Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues presents a view of women’s dignity, love and sexuality that significantly contradicts Catholic teaching. Sexuality, as viewed in the Monologues, is purely a physical, selfish thing. The love which is purported in the play is not a selfless love, which was taught by Christ and handed down in tradition, but a love which is devoid of God. The following are excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, statements from both the current and past popes, as well as a statement from the USCCB.

“God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes.” Catechism, 1604

“Conjugal love… aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love…which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values.” Catechism, 1643

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Catechism, 2357

“Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” Catechism, 2351

“The struggle against carnal lust involves purifying the heart and practicing temperance.” Catechism, 2530

“Masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” Catechism, 2352

“Carnal union is morally legitimate only when a definitive community of life between a man and woman has been established… It demands a total and definitive gift of persons to one another.” Catechism, 2391

“Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex’, has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great ‘yes’ to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, Part 1, Section 5

“Concretely, what does this path of ascent and purification entail? How might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first, important indication in the Song of Songs … In this context it is highly instructive to note that in the course of the book two different Hebrew words are used to indicate ‘love’. First there is the word dodim, a plural form suggesting a love that is still insecure, indeterminate and searching. This comes to be replaced by the word ahabà, which the Greek version of the Old Testament translates with the similar-sounding agape, which, as we have seen, becomes the typical expression for the biblical notion of love. By contrast with an indeterminate, ‘searching’ love, this word expresses the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, Part 1, Section 6

“Through sexual union, couples strengthen their marital relationship and participate in a special way in God’s creation of new life… Sexuality, then, is not merely a matter of biology, nor is it simply a source of personal pleasure. Rather, it concerns, as Pope John Paul II reminds us, in the Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, ‘the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death’ (FC 11). Spouses are called to celebrate their conjugal love by becoming one flesh in the Lord, and to see their sexual intimacy in the context of God’s creative role and the nature of marriage itself.” USCCB on the 25th anniversary of Humane Vitae.

“A person’s rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object of use. In a sense it can be said that love is a requirement of justice, just as using a person as a means you an end would conflict with justice. In fact to order of justice is more fundamental than the order of love—and in a sense the first embraces the second inasmuch as love can be a requirement of justice.” Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (42)

“However, mere pleasure, mere sexual enjoyment is not a good which binds and unites people for long, as Aristotle has most justly observed. A woman and a man, if their ‘mutual love’ depends merely on pleasure or self interest, will be tied to each other just as long as they remain a source of pleasure or profit for each other. The moment this comes to an end, the real reason for their ‘love’ will also end, the illusion or reciprocity will burst like a bubble.” Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (88)

“The traditional Catholic doctrine that masturbation constitutes a grave moral disorder is often called into doubt or expressly denied today. It is said that psychology and sociology show that it is a normal phenomenon of sexual development, especially among the young. It is stated that there is real and serious fault only in the measure that the subject deliberately indulges in solitary pleasure closed in on self (‘ipsation’), because in this case the act would be radically opposed to the loving communion between persons of different sex which some hold is what is principally sought in the use of sexual faculty.

"This opinion is contradictory to the teaching and pastoral practice of the Catholic Church. Whatever the force or certain arguments of a biological and philosophical nature, which have sometimes been used by theologians, in fact both the Magisterium of the Church—in the course of a constant tradition—and the moral sense of the faithful have declared without hesitation that masturbation is and intrinsically and seriously disordered act. The main reason is that, whatever the motive for acting in this way, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes ‘the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.’ All deliberate exercise of sexuality must be reserved to this regular relationship. Even if it cannot be proved that Scripture condemns this sin by name, the tradition of the Church has rightly understood it to be condemned in the New Testament when the latter speaks of ‘impurity,’ ‘unchasteness’ and other vices contrary to chastity and continence.

"In the pastoral ministry, in order to form an adequate judgment in concrete cases, the habitual behavior of people will be considered in its totality, not only with regard to the individual’s practice of charity and of justice but also with regard to the individual’s care in observing the particular precepts of chastity. In particular, one will have to examine whether the individual is using the necessary means, both natural and supernatural, which Christian asceticism from its long experience recommends for overcoming the passions and progressing in virtue.” Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Sexual Ethics (1976), 9-10.