Father Jenkins recently made headlines with his decision to allow the college to sponsor a performance of Eve Ensler’s ‘Vagina Monologues” during the week leading up to Easter. He is not the first Catholic college president to accede to campus demands for this play, but his nod of approval is deeply symbolic.
At Notre Dame, the furor over The Vagina Monologues…has been more heated than at any other Catholic institution, perhaps because so few Catholic institutions allow such performances.
Although this play is performed annually on the campuses of hundreds of secular colleges and universities, it has gained little traction at Catholic institutions, as Dr. Hibbs noted. The small group of Catholic institutions hosting the play peaked at 32 out of about 230, and it has shrunk to but 15 as criticism has mounted.
Tensions over The Vagina Monologues between the Notre Dame administration and the US bishops heated up last winter. Bishop D’Arcy has been a consistent, clear, and charitable critic of Father Jenkins’ decision to allow the play…. Then, last February, the bishops’ committee on doctrine, scheduled to meet on campus, moved its meeting off campus and decided not to stay at Notre Dame’s Morris Inn because of the disagreement ... The Vagina Monologues may be symptomatic of an alienation of Catholic universities from the Church that is deeper than either its fondest defenders or its most adamant critics have yet been able to fathom.