+ Good morning.
[off
the cuff] This morning we commemorate Doctor
Martin Luther King, Jr. And I want to talk a little bit about him. This will be
a little different than a daily homily and more like a Sunday homily, with a
little more of an intellectual reflection; because, here’s the thing: you and I
both know that there are injustices in the world. I don’t think I need to go
into all of that right now. Likewise, I know that some of you struggle with
uncharitable thoughts in your hearts and that some of those thoughts once in a
while may be based on skin color – and you know that you need to work on that.
You’ve heard these messages before, so I’m going to instead turn to a pressing
matter at hand that maybe we haven’t heard much about…
This morning we commemorate Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. And although he is not a saint, his life and his ways of thinking are important to the progress of our civilization.
In this current moment, and in order to understand better Dr. King’s contribution, it is most important to compare and contrast him to another imposing figure: that is, Karl Marx.
Karl Marx was an atheist, a philosopher that did not believe in God, nor did he believe in the inherent dignity of the human person. Karl Marx interpreted everything though a lens of social conflict, reducing society to those who have power and those who do not. Identity, then, was not based on a person, per se, but on envy. There existed, he said, a systemic victimhood because of unequal outcomes – and that the victims would one day gather together and overthrow those in power through a violent revolution. Only through this process of violent class warfare would systemic victimhood and unequal outcomes be overcome. Communism. … That is, of course, until the next revolution.
Doctor King, on the other hand, was a believer in God and he believed in the inherent dignity of the human person. Equality, therefore, was not based on outcomes – after all, doctors would make more money than trashmen – but rather, equality was based on that inherent dignity given by God. That is to say, doctors and trashmen, while they may get paid differently for different work, are still equals because of inherent dignity. It is because of this way of thinking that Dr. King said men and women of any color skin could achieve either becoming a doctor or a trashman. People are not inherently victims, but images of God.
Dr. King saw injustice not through the lens of class warfare or through the lens of outcomes, but through the lens of dignity of given by God – and offenses against that dignity. Without that belief in God, Dr. King knew what we are experiencing today: human dignity would have to come from elsewhere, often by force, and through violence.
Therefore, Dr. King took a non-violent approach. And his non-violent approach to societal reform and the civil rights movement was fundamentally based in his belief in God. Which is why it made such great inroads.
Now, while there has been incredible progress in the civil rights movement, we have seen in the past decade a breath-taking decline. And not for the reasons one may think; and not simply because of the past six years of our two presidents.
For the past decade, beginning in 2012, leaders in our nation—both political and academic—pushed the Marxist agenda hard into our cultural ethos. We began to experience in our common culture Marx’s radical philosophy that a person’s identity was not based on their dignity nor upon God, but upon victimhood. There existed, we were told, a systemic victimhood.
And therefore a class of oppressors.
In a recent interview, there was an African American woman who, as a child, wore braids in her hair. Her classmates, mostly Caucasian and around the age of 9, would note her braids and would do so with questions. The woman, she recalled, was told when she was a child by her parents and her teachers, that anyone who pointed out her differences was being racist. That it was shameful and she should be upset that questions were being asked about her braids.
The woman in the interview reflected on this and said it was a sad moment in her life, not because of the kids’ questions, but because she was told to take the position of being a victim. She wasn’t a victim, she said. The kids weren’t racist. They were just nine years old and curious as kids are – as kids would be in Dr. King’s Dream. And she said at the end of the interview: I missed an opportunity to show my dignity as an African American girl – because I simply believed that I was a victim.
The loss in the civil rights movement over the past decade has come because of an embrace of Karl Marx’s atheistic principles at the expense of Dr. King’s Christian principles. Everyone is now a victim. And white men—Christian white men especially—are often perceived as the reason. They are the oppressors.
Everything is now racist. And people are cancelled. Or everything is homophobic. Or misogynistic. Or transphobic. To say nothing of the fact that, throughout human history, Christian white men had also occasionally been captured and enslaved. (But, of course, comparisons and dwellings on such things are rarely helpful).
But it must be said that Christian white men are not the reason why black kids are not graduating high school; nor are they the reason why black kids are shooting each other at higher rates than whites; white men are not the reason why 13% of the population is responsible for 50% of the murders; nor are they the reason why single motherhood in the African American community jumped from 20% to 70% in the same period that civil rights movement was making great inroads.
If Christian white men should be the problem, it is because they have lost their Christianity and embraced Marxism.
To have a position of victimhood does not help anyone—anyone—to achieve solutions to these problems.
Envy,
therefore, is not a path forward. Victimhood and class warfare is not the way
forward. Both of these end in slavery for all—and often the worst kind of
slavery: the spiritual and intellectual kind that embraces corruption and
violence.
When a certain lives matter movement appeared a couple years ago, I quietly challenged my brother priests. Oh, it’s fine, they said. But I knew it wasn’t. And I have been vindicated when that movement turned out to be corrupt and violent as its became apparent that its basis was in Marxist principles.
Admittedly, it is easier to perceive one’s self as a victim than to work towards peace and justice—because peace and justice require belief and hard work, but victimhood can be achieved by simple feelings.
In that light, I am surprised that our culture still observes Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Someday it may disappear (not because I want it to – on the contrary!), nor because it isn’t important, but simply because people don’t believe it. If this day does stick around, it will be because people either continue to find in it some sentimental feeling about how we are all supposed to be kind (for whatever reason) or because we have reclaimed the Christian foundations of our society and conquered Marxism as Dr. King would have us do.
This was his dream. This was his dream where children could look upon each other as equals—not as victims—because we were children of the one heavenly Father, our God and our Lord.
May that vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., come to pass in our culture – and preferably in our own lifetime.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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