WASHINGTON,DC (Catholic Online) - In spite of a massive outcry from Catholics around the Nation and  strong objection from Church authority, Georgetown University gave its platform to Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of HHS, to confuse graduates about the nature of moral conscience, its proper formation and their moral obligations as citizens. 

The former Governor of Kansas, Secretary Sebelius is notorious for her open dissent from the teaching of her own Church. She was precluded from receiving communion by her Bishop in Kansas.  The leadership of Georgetown knew all of this. They also know of her hostile position against Religious Freedom demonstrated in her recent issuance of the notorious HHS mandate. Yet, they allowed the event to proceed.

In her address to graduates of Georgetown's Public Policy Institute on Friday, May 18, 2012, the Secretary whose Edict, if left unchanged, seeks to compel the Catholic Church and all of her institutions to provide sterilization, abortion inducing drugs and contraception if they offer health insurance - or face the police power of the State - told the graduates:  "I have the extraordinary opportunity to help implement legislation that is finally, after seven decades of failed debate, ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable health coverage."

With references to President John F Kennedy, she hid behind what I have called the "Kennedy Mistake" for years. She told the graduates, "Kennedy was elected president on November 8, 1960. And more than 50 years later, that conversation, about the intersection of our nation's long tradition of religious freedom with policy decisions that affect the general public, continues."

Just what that conversation truly means is betrayed by unfaithful Catholics in Public Life who obfuscate the issues we face; politicians like this HHS Secretary. September 12, 2010 marked the fiftieth anniversary of one of the defining political speeches of the last 100 years, the address given by Senator John F. Kennedy to the Houston Ministerial alliance. In that speech he unleashed a horrid mistake. He laid out an approach to the role of religious faith in public life and service which resulted in "privatizing" the truths informed by faith. It also entrenched a mistaken notion of the separation of Church and State.

He failed to acknowledge the existence of a Natural Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason - and which must govern our life together in Society. All just positive laws must comport with this Natural Law.  In the wake of his catastrophic mistake too many Catholics in public life, like Esau of the Old Testament, sold their birthrights for a bowl of porridge and helped to construct the current culture of death. The list of Catholics who eat the porridge - and feed it to others - seems to get longer each year. Some of the more notorious are former Governor Mario Cuomo and Senator Nancy Pelosi.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a clear directive instruction in 2002 entitled a "Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life".  It called upon Catholics to be "morally coherent" in the exercise of their citizenship. Sadly, too many have not been morally coherent. Secretary Sebelius is numbered among them. Giving her a platform to continue spreading the confusion at a Catholic University commencement address was a serious abuse of the leadership of Georgetown University. 

She told the graduates that "Contributing to these debates will require more than just the quantitative skills you have learned at Georgetown. It will also require the ethical skills you have honed - the ability to weigh different views, see issues from other points of view, and in the end, follow your own moral compass."

"These debates can also be contentious. But this is a strength of our country, not a weakness. In some countries around the world, it is much easier to make policy. The leader delivers an edict and it goes into effect. There's no debate, no criticism, no second guessing."

"Our system is messier, slower, more frustrating, and far better. It requires conversations that can be painful and it almost always ends in compromise. But it's through this process of conversation and compromise that we move forward, together, step by step, towards a "more perfect union."

The irony is that her HHS mandate is precisely such an unjust Edict! Her actions and the actions ...