcement back a bit. Though Sebelius is listed as one of the commencement speakers at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a university email later said she was to speak at an annual "student and faculty awards event."

The Archdiocese of Washington released a statement today (May 15) saying "it is understandable that Catholics across the country would find shocking the choice of Secretary Sebelius, the architect of the mandate, to receive such special recognition at a Catholic university."

Sebelius is an unusually provocative choice by Georgetown. Catholic politicians understand that they cannot rise in the Democratic Party without defying their church on some basic issues, abortion most obviously.

(Senator Robert Casey, Jr. is an exception so far, but he arrived on the national scene running against Rick Santorum.) Of the roster of Catholic pols who have seen the light and converted to the Democratic Party's position on abortion--Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden, et al.--Sebelius has probably been the defector inflicting the most damage since Teddy Kennedy.

Friend and Protector of George Tiller

As governor of Kansas she vetoed four anti-abortion bills and was unusually close to the late partial-birth-abortion specialist George Tiller, assassinated by an anti-abortion zealot in 2009. She protected Tiller from litigation and criminal prosecution and he became one of her major political donors. The Sebelius administration destroyed subpoenaed documents sought for years in criminal proceedings against Planned Parenthood for failure to report large numbers of child rapes. The originals somehow disappeared in 2005 and the copies were "routinely" discarded or destroyed by a Sebelius appointee in 2009. Planned Parenthood is also a large and regular donor to Sebelius.

The bishops (and the Vatican) have grown weary of big-name Catholics who abandon the fundamentals of their faith whenever politics requires it. The Bishops are also wary of Catholic colleges celebrating non-Catholics who oppose the church's basic principles. Their 2004 statement said Catholic colleges should make their values clear: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame was enormously controversial because of his stance on abortion, but even some opponents were willing to let that one go, rather than reject a sitting president. One who didn't let it pass was Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law professor and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under George W. Bush. She was scheduled to receive a high Catholic honor, the Laetare Medal, on Obama-day at Notre Dame, and quietly declined to appear.

Some Catholic colleges, for their part, are nervous about having the hierarchy telling them what to do. For Georgetown, the most post-Catholic of the nation's prominent Catholic colleges (it pointedly covered up religiously imagery when Obama spoke there), this isn't much of a dilemma.

After the 15 minutes of fame of Sandra Fluke, the single woman who said she needed a $3000 contraception subsidy to get through three years at Georgetown Law school, Georgetown President John DeGioia praised Fluke (her "expression of conscience was in the tradition of the deepest values we share as a people"), while waving off the strong anti-Obamacare statement of the bishops as merely one of many opinions on the issue.

("Many, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, have offered important perspectives on this issue.")

But Georgetown can still dust off its fading Catholic values when it has to. Recently 94 faculty members cited Catholic social thought on the duty to the poor. But that was to denounce a visitor to the campus as insufficiently Catholic--not Sebelius of course, but budget-cutting Republican Congressman Paul Ryan.

Time to Rename the Catholic Church?

From: Real Clear Religion

It's time for the Catholic Church to restructure and rename itself. It's the only way to acknowledge the schism that has taken place over the last 40 years and is now reaching a crisis point.

Taking a cue from Judaism, the Church should now be divided into Orthodox and Reform camps. The liberals would be known as Orthodox Catholics. Conservatives would be Reform Catholics. You read that correctly.

Let me back up and explain.

This would make things like the recent decision by Georgetown University to let Kathleen Sebelius to speak at a graduation ceremony easier to debate.

Kathleen Sebelius, of course, is the Secretary of the Department Health and Human Services. She is a Catholic who is implementing President Obama's health care mandate, which will eliminate the first amendment rights of conscience for Catholics who do not want to pay for birth control. She is set to speak at the commencement of the Georgetown School of Public Policy on May 18.

There has been an uproar about Sebelius speaking at Georgetown, and a defense of the decision among other Catholics.

