Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 21 April 2005 — Page 19

The Muncie Times • April 21, 2005 • Page 19

TO BE EQUAL

Death Claims 2 Great Humanitarians: a pope, an attorney

The judgment, if you will, early this month of four men in courts of law, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the court of public opinion, have produced a startling juxtaposition of the evil some human beings are capable of and the good other human beings commit themselves to. In mentioning the latter, I’m referring to the outpourings of emotion that attended the deaths of Pope John Paul II and here in the United States, famed attorney Johnnie Cochran. But, first, let me speak of the judgments in courts of law of two men who embody the depravity of spirit and the worship of violence that has always been too common in human affairs. On April 6, in a federal court in Chicago, Matthew Hale, the 33-year-old leader of a violent white supremacist group, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for plotting to assassinate a federal judge. Two days later, federal officials announced that Eric Robert Rudolph, a notorious white supremacist who had been captured in 2003, after 5 years on the run, had pleaded guilty to bombings that killed two people and injured more than 150 others, in order to avoid a trial that could have brought the death penalty. Federal

officials said Rudolf was responsible for the deadly 1996 bombing at the Olympic Village in Atlanta, and three bombings in the next 2-years outside a fami-ly-planning clinic, and a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., in which the clinic’s security guard, and a off-duty police officer was killed. Rudolph and Hale, like so many whose bottomless hatred of and need to dominate others led them to commit violence themselves or persuade others to do so, are actually cowards. Hatred of others offers them a refuge from their fear of making their way in our complex, modem, world. Many African Americans will easily recognize the type of people Hale and Rudolph are. The white South of the Jim Crow decades was infested with their likes. What a contrast they represent to Johnnie Cochran, whose life and career was a testament to the African Americans’ achievement ethic and to their patriotism in using the law of the land to pursue justice. During and after the O.J. Simpson murder trial, some, succumbing to base motives, sought to pose Johnnie Cochran as a figure of ridicule. But the evidence of his brilliant legal

mind and the clients of all kinds, who continually flocked to his firm, wouldn’t permit that. His great passion for pursuing justice for ordinary people fueled the extraordinary contribution he made to black America. Pope John Paul II embodied that commitment in religious terms and on a global scale. During the past couple of weeks, we’ve heard tributes to the late pope fro, politicians, the media, religious leaders, ordinary citizens for his unending commitment to reaching out to the destitute and fighting for the poor-tributes grounded in fact. For example, in his 1998 Lenten message, the pope declared that poverty “which for many of our brothers crosses the line to misery, is a scandal. It assumes a multiplicity of forms...: the lack of the necessary means of survival and primary health care; the absence of a home or its inadequacy...; the marginalization of the weakest from society and the unemployed from the productive sector; the loneliness of those having no one to count on; the condition of international refugees and those who suffer from war and its cruelties; the inequality of salaries; the absence of a family...the

individual is humiliated by the lack of these necessities of life. It is a tragedy before which those how have the possibility to intervene cannot, in conscience, remain indifferent.” Sadly, some who today praise the pope place disproportionate emphasis on the prohibitions he espoused, burying his views on love, compassion and forgiveness within an avalanche of so-called moral values made up of little more than vengeance, judgmentalism and exclusion. But I ask: How better to serve God that to work to ensure healthy starts for all of our babies-not just those bom into a particular class? How better to demonstrate the power of love, forgiveness and commitment to the principle of redemption than to provide opportunities for prisoners to reenter our society after repaying their debt? How better to carry out Christ’s teachings than to

Marc H. Morial president and CEO of the National Urban League.

reach out to help the poor, the neglected, the left behind and bring them into the social and economic mainstream or our nation? It is well and good to praise the pope. But the best tribute we could pay this great and holy man would be to put into action the teachings for which we now honor him. And that means all his teachings, not just those cherry picked for individual political purposes. In honoring Pope John Paul II, let’s do more than give lip service to his legacy. Let us put into practice the true meaning of what he lived and tried to teach us.

Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League. You can write to him at: To Be Equal, 120 Wall St., New York City, NY 10005.

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