Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (left), the renegade Catholic who is not permitted to receive communion, told a group of abortion advocates that she joined them in being "at war” with Republicans on the abortion issue.
Speaking before the radically pro-abortion organization NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League), Sebelius accused Republicans of trying to “roll back” women’s rights and the “progress” they have made during the sexual revolution.
Sebelius is a fierce advocate for abortion and openly and vigorously defies Catholic teaching on the matter.
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What She Said
Speaking at NARAL’s 17th annual “Power of Choice” luncheon in Chicago, Sebelius claimed that the GOP was essentially anti-woman, the Associated Press reported, and that the party wanted to curtail woman’s rights.
“In other words, they don’t just want to go after the last 18 months, they want to roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America,” Sebelius told the crowd of approximately 300.
She also wondered why Republicans want to withhold birth control from women who merely want to exercise “choice”:
Forty percent of unplanned pregnancies end in those women seeking abortions. Wouldn’t you think that people who want to reduce the number of abortions would champion the cause of widely available, widely affordable contraceptive services?
But the audience must understand, she continued, that their struggle isn’t a mere political battle. “We’ve come a long way in women's health over the last few decades,” she noted, “but we are in a war.”
Sebelius told the crowd that the struggle to murder the unborn and distribute birth-control devices that can sometimes act as abortifacients will continue “if we can fight through the misinformation and get Americans the facts.”
I’m confident we can keep moving forward to a day when all American woman have access to the comprehensive health services they need and the right to make their own choices about their bodies and their own futures.
She also pledged the Obama administration’s undying support for abortion. The President, she assured them, “will be fighting with you every step along the way.”
According to LifeNews.com, she also mentioned the pro-life protesters outside the event:
I know that some people were a bit appalled at walking through the demonstrators as you came to this lunch.
It is a discomfort when you’re coming to lunch, but think about the women who are trying to tap into the health services they desperately need who have to go through that kind of gauntlet in order to access all-too-infrequent services.
Bishops Say No to Sebelius
Sebelius’s militant advocacy of abortion has invited the repeated admonition of Catholic bishops. In March, 2009, the Vatican and Sebelius’ bishop said she "should not present herself for Holy Communion," which Catholics believe is the real body and blood of Christ, because she persists in the grave sin of advocating abortion. A Catholic must be in a "state of grace" (i.e., free from unrepented and sacramentally unforgiven mortal sin) to be fit to receive Holy Communion.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, has flatly stated that Sebelius is an embarrassment and scandal to good Catholics, and that she must not present herself for Holy Communion. In an interview, Burke told CatholicAction.org that Sebelius “is well known for her support of the right to procured abortion and for her public association with some of the more notorious agents of the culture of death.”
As a Roman Catholic, her appointment is the source of the greatest embarrassment because she has publicly and repeatedly betrayed her Catholic faith, in the most fundamental tenet of the moral law, that is, the law to safeguard and foster human life from the moment of its inception to the moment of natural death.
What is more, she has obstinately remained in her moral error after being admonished by, at least, three of her Bishops, including her present Bishop, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas. Her position on the question of procured abortion is the source of the greatest scandal to Catholics and to all who uphold the natural moral law.
Thus, Burke said, Naumann was absolutely correct in telling Sebelius to refrain from presenting herself for Holy Communion until she takes the “necessary steps for amendment of her life.”
“Archbishop Naumann only did what was his duty as Bishop,” Burke said, adding:
Every Bishop is held to the same universal Church discipline which has been in force since the time of Saint Paul the Apostle and is stated in canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. Whether … Sebelius is in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, or in any other diocese, she should not present herself for Holy Communion because, after pastoral admonition, she obstinately persists in serious sin.
The Church’s Canons 915 and 916 require a priest to withhold communion from those who have been excommunicated or who persist in grave sin.
The issue of Catholic politicians' communion arose last February when a canon lawyer said Governor Andrew Cuomo also should not receive communion because of his position on abortion and his public concubinage.