I am a part-time teacher at Georgetown University. It's a summer contract position teaching visiting high school kids, so I am far from being regular faculty or even that knowledgeable about the inner workings of the school (I also went to high school at Georgetown Prep). But in the three summers I've been there I have learned that Georgetown is not just one university, but several. There are conservative and liberal Catholics on campus, as well as all other kinds of people. Many conservative Catholics have insisted that Georgetown is no longer Catholic. In fact, Georgetown, a school in the Jesuit tradition, is Catholic -- that is, it represents the Catholic Church in America. And the Catholic Church, like Georgetown, is divided.

In fact the Church is so divided that it is now time to give the different factions their own names. I don't mean this sarcastically or with malice; as a journalist I simply believe that it will help us speak about Catholicism in the early 21st Century with clarity. It would also relieve tensions in the Church because each side, Reform and Orthodox, would know exactly what the other side believes in. When Catholics like the Kennedys or Andrew Sullivan or Kathleen Sebelius speak in favor of gay marriage or contraception, it would no longer be a shock or a scandal. Because giving each side their own designation beforehand would cut down on the outrage that often follows their individual pronouncements.

Forty years after Vatican II, the liberal philosophy of 1960s Catholicism has become a hardened orthodoxy. Liberal Catholics are as doctrinaire and dogmatic as the most reactionary medieval pope. They believe in peace (forgetting that the U.S. military allows said peace), social justice (except for the unborn), sexual freedom (poverty has nothing to do with broken families), and massive government spending (even if we can't afford it).

Is there a more predictable writer in America, particularly when it comes to Catholicism, than Maureen Dowd? When Chris Matthews addresses Catholicism on Hardball, is there any doubt what he will say? Has Andrew Sullivan read a single copy of any one of the dozens of books written by Pope Benedict? To ask the question is to answer it.

Conservative Catholics, on the other hand, are the real reformers.

A couple weeks ago I was at Georgetown to hear Representative Paul Ryan speak about his budget. The man stood there for more than an hour and presented fact after fact after fact about the economic catastrophe that is headed our way if the United States does not control its spending. The Catholic left, including both students and faculty at Georgetown, are protesting Ryan's budget. I should note that I disagree with Ryan slowing the rate of growth (not cutting) programs that serve the poor. But he is spot on when it comes to the absolute necessity of reforming social security and medicare.

The reaction on the Catholic left to Ryan's speech was remarkably fact free. There was a lot of screaming about cutting off the poor, but no engagement with the entitlement spending bomb that could ultimately bring down the economy. There has been a similar dynamic in the reaction to the Vatican's criticism of the orthodoxy, that is to say liberalism, of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious -- i.e., the nuns in the Unites States.

The Vatican is trying to reform the liberal orthodoxy of many women's religious orders in the United States. In reading the coverage of the issue, I noticed (I was not surprised) that whereas liberals like Georgetown professor and columnist E.J. Dionne were basing their arguments entirely on feelings, the conservative, or Reform, Catholics like George Weigel were citing facts. The response on the Catholic left was to accuse George Weigel -- official biographer of the pope, baseball fan and one of the most sanguine people I know -- of wanting to ethnic cleanse the nuns.

I'm sorry, but that kind of calumny indicates that the National Catholic Reporter represents not a different point of view, but a different religion. It's Orthodox Catholicism, a 1960s model where argument is based on emotions and feelings more than facts.

Finally, a very important word about Georgetown University. I noted above that Georgetown, like the Catholic Church in America, is divided. This does not mean that there is acrimony on campus; in fact, all I've seen is the opposite. It is a community where people like each other and the work they are doing, and where you can see a Reform (i.e. conservative) Catholic like Fr. James Schall next to Fr. Thomas Reese, an Orthodox (i.e. liberal) Jesuit who criticized Paul Ryan's budget on CNN the day Ryan spoke at the university.

Simply calling the different philosophies by their right names would only increase understanding of what the problem is. It would leave us free to stop expecting the other side to change.