A nationwide advertising campaign last week called on Georgetown and other Catholic universities to ban productions of the controversial play “The Vagina Monologues,” presented on campus this weekend by the campus chapter of Take Back the Night.

The Cardinal Newman Society sponsored the full-page ads, which appeared Feb. 17 in Baltimore, Washington, Boston and Chicago issues of USA Today. The ads called on Notre Dame, Georgetown and Boston College, among others, to cut off funding for the play and ban its performance on campus.

“These schools’ job is to teach Christian values and morality, but instead their presidents are permitting an obscenities-drenched production that defiles students,” the advertisement read. The play’s “nonstop sex talk uses vile descriptions, sleazy details and obscenities to trash Judeo-Christian sexual morality and to entice impressionable college students to commit sexual acts.”

The ads also warned of the dangers to students’ mental and physical health if they attempted to act out some of the scenarios in “The Vagina Monologues.”

They encouraged parents and alumni to express their views to university presidents, including Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia, and solicited contributions for further advertising campaigns.

Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” which includes vivid descriptions of female sexuality, has generated controversy at Georgetown in the past.

Georgetown’s Women’s Center, which is a recipient of university funding, sponsors the performance.

“As an academic community committed to the free exchange of ideas, Georgetown believes it is important that students, faculty and staff are able to engage in dialogue on important issues of the day,” Julie Green Bataille, assistant vice president for communications, said.

“The university does not endorse the particular content used in the play but supports the right of students and faculty to be able to express themselves on this issue, no matter what their particular view of it is,” she said.

Elizabeth Ellcessor (SFS ’04), co-chair of Take Back the Night, said that the Cardinal Newman Society ads are inaccurate. “The play is a celebration of women and of the potential of a world without gender violence,” she said. “The university setting is about open exchange of ideas, and this play brings a lot of valuable ideas to the table.”

The Cardinal Newman Society is a “national organization dedicated to the renewal of Catholic identity in Catholic higher education in the United States,” according to its Web site. Patrick J. Reilly, who founded the organization in 1993, wrote the USA Today ads.

The Virginia-based group claims to have played a key role in cancellations of the play at 16 universities this year, including Catholic University of America, Loyola University of New Orleans and the University of Portland.

Gaelan Gallagher (COL ’06), one of the play’s co-directors, defended the play’s content.

“Yes [the monologues] are brutal, disturbing, sexual and unnerving,” she said. “But simultaneously they are empowering, invigorating, validating and liberating.”

Proceeds from the play will be donated to HIPS, a recovery organization for prostitutes, and My Sister’s Place, a local shelter for abused women and children.

According to the ad, 15 Catholic universities have canceled the production, but over 30 Catholic schools still have the play.

This marks the fifth consecutive year that colleges have presented the play, including Georgetown.