January 24. 2006 6:59AM, South Bend Tribune
ND opens dialogue on events suited to Catholic campus
Jenkins weighs whether Queer Film fest, 'Monologues' are appropriate.
MARGARET FOSMOE
Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND -- The University of Notre Dame's president is considering whether "The Vagina Monologues," the Queer Film Festival and similar events should be allowed on campus.
The Rev. John I. Jenkins, who became president last July, on Monday launched a discussion designed to determine whether he will establish boundaries regarding events that some people consider to be at odds with Notre Dame's Catholic character.
In an address to faculty, Jenkins said he is exploring whether he needs to establish boundaries on what is permissible.
"While any restriction on expression must be reluctant and restrained, I believe that, in some situations, given the distinctive character and aspirations of Notre Dame, it may be necessary to establish certain boundaries, while defending the appropriate exercise of academic freedom," Jenkins said.
Jenkins, who will present a similar speech today to students, is seeking input from students, faculty and alumni.
In his address, Jenkins drew a distinction between the academic freedom granted individual professors or students and that accorded group sponsorship of events, such as academic departments that sponsor artistic events.
"My concern is not with censorship, but with sponsorship," Jenkins said. Sponsorship of events by university departments may suggest to the larger community acceptance by the university, he said.
For example, if Notre Dame sponsored an anti-Semitic play, it would appear that the university endorses or at least acquiesces to anti-Semitism, he said.
"The Vagina Monologues" has been performed on campus for four years. The play will be performed on campus again this year, but in a classroom setting, Jenkins said. "There will not be fundraising activities as occurred in previous years, through the selling of tickets and an auction," he said.
"The Vagina Monologues" is a theatrical production that deals frankly with women's views on their bodies and sexuality. In past years, the money raised at the campus production was donated to the YWCA of St. Joseph County and S-O-S of Madison Center.
Jenkins said the organizers have laudable goals, such as encouraging discussion of the gift of sexuality and raising money for community groups.
The president vowed to work with students to advance ways to eliminate violence against women. "I have difficulty seeing, however, how the annual performance of 'The Vagina Monologues' is the appropriate means to these ends," he said.
Last year, playwright and "Vagina Monologues" creator Eve Ensler visited and spoke on campus. Her visit drew protests by conservative students and groups. Bishop John M. D'Arcy of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend publicly criticized Notre Dame for permitting the Queer Film Festival and "The Vagina Monologues" on campus.
The film festival was founded in 2004. Showing films and hosting panel discussions of gay-related themes, the festival -- renamed the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival -- is scheduled for Feb. 9-12 this year. Among films to be shown are "Brokeback Mountain" and "Gay Republicans."
Jenkins may have struck an academic nerve with faculty.
In a question-and-answer session afterward, there were references to McCarthyism and other historical efforts to stifle free speech.
Margot O'Brien, an instructor in the accountancy department, praised Jenkins for his action. "The Vagina Monologues" treats women as sexual objects and degrades them, she said. It's not a matter of academic freedom, she said. "It's a matter of treating something that is evil as good, and that's just wrong," she said.
Other faculty questioned Jenkins' approach.
"One thing we are forgetting about 'The Vagina Monologues' is that it's a piece that was chosen by the students," said Emily Phillips, a film, television and theater professor. Taking it away takes away the voice of the students, she said.
"It's a very viable, very powerful and very effective play that speaks directly to what happens to women," she said.
Jean Porter, a theology professor, questioned Jenkins' distinction between academic freedom for individual professors vs. departmental sponsorship of events. "Much of our scholarship and academic life is carried out collectively," she said.
English professor Margaret Doody noted that Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice," will be performed on campus in February by Actors from the London Stage. The character of Shylock traditionally has been considered an anti-Semitic stereotype, she noted.
"The Merchant of Venice" is a play that was greatly admired by Adolf Hitler and which many Jews find deeply anti-Semitic, said Peter Holland, a professor of Shakespeare studies and chair of the film, television and theater department. But he doesn't think the play should be canceled.
"The university is a place for intellectual discussion," Holland said. "That's why works we disagree with should be performed, read and discussed."
According to this story, "the Vatican" (I'm never quite sure who that means) has responded to the violent reaction in some quarters of Islam to the Danish anti-Muslim cartoons with this:
The Vatican deplored the violence, but said: "The right to freedom of thought and expression . . . cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
In response, Eugene Volokh, who has a long post up, called "The Catholic Church and Free Expression," writes:
The Church (I'm not speaking of individual Catholics, just the church hierarchy, or at least its authoritative voices), still seems not to have accepted free expression about religion, or for that matter religious freedom.
