From LifeSite News:

Catholic Notre Dame to Allow Vulgar —Vagina Monologues—: Local bishop —deeply saddened— by decision by priest university president. By Gudrun Schultz

NOTRE DAME, Indiana, April 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) —“ The University of Notre Dame will continue to allow the controversial play —The Vagina Monologues— to be performed on campus, despite the plays’ explicit sexuality, obscenity and anti-Catholic content. The script contains graphic accounts of female sexual encounters, one involving the seduction of a young teenage girl by an older woman.

Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins, university president, spoke against the play in January, saying it was antithetical to the Catholic identity of Notre Dame, and that repeat performances on campus would suggest that the university endorsed the content and message of the play.

But in a statement yesterday Fr. Jenkins granted permission for the play to continue on the grounds of academic freedom, saying, —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.—

Bishop John M. D’Arcy, whose diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend includes Notre Dame, had asked that the performances be ended. He said he was —deeply saddened by the decision.— In his statement Bishop D’Arcy referred to his February comments on the play, when he said it —reduces sexuality to a particular organ of a woman’s body separate from the person of the woman, from her soul and her spirit.—

I just do not see how a play that objectifies can be a starting point for a “…constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition” unless the Catholic tradition is something other than it purports to be. There is objective good and objective evil. The dignity of the whole person is the only “starting point”.

A line from Bishop D’Arcy’s statement:

I am deeply saddened by the decision of Father John Jenkins, CSC, to allow the continuing sponsorship of the Vagina Monologues by Notre Dame, the School of Our Lady.

Yes, I would imagine that our Lady is saddened as well.

Please feel free to E-mail the Congregation of the Holy Cross, of which Fr. Jenkins is a member, and the University of Notre Dame is a part, to express your feelings.