SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME — Year A
*Alternate* Second Reading: Excerpt from the Letter from Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. One may want to ask “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. We have not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, we have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’
“I must make (an) honest confession to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Council or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace with is the presence of justice.”
The words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
