A Controversy at Post-Catholic Georgetown

[Draggingtree]

Minding The Campus:

 

May 15, 2012

A Controversy at Post-Catholic Georgetown

By John Leo

 

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 So far, some 25,000 people have signed petitions asking for the invitation to be withdrawn.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.

Read More

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/05/a_controversy_at_post-catholic_georgetown.html

[Draggingtree]

Does Georgetown need … The Exorcist?

 

posted at 8:01 am on May 19, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

After a week of controversy over her invitation to speak at Georgetown University’s commencement ceremonies, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally delivered her speech to the graduates at the Catholic school. With the cardinal of the archdiocese publicly rebuking university president John DiGioia over both the invitation and his non-sequitur defense, the stage was set for a confrontation — and sure enough, one erupted, if short-lived:

As promised, pro-life advocates interrupted the speech pro-abortion HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave at Georgetown University today. The speech has drawn condemnation from the Archdiocese of Washington, which has complained that the Catholic university should not be giving a platform to the abortion advocate. …

Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life, criticized Georgetown for allowing Sebelius to speak there. Read More

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/19/does-georgetown-need-an-exorcist/

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

If the shoe were on the other foot?

[Draggingtree]

Valin

take a look and listen at the video

[Valin]

Valin

take a look and listen at the video

 

I did. The question still stands. We (rightly) rant and rave when conservative speakers are shouted down so it's ok if we agree with those shouting down someone from the Left?

[Valin]

“For the Salvation of Souls”: A Farewell to Georgetown

Patrick J. Deneen

May 18, 2012

 

In yesterday’s Washington Post, in anticipation of today’s address by Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at Georgetown University as part of its graduation exercises, the editorial staff pronounced that “Georgetown Gets it Right.” Like many defenders of the invitation to Secretary Sebelius, the editorial at once denied that the invitation constituted an honor—since the event is not officially a “commencement” and an honorary degree is not being conferred—and asserted that the invitation constituted an opportunity for the legitimate “exchange of ideas.” The editorial archly stated that Cardinal Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington—who, in an extraordinary step, publicly criticized the invitation—“fails to recognize” the “critical academic function” of “open-minded debate.”

 

These two reasons—that the invitation did not constitute an honor for Secretary Sebelius, and that her presence on campus is an opportunity for “open-minded debate”—have been the main responses of defenders of the invitation amid the intense controversy that has arisen in the wake of last Friday’s public announcement of the invitation. They have been invoked by spokespersons of the university, and even suggested by Georgetown’s President John J. DeGioia in an open letter published on May 14, and cited in the Washington Post editorial.

 

(Snip)

 

What is so scandalous about Georgetown’s invitation to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is that it incontrovertibly honors the architect of a Mandate that demands that the Church cease to be itself. Georgetown is under an obligation to invite the exchange of ideas to promote an understanding of God’s Creation with an aim of the “salvation of mankind”; it is under no obligation to honor its persecutor or to engage in self-immolation. Indeed, as an institution of the Church—the oldest Catholic university in the United States—it ought to be in the forefront with the Bishops, the successors of St. Peter and the apostles, in standing against this latest persecution of the Church by the State. I think I again can speak for my nine faculty colleagues who publicly opposed this decision in stating that my reaction was less anger and outrage—of which I felt some—than sadness and hurt.

 

Since learning of this decision by the University I have served for seven years, and which I leave with sadness and pain to join the University of Notre Dame in the belief that it has the possibility of retaining its Catholic identity—I have mostly felt sharp pain over an institution of the Church honoring one whose policy would force—in some form—the Church to cease to be itself. Of course, if Georgetown were truly and irrefutably acting as the Church, categorically and by definition it could not act in this manner. It is only in its own internal confusion about itself and its mission, a confusion that it sows among Catholics and non-Catholics alike—not, finally, the “open-minded exchange of ideas,” but Ad majorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salute—that it could have issued and followed through on this invitation. I leave the Hilltop with even greater sadness than I felt making the decision to depart earlier in the year—apparently at the very time the decision was made to issue this invitation to Kathleen Sebelius—and will pray for Georgetown and for the Church to be true to itself, and not to be snared by the temptations of Caesar and the world.

 

Patrick J. Deneen is, until May 30, 2012, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair of Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University. In 2006 he founded the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy. On July 1, 2012, he will begin an appointment as Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.