Saturday, January 15, 2000
King should be martyr, clergy say
Catholic church honor would be unprecedented
BY EARNEST WINSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Tristate clergy said Friday they strongly support a proposal being considered by the Catholic church to declare the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a 20th-century martyr.
U.S. Catholic bishops have asked Pope John Paul II to honor the civil-rights leader, who is among 10,000 nominees being considered, at a May 7 ecumenical prayer service in Rome.
If Dr. King, a Baptist, is declared a martyr, it would be the first time the honor has been conferred upon a non-Catholic. But the Pope has said he wants to make a concerted effort to recognize non- Catholics as martyrs in the new millennium, said Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
“Until now, the only time the Catholic church has declared someone to become a martyr is during the canonization process (the process to declare someone a saint),” he said.
The word martyr means witness in Greek, he said.
“That's what a martyr is — someone who is a witness for their faith. And more commonly what we mean by that is someone who has died for their faith, and it seems clear that the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people is a key tenet of the Christian faith.
“It seems equally clear to me that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died for that tenet,” he said.
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil-rights leader who marched with Dr. King, said no recognition is too great for his friend, who was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis.
“My personal feeling is that Dr. King was God's spokesman for the hour — the spokesman for freedom, peace and justice,” the Rev. Mr. Shuttlesworth said.
No honor is too great for Dr. King and the families of John F. and Robert Kennedy, he said Friday from a hotel in Fayetteville, Ark., as he prepared to attend a Martin Luther King Jr. banquet.
“Without the strength and the courage that was brought to bear on the forces of segregation in this country,” he said, “this country would have stumbled across the 21st century, perhaps in danger of race wars.”
The Rev. Ed Jach, pastor of St. Francis de Sales Church in East Walnut Hills, agreed Dr. King is worthy of being named a martyr.
“What he was martyred for is an example of all the freedoms that we need in this world,” Father Jach said. “His life was really dedicated to the well-being of humanity and he suffered and died for it and that's a great achievement.”
Mr. Andriacco, however, said the same people who view Dr. King as a martyr for the civil rights movement may not see him as a martyr for the Christian faith.
“Not everybody would agree that Dr. King was a martyr simply because of the circumstances of his assassination don't conform to the model of martyrdom that we're used to,” he said, adding that he would expect the issue to be debated.
“They may not have noticed that in every speech that he gave he talked about the gospel, and many of the great speeches that he gave were actually sermons, and this kind of gets lost,” he said.
Meanwhile, a Vatican official downplayed speculation that the Pope plans to declare Dr. King a Christian martyr during the jubilee, saying that current plans call for a no-names prayer service honoring all Christians who died for the faith in the 20th century, according to Catholic News Service.
Jozef Maj, a Jesuit priest and a member of the commission planning the ecumenical service, told Catholic News Service the Vatican is studying the possibility of making public a few names. But he said any names would be persons who suffered directly because of their profession of faith in Christ, leaving aside “political or other factors.”
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