MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY

 

How Martin Luther King got his name

Charles King, Martin Luther King’s father went to Germany for a conference on Martin Luther and was so impressed with Martin Luther’s life and teachings that he officially changed his own name to Martin Luther King.  And he also changed the name of his young son, Charles King, Jr., to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Non-violence :  the struggle for freedom

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an advocate of non-violence in the struggle for freedom for African Americans in the U.S.  His insistence on non-violence conflicted with many members in the civil rights movement, including Malcom X and Medgar Evers.  Mayor Richard J. Daley had strong objections to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of freedom for African Americans.  Ralph Metcalf, Marquette University and Olympic medal winner and part of the Daley political machine in Chicago, left the Daley machine and followed his own judgments as an alderperson in Chicago as a result of Daley’s opposition to King.

Non-violence:  the Viet Nam war

In opposition to the United States’ political consensus, King was opposed to the Viet Nam war.

Barbershop quotes – ‘He had courage.’  (Courage to Be by Paul Tillich)

I go to the Sherman Phoenix Black Barbershop here in Milwaukee for my haircuts and I feel comfortable talking there with the people in the shop about Martin Luther King.  They summed up their feeling about him with the words, ‘He had courage.’  King knew his life was in danger, yet he joined the garbage workers’ strike in 1968. He was murdered in Memphis where he was speaking to support them. 

Let us celebrate this day dedicated to the spiritual warrior, Martin Luther King, imitating his compassion and service!

Marquette Rejects Catholic Social Teaching

 

Marquette University has rejected the requests of professors and workers to organize a union to bargain collectively.  In doing this, Marquette has rejected Catholic Social Teaching which has been a backbone for workers’ rights.

This is some of what Marquette has rejected:  the 1892 encyclical of Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, which declares the right of workers to organize; the 1919 statement by the U.S. Catholic Bishops, supporting the Popes’ Encyclicals on workers’ rights authored by Monsignor John Ryan; the 1931 encyclical by Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, defining the social structures of solidarity and subsidiarity; the 1965 document from Vatican II, Church in the Modern World, declaring workers’ right to independence and their right to strike; the 1981 encyclical by Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, explaining how  labor unions are a necessity and that labor is prior to capital; and, finally, the 1986 Pastoral Letter by the U. S. Catholic Bishops, “Economic Justice for All,” saying that Roman Catholic institutions are obligated to respect workers’ rights as presented in Catholic Social teaching.

Currently there are new unions formed in various industries:  the baristas working for Starbucks and the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH).  Martin Luther King, Jr. supported the garbage workers in their fight for workers’ rights in 1968.  The support for workers’ rights is in Catholic Social Teaching.  Where do we look now for the backbone for workers’ rights? 

Marquette University professors and workers have a right to form a union.

The Working Catholic: Christmas 2024 by Bill Droel

Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation—Jesus Christ, simultaneously fully divine and fully human, dwelling among us. He comes to the world not in splendor, but in a stable in an out-of-the-way town “where ox and ass are feeding.” That stable, displayed in millions of homes this month, symbolizes our modern world, broken yet redeemed.

For over 400 years Roman Catholicism ducked its appointment with modernity, reacting many times with aloof superiority or even with hostility. Since 1517 Catholicism has been uneasy with the loss of community as the individualism associated with the Protestant Reformation ascends. Catholicism was additionally turned off by the violent anti-clericalism of the French Revolution and later revolutions. Further, Catholicism takes a defensive posture with those expressions of Protestant Christianity in this country and elsewhere that are explicitly anti-Catholic. Catholicism’s caution about the modern world is also related to its opposition of communism’s total denial of the spiritual. Finally, Catholicism was and remains cautious toward some “scientific” trends, including a materialistic notion of evolution and eugenics with its accompanying embrace of abortion.

Catholicism’s defensive strategy officially changed at Vatican II (1962-1965). The new method is dialogue with modern ideas. The dialogue means learning about God’s revelation from the world of science, reason, exploration, forms of governance, modern art, and global commerce, from non-Catholic expressions of Christianity and from non-Christian expressions of faith. This dialogue with the world, please realize, does not exclude disagreements.

The new strategy requires a fresh definition of church. The word still applies to buildings, but that is not its deepest meaning. Nor is the church primarily bishops, their clergy, and their helpers. The word church means all the baptized.

