U of MN plans play that attacks Pope, Church

[John_R]

How can any respectable university consider blasphemy academic freedom? Well, the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance of the University of Minnesota plans to stage a blasphemous play called *The Pope and the Witch *starting on March 1, 2007.

According to The New York Times: “The witch, in nun’s habit, turns up as an aide to the doctor summoned to treat the pope, and before long the Holy Father is seized with a paralytic affliction that, among other names, is known as ‘a crucifixion stroke,’ leaving him with his arms outstretched.”

For more details on how you can protest, visit:

tfp.org/student_action/activities/protests/univ_minnesota_blasphemy.htm

 

[Contarini]

How can any respectable university consider blasphemy academic freedom? %between%

Why on earth not?

Instead of protesting, why not just stay away and write better plays.

Protesting a thing like this is always counter-productive.

Edwin

 

[Ray_Marshall]

For more details on how you can protest, visit:
tfp.org/student_action/activities/protests/univ_minnesota_blasphemy.htm

Thank you, John R for posting that URL. I am a U of MN graduate in Minneapolis and am in contact with several people already who have sent letters to the President and the Board of Regents of the University.

Yes, sometimes it doesn’t seem to be productive to protest. But how often do you see slurs of Jews these days? How often do you see slurs of Blacks these days? Catholics seem to be just about the only group that people feel that they can slur.

Why? Probably because we don’t fight back. Well, we are “excited” about this opportunity, because we have four or five months to wage a campaign against this sacrilege. It’s rare to have that much time.

I have already contacted the TFP people (who I had never heard of before) and posted their form on my blog: northlandcatholic.blogspot.com

Thank you again, John R!

 

[Dave]

This statement starts sound repetetive but nonetheless valid - would the university allow the theatre department to stage a play that mocks Mohammed? I think we all know the answer.

 

[Contarini]

This statement starts sound repetetive but nonetheless valid - would the university allow the theatre department to stage a play that mocks Mohammed? I think we all know the answer.

And that’s shameful. We should not be intimidated (as a culture). I don’t think mocking religious leaders is particularly helpful, but if they’re going to mock they should be even-handed about it!

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Thank you, John R for posting that URL. I am a U of MN graduate in Minneapolis and am in contact with several people already who have sent letters to the President and the Board of Regents of the University.

Yes, sometimes it doesn’t seem to be productive to protest. But how often do you see slurs of Jews these days? How often do you see slurs of Blacks these days? Catholics seem to be just about the only group that people feel that they can slur.

Why? Probably because we don’t fight back.

Vis-a-vis Muslims that may be the case. I.e., Catholics don’t usually murder people in response to slurs (I think there were some deadly riots in South America some years ago).

Do you really want to start killing people? Short of that, it seems to me that folks like Donohue do fight back. In fact, they are second only to the ADL for their propensity to see slurs and bigotry behind every bush. Any TV show with a bad priest elicits howls of outrage. I don’t see this habit of “not fighting back” at all (at least not among conservative Catholics).

The main difference between Catholics and blacks (or even to some extent Jews) is that Catholics are not an ethnic group. People do choose to be Catholic. Catholics have specific beliefs and policies that are and should be open to criticism. Criticizing Catholicism is less like criticizing Jews and more like criticizing Israel. And while there are Jews who claim that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic, this is nonsense.

Edwin

 

[Dale_M]

Instead of protesting, why not just stay away and write better plays.

I’ve read the play and it hasn’t fared well with the passage of time. It was first performed in 1990 and has a lot of references to (European and Church) politics of the 1980s. These are simply going to go over the heads of most university students. Moreover, the pope is a thinly veilled John-Paul II and the given his suffering during the last 15 years of life the jokes seem a bit mean-spirited.

I am not sure why it is being staged other than for shock value. The playwright, Daniel Fo, may have won the Nobel prize, but it wasn’t for this work. Fo even tosses in a couple self-referential winks of acknowledgement that the play is largely a vehicle for expressing his own distaste for the Church.

The play has a few chuckles but advocating legallized heroin, which is the second major purpose of the play, simply isn’t going anywhere in the U.S. This leaves Church-bashing as the main draw of the play.

Protesting a thing like this is always counter-productive.

It depends how it is done. If the protestors are reasonable and persistant it can work. The play is a stinker. We need to make that better known.

 

[Contarini]

I guess I just don’t like the culture of protest we have developed in our society. Of course protesters are exercising free speech and I would never question their right to do so. But every time the media reports, “Angry so-and-so’s protest such-and-such” it strengthens the far too prevalent idea that good manners in a pluralistic society involves never offending anyone.

I understand that conservative Christians feel like anyone can be offended except them. But the answer is not to play the “we’re offended” game. It’s to deny the validity of the game altogether. Again, I don’t mean that people don’t have the right to say these things–simply that claims of offence don’t have much meaning or contribute anything to a discussion of the issues at stake.

I’m a big advocate of staying away and avoiding any financial support of worthless material. I made a point of reading the DaVinci Code in an airport bookstore without buying it (I read it mostly because as a scholar of religion I was asked about it frequently by people who needed to be set straight, and I could do so more effectively if I had read it), and I have not seen the movie even though I’m curious about it.

I recognize that this won’t work so well with a university, and perhaps a legitimate line of protest is to ask why a public university would want to mock a large section of the public, and (as others have suggested) whether they would feel so free to mock (for instance) Muslims.

Edwin