For the sixth consecutive year, the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) has launched its nationwide protest of Catholic campus performances of The Vagina Monologues, a sexually explicit and offensive play that favorably describes lesbian rape, group masturbation, and the reduction of sexuality to selfish pleasure.

In addition to the annual protest, CNS is urging Catholic college students to sponsor competing programs, including lectures, prayer events, movies and other activities with Saint Valentine's Day themes that support women's dignity, chastity and true romance.  Students have been offered advice and financial support for such programs.  For instance, CNS is proud to financially support the Edith Stein Project (www.edithsteinproject.org) at the University of Notre Dame, a two-day conference on February 23-24 addressing themes of women's dignity consistent with Catholic teaching.
 
V-Day — (www.vday.org) the national organization promoting the play — has announced performances at 26 Catholic colleges and universities during February and March, but already officials of three of those colleges have assured CNS that the play will not occur.  One other Catholic college has been removed from the V-Day list without explanation.
 
That leaves 22 Catholic colleges and universities expected to host the play this year.  In previous years the CNS protest yielded a significant decline in Monologues performances: from 32 in 2003 to 22 last year.  But faculty and student supporters of the play have dug in their heels at colleges including the University of Notre Dame, which has earned an annual public scolding from Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort-Wayne-South Bend for hosting a play that is "offensive to women" and "antithetical to Catholic teaching."  
 
Last year Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., rallied alumni and faithful Catholics worldwide to his side when he announced his opposition to the Monologues—which he decried for its "graphic descriptions of homosexual, extramarital heterosexual and autoerotic experiences"—but later alienated the same Catholics by bowing to activists' pressure and allowing the play to be performed.
 
"You must know that in taking this decision you have brought most joy to those who care least about Notre Dame's Catholic mission," wrote fellow Holy Cross Father Bill Miscamble in an open letter to Jenkins.  "…By your decision you move us further along the dangerous path where we ape our secular peers and take all our signals from them."
 
CNS has contacted the president of each college by mail with a plea to prevent the Monologues performances.  Each president and their local bishop were also provided copies of the play, statements opposing the play from Bishop D'Arcy and Providence College president Rev. Brian Shanley, O.P., and citations from various official Catholic sources.
 
Officials at the College of St. Catherine in Minnesota, St John's University in New York, and Providence College in Rhode Island thanked CNS for informing them of V-Day's announced plans for 2007 and assured CNS that the play would not be performed.  Several bishops also have pledged to contact the colleges in their dioceses.
 
CNS is calling on its more than 20,000 members and other Catholics to convey their concerns about the Monologues to college presidents.  In past years, some colleges reported being flooded with e-mails and other communications protesting the play.
 
"This play describes the adult seduction of a minor to be the victim's 'salvation' that lifts her into 'a kind of heaven,' said CNS President Patrick J. Reilly. "There is an obvious parallel to the clergy sex-abuse scandal here, and it is shocking that any Catholic educators are sanctioning its performance."
 
The Cardinal Newman Society is a national organization working to renew and strengthen Catholic identity at Catholic colleges and universities.  For more information on the Monologues visit the CNS Campaign to Stop the V-Monologues 2007 page.