Cardinal Newman Society Campaign Against Offensive “Monologues” Achieves Results

Life Site News ^ | 2/1/06 | Gudrun Schultz

[wagglebee]

MANASSAS, VIRGINIA, United States, February 1, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Five Catholic universities have stated they will not permit the Vagina Monologues to be presented on campus, and four more say the play won’t appear, after a campaign by the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) to stop performances of the offensive production on Catholic campuses.

The Monologues is an obscene, sometimes pornographic “celebration” of women’s sexuality that focuses on lesbian sexual experiences and masturbation. The play encourages the use of vulgar and explicit sexual language, and glorifies the lesbian seduction of a young girl.

The CNS contacted 29 Catholic colleges this year to encourage the cancellation of planned performances in February and March 2006. The Society’s campaign has seen increasing success, with declining numbers of annual performances at Catholic colleges and universities. Last year, the play was performed at 27 Catholic schools, down from 29 in 2004 and 32 in 2003.

V-Day, an organization started by the play’s author, radical feminist Eve Ensler, to promote the Monologues, has acknowledged the success of the CNS’s efforts by posting a rebuttal on their website.

Universities that will not allow performances on campus include the Catholic University of America, Marquette University, New York Medical College, Providence College and Seton Hall University.

Assumption College, Carlow University, Sacred Heart University and Saint Xavier University have said the play will not appear, but have not officially banned the performance.

[wagglebee]

The fact that anybody, anywhere would be interested in seeing this is offensive.

[wagglebee]

Ping!

[camle]

telling women that all they are are vaginas? like that's enabling.
my cat has a vagina...

[Albion Wilde]

Interesting earlier thread about Bishops' wanting Catholic universities to align graduation speakers with Catholic tenets (last year):

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1397921/posts

[wagglebee]

Moral Absolutes & Homosexual Agenda Ping.

DISCUSSION ABOUT: "Cardinal Newman Society Campaign Against Offensive “Monologues” Achieves Results"

The Vagina Monologues are about a lesbian seducing a teenage girl.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To be included in or removed from the MORAL ABSOLUTES PINGLIST, please FreepMail either MillerCreek or wagglebee.

To be included in or removed from the HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA PINGLIST, please FreepMail either DBeers or DirtyHarryY2k.

[Al Gator]

"While it is not a great play, it is hardly offensive in my not very humble opinion."

If you don't think that sexist trash is offensive, maybe you are on the wrong forum.

[Al Gator]

"Not very good" isn't the whole of it.

Morally, its a piece of offal.

Not sexist? The parody "Penis dialogs" , which did nothing but plagiarize this stupid thing almost word for word with only the anatomy being different, was blasted by the feminazis.

[Coleus]

 

Catholic Higher Education Alert - 1/31/06

[wagglebee]

Thanks for the link, I missed it yesterday.

[pabianice]

Does this mean a ban also on "The Boner Blues"?

[Antoninus]

While it is not a great play, it is hardly offensive in my not very humble opinion.

Ok. How about puerile, vapid, gross, stupid, degenerate, pornographic lesbian propaganda? What's offensive is that some idiots out there think that a play with these characteristics is suitable for an audience of young Catholics.

[Antoninus]

Nobody gets hurt by a performance, therefore it isnt, in my opinion, immoral.

Ah, you're a devotee of John Stuart Mill--i.e., a libertine-arian. That explains it. In your mind, then, a play which glorifies an incestuous relationship between a man, his brother, and his two grandmothers is not offensive, either.

[Antoninus]

Welcome to FR, btw. I suggest you find your trousers right quick.

[d-back]

In the play, a thirteen-year-old girl is “seduced” by a twenty-four year old woman. At the end of the scene, the thirteen year old tells the audience: “Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape.”

Oh, that's not offensive.

