Mortarboards

Posted on 18 May 2009 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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24 Responses to Mortarboards

  1. DarkKnight says:
    18 May 2009 at 7:37 pm

    Does anyone else find it curious that an Obama supporter just happened to be in the same frame to provide “balance” or am I just suspicious?

  2. John Polhamus says:
    18 May 2009 at 7:44 pm

    I think that the fact she was holding the emblem of The Rising Wun (I made that up! Aren’t I clever?) upside down indicates disapproval. Clearly a girl with a keen sense of metaphor. Probably the Salutatorian of the class, the girl with the Cross and infant feet obviously being the Valedictorian.

  3. DarkKnight says:
    18 May 2009 at 8:11 pm

    If the “Rising ‘Wun’” is upside down, dare we hope that the Wun is setting?

  4. Matthew W. I. Dunn says:
    18 May 2009 at 8:26 pm

    I guess the message is:

    When choosing between “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” or the “Audacity of Hope,” Notre Dame graduates can’t make up their mind.

  5. Brendan says:
    18 May 2009 at 8:31 pm

    Anyone else notice the rainbow in the backgound?

  6. Audrey C. Amberg says:
    18 May 2009 at 8:57 pm

    Dear Father,

    I have been waiting to see if anyone else has submitted the list of the infamous Board of Trustees of Notre Dame. There is a column quoted on “Angelqueen.org” by Frank Walker, reviewed by Judie Brown, a well known pro-lifer. The headline is,”Who makes the decisions at ND (this is truly unreal).

    All are Obama earmark recipients, including pro-aborts, pro embryonic stem cell supporters, indicted felons, and, believe it or not, the chairman of a multibillion dollar Chinese conglomerate, who has proclaimed the superiority of the communist system to ours for investment purposes.

    Is there any wonder about the decision?

    God help us!

    Audrey Amberg

  7. Ricky Vines says:
    18 May 2009 at 9:53 pm

    This picture lifted my spirit because of a lot of positive images – the young graduate holding on to her faith cheerfully and vibrantly as though she’s empowered and enthused. There is another picture of another graduate walking past the demonstrators who were watching sadly. That unfortunately depicted the majority of the graduates.

  8. Charivari Rob says:
    18 May 2009 at 10:12 pm

    John Polhamus – “…emblem of The Rising Wun … upside down…”

    In all honesty, I thought it was the new Pepsi logo! You’re right, of course.

    To me, the Obama logo always looked liked a tunnel flooding with water. Then again, I live in Boston – we have that on our minds.

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  10. Girgadis says:
    18 May 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Quiet statements like the mortarboards bearing the cross and precious feet
    speak volumes louder than the imbeciles who shouted from the rafters. People
    really ought to cease and desist from actions that draw more attention to
    themselves than to the cause.

  11. Patrick Lobo says:
    18 May 2009 at 11:25 pm

    I too, thought it was the Pepsi logo. That’s “Pepsi — the Choice of a New Generation.” Oh wait! There won’t be a new generation. It will be killed off by the pro-Choice people before it even happens.

  12. Gloria says:
    18 May 2009 at 11:52 pm

    Sorry. The valedictorian is not in the picture. I believe I saw an interview on TV of the young woman who was valedictorian. She defended the appearance for all the usual convoluted reasons. She, of course, is personally pro-life.

  13. Father Bartoloma says:
    19 May 2009 at 12:01 am

    It’s a nice picture but frankly, the whole thing made me sick.

  14. Dino says:
    19 May 2009 at 12:22 am

    In all the coverage at Notre Shame Sunday, was there any reporting on the demonstration and Mass organized for those who decided to forego the Obama praisefest?
    What has happened to the priest and others who were arrested for “trespassing”, rosaries in hand?

  15. Firefly says:
    19 May 2009 at 12:24 am

    Comment by Gloria: “…She (the valedictorian), of course, is personally pro-life.”

    Of course. There have been so many attempts by all sorts of people to explain this away. Shakespeare expressed it best:

    “In law what plea so tainted and corrupt
    But, being seasoned with a gracious voice
    Obscures the show of evil? In religion
    What damned error, but some sober brow
    Will bless it and approve it with a text,
    Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
    There is no vice so simple but assumes
    Some mark of virtue on his outward parts:
    …
    Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
    To a most dangerous sea…”

  16. John Polhamus says:
    19 May 2009 at 2:58 am

    “To me, the Obama logo always looked liked a tunnel flooding with water. Then again, I live in Boston – we have that on our minds.”

    Re Boston: Quite!

    Re “The Rising Wun”: True I jokingly referred to this logo as “The Rising Wun”, but the fact is that when I look at that logo I see two things: the setting of a White Sun – an allegorical reference to the waning of “white power” (as the multi-culturalists like to portray it) in this country; and the fact that it is setting over the red and white stripes of the flag of this country – an allegorical reference to internationalism and the subversion of American sovreignty. Further, whether it’s rising or setting, the stripes of the flag are portrayed as the ground, which is exactly where it was in the photoshoot Bill Ayers did, while he was standing with his feet on it in an expression of triumphant contempt.

