{"id":2242,"date":"2006-05-09T00:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-09T00:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/notre-dame-still-there.html"},"modified":"2006-05-09T00:49:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-09T00:49:00","slug":"notre-dame-still-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/notre-dame-still-there.html","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame – still there."},"content":{"rendered":"

First off, Catholic News Service, has sort of surprisingly, run a story on the controversy.<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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

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In attempting to elucidate the Catholic understanding of academic inquiry, Professor Christian Moevs in yesterday\u2019s Observer<\/u>, one of Notre Dame\u2019s undergraduate newspapers, invoked the example of Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/u>. \u201cThe Catholic university,\u201d he wrote, \u201cmust be like Dante\u2019s Comedy<\/u>: 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\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Moevs is at least right in this: Dante\u2019s Comedy<\/u> serves as a beautiful image of inquiry. But for all Professor Moevs\u2019 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<\/u> in the truth. For what we should learn from Dante is that our encounter with \u201cevery possible facet of human behavior and experience\u201d 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\u2014but only so that Dante can see them as debasements<\/u> 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s rich teachings on human sexuality, for example, as Bishop D\u2019Arcy underscored last week, must be allowed to serve as the guide to every inquiry on campus\u2014whether theoretical or dramatic\u2014into 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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The guidance of the Church\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019Arcy 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2014or 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\u2019s act of adultery. They were reading aloud together the romance of Lancelot du Lac<\/em>, 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. <\/p>\n

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? <\/p>\n

Some may think that this depiction of Catholic intellectual inquiry is defensive, fearful. Certainly it involves a holy fear\u2014of 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. <\/p>\n

So, what of Eve Ensler\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNotre Dame - still there. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/notre-dame-still-there.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Notre Dame - still there. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First off, Catholic News Service, has sort of surprisingly, run a story on the controversy. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}