Listed below is the show’s contents, which largely speak for themselves:

1. Introduction
2. Hair
3. If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?
4. If your vagina could talk, what would it say?
5. The Flood
6. The Vagina Workshop
7. Vagina Fact – Clitoris
8. Because He liked to Look at It
9. Vagina Fact – Genital Mutilation
10. My Angry Vagina
11. My Vagina Was My Village
12. The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could
13. What does your vagina smell like?
14. Reclaiming Cunt
15. I Asked a Six Year Old Girl
16. The Women Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy
17. I Was There In The Room

The play demeans and objectifies women; it condones lesbianism; it condones rape. It is contrary to Catholic teaching, and these Catholic colleges have a moral obligation to ban it from their campuses.

Three cheers for the Cardinal Newman Society.

[illinoissmith]

"I disagree. Nobody gets hurt by a performance, therefore it isnt, in my opinion, immoral. Of course, milage may vary."

Pushing sex, especially non-procreative meaningless sex, as the central be-all and end-all of being a human or woman, is an attempt to hurt people; human life involves much more than this. To the extent this lie is adopted, people become broken, empty-pleasure-seeking shells.

Whether or not that attempt at harm works depends upon the psychological defenses of the audience.

If it is immoral to systematically attempt to hurt people, and to occasionally succeed against those who are weak, this play is immoral.

That is different than saying it should be illegal. Which is, yet again, different from saying private universities, or taxpayer-funded universities, are legally obliged to give it time and space.

[illinoissmith]

"'Nobody gets hurt by a performance, therefore it isnt, in my opinion, immoral.'

Ah, you're a devotee of John Stuart Mill"

This is a disservice to Mill, who recognized that there are greater things in human life than bumps, scratches, and base pleasure rushes.

Someone who believed that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, would be quite likely to recognize the harm involved in a play whose message is that piggish pleasures are the apex of human life.

[John O]

Universities that will not allow performances on campus include the Catholic University of America, Marquette University, New York Medical College, Providence College and Seton Hall University.

Somehow they did something right. It must be a mistake.

[Incorrigible]

Though it's hard to tell mosttimes, MU has always been a tad to the right of the other Jesuit schools.

[Antoninus]

This is a disservice to Mill, who recognized that there are greater things in human life than bumps, scratches, and base pleasure rushes.

Not really. Just because people have used Mill to give themselves a philosophical backing to indulge their own basest desires, doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the man himself. I suspect he'd be rather horrified to find out the kind of activities that are being endorsed using his philosophy.

[Antoninus]

Not especially.

Thanks. You confirmed my suspicions.

Isn't semester break over by now?

[Antoninus]

It is simply a play about an aspect of life.

Glad you're such a discerning person. I guess a play about taking a dump would be fine with you too. After all, that's a much more common aspect of life.

Death to relativism!

[illinoissmith]

"The play doesnt suggest that sex is the be all and end all of humanity. It does however point out that it is an important part of human existence. It chooses to focus on that part of existence, just as other plays focus on other parts of existence."

This is factually incorrect. The play elevates sex to a level beyond respect for things like ability of minors to consent, and beyond things like the importance of context to give an act meaning and purpose, etc. The material of the play is evidence for the role it suggests sex should have in life. That suggested role is as end-unto-itself goal, disconnected from other parts of reality, and higher to them.

Further reason why I say what I say about this play, is that this play fits in seamlessly with a social pattern I have observed in many other places and forms. This social pattern is the nihilistic hedonist worldview very prevalent in the post-Christian West, which is causing tremendous misery and intellectual brokenness and backwardness in its hapless adherents.

"Again, I dont think the play attempts to hurt people. It is simply a play about an aspect of life."

There are some harms in life that are a bit more subtle than, though just as damaging as, things like getting hit over the head with a frying pan. I have tried to lay out my take on some of these, above. Further discussion and I will just do more in the same vein. If you can't fathom this, I doubt we can do much more than talk past each other.

[berkley]

St Louis University allowed it last year. I wrote Fr Biondi a letter that I no longer would donate $$$ to a university that promotes such trash. I have kept my pledge. I'll send $$$ to the Newman Society.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

One of my brothers donates yearly to Marquette... That is, until this year with the "Gold" fiasco among other things. I suggested he switch his donation to the CNS and tell MU why he is doing that.

