Considering how often I cite The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. as the last great figure of traditional American egalitarian liberalism, you might expect me to write about him on this day that supposedly honors him, his work and his legacy.
And I'd like to but I'm not going to until his estate loosens the muzzle that silences him more effectively than his enemies did during his lifetime. As long as they remain under the aggressive strangle-hold that his own children and their associates have put on his words, I'm not going to paraphrase them. He said it better than I would and the suppression of what he said is not my fault.
I haven't been enthusiastic about how MLK Day is celebrated, though I cherish the memory of how George H. W. Bush looked so uncomfortable during the celebration of the first one. From that first one I thought that closing schools and having friggin' parades was about the most inappropriate thing you could do to honor his legacy. Not to mention the ubiquitous use of one of his lesser speeches and the domesticated false figure of him that omitted all of the things that got him killed, in the end, his radical economics, his non-violence. America screws up every holiday, even those that start with the best intentions.
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As an update, I'd forgotten the part that the vile Cardinal Robert Sarah played in the totally inappropriate naming of St. John XXIII, the Pope who wrote Pacem in Terris, as the patron saint of the Italian military, something I'm sure was an expression of his opposition to his canonization or just of the same cynicism exposed in his use of the clearly mentally diminished Benedict XVI.
I would also say that I have to agree with what Michael Sean Winters concludes about the role that Georg Ganswein played in that fiasco, which I hope he is right backfires on the right wing anti-Francis clique. Pope Francis will be a far better Pope if he bends his policy on devolved power enough to get these men out of positions where they can do damage.
For fans of scandal and corruption, read what Winters says about the prospect of the retired Benedict living in Bavaria instead of at the Vatican.
I disagree with the latter about not letting future retired popes live in the Vatican: The alternative is far worse. Can you imagine if Benedict had returned to Bavaria? Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis would keep him in her palace, surrounded by her "gladiators." Every rightwing nut would make Benedict's residence a pilgrimage site. No. Keep retired popes within the walls, but let the new pope appoint a new secretary for any retired pope.
Yeah, now that you say that, I can imagine it and helles belles, is there anything more putrid than the decayed corpses of the royalty and nobility of Europe and the like and the part they still, today play in anything having to do with Catholicism? Knights of Malta, Knights of Gregory (for those who don't know, JPII* made the smut peddler-fasicim promoter Murdoch one of those), etc. Gloria von Thurn und Taxis is one of the patronesses of both the vile Cardinal Raymond Burke and an associate of Steve Bannon, just as an example.
All royalty, all "nobility" all such feudal bull-shit hereditary gangsters will always be a cancer on the Catholic Church until they are definitively cut out of it, If I were Pope I would order all clergy and religious to cut all ties with all of them, immediately.
* And as for JPII, I'd put the breaks on the saint making assembly line. As the many scandals of the JPII papacy come out, it's clear he should not be considered a model of sanctity in much of any sense. He was one of the worst popes of modern times, maybe worse than the worst of the more recent Piuses. Winters mentions that Robert Sarah had aspired to become Pius XIII at the next conclave. Looks like he blew his chances. Let's hope so.
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