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Catholic College Allows Bawdy Play on Holy Day 2/14/2002 Catholic College Allows Bawdy Play on Holy Day The College of Holy Cross, a Catholic Jesuit institution based in Worcester, Massachusetts, allowed a student production of the vulgar feminist play The Vagina Monologues to go forward on Ash Wednesday, despite protests from outraged Catholics across the country.
The play reportedly contains references to lesbian pedophilia (sex between a 13-year-old girl and a 24-year-old woman), direct challenges to orthodox Christianity, and numerous vulgarities and sexual references. Kathy McNamara, a spokesman for Holy Cross President Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., told C&F Report that “he couldn’t find a reason to say no to the students” who were putting on the play. McNamara said the play had been scheduled months before to debut Tuesday for a two-day run, but it was not realized until recently that the second night would be Ash Wednesday. She said the scheduling oversight was “unfortunate.” The play is being put on by a Holy Cross student group called the Women’s Forum, and proceeds are going to a local shelter for battered women. In an article in The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Fr. McFarland said, after being told of the Monologues play’s contents, it has “value” because it draws attention to violence against women. The Telegram & Gazette reports: College administrators decided that the play was not so thoroughly wrong as to be unsuitable for a campus production, [McFarland] said. “I understand that people are objecting to it … but it has value. That’s why we’re going ahead with it.”
One dismayed priest, Fr. Peter West, wrote: “Ash Wednesday is one of the most solemn days of the liturgical year in the Catholic Church. It is a day that Catholics are called to do penance and reflect on their mortality and on eternal life. It is on this day that Holy Cross College … has chosen to put on a performance of The Vagina Monologues.” A letter from Fr. McFarland on the college’s Web site, commenting on the school’s “Jesuit and Catholic nature,” states: We believe in the importance of faith, and in the complementary roles faith and reason must play in rigorous intellectual and spiritual inquiry. Holy Cross students are challenged to examine — or form — their core moral and ethical values, discover a role to play to advance social justice in the world.
MONOLOGUE’S CONTENT
In a recent op-ed critical of the “Monologues” play, Janice Crouse, Ph.D., Executive Director and Senior Fellow at the CWA-affiliated Beverly LaHaye Institute, writes: The way Monologues manages to disparage heterosexual intercourse is just one of the minor ways it errs. Typically, the biggest laugh of the night is when one of the characters admits that she “had a good experience with a man.” Astoundingly, it also trivializes the very abuse it opposes. Take one scene. … A teenaged girl tells her tragic story of sexual abuse as a child. Don’t waste tears on her, however, because her seduction at age 13 by a 24-year-old woman makes everything fine once again. The message? Rape and seduction of a child by a man is vicious and reprehensible violence against women. Rape and seduction of a child by a woman is consensual, soothing and healing. The truly satisfied woman, according to [the play’s author, Eve] Ensler, is a “sex worker with women only.” Ensler claims that, through the show, she has “reentered my vagina. And that has completely changed my life.” Her original press release stated, “The play brazenly explores the humor, power, pain, wisdom, outrage, mystery and excitement hidden in vaginas.” Hmmm. A vagina may indeed hide many things … but wisdom?? So has the feminist cause come down to nothing more than ranting about the part of women’s anatomy that most clearly distinguishes them from men? Apparently, Ensler thinks that if women shout the word “vagina” loud enough and long enough — it appears 128 times within the play's 106 pages — they will become enlightened and liberated. So much for men and women being interchangeable.
According to Crouse, Vagina Monologues has been staged in 800 cities and college campuses across the country, winning the support of celebrities like actresses Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, and Calista Flockhart. It is now showing at theaters in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Kansas City, Baltimore, Miami, Indianapolis, Buffalo, and other cities. NOT ATYPICAL
Sadly, the Holy Cross situation is not atypical when it comes to Catholic learning institutions. As traditional Catholics and veteran family activists know, the days are long gone when Catholic schools offered a haven from feminist and liberal social crusades. Several Catholic-affiliated campuses are struggling with how to handle “gay” student groups and feminist students who rail against Catholic pro-life orthodoxy. Several Catholic colleges offer courses with agendas that flout Catholic doctrine: for example, radical homosexual activist attorney Chai Feldblum teaches a course entitled, “Sexual Orientation and the Law: Selected Topics in Civil Rights” at Georgetown University Law Center. Michael Schwartz, CWA’s vice president for government relations, decried the erosion of morality at such institutions and offered this comment on the Holy Cross president’s decision to allow the Vagina Monologues play on Ash Wednesday: “Father McFarland is wrong about the intention of the play. It is not to ‘raise consciousness about violence against women,’ but to promote lesbianism and vulgarity. I certainly hope the English Department at Holy Cross is more capable of understanding a literary text than the president is.” ACTION
To contact Holy Cross President Fr. McFarland or the Diocese of Worcester, write or call:
Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J.
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, MA 01610-2395
(508) 793-2011
Web site: http://www.holycross.edu/
E-mail: webmaster@holycross.edu Most Rev. Daniel P. Reilly, D.D.
Diocese of Worcester
49 Elm Street
Worcester, MA 01602
(508) 791-7171
Fax (508) 753-7180
Web site: http://www.worcesterdiocese.org/
E-mail: rdelisle@worcesterdiocese.org — Staff
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Holy Cross President
