Off the Record

"very selective" By Diogenes | November 14, 2008 7:54 AM

 Let's not be judgmental. They were young and needed the money. It's not as if they were Benedictines, after all. Boston College has cut a licensing deal with Victoria's Secret to market its logo on various delicate hand-washables. From the Boston Herald:

Boston College’s merchandising deal with racy lingerie peddler Victoria’s Secret is raising ire on campus and among the conservative, Catholic school’s alumni. 

“It’s disgraceful and appalling,” said Boston College graduate C.J. Doyle, who runs the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. “This is just one more example of the university’s callous contempt for Catholic sensibilities and its complete indifference to what remains of its Catholic identity.” 

Yesterday on Newbury Street, outside a Victoria’s Secret store that is selling hot-pink Boston College tank tops for $19.50 and Eagles “short shorts,” others agreed.

You can tell they were playing close attention during Pope Benedict's address to Catholic universities last year, can't you?  

The universities of Minnesota and North Carolina have already pulled out of the deal, in part because they did not want their brand associated with the retailer.

“There is no way that we want that (BC) logo to be interpreted as ‘We OK the sexualization of women,’ ” said Sharlene Hesse-Biber, director of the Women’s Studies Center at Boston College, about the products. 

Remind me. Are short shorts commended in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, or am I confusing it with Dominus ac Redemptor again?

BC spokesman Jack Dunn said the school was “very selective” when it agreed to let Victoria’s Secret sell BC sweatshirts, sweatpants, T-shirts and flip-flops as part of the racy chain’s youth-oriented Pink line.“We thought it was a tasteful line of clothing that college students wear,” he said. 

He said the college had no knowledge of Eagles-emblazoned “short shorts” that were selling next to the hot-pink BC tank tops.“We never authorized undergarments,” he said, though other colleges have their names printed on panties in the Pink collection. 

As a Phillip Morris attorney famously asked, "What's the point of having integrity if you can't sell it?" Boston College has given its students a splendid and truly instructive example of the approach of today's mature "thinking Catholic" toward worldly advancement. Hey, it certainly paid off for the Theology Department.

[Dunn] also said the university does not divulge how much it makes from selling licensed apparel.

As Ignatius Loyola whispered to the young Francis Xavier at the University of Paris, "Shouldst thou gain the whole world, and yet forfeit thy immortal soul thereby, be sure to get a percentage of the gross." 

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• Posted by: Moreman - Nov. 15, 2008 10:58 AM ET USA

  The "bottom" line wins again.

• Posted by: maynardus - Nov. 14, 2008 6:03 PM ET USA

  Hush, you'll disturb the Cardinal's slumber... On the other hand, wake him up, maybe he can get a pair of sandals with the BC logo on them! But thank Heaven there's a "Women's Studies" professor around when we need one, to clarify the REAL issue here! Truly we are in the "post-satirical era" - you cannot make this stuff up! The bishops fiddle while Rome burns, and the last shreds of a once-great Jesuit university's "Catholic identity" are being scattered to the "winds of change"...