Patrick J. Reilly
Sometimes people say the darnedest things.
Making the latest submission to the "You Can't Argue With Logic Like That Department" (YCAWLLTD, for short) is Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative group that seeks to strengthen Catholic schools' adherance to Catholic teachings.
Reilly and other conservative Catholics are up in arms about productions of "The Vagina Monologues" on the campuses of Catholic universities. For those unfamiliar with it, "The Vagina Monologues" is the Eve Ensler play about, well, vaginas, that has been produced worldwide for years and has raised a lot of money to combat violence against women.
Besides the fact that the play centers on ladies' nethers (eww!), some of the monologues are also related to lesbian sexuality (double eww!).
This is a play. Which means it is performed by and, presumably, seen by people. And Catholics – or, at minimum, people who do not want to burn in the fires of hell – do not engage in vagina talk, or anything else the Catholic Church isn't down with (no pun intended, I swear).
According to Reilly, this kind of thing has got to stop. "If we're going to discuss homosexual activity, why don't we have a display of it onstage and then we can discuss it?" he told The Associated Press. "At what point does that stop?"
A good point. In fact, it's amazing no one else speaks of it. Everyone knows that it is impossible to TALK about something without actually DOING it – or at least watching someone else do it. A friend of mine calls this "speaking it into being." If you want something to happen, talk about it. If you don't want something to happen, don't talk about it. It's as simple as that.
Now, psychotherapists might call this kind of thing "magical thinking," but what do they know? Heck, even THINKING something can make it happen. Take my father, for example. He has encouraged me to visualize a good parking space every time I go shopping. Most of the time I do the visualization – and some of the time I actually get a good parking space. Could there be more conclusive proof? I didn't think so.
Still, talking is where the real power is at, according to Reilly, who I am pretty sure is not advocating FOR the display of homosexual acts on stage. Which is why I am sure he supported Notre Dame's decision to not allow "The Vagina Monologues" to be performed as a fundraiser on campus this year, even though the same play raised over $15,000 last year for agencies fighting violence against women.
Apparently violence against women isn't a Catholic issue.
Following Reilly's logic, however, you can't talk about violence against women anyway, lest you actually start beating the tar out of a woman in real life. And my goodness, what about the parts of "The Vagina Monologues" that deal with things like rape? Reilly and his ilk are actually doing a bigger service than they know in combating these problems. After all – if we don't talk about them, they don't happen.
Which sure helps to explain the Catholic Church's reaction to its sexual abuse scandal.
