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The Knights of Columbus: An Illustrated History

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One of the highly incommensurate aspects of the Knights of Columbus' self-presentation nowadays is that the Rev. McGivney was responding to a deep-seated Catholic desire to provide for "widows and orphans" by way of a Catholic fraternal benefit society. Let us be clear, McGivney himself was a mensch, and had very decent desires for those of his faith community. But let us also be clear that the Catholic Church was quite conflicted about the whole matter. In fact the dominant attitude was one of skepticism towards the whole idea of providing for the suddenly dispossessed by way of a fraternal benefit mechanism, period. As surprising as it seems today, even almost incredible, the dominant view of the Catholic Church was to argue that such assistance constituted an occasion for the lessening of heroic piety. That is, again as incredible as it seems, that sudden need should NOT be systematically aided because it was a lessening of the spiritual lessons required for proper piety. Of course, in today's light, it all seems incredible. But this is what many Catholics believed, and what the hierarchy definitely believed at the time. . McGivney was indeed heroic in bringing a more humane, decent vision to his faith community. But Catholics are eager to forget these odd contradictions today, and not learn the lessons from them. If there is any doubt about this matter, one can find it well-enunciated in Hugh Patrick Smyth's The Catholic Church and Secret Societies. This truly terrible book seems to tar all fraternal benefit mechanisms under this awful logic. Of course the work received an Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat, and thus total official approval of its themes, because it enunciated the dominant Catholic view overall at the time. The Knights of Columbus were indeed more advanced in their faith community, and deserve credit. . The only historical lesson to be drawn from this tis that many dominant views of the Catholic Church about the basic facts of human decency have been changed over time. And the bizarreness of anathematizing helping "widows and orphans" by fraternal benefit mechanism for equally bizarre "spiritual" reasons shines a great light on the bizarreness of those obvious virtues of love and mutual care that they anathematize today.