He quotes the following from a Reuters story:
The Vatican on Saturday condemned the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad which have outraged the Muslim world, saying freedom of speech did not mean freedom to offend a person's religion.
"The freedom of thought and expression, confirmed in the Declaration of Human Rights, can not include the right to offend religious feelings of the faithful. That principle obviously applies to any religion," the Vatican said.
"Any form of excessive criticism or derision of others denotes a lack of human sensitivity and can in some cases constitute an unacceptable provocation," it said in a statement issued in response to media demands for the Church's opinion.
Then, Volokh continues:
This is not just an admonition about what's right, decent, productive, or in good taste -- rather, it's a claim that the law ought to have a relatively free hand in restricting speech that "offend[s] religious feelings of the faithful," which apparently includes some unstated amount of "excessive criticism or derision of others" that "denotes a lack of human sensitivity." May we still publish the works of Martin Luther? How about of Christopher Hitchens? The Last Temptation of Christ? . . .
This is not a marginal issue; it is at the core of the rights of free speech and religious freedom. Under the position the Vatican sets forth, large zones of religious debate, political debate, and art would be outlawed. . . .
I really hope this "Vatican" quote is inaccurate, or taken out of context, or an outlier. Surely it cannot be the case that the Pope means to instruct Catholics that we should support using law to censor things that "offend" our "religious sentiment" -- or the "religious sentiment[s]" of those who are, or certainly appear to be, very easily offended? (Obviously, as Volokh points out, to say that offensive speech should not be censored is not to say that it should not be criticized.)
UPDATE: Jody Bottum, at the First Things blog, has this to say about the reaction of the "Vatican":
Despite the murder of a Catholic priest in Turkey, apparently because of these cartoons, the Vatican issued a statement in which obtuseness seemed caught in a death struggle with inanity—and for much the same reason: It’s not nice to tease our backward brothers, or hold them to the same standards we might hold Danish newspaper editors.
In response to my request for help (here), I received several helpful responses (for which I and my student are very grateful). If anyone out there is interested in having the bibliographic information I've received--about the Doctrine of Double Effect, especially in connection with abortion, and/or about Church statements on abortion--just give a holler: [email protected]
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Jeff Rosen's piece, "Is Ritual Circumcision Religious Expression?", is worth checking out. He discusses "a male-circumcision ritual practiced by some Hasidic Jews in New York. The ritual is called oral suction, or metzitzah b'peh. After removing the foreskin, the mohel, who conducts the circumcision, cleans the wound by sucking blood from it." After noting the conflicts that so often arise in the accommodation-of-religion arena, but also the tendency in some other countries to insist on the imposition of "inflexible" public (secular) norms, he writes:
Ultimately, the American compromise depends on a delicate series of judgments about when, precisely, private religious expression imposes harms on unconsenting and innocent third parties. Courts have held that Jehovah's Witnesses may not deprive their children of blood transfusions. But should the city of Newark be able to prohibit all police officers — including practicing Muslims — from wearing beards in order to foster a uniform appearance on the job? In a 1999 ruling, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. sided with the Muslim officers. Since Newark allowed police officers not to shave for medical reasons (typically if they had a skin condition), Alito said that it was discriminatory not to make an exception for those whose religion required them to wear beards. Alito stressed, however, that states can refuse to accommodate religious minorities in the interest of promoting public health, as long as they treat religious and secular citizens equally.
This Solomonic ruling makes sense, as far as it goes, but it doesn't tell us how deferential Alito will be to religious practices in other cases. The most prominent American conservative scholar of religious liberty, Judge Michael McConnell, agrees that noncoercive religious expressions, like yarmulkes worn by Jewish soldiers, should be accommodated. But he emphasizes that public prayer in schools, which coerces nonbelievers to pray, should be banned. By contrast, Justice Antonin Scalia, who generally opposes religious accommodations, supports prayer in schools because he says that the state needn't be neutral between religion and secularism. Let's hope that Justice Alito, whatever his views on Orthodox circumcision rituals, doesn't go that far. The beards of Muslim police officers should indeed be protected, but not as a cautious first step toward the goal of creating an openly religious state.
I really like Rosen's work, and agree with much of what he says in this piece. That said, I'm not sure it is right to say that Justice Scalia "generally opposes religious accommodations." True, he does not believe that they are often required by the Constitution, but he has also and often made it clear that accommodations of religious are both permissible and sound.
As a followup to Rob's post below, read this:
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Bono Unplugged
February 3, 2006 Episode no. 923
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week923/exclusive.html
by Kim Lawton
After Irish rock star Bono's address to the National Prayer Breakfast
on Thursday (Feb. 2), I was one of eight journalists invited to sit
down with him for a private "on the record" conversation. All cameras
and recording devices were prohibited, for reasons that were never made
entirely clear. This makes reporting on the conversation particularly
challenging for a television reporter.
