The Real Graduates of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame’s honor of Barack Obama was a historic event, a rite of passage. Television images of gowned academics in self congratulatory bliss eager to honor their symbolic president, against a background of useful graduates completed the scenes.

A day later it is hard to recollect a meaningful sentence either from the hopeful wish list Father Jenkins imposed on “the Obama” or from the self serving call to service from the self indulgent honoree.

Prideful stares from the platform committee affirmed their perceived handiwork, a President in their images, the panoply replete with an octogenarian priest memorialized in a fifty year old photograph as proof of their artistry. A caricature of the presumed America to come occupies the historic stage at Notre Dame. Gone is the America which shed blood to end colonial slavery, aging veterans who rescued Europe from Nazism and communism, the farmers who fed the world and the shopkeepers who scraped for profits to educated their children.

Instead, striped robed academics revel in an obstinate pragmatic relativism which has presided over a half century of cultural destruction. A prideful relativism whose empowerment would discard those individuals discourteous enough to presume existence.

But beyond the tedious rhetoric were true signs of hope; mortarboards of discontent scattered through the crowd, silent hands among synchophantic applause and a Laetare medal in thoughtful repose.

Outside the arena another story unfolded, a few thousand people and 40-50 graduates gathered at the Grotto; prayers, silence, and a shared alma mater witnessed a new hope for change, an antidote to the despair.

While the University may be mired in the past, the students at the Grotto have moved on, their graduation already a memory, and their protest the real hope to believe in. Life vs. Death? They have already chosen Life.

These are the true Graduates of “Notre Dame” class of 2009.