Gonzaga VP invokes "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" to justify production of "The Vagina Monologues" [Catholic]

This developing story is unbelievable. Well, not really.

But, first, the believable: for some time now there has been a strong push by various faculty members and students at Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA) to have an on-campus production of "The Vagina Monologues" (TVM). Fomer president Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., while head of the Jesuit school (1998-2009), twice refused productions of the play; it was also vetoed last year.

But now, it appears, TVM may very well be performed this year on the Gonzaga campus. Dr. Eric Cunningham, a professor of history at the school, wrote the following letter to The Gonzaga Bulletin, published online two days ago, in which he stated:

When fliers advertising auditions for the "Vagina Monologues" began to appear last month, I wondered if "the conversation" about Eve Ensler's play was going to become a permanent part of Gonzaga's annual Rites of Spring. Judging from Academic Vice President Patricia Killen's memo to university employees last Thursday, it appears that we're going to be spared that conversation in favor of a different kind of conversation. We will not be discussing whether the university ban on the production of the VM is valid, and we will not be discussing whether the VM is appropriate cultural fare for a Catholic university. In one gesture the AVP has rendered both the ban and the debate unnecessary. By casting the VM as but a piece of a larger discussion on violence against women, she has deftly defused the controversy — at the possible risk of closing off discussion on a topic of great concern to many people in the Gonzaga community.

He then gets to the part that is most outrageous (as well as manipulative and cynical):

More interesting than the move to sidestep the debate on free speech vs. identity was the AVP's stratagem of invoking Pope John Paul II's "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" to justify an on-campus production of the Vagina Monologues.

"If, as Ex Corde Ecclesiae (‘From the Heart of the Church') states, ‘ . . . by its Catholic character, a University is made more capable of conducting an impartial search for truth, a search that is neither subordinated to nor conditioned by particular interest of any kind,' then faculty, staff and students at Gonzaga are called to attend to and reflect on their own assumptions and presuppositions, and to engage in discourse about experiences of sexual violence, controversial art, ideas and events with scholarly charity (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Introduction, Section 7)."

Cunningham makes several excellent points about this bold-faced misuse and abuse of Ex Corde Ecclesiae:

While good scholars will interpret Church documents in various ways, it would seem to be a stretch to reconcile the spirit of Ex Corde with an artifact whose substance and spirit run decidedly counter to formal Catholic teachings on love, sexuality and the "nuptial meaning" of the body — all of which are expressed with great clarity in The Theology of the Body lectures, also promulgated by John Paul II. Nevertheless, I'm grateful to Dr. Killen for bringing Ex Corde into public discussion. It's the first time in my eight years at Gonzaga that I've heard any administrator make reference to it, and I hope we're able to move decisively in the direction of implementing all of its various guidelines and mandates.

I hope there will be fruitful and mutually respectful dialogues on the "monologues" — it would be a welcome change. Thinking back to last year's controversy, it was clear that the pro-VM faction saw this primarily as an issue of free speech, and they felt their rights were being trampled by institutional intolerance. They seemed to ignore the fact that most of the opponents of the play saw this as an issue of institutional identity. The opponents believed that they had a moral obligation to stand with Catholic teachings on sexuality — not to oppress, but to show fidelity to the Church and to Gonzaga's religious tradition. What was at stake for these people was not freedom of speech, which as citizens we all enjoy, but the preservation of specific religious values, which as a Catholic school we have a duty to defend, or at the very least acknowledge. As I recall, many of those supporting the play exhibited little sensitivity toward, or even a full understanding of the values in question — and yet portrayed themselves as victims of a callous and unthinking regime.

He then argues—very effectively, in my opinion—that the core issue at stake is that of real freedom and authentic Catholic identity:

The real question at the core of this controversy is not whether certain Catholics at Gonzaga are trying to censor the media, silence voices, block access to art, or diminish the general awareness of violence against women — nobody wants that and nobody has the power to do that. "Vagina Monologues" has been openly performed since the mid-1990s; it has been read and discussed in classrooms all over the country, including ours. It can be purchased at any bookstore or accessed online by anybody, anytime. Neither Gonzaga nor the Catholic Church has the power to stop free speech in Spokane or anywhere else. From the standpoint of its opponents, the original decision to bar the production of the VM was not an attempt to undermine the rights of free people, but rather an attempt to protect the rights of a free Catholic university.

