By Brian T. Olszewski of the Catholic Herald Staff

MILWAUKEE – Msgr. Patrick Wells, a priest of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, was a deacon studying at Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, when, in December 1990, he asked the school’s director of liturgy and music, C. Christian Rich, “What was the Sacred Heart School of Theology going to do to remember Dr. Martin Luther King?”

The cleric, being told that Martin Luther King Day was the last day of students’ winter break, and that nothing much would happen on that day, replied, “Well, maybe this is the last day nothing happens.”

As Rich introduced Msgr. Wells as the featured speaker for the Catholic community’s15th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemoration, he added, “That liturgy (held in January 1991) is the cradle of what we celebrate.”

More than 400 people attended the event Jan. 16 at St. Francis of Assisi Church in which Msgr. Wells, using King’s 1965 “Our God is Marching On” speech as his basis, noted that the late civil rights leaders taught “adherence to not only what is right, but what is just.”

Pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church, Houston, since his ordination in 1993, Msgr. Wells said, “What some people think is right isn’t always just, but what is just is always right. Dr. King understood that; America didn’t, and 38 years after his death we are still wrestling with issues of social justice and economic inequality.”

Commenting that more than four decades after landmark civil rights legislation was enacted, economic and social progress for black Americans remains stagnant or going further downhill,” Msgr. Wells used statistics from the National Urban League to make his case:

• Median net worth of black households in 2000 was $6,166 compared to $67,000 for white households.

• Blacks are twice as likely as whites to die from disease, accident, behavior and homicide.

• Twenty percent of black Americans have no health insurance.

Msgr. Wells, former chairman of the department of pharmacology at Texas Southern University, asked, “Are public schools becoming the training ground for private penitentiaries?”

Questioning whether political agendas will meet children’s educational needs, he continued, “An ominous cloud looms over our children’s educational future. It gives me pause to wonder when we hear the president is telling us, ‘No child left behind,’ he, in fact, means ‘Yo’ child can kiss my behind.’”

Msgr. Wells questioned whether King is “taken more seriously in death than he was taken when he was alive.”

“We’ve all, both blacks and whites and everything in between, become consciously ignorant about the King legacy and what it stood for,” he said.

Noting that King “resigned himself to America not getting where it needed to be, a land honoring the promise of equality, before they got to him,” Msgr. Wells said, “He had enough faith to believe that we, as a people, would get there – with or without him – if we believed and continued to be faithful in the struggle for equality. Instead, we settled for a holiday, and it seems time has almost stood still.”

Msgr. Wells concluded his 31-minute presentation by repeating King’s words from the “Our God is Marching On” speech:

“I know you’re asking, ‘How long will it take?’

“How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

“How long? Not long, because you stilled reap what you sow.

“How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

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