Notre Dame seniors, Merlot Fogarty and Jose Rodriguez, with other protesters outside University Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. Photo by Bridgette Rodgers, ND ’26, majoring in Political Science and Theology.
Introduction
We’re pleased to bring you an affecting article written for Sycamore Trust by Notre Dame senior, Merlot Fogarty, about her experience as a pro-life advocate on campus and explaining why she felt compelled to challenge the university’s academic freedom policy by organizing the recent protest against the school’s first drag show. While she says that “drag shows and gender ideology” have not been a focus for her advocacy, her commitment to Catholic values and her determination to speak up for “those who aren’t given the voice to speak for themselves” clearly have been — and were at the heart of her decision do something to “uphold the truth of gender and the human person, the protection of Our Lady’s name and the dignity of women.”
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Taking a Stand for Catholic Values at Notre Dame
By Merlot Fogarty, '24
If you read the Sycamore Bulletins often, you’ve probably seen my name mentioned at pro-life rallies, fighting against the abortion extremism of Notre Dame professors, and being harassed for speaking out as a pro-life conservative. I’ve spent my time at Notre Dame fighting my share of battles with the administration. Beginning in the fall of my freshman year, I chanted “ACB, USA” as I marched past the hundreds of students gathering in protest of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation. The anti-ACB protest was protected by police officers. The pro-ACB students were removed.
Drag shows and gender ideology are not really my ‘issues.’ I think that’s what makes my, and all of the other students, involvement in speaking out against it so compelling. We know what authorization of a drag show means for the future of Notre Dame as a Catholic university. We know the door that this event has now opened.
The hostility toward students who uphold Catholic Church teaching has only escalated since the fall of 2020. With Sycamore Trust’s vital support of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, we’ve spoken out against Gender Studies’ promoting abortion doulas, the LGBT Law Forum’s hosting an event featuring a sex worker, the withholding of funds for Notre Dame Right to Life members to attend the local Right to Life Michiana’s annual benefit dinner, Father Jenkins’ lackadaisical response to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the cancelling of NDRTL’s trip to attend the national March for Life, the attack on language at the institutional level, and the school’s vaccine mandates.
While these controversies have filled our hours with interviews and debate, the massive abuse heaped upon students who have spoken up in defense of Church teaching specifically on sex and gender is on a completely new level. In the past three years. Notre Dame has hosted monthly LGBTQ+ Masses, incorporated “allyship” and “inclusivity” as the pillars of the “Welcome Weekend,” offered children’s “queer” and “pride” books in the on-campus bookstore, affirmed gender identities differing to one’s biological sex in the Moreau first-year curriculum, held a “Coming Out Day Celebration” in which a priest wore a pride flag stole, issued strong support of national “Pride Month” via her social media platforms, and finally, permitted the departments of gender studies and film, television, and theater to host a drag show.
When the Rover first reported on the plan for Professor Wojcik to host a drag show, I didn’t think much of it. I’m a senior, I’m on my way out, it didn’t seem like a “pro-life” issue, which is what I’m most known for participating in.
When Editor in Chief of the Rover, Nico Schmitz, followed up this report with an editorial, this line stuck out to me: “Fundamentally, a drag show mocks all that it means to be a woman by painting a hyper-sexualized picture and making her an object of derision. Such a performance is particularly egregious at a university dedicated to the exemplar of all women. Under the eyes of Our Lady atop the dome, this performance threatens to fundamentally insult the core of what it means to be a woman.”
While I obviously oppose all forms of disordered gender identity and believe it is important to uphold the truth of gender and the human person, the protection of Our Lady’s name and the dignity of women is what truly provoked me to get involved. My passion for the pro-life movement stems from my devotion to speaking up for those who aren’t given the voice to speak for themselves, specifically for the voices of women who were coerced into participating in the violence of abortion because society told them they couldn’t do what their feminine nature orders them toward in motherhood.
By dressing in stereotypical women’s clothing and makeup, drag performers feign womanhood for the sake of sexual entertainment. Women have fought for centuries to be seen as equal in worth to their male counterparts. I don’t even need to begin on society’s new “birthing-persons” or “people-with-uteruses” language. Modern feminism has swung so far to the opposite of protecting women’s dignity, that they now aren’t even capable of defining what it means to be a woman.
I sent an email that day to Father Gerry Olinger, whom I know well through conversations and controversies last year, expressing my concern specifically as a woman at Notre Dame. “Notre Dame has a duty to protect the dignity of their students, faculty, and staff, and to educate with a vision to the truth. To have men parade around a stage on Our Lady’s campus ridiculing women is a clear violation of the truth and of my and my fellow Notre Dame women’s dignity,” I said.
Father Gerry’s response came about a week later, while students were on fall break. He thanked me for my email and patience awaiting his response. He then defended the event “taking place within a Film, Television and Theater class” on the grounds of “academic freedom.” More specifically, he cited a recent statement from Father Jenkins on Freedom of Expression: “Because Notre Dame is a university committed to the pursuit of truth through teaching, learning, inquiry, and dialogue, we are committed fully to the academic freedom of scholars to research and publish the results of their research and to teach in accord with their obligations and training,” the statement reads.