How are people today able to gather around the Christmas stable—a symbol for our world? 

In recent days Pope Francis concluded a multi-year synod that was meant to model how Catholic leaders can internally discuss vital topics. It was a synod about a process. Understandably, the press did not find a three-year meeting about a new process interesting. Instead, newspaper and magazine ink was mostly given to a few controversial topics like ordained women deacons in Catholicism and changes in celibacy requirements for clergy, better treatment of gays, lesbians, and those others whom Catholicism has maligned. 

Nonetheless, the synod was an expression of Vatican II and particularly of Pope Francis’ primary theme: In our modern place and time the church (people of God) finds the incarnate Christ along the peripheries. To hear the word of God, people must attentively listen to those   huddled around a stable in Bethlehem, those scrambling among ruins within Syria, those in line at the Wednesday morning food pantry, and those young adults who are unsatisfied with our vacuous culture.

How can Catholics and others from the east and west find the stable and there have fruitful engagements with what is happening in our modern world? This month happens to be the 60 th anniversary of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Therein is a paragraph about the new definition of church, about how that church influences the world, about how the world enriches the church and about the true meaning of Christmas:

The entire people of God by their very vocation seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God so that by exercising their proper function and being led by the Spirit of the gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within, in the manner of leaven.

Droel edits a free newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

 We are meditating on the meaning of the resurrection of Notre Dame Cathedral at this time. 

Henry Adams reminds us that Mary, after whom the Cathedral is named, represented the energy “of love and of matter.” Mary is a protector and living intercessor between mankind as individuals and “the perils of law, whether human or divine.” 

A carved-wood depiction of Mary — unusual in that here, the infant Jesus is directly facing her, rather than towards the viewer, and both appear completely adoring of each other. Location unknown. Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash.

A martial religion of “predominate masculine energy” ruled in the 11th century, but Mary represented “the assertion of the supremacy of love over force” with the Gothic reality of the 12th and 13th centuries. She represented “boundless sympathy” and “not even the weakest human frailty could fear to approach her.” 

As Adams puts it, she represented the Buddhist sense of compassion, “the first of all virtues.” 

She represented a new civilization which included a whole new creation of education, when the university movement in the cities displaced the monastic hold on education in the countryside. And “university” originally meant a place to go to find one’s place in the universe. (Not just one’s place in a man-made work world, which is what it has come to mean during the modern era.)

The Virgin of the twelfth and thirteenth century had not only the powers of Eve and Demeter and Venus; she was also the mistress of all the arts and sciences, was afraid of none of them, and did nothing, ever, to stunt any of them…She was Queen by divine right and compassion and understanding, not by law and formula. She was “the practice of the true balance of powers, with the individual always tilting the balance.” 

Highlights from the reopening of Notre Dame de Paris on December 7th, 2024. Video by CBS Sunday Morning. You can also watch the replay of the entire opening ceremony HERE.

She was a “personal presence” and a “saving grace” [and] the personal equation at the heart of law and justice.” She gave birth to “fresh creations of order.”* 

The very word “cathedral” derives from the word for throne (as does the Goddess Isis, the original Black Madonna). So another aspect to Notre Dame Cathedrals is that they honor the Goddess who sits ruling a city (or a country) with compassion and justice for the poor, not for the rich. And for the celebration of life. (Again, anthropocentric and patriarchal religion have reduced the “throne” in the cathedral to a place where a bishop sits, but that leaves out the cosmos and the divine feminine that are so central to the deeper meaning of cathedra.) 

Such a building offers a fine reminder for our time of a new cosmology, a cosmogenesis story of how our Earth and our species made the 13.8-billion-year journey to be here.

The South Rose Window in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Photo by jmvnoos in Paris on Flickr.

And to be grateful for being here. Which is religion’s task, to spread the thanks. As Thomas Aquinas (who was in Paris at the time the rose windows were being installed in Notre Dame cathedral) put it: “Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude.” And that is what the Sabbath is about, he says: giving thanks and first and foremost for creation.

It seems the Divine Feminine might have something needed and necessary to say to our times. Maybe the resurrection of Notre Dame de Paris might assist us in taking in that wisdom. If we choose to listen.

