This story has been brewing for months, ever since the University of Minnesota’s theater schedule for the year was announced, but this weekend was the moment: the theater presented its production of Nobel Prize for literature laureate Dario Fo‘s play The Pope and the Witch. From a review of the play when produced at Yale:
Dario Fo doesn’t miss a trick, least of all in the basic plot structure of his play: what if the Pope suffered a nervous breakdown on the day of a major press conference and could only be cured by a feminist midwife-cum-witch doctor? What if this heathen woman infiltrated the Vatican, made it all the way to the Pope’s chambers (where the holy father is suffering paranoid delusions of angry third world children storming St. Peter’s Square and attacking him for banning birth control), and then proceeded to use hypnotism and African voodoo ritual to bring the pontiff to his senses? What if? Well, it’d be pretty crazy, wouldn’t you think?
Add to this a Vatican Chief of Security with Mafia ties and an accent straight out of GoodFellas, a Vatican press officer who resembles a movie producer more than a monsignor, a nun with titillating sadomasochistic fantasies, three heroin addicts, an exploding parakeet, and a Pope dummy, and you’ve got a recipe for comedy.
Fr. Z, who is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, had a post a few days ago in which he reprinted his letter to the university.
The news this weekend is that Minneapolis-area Catholics offered what sounds like a fine witness, occasioned by the play. Several posts here:
But Friday evening, a really strange sight was seen in front of the Rarig Center, home of the University’s Theater Department. The cloudy sky obscured any possible view of airborne transportation, but 60 Men in Black were seen in formation, led by four men wearing three-quarter length white over-garments (not down-filled by the way, in the 20 degree temperature), with some lacy garnishes and embroidered edges and a large white tab at the neck on their black collarless undergarments. (And these leaders were not wearing gloves when they held out their identifying signs.) Definitely not what the cool UofMN students is normally seen wearing.
These 60 aliens (alien, at least to students of the University of Minnesota leaning out of their dorm, office and library carrel windows and accosting visitors as to what was going on) seemed to be alternately singing and reciting verses with musical chants and poems that seemed to be in some dead language.
While these Men in Black were murmuring and chanting their stanzas, occasional groups of people paused and marveled for a few minutes on their way to a viewing of the opening performance of a theatrical presentation entitled “The Pope and the Witch” at Rarig Center. A goodly number of photographers, enraptured by the performance, or in the pay of the University Police Department, were on hand to document the event.
At that post, Father William Baer rector of Saint John Vianney College Seminary, added a comment of his own:
Among the comments made in the local newspapers and blogs regarding the events of the past two nights, there has been an interesting thread running through them, namely, comments about the singing of traditional chants and hymns.
At the Seminary, I teach the men that singing in the Scriptures is often associated with victory in battle. In particular, the "new song" of the Psalms and, especially, of the Exodus, is no willowy, but a triumphal song following the LORD’s victory over the Egyptians and other opponents. Mary’s Magnificat is a victory song, acclaiming God’s triumph in raising the lowly, including His lowly handmaid, to glory, while casting down the proud and powerful of this world. In heaven the martyrs and saints will sing a new song, "the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb."
Are you in a fight? Cry out to the Lord. Are you victorious? Sing out to the Lord. This is how Catholics do it. And this may be an under-appreciated part of how Catholics are to do evangelization. People close their ears to our words, but they just can’t ignore a good song.Do we want Catholic men to sing? Give them a chance to fight for Christ, give them a chance to celebrate our victory in Christ, and then give them chants and anthems, ancient and new, whose words and melodies and spirit befit an unconquerable band of brothers in Christ.
Do that, and we will have thousands of everyday Catholic men around the Twin Cities, including men who have hated to sing the insipid songs foisted upon them previously, singing with ardor a new song to the Lord. I guarantee that observers and protesters who pay no attention to mean-spirited and tiresome shouts of protest will take notice. That’s what a song of victory does. Always has, always will.
Mary of Veritatis Splendor (the Roamin’ Roman, back home now, in case you didn’t know) has a fine post that really gets to the heart of the matter, and really could be form a mission statement for this particular kind of cultural engagement:
Nope, we were not there to protest. We were there to pray. We were there not so that they would see us per se, but so that we could see them – we could see some of the faces of our neighbors in need. It is not often that the worlds of secularism and of orthodox Catholicism meet quite so obviously, but I feel very strongly after last night that these worlds do indeed need to meet more and more. We must "upset the apple cart" by simply BEING in the world, if not to convert them by what we are doing, to convert them by being able to pray for each of them specifically. Personal prayer. I know I will remember many of those faces that I saw last night for quite some time to come, I vow to be intentional in praying for them (if not by name, by face!).
The fact that this is a public university with an avowed policy (as you can see from Fr. Z’s post) against actions or speech that express, among other things, hostility to persons based upon, among other things, religion is, er…interesting. Live by the hate speech code, die by the hate speech code, I always say. Would a play in which Mohammad, Buddha or a group of Hindu priests were used as a means for satirizing…anything..be produced on this campus? Gee, I don’t know.
Aside from the public funding issue and the policy of respect towards various views or positions including "religion" (which is central here)…all of that aside, people have the right to write, produce and go view what they want. But those who feel that the piece is damaging in some way also have the right to make their views known, and the various bloggers cited above seem to be putting it exactly right, saying in essence, we are here to let you know that this is not who we are. This is a misrepresentation. Satirize away, but know that the Catholic faith is not about this, and we’re here to show you what it is about. It seems to me a sounder and more productive, evangelistic, love and other-centered angle than simply saying "that’s offensive to me. So stop it."
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