Originally published Nov. 18, 2004
FORDHAM - For three years, Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" was performed at FCLC without incident. But on V-Day 2004, the "Monologues" were never performed. What changed?
Dean of Students at FCLC Christopher Rodgers told The Observer in October that the university's Office of Public Affairs received upwards of 1,000 letters protesting the scheduled production and asking the university to re-consider allowing it to continue. Rodgers said that he took these letters as a clue that he should re-evaluate whether or not the "Monologues" were appropriate at Lincoln Center.
This influx of letters came shortly after the Cardinal Newman Society placed an advertisement in USA Today, The Washington Times and the National Catholic Register protesting the "Monologues" as a "vulgar and sexually explicit play."
The Cardinal Newman Society, whose founder and president is Patrick J. Reilly, FCRH '91, is an organization which on its Web site (cardinalnewmansociety.org) describes itself as a "national organization dedicated to the renewal of Catholic higher education in the United States."
The mission of the Newman Society is to "promote discussion and understanding of the message of the Catholic Church concerning the nature and value of higher education."
In the case of "The Vagina Monologues," the Society made particular objection to the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" citing it as a statutory rape of a 16-year-old by an older lesbian. The advertisement encouraged concerned parties to contact the presidents of the 30 Catholic institutions that had scheduled performances, and included their e-mail addresses.
Although Rodgers also opposed the inclusion of the "Coochie Snorcher" monologue, he said that the objection of the Newman Society was not a determining factor. However, Anahid Kassabian, associate professor of communication and media studies and women's studies who is familiar with the Society, believes that the connection between the influx of letters and the fact that the "Monologues" was not performed this year is real. "Can it be simple coincidence," she speculated, "that the first year Student Activities decided to require the removal of the 'Coochie Snorcher' monologue is the year that the Cardinal Newman Society released its first report on the problem of the 'Monologues' at Catholic colleges and universities? That seems unlikely."
According to Elizabeth Schmalz, assistant vice president for public affairs at Fordham, "The actions or advice of the Newman Society do not influence the operations of Fordham University in this or other matters." Schmalz added that the Newman Society "has no standing at all within the world of American Catholic higher education."
"The Vagina Monologues" campaign is not the only initiative launched by the Newman Society, and as Reilly said, they will continue to call such issues to universities' attention in the future. In addition to naming the Catholic colleges that had scheduled performances of the "Monologues," the organization has also singled out and protested invitations by Catholic colleges to guest speakers who have pro-choice records, the presence of links from university homepages to Web sites offering contraception advice, the existence of student clubs that focus on gay and lesbian rights, and sex columns in college newspapers.
Many of the issues the Society critiques today are similar to those that Reilly told The Observer he was aware of while he was an undergraduate at Rose Hill. During his senior year, students started a pro-choice club on campus, which distributed literature from Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). "On the steam of the pro-choice club," Reilly recalled, Fordham Lesbians and Gays (FLAG) also became a recognized student club. Reilly, then editor of The Ram, felt that the university's Catholic identity was being challenged by these groups, and, in response, published several op-ed pieces protesting the clubs and organized an ad-hoc group on campus to encourage the university to reconsider the clubs' existence.
Later in Reilly's senior year, it was announced that the commencement speaker would be Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund who had been involved in setting up campus-based Planned Parenthood clinics. In response, Reilly's ad-hoc group sent letters to the parents of the graduating class encouraging them to contact the university if they also found Edelman's presence on campus troublesome. Reilly added that the university president's office received an influx of phone calls in the following weeks.
Reilly credits the issues he first encountered while at Fordham with his current involvement in issues of Catholic identity on college campuses and with the eventual inception of the Cardinal Newman Society in 1993.
The Rev. Joseph A. O'Hare, S.J., former president of Fordham, who knew Reilly as an undergraduate, does not fault the intentions of the Newman Society, but he does fault its actions. "Some of the tactics they use are unfortunate because it's like witch hunting; they scour the list of commencement speakers to make sure every speaker is politically correct-that is to say that they have the right view on abortion or one or two other litmus tests which I think are rather narrow in their view of what the Catholic tradition and the Catholic church are about."
