42 Catholic Colleges Schedule Performances of Vulgar Play


(This article courtesy of the Cardinal Newman Society and the Catholic Higher Education Alert email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.cardinalnewmansociety.org or email [email protected].)



About one of every five Catholic colleges in the United States is scheduled this year to present the vulgar play “Vagina Monologues”, complete with a favorable reminiscence about a lesbian seduction of a 16-year-old girl.

According to the organizers of the “V-Day College Campaign” &#0151 a marketing ploy that encourages campus showings of the play in the form of a fundraiser to help prevent violence against women &#0151 students and faculty at 656 colleges worldwide have requested the rights to present the play in February and March. They include 42 Catholic colleges, among them Boston College, Creighton University in Nebraska, DePaul University in Chicago, Fordham University in New York, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., La Salle University in Philadelphia, Loyola University of Chicago, Saint Louis University, the University of Dayton in Ohio, the University of Detroit Mercy, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and the University of San Francisco.

For a complete list of participating Catholic colleges, as listed at www.vday.org, click here. The V-Day website also identifies 28 Catholic colleges that presented “Vagina Monologues” last year.

The play is a collection of monologues by women describing their personal stories, replete with vulgarity, frequent use of “vagina” to represent women and femininity, and explicit discussions of sexuality and sexual encounters including lesbian activity and masturbation. In one scene, a woman describes her seduction by a lesbian woman when she was 16 years old, declaring it her “salvation”. (This scene was edited from a previous version, in which the girl was only 13 and the seduction was called “a good rape”.)

“This kind of vulgarity has no academic or social value to students at a Catholic college, and it’s spiritually destructive,” said Patrick Reilly, President of the Cardinal Newman Society, in a press release. “The play is not being studied; it is being presented to students and faculty, usually with the full endorsement of college leaders or at least with the use of a Catholic college’s name, facilities and funding. That is a clear conflict with Ex corde Ecclesiae and the Catholic college’s promise to care for the spiritual development of its students.”

Ex corde Ecclesiae is the 1990 apostolic constitution that provides general guidelines for colleges that carry the label “Catholic”. The constitution requires that a Catholic college “informs and carries out its research, teaching, and all other activities with Catholic ideals, principles and attitudes.”

Students and alumni protested last year’s showing of “Vagina Monologues” at the University of Notre Dame. A group called Mary's Advocates is planning again to protest this year’s showing on March 3 and 4, just one day before Catholics begin to celebrate Lent in preparation for Easter. The event is sponsored by Notre Dame’s Program in Gender Studies and its Film, Television and Theatre Department.

The play will also be presented a second year at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The college’s president, Rev. Michael McFarland, S.J., announced this month’s showing in November while disparaging Holy Cross alumni who called last year’s production “pornographic”. The college is now threatening to sue the Holy Cross Cardinal Newman Society &#0151 not formally affiliated with the national Society &#0151 for using its alumni directory to encourage protests from other graduates.

Sharon Sobotta, the new Sexual Assault Awareness Coordinator at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, proudly told the Contra Costa Times in December that one of her first actions would be to organize a production of “Vagina Monologues” on February 14.

Georgetown University has been presenting “Vagina Monologues” since 1999, probably the longest run of the play at any Catholic college. Each production has generated an outcry from students and alumni. In 2000, a campus newspaper censored a student’s regular column that was critical of the play and subsequently fired him for objecting. Robert Swope, then a Georgetown senior, dared to complain about the production’s sponsors, arguing that the event “exposes the [Georgetown] women’s center for what it really is: an indoctrination camp for lesbians and feminists”.

Soon after complaining about last year’s showing of “Vagina Monologues” at the University of San Francisco, Rev. Joseph Fessio, S.J. was reassigned by his Jesuit superiors to the chaplaincy of a small hospital in California. The action was widely seen as retaliation for Fessio’s outspoken criticism of the university and his role in founding Campion College, a two-year Catholic college nearby the University of San Francisco. Fessio has since become chancellor of the new Ave Maria University outside Naples, Florida.

At least two Catholic colleges this year have already taken a brave stand by banning the play. Warren Rosenberg, provost of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, told students in December that “Vagina Monologues” was inconsistent with the college’s “history, traditions and community composition”. The nearby College of New Rochelle also has told students the play “is not an appropriate vehicle for the college,” according to news reports on January 30.

Last year, the president of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington banned the play from campus, but a university-recognized student group moved the production to a nearby hotel. “Vagina Monologues” is again banned from campus this year, an action applauded by Cardinal Newman Society. But because the play is produced and promoted by Gonzaga’s Women’s Studies Club, a university-recognized and university-funded student club, Gonzaga has not been removed from the list of sponsoring colleges.

In 2001, after hearing numerous complaints about the previous year’s production of “Vagina Monologues”, the president of St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana insisted that students find a better play to help raise awareness of women’s issues – but the students rebelled with an on-campus reading of the play. St. Mary’s is on V-Day’s list of participating colleges this year.

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