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Secular Saints

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Today is a Federal holiday in the United States — the only one in the American calendar designated in honor of a single individual. That individual, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr., the most famous black leader to come out of the Civil Rights movement, and the closest thing Americans have to a national hero. Cornell is certainly doing its part to honor King’s memory. Earlier today I received this email from our esteemed president, David J. Skorton:


Dear Cornellians:

Welcome back to Cornell for the start of the Spring 2008 semester. Today marks both the first day of classes in Ithaca and our national observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is a day to remember the life and legacy of a man who devoted his life to promoting racial equality and social justice and whose commitment to creating change through nonviolence has inspired millions in our own country and throughout the world.

Dr. King’s message resonates on our campuses, as we seek to support and learn from each other to create a more caring community. Building on Dr. King’s legacy, several Cornell units in Ithaca (including the Public Service Center, Campus Life, the CRESP Center for Transformative Action, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County) have joined with community partners and Ithaca College for the 14th annual celebration of the life and work of Dr. King today at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center.

Beginning this coming Thursday, January 24, and every Thursday through February 14, we will continue the celebration of Dr. King’s legacy with the “Soup and Hope” series. You are invited to bring a soup bowl to Sage Chapel at noon and share soup and bread while hearing talks by community leaders who are working for social change.

The series will set the stage for Cornell’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Lecture on February 19, at 4:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel. This year’s speaker will be veteran civil rights leader Vincent Harding, co-founder of Veterans of Hope, an educational initiative that encourages community building by drawing on the life stories of those who, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have struggled for freedom and justice.

As Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, wrote in an essay on the meaning of the holiday that bears his name, today is “a day of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. No other day of the year brings so many peoples from different cultural backgrounds together in such a vibrant spirit of brother and sisterhood. Whether you are African-American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian-American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America. This is not a black holiday; it is a peoples’ holiday. And it is the young people of all races and religions who hold the keys to the fulfillment of his dream.” (http://www.thekingcenter.org/holiday/index.asp)

I hope you will keep Dr. King in your thoughts today, and join us in keeping his spirit alive on our campus throughout the coming month and year.

David J. Skorton
President, Cornell University

It’s such a sad thing, really, to see how badly the secular world is in need of heroes and saints. The hagiography of Martin Luther King was rehashed for us annually in public school; in the lower grades we used to have a special assembly in his honor (either before or after the holiday) in which people would read poems (the closest they could get to prayers in such a context) dedicated to King. I remember being in the school choir and singing songs especially in his honor. And of course we would get a speech from the school principal reminding us how we should try to keep his spirit in our school, and in our lives as a whole. Apparently some things stay consistent all the way through graduate school.

The only problem, of course, is that King is an utterly inappropriate object for this kind of devotion. Cornell being a university, I think it particularly shameful that they would persist in calling him “Dr. King” throughout this little message, despite the overwhelming evidence that King plagiarized significant portions of his doctoral dissertation. If Boston University had any academic integrity, his degree would have been posthumously revoked. (But instead, they established scholarships in honor of their school’s most famous cheat.) Incidentally, many of King’s other works were plagiarized too, apparently including his famous I Have a Dream speech. Is that the spirit we want kept alive in the university?

Beyond his problems with academic integrity, King’s personal life was far from admirable. It’s fairly widely known by now that King had numerous adulterous affairs, and (somewhat ironically for a man famous for preaching nonviolence) he sometimes brutalized the prostitutes he hired. Finally, King had significant connections with known communists, and with organizations known to be sympathetic to communism. A powerful leader he may have been, but he was not a notably good person. It takes a lot of revisionist history to turn this man into someone for whom a school assembly should be held.

Normally these details about King’s past simply pass unmentioned, at least by anybody who is eager to prove that they are politically correct and non-racist. When the sordid stories do come up, you sometimes hear sober reflections on how very great people can still have their flaws, we all have clay feet, etc. This is a ridiculous justification given how thoroughly America has beatified King. It’s true, of course, that all of us (with three historical exceptions) are born tainted by sin, and thus are prone to make mistakes. But virtue, as Aristotle understood, is something that affects all different aspects of a person’s life. A man might have small flaws (say, a tendency to be late, to lose his temper a little too easily, or to forget about things he promised to do) and still be called, with reasonable accuracy, a person of character. Someone who falsifies his academic work and hires and beats prostitutes cannot be called a man of character, and there’s no evidence that King ever repented of these mistakes or mended his ways. Does everyone have clay feet? Then show me the clay feet of St. Agnes (whose feast day this is.) Or perhaps that’s unfair (there being somewhat limited information now about the life of St. Agnes), so how about the clay feet of St. Padre Pio or Bl. Theresa of Calcutta? Everyone may have a few peccadilloes, but a saint should at least show significant signs of having lived a virtuous life. Martin Luther King was not a virtuous man. We might still admire certain specific actions of his, but he should not be venerated.

The problem, of course, is that our country needs saints. We need figures to admire, and paragons to show us how to live our lives. In the secular world, there’s kind of a dearth. Who are leftists and atheists supposed to look up to? Bill Clinton? Noam Chomsky? That great Man of Peace and Reason, Al Gore? No wonder they settle on King, who at least has the advantage of having been murdered by a person who probably was genuinely racist.

I know that there are some foolish liberal parishes that join the public schools in holding events to honor Martin Luther King on his national holiday. (In fact, the American bishops are said to have put his name forward as a non-Catholic figure to be honored at Pope John Paul II’s Jubilee Mass in 2000. I couldn’t find anything on whether the suggestion was accepted, which I hope means that it wasn’t.) I propose that we take a different line. Today is a day to pray for those unfortunate souls who have no better heroes in their lives than Mr. Martin Luther King, Jr. May they one day have the grace to be inspired by true saints, whose examples of faith and purity can lead them back to God.

30 Responses to “Secular Saints”


  1. 1 Claire Jan 21st, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    BRAVA!!!
    Your courage inspires me. Keep up the good work.

  2. 2 iacobus Jan 21st, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    Well put, Clara. It is particularly depressing when Catholics gush so.

    There’s a high school chapel I’ve chanced to visit in Maryland where the stained glass above the sanctuary depicts said menace flanking our Lady, accompanied by Blessed Mother Theresa and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

    Then again - and I’ve never asked about this - the scene also features what looks to be Ghandi and Lincoln. At least MLK was baptized.

    stained glass

  3. 3 Clara Jan 21st, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Oh, dear. With so many wonderful saints to choose from, one can only ask: WHY?

  4. 4 Tim Jan 21st, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    “the only one in the American calendar designated in honor of a single individual.”

    Actually, there are four: Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, Washington’s Birthday, Columbus Day, and Christmas.

  5. 5 JSP Jan 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 am

    we can thank the former Republican Congress for changing Presidents’ Day back to the correctly titled, Washin