Happy Martin Luther King Day!

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the great Christian humanists of the 20th century, and acknowledged as an outstanding American by Pope Francis during his papal visit.

He and Servant of God Dorothy Day were contemporaries.

Since its beginnings in 1933, The Catholic Worker had carried articles about racism, the exploitation of black labor, and justice for minorities. When the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s, other articles added a clear voice for equality and justice among people of all races. When Martin Luther King was killed, Dorothy wrote:

Martin Luther King died daily, as St. Paul said. He faced death daily and said a number of times that he knew he would be killed for the faith that was in him. The faith that men could live together as brothers. The faith in the Gospel teaching of nonviolence. The faith that man is capable of change, of growth, of growing in love. (Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, April 1968)

It's worth noting that his Letter from a Birmingham Jail makes clear that his activism and his ministry were rooted in the natural law, the same sort of philosophical underpinning as undergirds the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among others.

"I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong... Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself."

—Martin Luther King, Jr.