We sat in a circle while Bono drank coffee and snacked on a makeshift
breakfast that he hadn't had a chance to eat at the prayer breakfast
head table. He was wearing his trademark rosy-tinted wraparound
sunglasses, a half-buttoned black shirt, and purple socks.
The singer was still bemused about being selected as the keynote
speaker for the annual gathering of nearly 4,000 politicians, foreign
dignitaries, and religious leaders. After all, the breakfast is
organized by an evangelical foundation, and Bono is the man who was
chastised by the FCC for uttering the F-word during the nationally
televised Golden Globe Awards in 2003.
He joked about the incongruities during his speech, suggesting that he
must have been invited because of his "messianic complex" -- a digging
reference to media headlines about his efforts to "save the world."
But it was his campaign against global poverty and AIDS that brought
him to the event, along with the fact that he has made this effort a
deeply personal moral and spiritual crusade.
Bono says he sees faith-based groups as "a vital component" to his
work. "The church is a much bigger crowd even than the stadiums we play
in as U2," he told us. And he's been energized by the religious
response, particularly from evangelical churches that he says were
initially "slow" to jump on board.
"There's something going on," he said with visible enthusiasm, calling
it a movement "with heat." He added, "The church is leading, and it's
amazing."
Bono's message to the prayer breakfast was a plea for more aid to fight
famine, poverty, and disease, particularly in Africa. He urged support
for the One Campaign, whose goal is to see the U.S. allocate an
additional one percent of the federal budget to the world's poor.
Bono called it a "tithe," and he couched his call in religious terms
that he spoke with an obvious passion. In his speech, and in our
meeting afterward, he impressively quoted large passages of Scripture
off the top of his head. Throughout our conversation, he spoke about
God's concern for the poor and biblical calls for justice. He came
across as intelligent and informed, easily reeling off statistics and
the details of arcane international trade policy. Earnest, not
posturing.
But I was most fascinated by new glimpses of Bono's own spiritual
journey. He admitted to us that this week's speech was his most
explicitly religious public expression. "I try to keep it to my private
life," he said, joking that he would probably reap a "loss of album
sales" from his more secular fans.
In his speech, he described growing up in Ireland with a Protestant
father and a Catholic mother. Organized religion, he said, too often
got "in the way of God." He referred to himself as a "believer," and
"an Irish half-Catholic."
In our later meeting, he said in the last 10 years he's really engaged
with Scripture. He told us he reads THE MESSAGE, a translation of the
Bible popular with evangelicals that was compiled by an American
mainline pastor, Eugene Peterson, whom Bono called "a gifted scholar
and poet." Bono said lately he's been struck by Isaiah 58, and
particularly verse 8, which in several translations says if you help
the poor, the Lord will be "your rearguard." Bono told us, "God will
watch your back. I love the street aspect of that." Then he quietly
added, "And it's really been true in my own life."
He acknowledged his sometimes rocky relationship with conservative
Christians, who have been wary of some of his rock star antics, his
liberal use of obscenities, and his tolerance of gays. Although many of
his lyrics have been laced with Christian imagery and symbolism, he
appears stung by some criticism that it's not "Christian" enough.
"I'm asked, 'Why doesn't your music proclaim Christ?'" he said. His
answer: "It does." He went on, describing how he believes the Bible's
assertions that "creation has its own proclamation" of God. "I'd like
to think our music had the same qualities to it," he said.
Asked about his own past criticism of contemporary gospel music, Bono
admitted he was referring to what he saw as "happy clappy" songs that
lacked "grit." He said such music doesn't mean anything to him "without
a truth telling of where you are and where you live in your life." But
he was quick to add that he has recently built new friendships with
several evangelical musicians who have joined his advocacy campaign.
And he was also quick to draw a distinction between contemporary gospel
music and worship music, something he said he loves very much. He said
some of his favorite music includes hymns by Charles Wesley, Handel's
"Messiah," and Jewish liturgical chanting.
With spontaneous eloquence, he said being a worship leader must be "the
highest of all art forms, to worship and call people into the presence
of God."
Clearly aware of the ironies of his new faith-based campaign, Bono
admitted, "If me 10 years ago would have heard me say what I said
today, I wouldn't believe me."
Bono spent nearly 45 minutes with us and loosened up a lot as the
conversation went on. He would have kept going, but his handlers cut
the session off. He was thoughtful and candid, a performer who didn't
appear to be performing. And he was enormously compelling, especially
when he described the people he has met in his travels in Africa who
put real "flesh and bones" on the purpose of his campaign.
All the more reason it was so frustrating not to have it all on videotape.
Kim Lawton is the managing editor of RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY.
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