Academic Freedom at Notre Dame
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

In early April 2006, Fr. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, approved a campus performance of Eve Ensler's highly controversial play The Vagina Monologues for the fifth straight year. He did so against the wishes of his bishop and despite expressing misgivings earlier in the year about the moral content of the production. He justified his action on the ground of academic freedom, saying that "the creative contextualization of a play like The Vagina Monologues can bring certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition." While the action generally pleased Notre Dame faculty members, only about half of whom are themselves Roman Catholics, it outraged many Catholics all across the country. The paramount issue, of course, was the relationship between free academic discourse, a meaningful education, and Church teaching.

The play in question is explicitly sexual, obscene, and vulgar; it contains an approved reminiscence about a lesbian seduction of a 16-year-old girl. Does this basically pornographic view of women and their sexuality, strongly opposed by the Catholic Church, contain a "creative contextualization" worthy of protection by academic freedom? If so, where would the administration at Notre Dame draw the line? Would Fr. Jenkins approve a Nazi play about the "myth of the holocaust"? Of course not. He will not permit the 1860 Oberammergau Passion play to be performed on campus because of its alleged anti-Semitic bias. Would he sanction a play that urged homosexuals to seek healing and conversion and live a chaste life? Probably not. But he approves a gay film festival. One wonders about the extent to which Fr. Jenkins's commitment to academic freedom is simply based upon political correctness.

The Ensler play has been banned at several Catholic universities in the United States, one of which was Providence College. Fr. Bian Shanley, president of Providence, wrote,

Far from celebrating the complexity and mystery of female sexuality, "the Vagina Monologues" simplifies and demystifies it by reducing it to the vagina . . . . Artistic freedom on a Catholic campus cannot mean the complete license to perform or display any work of art regardless of its intellectual or moral content. Any institution which sanctioned works of art that undermined its deepest values would be inauthentic, irresponsible and ultimately self-destructive.

The Very Rev. David O'Connell, president of the Catholic University of America, said,

I find the play crude, ugly, vulgar and unworthy of staging or performing at CUA in any manner whatsoever . . . . [The play's performance] has become a symbol each year of the desire of some folks to push Catholic campuses over the edge of good and decent judgment.

The Cardinal Newman Society declared,

Banning this play would in no way inhibit free discussion of the topics the play purports to address. Rather, banning the play is a means of demonstrating genuine commitment to reasoned dialogue on important issues, without the vulgarity, obscenity, disrespect for human dignity and one-sided demagoguery that prevent true academic discourse.

The move at Notre Dame is part of a larger story about Catholic higher education in this country. A 2003 study conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute surveyed students at 38 Catholic colleges and found seniors far more likely to hold leftist moral and religious views than freshmen. "Hooking up," for example, was approved by 49 percent of the seniors; support for legalizing homosexual "marriages" increased from 55 percent to 71 percent; among seniors, 13 percent did not attend a religious service in the past year (a four-fold increase since their freshman year); 31 percent didn't pray at all. (See www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112504.html.) In 2003, according to the Cardinal Newman Society, 42 U.S. Catholic Colleges were scheduled to present The Vagina Monologues.

Many Catholic institutions have been ignoring the pleas of their bishops and the Vatican to be centers of orthodox Church teaching, as well as bastions of intellectual growth. Pope Benedict XVI, one of the West's most formidable intellectuals, may soon take steps to do some evangelical pruning of secularized Catholic colleges and universities, declaring them no longer Catholic. If this takes place, one wonders on which sideof the divide Notre Dame will fall.

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