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 So far, some 25,000 people have signed petitions asking for the invitation to be withdrawn.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