This, I think, is what was so troubling about last year's conversation. It seemed to go unrecognized by the pro-VM faction, which included students, faculty, staff, and administrators, that in the United States, a Catholic school is as free to be a Catholic school, as a playwright is to publish and produce her work. A critical component of any school's freedom is its right to establish standards of speech and expression that it defines as appropriate to its professed values. The real question then, is what are these values?

What is a Catholic university? As important as the questions of core curriculum, academic freedom, student life, and social justice obviously are, none of them are even answerable until we know what we actually stand for. We reproduce the mantra of "Catholic, Jesuit, and humanistic" in all our literature, but there exists no consensus here as to what these things mean. If you ask people at Gonzaga to define "Catholic," you are certain to get a wide variety of answers, ranging from the all-encompassing "well, Catholic means universal, so I guess everything is Catholic" to more specific definitions based on such things as authoritative Church documents — like "Ex Corde Ecclesiae."

I dug up this nearly 1-year-old post because the same thing is happening this year at (of course) Georgetown.

I've just written to the president of Georgetown, and I would actualy be quite pleased if you would do the same. He may not pay any attention, but your e-mail will be in your celestial file (and his) as evidence, for and against, On That Day.

president@georgetown.edu

Dear Dr. DeGioia,

I certainly think you should stick to your principles and continue to have fthought-provoking performances like The Vagina Monologues presented on the Georgetown campus.

As such, you would be taking a courageous stand against the imposition of non-scholarly Catholic standards upon higher education. You would be helping each and every one of us in the Georgetown community to free ourselves from the limitations of “the mind of the Church.”

You have made great strides in demonstrating your commitment to a fully post-Christian and post-moral understanding of learning, scholarship and culture.

There is no reason for you to listen to the narrow views of people who resist the sponsorship of moral corruption. They are worried, no doubt, about your soul, and the soul of Georgetown. But quite needlessly.

Your soul--- together with the soul of Georgetown --- is progressing quite rapidly to where it needs to be.

Sincerely,

Iblish Ash-Shaytan
Class of 2015

If the college administration is going to 'go there', someone should publicly ask the administration if they would be as welcoming to a stage play that lauded a priest cultivating and manipulating a young man, in order to commit sexual abuse. After all, that is the subject of one of the 'monologues'; a young woman is seduced by a female coach, and yet the "Monologues" are lauded by feminists.

I guess outrage about sexual abuse is selective, and that point should be brought home forcefully to the Jebbies running the school. It might even make a few of them squirm, since the Jebbies have been harboring abusers for years, but since they are the only Catholics that the MSM likes, they've not been investigated in the same way the Catholic Bishops have.

Gonzaga MAY be private but it is hardly Catholic. See likewise: Notre Shame, Boston College, Georgetown, University of San FranSicko, Manhattanville, and a very wide selection of once Catholic colleges which have become secular humanist fortresses instead. Google Land o' Lakes Conference of 1967 at which each and every Catholic college and university with six exceptions declared themselves no longer Catholic in a vain pursuit of academic (read atheist and Marxist) "freedom."

St. John's University in NYC refused to join in the Land o' Lakes Declaration. Whether it has subsequently caved in I do not know. Steubenville in Ohio is a Catholic College and means it. Belmont Abbey in North Carolina likewise. St. Thomas More in New Hampshire, St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Christendom in Virginia, Magdeline in New Hampshire, St. Thomas Aquinas in California, Ave Maria in Florida and a new college in Wyoming are about all that is left.

It is worse for actual Catholics to send their children to schools posing as "Catholic" but chock full of heretical and secular humanist teachers and administrators with bristling leftist agendas than to send their children to such schools as Bob Jones University, Oral Roberts, Regent, Liberty Baptist and other firmly Christian schools (though each differs with Catholicism theologically while retaining the morality, the scholarship and the moral teachings of the best of Western Civilization). What the good Catholic and good Christian colleges and universities may lack in, say, football dominance, compared to a Notre Shame, they make up for by affording an intellectual pathway to eternal salvation which is even more important than football (or Gonzaga's basketball program) to many of us.

