A Boston College blogger reports that the Jesuit university held a panel discussion on the “V Monologues” this year at which, they report, a faculty member said the play is “so holy that it should be shown on Good Friday.”
Now that faculty member, theology professor John McDargh, defends the Monologues and denies saying what he’s quoted as saying.
The critiques of the play braced me for a production that might be shocking or offensive. They did not prepare me for what I personally experienced as perhaps the most moving and memorable evening of theater in my 25 years at Boston College. Nor was I prepared to find the play as I did then, and did again last Friday, to be deeply meaningful, and indeed, to use a perhaps old fashioned word, edifying.
I have spent two years trying to understand what it is about the play that, for me at least makes it so powerfully, religiously evocative.
[…]Finally, though my sole Lenten reference was to Ash Wednesday, and not Good Friday as reported, I must say that no Christian can listen to the stories of the Bosnian survivor of gang rape, or the elderly Korean women who survived their sexual torture as “comfort women” - and not think that these are very parables of the kind of innocent suffering and shaming with which God shows radical solidarity in the life, passion and death of Jesus. So perhaps The Observer in misreporting is wise after all, if unintentionally. Perhaps indeed we might consider meditating upon those passages during the week we call Holy.
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Between Barely Catholic and the rest of these “University in the Catholic Tradition,” where does the buck stop? Who do we talk to about getting these facilities to straighten up and fly right? Is there such a person, and why has he been asleep at the switch so long?
At this point, one might be sorely tempted to sue these institutions of greater stupidity for false advertising. They’re claiming to be Catholic and they’re no such thing.
Sadly, the tag for McDargh (“Gay Episcopal Theologian”) is at the same time redundant (Gay Episcopal) and oxymoronic (both Gay theologian, Episcopal theologian).
Cardinal Newman, pray for us.
Gee, I guess I really missed the boat—I wasn’t aware the reason people were against the V Monologues was because the play highlighted the horrors of rape, forced prostitution and other degradations of women. Really—I didn’t know only the proponents of this play cared about such issues. What a shock!
A few years ago my son started attending B.C.
But as his freshman year progressed, he became more and more disillusioned. Especially upsetting for him was to get a pro-abortion harangue in one class. This hit him hard for his younger brother fit many of the criteria that abortion promoters give as justification for abortion. He apparently had a hard time keeping himself from loudly haranguing back. But as a straight A student he had learned long ago that the only way to even survive in some classes is to kiss professorial butt. So at the end of his first semester-even though he had high marks and a partial scholarship—he couldn’t get out of BC fast enough. Consequently my family has first hand experience of what a fraud BC is as a Catholic school.
A few years ago, Holy Cross in Worcester, MA did the V’s on Ash Wednesday. I guess Good Friday would only be the next logical regression.
John McDargh’s same-sex “marriage” to Tim Dunn at St. Paul’s Episcopal church was featured in a MassEquality article:“Equality matters to real people like John McDargh”. McDargh’s job as a Theologian at Boston College was highlighted by Bay Windows’ writer Laura Kiritsy as she described his mission to promote change in the environment at Boston College by establishing the “Lesbian, Gay Faculty , Staff, and Administrators Association”(LGFSAA) in the Bay Windows issue of June 3,2004:“BC faculty band together to promote change”.
McDargh is also actively involved in the “Task Force on the Blessing of Holy Union” for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts” and in the Jewish Keshet “programming promoting gay advocacy in the Jewish community”. These facts can be found on the Google search on his name.
The Boston Archdiocesan newspaper,The Pilot, had run an ad for Thomas Groome’s “Boston College Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry” in which John McDargh was featured among the teachers in Session Two:July 9-July 20 of 2007.(Pilot,2/2/07,p.8).
I wrote to the Pilot editor to ask if he was aware of John McDargh’s activities in support of same-sex sex and same-sex marriage. I asked if the Pilot intended to enable John McDargh’s teaching by accepting this ad which included John McDargh’s teaching. I have not received a reply yet. But certainly Thomas Groome is well aware of John McDargh’s advocacy activities for dissenting against the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Why is McDargh included?
I may have offered this comment before, but I recall passing a campus tour of BC a few years ago, when one of the tour-group asked, “How Catholic is Boston College?” The helpful admissions office guide responded, “Oh, it’s as Catholic as you want it to be.” Perhaps they should translate that into Latin and put it on the crest.
Alice, McDargh is included probably because Groome is in agreement with him. Do a google search on Groome. Even moderate heretics here at BC think that Groome has gone too far.
Rosberry, that’s the standard line. However, my friend was told on Georgetown’s tour, “We are really ashamed of our Catholic heritage. Sorry about it. Don’t pay attention. It will be gone soon enough.” At least BC isn’t THAT far out there…
Change is coming.
I spoke to a recent bc graduate in the priesthood. He said his vocation was fired up and fostered by the philosophy dept. Not a word about the theology dept.
jack, that would mesh with the observation by Fr. Neuhaus that one can more easily find orthodoxy in the philosophy department at any Catholic college than in their theology department. One probably has to guess that at the very least the professional pressures to appear “forward thinking” and avante garde have some small amount to do with it. For those, at least, who didn’t start that way that is.
The philosphy department at BC…Dr Peter Kreeft, enough said (although I’m sure there are others in the department as theologically sound as Dr Kreeft).