“Because the event you reference is part of a one-credit course in Film, Television and Theater on the History of Drag, the principle of academic freedom does apply in this instance,” Father Gerry continued.
While we can certainly have debates on the lines that can (and should) be drawn on academic freedom at a Catholic university, the citation of this new statement has led many students like myself to ask questions clarifying what this means for academic freedom policy going forward. If a “minstrel show of femininity” is permitted because it is affiliated with a one-credit university class, what would stop a professor from hosting a strip show to conclude a class on pornography, or a satanic ritual to conclude a class on the satanic temple?
Notre Dame’s academic freedom policy stems from two addresses in 2006 after the Vagina Monologues controversy. At a “Catholic research university,” controversial events touching on “significant issues” in Church teaching would be sure to occur again. If and when they did, our policy states that the events must provide Church teaching. They are also barred from using “framing and language” that give the impression of endorsing perspectives “directly contrary to Catholic teachings.” Finally, presentations that are “intended to be provocative” must be defended by their department chair as academically valuable and not “gratuitously offensive.”
Prior to the February statement – which was released in response to the harassment of abortion activist, Professor Tamara Kay – most of the events that have been hosted promoting messages contrary to Catholic teaching have included the Catholic Church’s teaching in a follow-up email to participants. What is unclear is whether the statement in February overrides the 2006 policy and if the Catholic position is no longer required to be shared. The university has given no clarification on the matter.
As for the media campaign launched against the show, we all have senior Computer Science major Jose Rodriguez to thank, who spent his entire fall break coding the website which allowed Notre Dame students, alumni, and supporters to send over 1,300 emails directly to the inboxes of Father Jenkins, Father Gerry, Provost McGreevy, Dean Sarah Mustillo, and the heads of each sponsoring department of the show. The responses in support of our efforts to rid our campus of this offensive performance were deeply moving.
While we were unsuccessful in canceling the performance, the 250 students, faculty, alumni, and community members who joined us to prayerfully protest the show were truly a sight to behold, and a shining light in the face of the deep darkness of falsehood that continues to descend on Our Lady’s campus. The Sycamore Trust was incredibly generous in rallying alumni to join us on campus and in their homes to pray the rosary, as well as providing funds for the posters students held at the vigil.
Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend also made remarks at the conclusion of a mass he celebrated in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the night of the show, leading the congregation in a Hail Mary, and sending his gratitude for the students who bore “witness to our Catholic faith and our teaching on the dignity of women.”
Standing up for authentic femininity and masculinity – for the truth of God’s wonderful complementary creation of male and female – is a hard thing to do. While the Notre Dame administration continues to cave to a few professors with provocative intentions, activist students appeal only to emotion, causing scandal and calling names, lacking any normative argument defending the LGBTQ ideology’s apparent biological contradiction.
We know these professors will continue to abuse their academic standing to push anti-Catholic ideologies and hide under the university’s academic freedom protections. What we can do – as parents, as alumni, and as current students – is bring attention to the large and beautiful Catholic community at Notre Dame who are promoting truth, doctrine, and the love of Christ. We can implore department heads and deans to hire faculty in alignment with the university’s mission of pursuing truth. Ultimately, we must trust that Our Lady’s mantle will protect the sons and daughters of Christ from the creeping perversion and secularism making its way to our campus. We can pray for the future and the Catholic identity of Notre Dame, for the students and faculty who are pursuing truth, and for God’s will to reign at His Mother’s university.
Notre Dame, Our Mother, Pray for Us.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
Merlot Fogarty
Merlot Fogarty is a senior studying theology, political science, and constitutional studies. She is the president emerita of Notre Dame Right to Life and current communications director for the Network of Enlightened Women.
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Oremus
Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. (1 Cor 3:18-19)
O God our Father, Eternal Wisdom and Love, You have created us in Your own image and likeness, and called us to live in humble obedience to You and according to the order which You have established to govern the universe. You sent Your Son, Wisdom Incarnate, to save us from sin and to reconcile us to You and to one another. He established the Church to be a saving witness of Wisdom and Love, Goodness and Truth to a rebellious world. We implore You to dispel the darkness that surrounds us. May all who have rejected the truths of creation, seeking to replace Your design for the human race with one of their own, be awakened to the destructive folly which passes for wisdom in this age. Enlighten us all by the Truth which sets us free and grant that we may courageously embrace the scorn and contempt of the wise of the world so that we may joyfully share in the Wisdom of God. Through the intercession of Notre Dame, our Mother, we make our prayer in the Name of Jesus, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
The above prayer is by Sycamore Trustee Father John Raphael (’89). To join us in regular prayer projects such as our Novena for Catholic Education and our Meditation on the 12-Days of Christmas, please join our Apostolate.
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