First off, Catholic News Service, has sort of surprisingly, run a story on the controversy. The fact that they’ve run it is surprising (considering that CNS does not really seem to like to admit that conflict exists with the Church in the US), but the author is not – Ann Carey, who’s written quite a bit on matters such as this, often printed in OSV.

Secondly, I’m running a short piece written by Daniel McInerny, Associate Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. It was penned as a letter to the editor, but it find its way to print – so – enjoy!

In attempting to elucidate the Catholic understanding of academic inquiry, Professor Christian Moevs in yesterday’s Observer, one of Notre Dame’s undergraduate newspapers, invoked the example of Dante’s Divine Comedy. “The Catholic university,” he wrote, “must be like Dante’s Comedy: the pilgrim has to look at everything, touch every possible facet of human behavior and experience, in his own journey toward understanding and divine love. Dante doesn’t edit, filter, suppress, limit, silence. There is nothing he cannot confront, nothing he does not force his readers to confront, no matter how debased or vulgar or antithetical to all value.”

Professor Moevs is at least right in this: Dante’s Comedy serves as a beautiful image of inquiry. But for all Professor Moevs’ concern about the need for truth to encounter the world, and for the world to encounter the truth, he fails to adequately appreciate our need to be extensively formed in the truth. For what we should learn from Dante is that our encounter with “every possible facet of human behavior and experience” can only successfully lead to truth if it is undertaken with a divinely-appointed guide, a guide who will tell us the difference between the path that leads only to the dark wood, and the path that leads to Paradise; who will tell us that certain facets of human behavior and experience, however alluring their surface features may be, are in fact a hellish servitude. It is true, in their journey through Hell Virgil does not for Dante edit, filter, suppress, limit or silence any of the debased or vulgar scenes the two encounter. Virgil demands that Dante experience them in full—but only so that Dante can see them as debasements of what is properly human. For such knowledge, Dante must learn, is the only way to mature in the freedom of the children of God.

Academic inquiry within the Catholic university must be a similarly guided tour, with a divinely-appointed tour guide. The consummate tour guide, of course, is the magisterium of the Church. The Church’s rich teachings on human sexuality, for example, as Bishop D’Arcy underscored last week, must be allowed to serve as the guide to every inquiry on campus—whether theoretical or dramatic—into the truth of human sexuality. These teachings are our wise Virgil, clarifying actions and attitudes that, while seemingly free and fulfilling, actually lead us astray from the true path to freedom and happiness. And when we are wounded, it is the Church, our loving Mother, who picks us up and who offers us the only truly satisfying source of healing and love.

The guidance of the Church’s teaching at a Catholic university must be vigorous and pervasive. Suffused with love, it must permeate every facet of campus life. After all, the Church’s teaching is the Truth, the most essential of all the truths that human beings desire. Thus the Church, and by extension the Catholic university representing the Church, is in the best position to tell us when a certain understanding of human sexuality cannot safely guide us, when it is in fact a debasement of human dignity and inappropriate for dramatic representation, whether on stage or on screen. This is the kind of guidance that Bishop D’Arcy provided for us in his statement last week. In essence he taught us a lesson akin to the one Dante has to learn when he encounters the adulterous lovers, Paolo and Francesca, in Canto V of the Inferno: namely, that some understandings of love, however appealing they might seem, are so fundamentally disordered that they destroy our happiness.

Professor Moevs declares that the truth is strong enough to withstand any encounter with the world. And so it is. But we human beings who search for truth are not so impermeable. We are vulnerable creatures, prone to ignorance, confusion, misdirected passion, and indeed sin. We do not always see our way clearly. We sometimes find ourselves lost in the dark wood. This is precisely why we need a Virgil—or better, a Beatrice. This is why we need the Church to set the boundaries of our search for truth. It is interesting to note here the occasion of Paolo and Francesca’s act of adultery. They were reading aloud together the romance of Lancelot du Lac, and at a particularly spicy bit, one thing led to another. Clearly, besides the awful consequences of misdirected love, what Dante learns from meeting Paolo and Francesca is that certain kinds of dramatic representations are fraught with moral dangers. When it comes to the dramatic performances we have lately been discussing, the Church has been trying to teach us the same thing.

Professor Moevs is also adamant that every facet of human behavior and experience be given a chance to engage Catholic teaching. If his wish is for the culture to be allowed to benefit from the treasures of our Catholic intellectual and moral heritage, then his wish is to be commended. But the best way for the culture to benefit from the resources of a Catholic university is for that university to be Catholic in every dimension of its being. For who would respect the beliefs of an institution if that institution did not boldly and attractively embody its beliefs in every action that it takes?

Some may think that this depiction of Catholic intellectual inquiry is defensive, fearful. Certainly it involves a holy fear—of offending God, of seeing young men and women being directed down a wrong path. But this view of inquiry does not fear the world. Rather, it confidently embraces everything that is consonant with Truth, even while it charitably rejects all that cannot be reconciled to it.

So, what of Eve Ensler’s play? By all means, let students read (though not enact) it. But let them look into those scenes only with the right Virgil at their elbow, one who will teach them that what they see there is a grotesquely misdirected eros, a strangled cry from a living hell.