I suppose I should thank Ian Leslie of The Ruffian for his semi-formalization of a notion that’s been bothering me for the last decade, although elsewhere he admits to getting the idea from Andrew Sullivan. What does he call it?
Many middle-class people in Western societies carry a covert longing to have our moral mettle tested in the crucible of history. I’ve sometimes felt that urge myself. We want to know how we’d have behaved in societies where overt displays of racism were the norm, and laws explicitly discriminated against people on the basis of race, gender, or sexuality. Would we have meekly accepted such wrongs and even endorsed them, like many or most of our historical peers? Surely not. We’d have stood up and fought for justice, wouldn’t we? We’d have been heroes.
Following the social and political liberalisations of the last century, modern Western societies have provided little opportunity to take sides in genuinely momentous moral contests. We are no longer in conflict over whether different races deserve equal rights or women can vote or – a more recent achievement – gay people can marry. Public attitudes have consistently become more liberal. For all the fuss about populism, most of us agree on the fundamentals of liberal democracy; we’re just arguing over how to optimise it. That means the stakes are lower than they were. The closest many of us get to a test of political integrity is whether we’re willing to spend more on eco-friendly washing up liquid. It’s all unsatisfyingly undramatic.
I love the name, I love the definition. I thought of the necessary transformation of society as a result of climate change as a possible exception, but that hardly has the same personification of injustice as does, say, the beating of the pacifist heroes of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge by the police in 1965. Climate change is not being brought on by deliberate evil or racism or anything of the sort, but by human limitations and overpopulation.
Much of the drama over transgenderism, homosexual marriage, vegetarianism, the anti-vaxxers, the legit skepticism movement, and many other momentary as well as long-running controversies can be attributed to MLK Syndrome, but I think I’ll omit the obvious ones. Instead, I’ll mention a new one that is annoying the skeptics.
The Catholic Church is in the midst of moving the late Pope John Paul I (aka Cardinal Albino Luciani), he who was Pope for all of a month in 1978, down the path of sainthood. What’s the alleged event that justifies claiming he’s responsible for a miracle?
The Vatican said that the healing, of an 11-year-old girl [in 2011], took place in Buenos Aires, the birthplace of the current pope, Francis. She had been afflicted with acute brain inflammation, septic shock and other grave medical problems and was deemed on the verge of death by doctors. A pastor of the parish associated with the hospital caring for her took “the initiative to invoke Pope Luciani,” the Vatican said. [Religion News Service]
Yeah. I can see why the skeptics movement finds this sort of claim to be dubious in the extreme. The guy had died in 1978; 2011 is thirty three years later!
But I can also see the notion that the Catholic Church is desperate to propagate its version of reality, a version in which God still stirs the waters with his finger, saints can be made by the Church, and dead Popes can still stride forth and heal little girls.
After all, the Church is slowly fading, isn’t it? Science is encircling it, discrediting its explanations of natural phenomenon; everywhere it operates it seems to be infiltrated by philanderers and pedophiles; former adherents are now moving on to the charismatic Protestant sects, at least in Central and South America; the dubious reputation of the Pope previous to the current Pope, who dared to retire rather than die in the chair, rests heavily on its shoulders; and the influx of recruits to the priesthood, at least here in the United States, has dropped off sharply as its reputation has become tarnished.
The yearning for a supernatural occurrence, for a new saint, must be compelling for the faithful, especially members of the power structure, who seem themselves, no matter how true to their putative beliefs, as becoming more and more irrelevant to today’s society and, perhaps more importantly, history. The divine and its evidence are the stuff which justifies the decisions of the faithful, and thus MLK Syndrome, or a cousin, very much comes into play: the belief that the drama and importance of the Catholic Church has not been consigned to history, but continues today.
And justifies this thin play for a new Saint.
