America is yet to realise Dr Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality, a senior US cleric has said.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, told congregants at an annual diocesan Mass on Saturday celebrating the legacy of Dr King that the country had made great strides in the last 50 years.
But he warned: “If we look at families and neighbourhoods across our land, if we look at our schools and workplaces, if we look at our courtrooms and prisons, if we look at our streets and see people again marching with signs saying ‘black lives matter,’ then we see that, while we have made great progress, we still have a ways to go yet.”
The annual Mass draws Catholics of all backgrounds and not only commemorates Dr King but also celebrates the rich history of black Catholics in the archdiocese. This year’s Mass was held at the Holy Comforter-St Cyprian parish in Washington with the theme “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” a quote from King’s famous 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail in Alabama.
“Many in Dr King’s time did not want him to speak for a just society, for freedom and equality for black men and women, boys and girls who had been victims of longstanding discrimination,” he said in his homily. “There were also those described as lukewarm who did not want to hear Dr King’s message, preferring, as he says in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, the ‘absence of tension’ to the ‘presence of justice’. But Dr King insisted that we must be like the early Christians and work to transform the culture.”
“If one is treated unjustly, we are all affected. None of us can turn a blind eye, none of us can remain silent, none of us can be passive in the face of oppression, violence and assaults on the fundamental dignity of the human person. Each of us is responsible for the harmony that should reflect the presence of God’s kingdom in our world. In a democracy, every citizen must accept some responsibility for the direction of the country. Especially as people of faith, we need to bring our moral values and vision to the market place,” said the cardinal.
He looked to countries where people are persecuted for their faith, such as those who are killed by Islamist terrorists, and observed “that we as a people have not yet come to the Promised Land.”
He went on: “On this journey we need to do our part. At the heart of our participation is our faith in Christ, his Gospel, his call to human solidarity and above all his love.”
“In the quiet assurance that it is God’s justice we proclaim when we do our part to live Jesus’ Gospel of love, we know we can make a difference. In this way we can change hearts. If enough hearts are changed, people will be changed. If enough people are changed, the world will also be changed, the cardinal concluded.
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