[Posted for Dan Boland] It is a sustainable proposition that dismissing such issues as The Vagina Monologues and pushing them to assumed obscurity by means of our withholding further comment will lead to their natural demise. In this instance, however, I suggest this strategy is exactly the incorrect one, since the VMs are not the only or the gravest issue. By ignoring with our silence the vapid, yet vicious, re-appearances of the VMs on the Notre Dame scene, we thereby grant them a measure of normalcy and proper status which they indeed ought not be granted on any Catholic campus. Even the President of the University, in his earliest discourse on this issue, first admitted that the VMs were not in keeping with Catholic morality; he then, incredibly, allowed their performance, and has allowed them several times since -but (and here is the crucial moral issue) he did not contradict his original estimate of their immoral content. In effect, he admits their immoral content but grants that they cannot and should not, in his judgment, be prevented because academic freedom is of greater merit than the integrity of traditional Catholic moral teaching. Thus, the issue is not merely the unsavory ravings of the VMs. The larger and more crucial issues involve the marginalization of Catholic moral principle by the Catholic priest who heads up the University. Moreover, the incursions of secularist power and influence are extremely worrisome and not without definite impact on the future directions of Notre Dame's future. Thus, it is to these larger issues (implicit in the VMs), as well as to the VMs themselves, that we must attend with perseverance and gritty determination. If we do not, we may well ask: where else will we find our Catholic moral heritage conveniently dismissed by the further demands of secularist thought within the University? If such instances are repeated, then precedent is set; dismissal of our Catholic commitments and obligations so that academic freedom may thrive becomes commonplace. We may then look to the day when Catholicism itself is sidelined in favor of the ever-encroaching demands of secularist academic freedom. In time, as has happened at countless once-Catholic institutions, we can also anticipate the death of the Faith as a primary factor at Notre Dame and, therefore, the death of Notre Dame itself, and in its place a university which stands as a wretched reminder of what should have been. Such dire thinking may seem drearily foolish but if one looks to the last several decades, one is forced to admit that the growth of secularism has been powerful, in some cases overwhelming, among many institutions which once claimed to represent Catholicism. History is clear enough: the dangers of ignoring such evidence are too great; we must persevere in confronting the VMs whilst putting the larger issue in the spotlight.