    Has really no one else seen this symbolism in the logo? Does anyone really think that these seemingly innocuous stickers for the backs of people’s car-windows are really composed without meaning? Given the trends, does anyone think it makes any sense to interpret the white sun as rising (I mean, it wasn’t the Conservatives that published the logo, now was it!) I thought that the very first time I saw that logo, and I’ve been waiting for someone to analyse it, and haven’t heard a word. The hour having passed, I suppose there’s not point in keeping it to myself any longer, for what good it will do.

    But I simply don’t believe that such logos are composed without meaning, and the question is, what is the meaning of that logo? I guarantee that it means something, probably many things. International Socialism is a masterfully propagandising movement.

  17. Gary says:
    19 May 2009 at 6:59 am

    “Anyone else notice the rainbow in the backgound?”

    not until you pointed it out, but there it is. if not at the forefront these days it’s lurking in the background.

  18. Patrick Finley says:
    19 May 2009 at 7:07 am

    I think Mr Obama/President Obama thinks of himself as “enlightened”. It really has an “enlightened” feel to it, the logo that is. He is the typical “enlightened” one, he thinks he knows it all, and the rest of us are schmucks, a really quite arrogant attitude. Its the whole rising sun look it has, like a new day is coming to save all of us fools who place so much stock in our “faith and guns”… Silly him, the good knight I am, its FAITH AND SWORD :P

    Had no idea about the board of trustees thing. Typical. Buy your opponents off, then they arent an issue.

    Someone on some board likened this to the English reformation. More and more I see it. First the opponents are taken care of, either by money or worse, then the real severing begins. The irish, had a special 10 bead rosary they used during the elizabethan times, that was different enough to fool the british. Songs like “12 days of christmas” were there to still teach catechism in the underground english catholic church. I wonder how soon it is, before I am using my celtic rosary, and I am singing enigmatic songs to keep the faith in this country?

    Has anyone noticed anything yet from the Holy see on this? Or do we think they would stay out of it since its Between the Bishop and the School?

  19. Joanne says:
    19 May 2009 at 8:02 am

    What I like about this photo is that the party who favors legalized abortion presumably is the male; the female is clearly prolife. Apparently in every age range, a higher percentage of males favor legalized abortion than the percentage of females who do. (To be honest, though, I am not sure how the research that determined this was done, or how good the research was.) Males probably *do* favor abortion more than females – that kind of makes sense when one puts aside the images that he or she sees in the mainstream media and thinks about it intuitively. Regardless of what the real statistics are, though, this photo I think will surprise (and educate) alot of nonprolifers who see it, because it seems that the belief among the general public is that women are the ones who staunchly support abortion. (And it’s men who are always trying to take that “right” away.)

  20. Charivari Rob says:
    19 May 2009 at 8:27 am

    ““Anyone else notice the rainbow in the backgound?”

    not until you pointed it out, but there it is. if not at the forefront these days it’s lurking in the background.”

    Rainbow? The graduate degree hoods in the background, or that one little scrap of tricolor in the middle of the photo?

    I really wouldn’t read that much into it. In the jumble of the photo, you can’t even tell for sure if it’s on somebody’s mortarboard or sleeve cuff.

    Somebody making a statement with the rainbow would be more likely to have one that filled the entire mortarboard, like the flooded tunnel logo. It’s as likely to be just a small scrap of kente cloth that someone pinned to their mortarboard as a locator – “Look for me in the first few rows on the right, Mom. I’ve put a little kente cloth on my ‘board.”

  21. Sara says:
    19 May 2009 at 9:52 am

    Ahhhh, now THAT gives me HOPE! :)

  22. Patrick Finley says:
    19 May 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Just listen to Glen Beck\’s version of the communist anthem and it all makes sense at that point.

    People used to call his predecessor (not bush) slick willie, well this guy makes Ol\’ bill look like , forgive the pun, and Altar Boy, I just continually am amazed that people are so easily duped by him. Maybe we need a showdown with the Prohpets of the administration versus the Prophet of the Lord. I bet the administration comes in second, only they would try to use bio fuels rather then call down lightning

  23. Brendan says:
    19 May 2009 at 4:49 pm

    Joanne:

    It’s interesting that you bring up that the common idea is that more men are pro-life than are women, because pro-life people are somehow taking away the rights of women. Although I am a college-age male with little interest in feminist philosophy, organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List point out, and I agree, that abortion is the ultimate form of female oppresion. More females have been eliminated through selective abortion than through any other means, and abortion can be used to treat women as disposable sex objects.

  24. Kristen says:
    19 May 2009 at 8:39 pm

    I never understood why women saw/see abortion as something that is not harmful to them, and something that is “liberating”. IMHO- it is just the opposite. As is ABC/The Pill/Patch/Ring. Both do nothing but make women sex objects at the disposal of men. Neither party has any consequences to consider. If the ABC fails, go get an abortion. It all just makes my head spin.

    Feminists for Life!
    http://www.feministsforlife.org/