Posted on 04/17/2009 8:40:07 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Friday, April 17, 2009
By Edwin Mora
(CNSNews.com)- Notre Dame expects President Obama to wear the school’s traditional doctoral robe--which is emblazoned with a cross and a prayer to the Virgin Mary--when the president receives an honorary law degree from the university at its May 17 commencement ceremony.
“Yes,” replied Notre Dame Spokesman Dennis Brown, when CNSNews.com asked him if Obama would wear the robe that has been worn by previous graduation speakers at Notre Dame.
Another Notre Dame official confirmed that “everybody” wears Notre Dame’s traditional doctoral robe when they receive an honorary law degree from Notre Dame.
In 2001, when President Bush received an honorary law degree from Notre Dame, he wore the school’s traditional doctoral robe inscribed with the prayer to the Virgin Mary. In 2008, when actor Martin Sheen received the Laetare Award from Notre Dame at its commencement ceremony, he wore the same traditional Notre Dame robe.
CNSNews.com asked White House Spokesman Shin Inouye whether Obama will wear the same robe worn by Bush and Sheen. Inouye said: “I’ve looked around, but I don’t have an answer for you.”
The Notre Dame doctoral robe bears two images of the school's coat of arms, one on both the right and left chest areas.
The coat of arms and its symbolic meaning are described in “The Spirit of Notre Dame: Its History, Legends and Lore” by Dorothy V. Corson, a publication that is posted on Notre Dame’s official website.
The publication includes a detailed illustration of the coat of arms and a quote from the February 1931 issue of The Notre Dame Alumnus magazine, explaining it.
The emblem features a cross and a book with a prayer inscribed in it, a star in the upper left-hand corner and two wavy lines at the bottom.
The official title of the university is “Universitas Dominae Nostrae a Lacu”—the University of Our Lady by the Lake--and thus the star is presented because it is “reminiscent of the beautiful epithet Star of the Sea” and “was chosen as Mary’s symbol in the new shield of arms.”
The two wavy lines are “poetically expressive of the dedication of the University to the Star of the Sea.”
Members of the Congregation of Holy Cross who founded Notre Dame are represented by the cross.
“The open book is always emblematic of an institution of learning,” says the publication on the Notre Dame website. “The phrase ‘Vita, Dulcedo, Spes,’ taken from the ancient prayer to the Virgin, the ‘Salve Regina,’ means ‘our life, our sweetness, our hope’ the combination of these phrases with the symbol for the university indicates the dedication of all Notre Dame’s activities, intellectual, spiritual, athletic, and so on, to Our Lady.”
When President Obama spoke at Georgetown University on Tuesday, the school covered over a cross and the monogram “IHS”—which is a symbol for the name of Jesus—where it was inscribed on a pediment embedded in the wall directly above and behind where Obama stood on a stage to speak.
In a written statement, Georgetown told CNSNews.com on Wednesday: “In coordinating the logistical arrangements for yesterday’s event, Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage. The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches. Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn’t high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context.”
On Thursday, both Georgetown and the White House made statements indicating that covering over the “IHS” and cross behind the stage at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was the unintended consequence of an effort to provide a backdrop for the flags that the White House wanted displayed behind the president.
IS IT ME or DOES ANYBODY ELSE BELIEVE THAT OBAMA IS IN FACT “ The Enemy of the State “ ? This is starting to bother me... He’s our President... Right?
Why do it otherwise?
MY thought exactly. There really IS a Pope, isn’t there? Or has he been silenced?
If the Holy Cross fathers have so far apostasized from the Faith that they would tolerate the presence of this POS, then my bishop (Doran) is certainly right to suggest that ND be renamed Northwest Indiana Humanist University and stop sullying the name of Our Lady. Additionally, ND can stop vomiting on the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church by posing for holy pictures as though the school were still Catholic when, in fact, it is devoted to academic anarchy and all things in enmity to the Faith.
The Vatican can and should discipline Fr. Jenkins and any other priest complicit in this outrage.
I’ve had that idea fluttering around in the back of my mind and seeing someone else tune into it just about blew me out of the water. Thought it was just me.
I know there is a church hierarchy -
I’m wondering where the buck is stopping on this one & yet it’s still confusing because the Vatican has still not yet accepted the Obummer’s Admin pick for envoy/ambassador from the U.S.
along with the Notre Dame controversy- yikes!- there’s been nothing
Would be really funny to me if they insisted he wear it. I doubt that he will.
And he definitely doesn’t deserve any award or honorary degree.
Keep FReeping Notre Dame.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2231446/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2230231/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2210995/posts?page=28#28
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2210995/posts?page=87#87
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2210995/posts?page=101#101
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2210995/posts?page=102#102
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2212664/posts?page=29#29
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2212664/posts?page=37#37
No doubt if he wears it, it won’t be visible.
I am a Messianic Jew and I agree with you 100%
Perhaps...
Mary has been known to touch the hardest of hearts.
If Presidents have always been routinely invited to speak at Notre Dame, the invitation to Obama is understandable. The biggest issue in this contretemps isn't, as Catholic baiters would like to assert, Obama's speaking at Notre Dame; it's the university's conferral of a "Juris Doctor Honoris Causa" honorary law degree upon him.
It’s a matter of public record that Obama’s legal career is rather puny, not exactly distinguished by "honoris causa" standards. He worked on about 30 cases in four years before he was launched into politics at a Bill Ayers soiree.
Obama rarely has spoken about his time at Columbia and Harvard, and for good reason. He graduated without honors from Columbia with a major in political science. We don’t know his LSAT scores to get into Harvard; he’s never released them. His elevation to editorship (he was named an editor along with about 40 of his classmates at the end of his first year) of the Harvard Law Review is not exactly laden with merit. Before he arrived at Harvard, the qualifying standard had been changed from assignment based on grades to one in which half the editors were chosen through a writing competition. The New York Times reported in 1990 that the process was "meant to help insure [sic] that minority students became editors of The Law Review." Unlike most editors, Obama wrote very little. Indeed, he had credited to his account only one edited, unsigned article in 1990 ... before he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review (an honor that used to go to the student with the highest GPA). Unsurprisingly, the article argued against any limits on abortion. After his election as President of the HLR, he contributed not a single signed word to the HLR or any other law journal. Unlike most presidents of the HLR, Obama did not go on to clerk for a Supreme Court justice.
In short, Obama’s law "career" is checkered, obscure, and exceedingly unprepossessing. No "honoris causa" candidate he.
As President, his legal maneuverings and executive orders have been primarily to loose every possible restraint on abortion, here and abroad.
Obama has already been the most demonstrably pro-abortion President we’ve ever had, all in fewer than 100 days of office. Anyone who follows the radical course he’s taken on abortion is flouting and trampling the "Catholic tradition, which brings specific spiritual and moral values to bear upon daily life and legal judgments" mission statement upon which the Notre Dame Law School, not to mention the Catholic faith, is undergirded.
If abortion acolyte Obama is eligible for an "honoris causa" honorary degree at Catholic Notre Dame, then Yassir Arafat would qualify as Doctor of Humane Letters at Yeshiva University, and Tuskegee University should be making immediate plans to bestow a posthumous honorary degree upon George Wallace.
Well, they do have a point. Seeing Obama, or whatever his name is, associated with Christ in any serious way would be quite incongruous.
The Bufffoons at Notre Dame can only do More Damage and create more Insult by Having the “Abortionist in Chief” wearing a prayer to to the virgin Mary.
They can’t be Catholic and be part of the disgrace to the Mother of God.
This Obama is making a point of showing insulting and denigrating all of the faith of Catholics the world over.
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