Upholding Women’s Dignity

CARDINAL NEWMAN SOCIETY, Feb. 6 — Catholic colleges are promoting alternatives to the staging of the morally objectionable feminist play The Vagina Monologues. The University of Notre Dame hosted a two-day conference Feb. 23-24 on issues including sexual assault, women’s rights, sexual modesty and abortion. Earlier in the month, the University of St. Thomas in Houston staged a play written by a faculty member about the trafficking of women. At Boston College, students have organized a “Dignity of Women Week.” Students at several other schools are planning similar events. Cardinal Newman Society spokesman Marc Perrington said that the society applauds “the students and faculty who are defending women’s dignity in a mature, Catholic way.”

Ethical Land Sale

THE AUSTRALIAN, Feb. 7 — St. John’s College in Sydney, Australia, has attached a pro-life condition to its sale of college-owned land. Sydney University has agreed to ban embryonic stem-cell research at a medical institute to be built on land it is buying from St. John’s. College Rector David Daintree told The Australian that “we felt that in ceding land to the university we ought to do what we could to ensure that it wasn’t used for things that we would, as a group, have a conscience problem with — and the university was very obliging.”