[John O]

I got a call from them just yesterday. A very nice young lady called and asked for my donation. I asked if they had changed the name back to Warriors yet. She said no but it was still quite a controversy. I told her that it would continue to be one and that they should call me back when they change the name.

[illinoissmith]

"Not really. Just because people have used Mill to give themselves a philosophical backing to indulge their own basest desires, doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the man himself. I suspect he'd be rather horrified to find out the kind of activities that are being endorsed using his philosophy."

I misspoke, and I apologize for doing so. I should have said, not that you do a disservice to Mill, but that I believe you misrepresent some of the details of his particular variety of Utilitarianism.

I suspect you are thinking of the philosophy Bentham, and of other Utilitarians in his vein, not of Mill.

They differ is some significant ways. Mill's system would have put VM-esque trash on the level of a pig's desires, and given them very low weight in his calculus. Bentham was dealing with, essentially, the physical intensity of the pleasure of pain, to give weight to various pleasure of pain, and so his system is very easily accommodating for things like VM. Most famous Utilitarians today are of Bentham's vein (Singer, for one).

You may not believe that Mill's system was a justifiable form of Utilitarianism, given the premises of Utilitarianism, but it is his system, so it is what he says it is. And what he says it is is a system where base pleasures get few points and higher pleasures get more points, without central regard to the physical intensity of those pleasures. Base and higher defined to mean, essentially, what an educated, civilized man like himself thinks they mean (his standard for higher vs. base is, which would an educated man, with knowledge of the full range of possible pleasures, prefer). Thus the famous Socrates quote.

[illinoissmith]

BTW, Bentham preceded Mill (IIRC, he was a friend of Mill's father), so I don't think it could be said that the fruits of Bentham's philosophy (such as VM) are, even indirectly, the fruits of Mill's.

[DBeers]

Again, I dont think the play attempts to hurt people. It is simply a play about an aspect of life.

Aspects of life are anectdotal -the fact that things happen or are evident and or the frequency that things happen or are evident are inconsequential determinants in regards to morality. As example: liberals wish to continue aborting innocents -this too is an aspect of life -YET it is murder and is quite offensive.

It should be as objectively obvious to you as it is to me that that your apsect of life statement is morally meaningless...

[GOP_Party_Animal]

...and that they should call me back when they change the name.

LOL - Nice and simple. I told the girl (who was living in McCormick!) that I couldn't trust the administration and the BOD with my money. I think it went over her head.

[Incorrigible]

We all must have talked to the same girl. Said she was a freshman living at McCormick and that it was her first day calling. She seemed a little too polished for that to be true though.

I have different reasons for not donating all these years mostly related to Dean Kipp.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Before rhe was removed by the moderater, DonalWheresMaTrousers wrote, "Nobody gets hurt by a performance, therefore it isnt, in my opinion, immoral."

I agree with yuour response. If a person means, "There were no cuts, abrasions, concussions, or gunshot wounds, and nobody was hospitalized by the end of the play," then you can say "nobody gets hurt." But, since we are human beings and not mountain bonobos, we can be damaged in more ways than physically. We have emotional, intellectual,and spiritual faculties that can be weakened, warped, injured, or killed.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

Here's a post from my favorite Marquette blog (gop3.com). Could the poster be our gal?

Allison Herre Says:

You are completely correct about the alums feeling alienated [re: Warriors]…i cannot count the number of times that i have been turned down for a donation for that very reason…its why i have to stay on the phone for an average of 30 mins longer a night than usual

[metmom]

More like bye-bye.

[TAdams8591]

"There were no cuts, abrasions, concussions, or gunshot wounds, and nobody was hospitalized by the end of the play," then you can say "nobody gets hurt." But, since we are human beings and not mountain bonobos, we can be damaged in more ways than physically. We have emotional, intellectual,and spiritual faculties that can be weakened, warped, injured, or killed."

This is something I have understood since I was college age. Why is it so difficult for people to understand?