A strange quarrel has erupted on the Religious Left.  Frederick Clarkson gives a good summary at Daily Kos.  

It all began when Alexia Kelley, executive director and co-founder of Catholics in Alliance with the Common Good, was appointed as the faith-based director in the Department of Health and Human Services.  Kelley was being rewarded for her support of the Obama-Biden ticket.  (There is nothing objectionable in that, as far as I am concerned.) 

The appointment came as no surprise. Catholics in Alliance was at the forefront of trying to convince Catholics to vote for Obama.  Kelley's spin on the bishops' "Faithful Citizenship" document exerted substantial influence through the Catholics in Alliance voter guide that made its way into parishes throughout the nation.   

Kelley should, by the way, be highly qualified for the job from her years at the Bishops' Conference working for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

To Catholics in the pro-life movement, the Kelley appointment was just the case of another Catholic going into the Obama administration who buries the abortion issue under a plethora of social justice issues.

That was not how her appointment was greeted by "pro-choicers" on the Religious Left. The first salvo was fired by Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice who described Catholics in Alliance as an "anti-choice organization" and Alexia Kelley as holding a "vehement antichoice stance."

O'Brien continues: 

From the beginning, Alexia Kelley directed CACG to ignore the question of access to abortion and reframe the debate in terms of reducing the number of abortions—although polls consistently show that the majority of Catholics support abortion rights. This language around reducing the number of abortions should be a huge red flag to anyone who believes in and seeks to defend a woman’s right to choose. While evidence-based prevention methods can go a long way towards reducing the need for abortion, some women will always need access to safe and legal abortion and we must recognize that and ensure public policies support that access. 

The point of disagreement seems to be the "abortion reduction" message that Obama's Catholic outreach churned so successfully in the 2008 campaign. O'Brien writes:

As Ms. Kelley’s group opposed evidence-based prevention methods such as contraception and comprehensive sexuality education, its “abortion reduction” rhetoric is simply a newly packaged antiabortion message.

O'Brien's problem is that he actually took the abortion reduction argument seriously in the first place!  The Catholics supporting Obama on the basis of this argument are either disingenuous or are supremely self-deluded.  Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: the promise of abortion reduction is nonsense.

As far as the contraception issue is concerned, Kelley and her organization had to pay lip service to Church teaching to have any credibility as a Catholic organization.  It's hard to believe that O'Brien really believes that Kelley is going to run an anti-contraception campaign at HHS.

O'Brien also complains that Catholics in Alliance tiptoed around the issue of abortion "legalization."  Once again he refuses to see the delicate situation Kelley was required to navigate by leading a Catholic organization -- with access to chanceries and parishes -- which supported the Obama-Biden ticket.  Everything depended upon maintaining the illusion that Catholics in Alliance was against abortion while making the abortion reduction pitch to protect the Democratic ticket from pro-life criticism.  

The former president of Catholics for Choice, Frances Kissling, then offered her own critique of the Kelley appointment at Salon. Kissing reports consternation among pro-choice leaders and complains that Kelley now has control of 20 million in grant money for family-planning organizations :

Kelley's group of self-described progressive Catholics takes a position held by only a small minority, that the Catholic church is right to prohibit birth control. Were there no qualified religious experts who hold more mainstream views on family planning and abortion, views that are consistent with those of President Obama?

But when I came to the end of Kissling's Salon article, I found the core of the complaint:

The pro-choice movement's recommendations for pro-choice appointees to the faith-based office's advisory council were ignored. 

The faith-based and community services office at HHS was a prize the pro-choice groups wanted from the Obama White House.  And why shouldn't they, when there is 20 million dollars to distribute among themselves?  Kissling writes about Kelley:

Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral? Will programs that provide contraception to adolescents get funded?   

O'Brien, Kissling, and their comrades think Alexia Kelley is unsympathetic with their aims.  I hope they are right, but from my vantage point, the language they cite from Kelley and Catholics in Alliance was a political tactic to operate as a Catholic organization supporting the Democratic Party ticket -- nothing more.