Notre Dame President Approves Filthy Play

The reasons?

In a Monday press release, Father Jenkins wrote, “I am well aware that the performance of this play will upset many.” He said it was “particularly painful” for him that Bishop of South Bend-Fort Wayne John D’Arcy and many Notre Dame alumni disapproved of the decision.

“At the same time,” he said, “others are upset at the restrictions on this performance-that there will be no fund-raising, that a panel must follow each play and include a sympathetic and thorough presentation of Catholic teaching.”

“My decision on this matter,” Father Jenkins said, “arises from a conviction that it is an indispensable part of the mission of a Catholic university to provide a forum in which multiple viewpoints are debated in reasoned and respectful exchange–always in dialogue with faith and the Catholic tradition–even around highly controversial topics. Notre Dame’s policy on controversial events rests on the conviction that truth will emerge from reasoned consideration of issues in dialogue with faith, and that we will educate Catholic leaders not by insulating our students from controversial views, but by engaging these views energetically, in light of Catholic teachings.” [Full Story]

Would Father Jenkins allow on Notre Dame’s campus a play which would…

  • …portray the bombing of abortion clinics in a positive light… or
  • …encourage students to murder professors… or
  • …incite students to civil disobedience of child labor laws… or
  • …advocate the legal sanction of African servitude… or
  • …present students – especially depressed ones – with a seductively alluring presentation on the merits of suicide as a way end their suffering …

…as long as each is followed by a sympathetic and thorough presentation of Catholic teaching?

I doubt it. With the exception of the last, none of these items on my list entail the kind of real temptations to commit mortal sin that college students commonly wrestle with (unless college has changed that much since my graduation). Sins against purity, however, are pandemic and their temptations are far more real. If ND’s prez were thinking as a Catholic priest who regularly hears confessions and tries to reconcile struggling and fallen young people to their God, he would not countenance this filth for a second.

Who, by the way, will make the sympathetic and thorough presentation of Catholic teaching, Notre Dame’s own Father Richard McBrien?