Most recently, the Newman Society has also targeted what Reilly called the "problem" of liberal bias on Catholic campuses. On Oct. 21, a special report published on the Society Web site catalogued the contributions made to the Democratic Party by employees of Catholic universities. In a phone interview, Reilly said that such campaign donations are inconsistent with Catholic teaching on abortion issues. Some members of the Fordham community, though, see the study's intentions differently.
The study showed that employees at the ten largest Catholic institutions by student enrollment, six of them Jesuit, donated $196,025 to Senator John Kerry's campaign compared to $21,200 donated to President George W. Bush's. The report used Federal Exchange Commission data to list the names of the employees at each college who donated and the amount of each donation. At Fordham, employees donated $19,460 to the Democrats and $4,000 to the Republicans.
"The point of releasing that," Reilly explained, "was it was another example of the extent to which there is such a clear bias in Catholic colleges that doesn't seem in many ways to be consistent with Catholic teaching."
Among those listed was Thomas S. DeLuca, Jr., associate professor of political science, who donated to the Democrats. "This is a transparent effort by the Newman Society to chill our political speech and association, and also our academic freedom by making us afraid," DeLuca said. "That effort has failed with me. Tactics such as this one employed by the Newman Society will have no effect on how I participate in politics and what I write, teach or think about. Not now. Not ever."
Susan Beck, associate professor of political science and a Democratic donor, was also among those listed and sees the attack as an effort to stifle freedom of expression. "In exercising free speech," Beck said, "the Cardinal Newman Society attacks the right of others to exercise free speech. At the very least they are trying to constrain the speech of others, which is certainly not consistent with the Jesuit tradition."
Reilly said that he is not attempting to stifle freedom of speech. "The church as a whole has always been perhaps the greatest defender in society...of freedom-of freedom of conscience, of political freedom, of the right of people to believe and say what they want," he said. "In academia, it's very important to have free discussion, and if someone believes something they should be able to say it. However, there's also the issue of being a Catholic institution, and having the Catholic understanding that there are certain issues-certain truths-that we know as Catholics that are not agreed upon elsewhere.
"Freedom of conscience does not mean...a general freedom to always oppose fundamental Catholic teachings and especially to use a faculty or administrative position [in a university] to do that," Reilly continued.
James R. Kelly, professor of sociology, contributor to the national Catholic monthly, America Magazine and a member of the recent panel discussion, "Religion and the Future of Liberal Politics," does not believe that employee donations can be interpreted as support of abortion rights but as support for the Democratic Party's larger mission. "Seems to me that the economic policies of the Democratic Party-greater interest in government programs for the poor, increasing the minimum wage, a more progressive tax policy etc.-are in line with the encyclical tradition of Roman Catholicism...and certainly have a place at a Catholic University.
"I thought Patrick Reilly's inspection of political deductions rather unseemly," Kelly continued. "How does he know a donor's motivations for Kerry donations? Perhaps, like John Paul II, he or she thought this was a way of ending the killing in Iraq."
O'Hare also cites the war in Iraq as a valid reason to have supported Kerry. "If the people in the Vatican had a chance to vote," he speculates, "they would have voted for Kerry, because they share the European disagreement with the policies of President Bush."
Reilly said that the report does not assume that the primary reason for the donations was support for abortion rights. He did say, however, that it was an indicator of the way the faculties are leaning, and should be "taken into consideration."
But should political leanings be part of the hiring process? "Does someone's vote or financial support for a candidate directly impact whether they should be hired at a Catholic institution?" Reilly questioned. "I think it's a factor." He continued to say that his report was not necessarily saying that faculty who donate to Democrats are not fit to teach at a Catholic institution.
FCLC faculty members, though, feel that any demand from the Newman Society that they follow Catholic teaching to the letter is unacceptable. "We are not all Catholic," said Kassabian, "and nothing about the hiring process suggests that we have to live our lives according to the dictates of the majority of Catholic Americans, much less to the Church, or to the university's interpretation of church teachings.
"It is a fundamental principle of education that faculty have a certain kind of academic freedom that makes our work possible, and the Newman Society's homepage is suggesting a litmus test for that that has never been heard of before."
O'Hare also believes that a university should first and foremost be a forum for open expression. "It is very bad for a Catholic university to narrow in a very rigid way the scope of acceptable conversations in a university," he said. "Catholics should have enough confidence in their tradition to accept the discussion of competing views."
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