The renegade former "Catholic" schools are guilty of grand theft academic by taking the money contributed by many generations of actually Catholic people as invested in buildings, libraries, laboratories and what not and then perverting the teaching at their schools. Today's Gonzaga is not Bing Crosby's Gonzaga. If someone more committed as a Catholic than Bishop Blaise Cupich were Bishop of Spokane, then Gonzaga would be rightfully deprived of using the name "Catholic" as a description of itself which violates truth in advertising as well.

What "types of schools" do you suggest? Bob Jones perhaps?

That kind of argument is a logical fallacy called a straw-man. Instead of rebutting the poster's argument, you make up a phony argument with an asssumed result and argue against that.

This TVM piece has no issue being shown anywhere. Speaking for myself, as a Catholic, I attended the University of Chicago, a well-respected, secular university that had an undeserved reputation of being conservative because of some Austrian school economists and Alan Bloom. In fact, that atmosphere was somewhat schizophrenic. The campus area was zoned dry, so you could not have a beer with your Eduardo's pizza, and yet the Lascivious Costume Ball (complete with nudists in Ida Noyes Hall, Ida is STILL spinning in her grave) and GALA organization provided unhealthy social outlets, perhaps to compensate for the lack of healthy ones. I transferred to Christendom College, and do not regret it.

BlackElk made some suggestions of schools for Catholics, and there are places like Hillsdale College for those who are not seeking a school affiliated with a religion.

We already subsidize nearly all colleges (Hillsdale, Christendom, Grove City being notable exceptions) through our taxes. Why should we further endorse programs like TVM at Gonzaga with student activities fees, and legitimize them with our attendance at said school?

We look at these schools, and find that 90% of the faculty and 65%-85% of the students are Obama supporters (estimates, find better numbers and see how far off I am). I remember a public policy class that I took where the entire class was asked if we prayed to God for something specific to help us (e.g. praying for peace, or an end to world hunger would not be included). I alone raised my hand. I still don't know why the question was pertinent to the subject matter.

Is it possible that 95% of the colleges have been systematically turned into something that tends to undermine the western social order? It must be. It has happened.

Is it possible to infiltrate these places and undo some of the damage they have caused? For some, maybe. It is more likely if you can live off-campus from beginning to end, something not allowed at the most elite universities for freshmen.

But don't pretend that it hasn't happened, and don't pretend that filth like TVM is acceptable fare at any civilized venue, and that its toleration as a campus sponsored event does not mean that the institution hasn't joined the fight to tear the fabric of classic western civilization. I don't care if its straight Marxism, the Gramschi or Fabian variants, or Nietzschism, these are revolutionaries. We are their target.

Dear Salvation:

With all due respect, Gonzaga, in 2000, hosted a campaign appearance by AlGore. On that occasion, pro-life protestors were rounded up in cattle pens and kept far, far away from the TV cameras. That fiasco is also part of Gonzaga's history. I am glad that Gonzaga has a very orthodox and very Catholic architectural chapel kitty corner from its campus. It is, no doubt, very difficult to find much in the way of actually Catholic Jebbies to say Mass there, however.

Nick Carraway's criticism of the Jesuits is on target. Once, decades ago, the Jesuits prided themselves on being "God's Marines." They were still that when I graduated a Jesuit prep school in the mid-1960's. In later years, they have become a dwindling club of leftist and scarcely Catholic dissenters.

As a matter of fairness, today brought good news from Wisconsin where the Jesuit provincial superior has suspended one William Brennan, SJ (a 92-year-old dissenter) for concelebrating a "mass" with some feminist nutcase posing as a priestess and also ordered Brennan not to say Mass, not to perform any priestly functions whatsoever, and to refrain from contact with press and media. There may be hope yet, however faint. Of course, if Brennan did not run straight to the execrable National "Catholic" Reporter to whine, moan and groan about those awful reactionaries who fail to appreciate his devotion to his long dead mom by way of supporting womenpriests, I would not have known. Brennan's real profession is violation of his vows. If he could find his way to San FranSicko, he would probably be reinstated by Fr. Privet, SJ, the provincial superior there, and added to the University of San FranSicko faculty, perhaps in the Department of Defiance of Vatican Authority.

Salvation, I appreciate all of your efforts here but Gonzaga is beyond the pale, ought to be stripped of any claim to be Catholic, and suppressed as a Catholic institution gone bad.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.