New Orleans, La., Feb 17, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Loyola University students staged the "The Vagina Monologues" this week, drawing public rebuke from Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans.
In a written statement Wednesday, Archbishop Hughes said the play is "contrary to sound Catholic teaching and does not advance the important questions about women, human sexuality, violence against women and the common good, which it proposes to address." Last year, the Jesuit school’s interim president prevented the staging.
The current president, Fr. Kevin Wildes, recognized the controversy surrounding the work and the fact that its language may offend some people, however, he commended the play for raising important issues, "particularly about sexual violence toward women."
He said in a letter Monday that the university was not endorsing everything in the play, but the play “has provoked a good deal of conversation among women and has helped them to name the dehumanizing attitudes and behaviors which reduce them to secular objects.”