During his first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass Jan. 17, Bishop Anthony B. Taylor said President Barack Obama’s election is a fulfillment of King’s dream.
The Mass at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock has been held for the past 20 years and is coordinated by the Diocesan Council for Black Catholics.
“Dr. King’s ability to articulate his dream of what we could and should be has changed our understanding of what it is to be an American more profoundly than most people realize even today,” he said. “And not just because we are about to inaugurate our first African-American president, miraculous as that is to those of us who remember what things were like 41 years ago when Dr. King’s life and work seemed to come to an end.”
“I join you and a majority of Americans in rejoicing that such dreams really can come true, but we shouldn’t forget that it hasn’t been easy, that a price had to be paid for this dream to come true, a steep price of courage, self-sacrifice and in many instances, blood.”
Bishop Taylor acknowledged that King would have been proud to see Obama elected if he had reached his 80th birthday Jan. 15. But he would probably have been disappointed with Obama’s pro-choice stance, the bishop said, quoting King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King.
“The election of an African-American president sends a powerful and historic message that what was previously unthinkable can become reality,” Alveda King said. “The battle for equal rights has reached a major milestone, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of full equality remains just a dream as long as unborn children continue to be treated no better than property.”
King is considered one of Bishop Taylor’s heroes. The then-eighth-grader was spurred to become more active in his faith following the civil rights leader’s assassination in 1968 in Memphis. The bishop said he learned that being a faithful Christian meant “doing what Jesus did, living for something bigger than yourself, working to build God’s kingdom of truth and justice already in some measure here and now in this world, and this includes defending human rights.”
The bishop said Catholics should not forget that King’s “fundamental message” was “we are all brothers and sisters, and that life is sacred.”
“If life isn’t sacred, why bother to make sacrifices to do the right thing? Who cares? We care because life is sacred and that’s also why we don’t give up hope,” he said.
Bishop Taylor said he believes King’s dream has lived on for nearly 50 years because the Baptist minister based his civil rights work on Jesus Christ.
“Dr. King was not a politician; he was a prophet and more than a prophet,” he said. “He was a man whose whole life was given over to the proclamation of the Gos pel of Jesus Christ in its entirety. Jesus was his greatest hero, along with Mahatma Gandhi. Jesus and Gandhi taught him non-violent resistance to evil, and Jesus also taught him to trust in God even when there was a price to pay in order to set us free, even to the point of shedding his blood, just like Jesus whose servant he was.”
This year’s recipient of the Daniel Rudd Award was Pearl Herman, 77, a lifelong member of St. Bartholomew Church in Little Rock and wife of Deacon Kirke Herman. Pearl Herman is a former St. Bartholomew and Pulaski County Special School District teacher. She reached out to Bishop Albert Fletcher to integrate the Cath olic schools, including Catholic High School in 1962. She has been involved in nearly every ministry in the parish, including serving as a lector, RCIA instructor, altar server trainer and participant in Why Catholic?, rosary group and Bible study. She and her husband have been married for 57 years and have four children.
The lectors, music and liturgical dancers were provided by the diocese’s three predominantly black churches, St. Bartholomew Church in Little Rock, St. Augustine Church in North Little Rock and St. Peter Church in Pine Bluff.