The Working Catholic: "Marriage" by Bill Droel

At a wedding reception not so long ago the groom entered the hall with a weighted ball chained to his ankle. The stunt was meant to be funny. Statistics show, however, that many young adults these days are not kidding; they are negative toward the institution of marriage. In fact, the majority of family arrangements today do not include marriage.

Brad Wilcox of the National Marriage Project at University of Virginia sets out to counter those negative attitudes in Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization (Broadside Books, 2024). Marriage is good for a couple’s finances, good for their health, for their sexual fulfillment, for a flourishing society and particularly for children. Nothing else, Wilcox convincingly argues, is a better predictor of a child’s overall health and eventual upward mobility than a married two-parent family. “Not income inequality. Not race. Not school quality.”

Wilcox furnishes credible examples of both conservatives and liberals who disparage marriage. But his tone, as contained in the book’s subtitle (defy the elites) implies that a particular ideology is harming an otherwise pro-marriage group of people. Yet, foregoing marriage is common among both conservatives and liberals.

Keep in mind that corresponding or parallel factors are not the same as causal variables. That is, marriage is associated with higher income over time. But that does not mean that higher income necessarily makes for a good marriage or that a stable marriage automatically leads to a high-paying job.

Melissa Kearney, like Wilcox, likewise shows the advantages of marriage in her widely- reviewed The Two-Parent Privilege (University of Chicago Press, 2023). There’s a strong overlay between a college degree and a marriage license. Those lacking a college degree constitute the majority of family arrangements outside of marriage. She then shows the overlay between the education/marriage combo and economic mobility. Those with a college degree soon enough financially outpace those who do not complete college and those with a degree are more likely to be married than those without.

The phrase college degree is deliberate. Today, about 40% of 18-24 year-olds enroll in college. The payoff, however, comes only to those who graduate. Of all those who enter college, only about 40% complete their degree, even after six years in school. Those who drop out can be in worse shape than if they hadn’t enrolled at all because of student debt and missed years of earnings.

A further thought must quickly be added to the college degree comment. A household in which the breadwinner(s) have a post-high school certification in a career area can financially succeed. Burning Glass Institute of suburban Philadelphia, for example, names 73 non-degree careers that can stabilize a family. Education in those areas covers the specifics of the intended job plus needed computer skills and good communication and teamwork.

Back to Kearney: It is wrong to put a moral spin on the marriage decision. The decisions and their outcomes are not related to the goodness of a person, she writes. For example as Kearney writes, “It is not helpful to blame or shame women who are faced with the difficult choice between parenting alone or living with a partner who is an economic or emotional drain.” Life is more complicated than a simple formula like Get Married and You Will Thrive.

Again, the three factors—marriage, college degree and economic mobility--are not related in direct cause and effect. They are strongly associated with one another. And that association is worth serious reflection.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a printed newsletter on faith and work.

Veteran’s Day

On Veteran’s Day I am reminded of my required time in the military.  War threatened at the time, but we were not yet engaged in open battle.  As I look back, I consider my ineptness as comic.

But I also remember my grandmother’s brother, Tim Walsh.  He was an outstanding student and the Franciscans considered him an outstanding prospect.  They sent him to England to study for the priesthood.  He was given the religious name of Jerome.  After he was ordained, he volunteered to serve as a chaplain for Irish troops in World War I.  He went back to the priory in England with PTSD.  I did some research on him and discovered that Irish chaplains went to the front lines. 

He died in the United States as a relatively young man with my grandmother in attendance.

 War, even with honor and glory, is horrible.  It's the innocent who pay the price.

Gustavo Gutierrez – Liberation Theology

 

One of the greatest theologians of contemporary times, Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P., recently passed away on October 22, 2024 in Lima, Peru. His theology was revolutionary in more ways than one. 

His method was from the ground up.  He advocated for ‘comunidades de base,’ that is, communities relating their situation to Scripture.  He saw this as a way of liberation, as the Jews from Pharaoh’s domination.

His guide was the theology of the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, James the Just.  James prefaced ‘preferential option for the poor’ and the need to act for social justice. 

Weekly protest for immigrant rights in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office (ICE) in Milwaukee

A Theology of Liberation, by Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P., 1973. (Six references to the Epistle of James)

The Birth of Christianity, by John Dominic Crossan, 1998.

Zealot:  the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan, 2013.

Epistle of James, The New American Bible.