A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Wayward Knights enable abortion, gay marriage July 15, 2011

I’ve written in the past about why I no longer feel I can be a member of the Knights of Columbus.  I recognize that many local councils do quite good work, but I feel the national leadership is more concerned with protecting their insurance business and playing the political game than they are promoting the good of the Church. 

There is a stunning e-mail circulating, apparently, from a priest who has categorized the numerous politicians, who are members of the Knights in good standing, who, through their legislative efforts, have helped keep abortion legal and made state recognition of homosexual couples simulating marriage a reality.  The list of Knights at the state and federal level who have supported legislation antithetical to the timeless Doctrine of the Faith is as long as it is disturbing.  The bedrock requirement for membership in the Knight’s of Columbus is to be a male, practicing Catholic.  Being a practicing Catholic means accepting all the Doctrine of the Faith, whether one’s priest or bishop does or not.  As judging by this e-mail, the sad apostasy that has pervaded so much of the Church has infected the Knights to no less a degree.  I know that many instances of this kind of public rejection of the Truth Christ has revealed through His Church has been brought to the attention of the senior leadership of the Knights at the state and national level.  Many local councils have tried to remove these apostate men from the ranks of their membership.  And yet, the national leadership has instituted a policy of specifically forbidding such removal from membership, for apparently political reasons.  Why, then, should I, or any other believing, practicing Catholic, consider the Knights a good and faithful Church institution? 

We are  in the midst of a cultural war, and it is total.  We, meaning those who hold traditional Catholic values, are losing badly.  We are losing badly for many reasons, but one of the prime reasons is that the Church is so badly divided on so many of these cultural issues.  The Church is divided because too much of the Church leadership (bishops, priests, etc.,), and too many Church organizations, have completely rolled over on issues like apostasy within the membership, and allowed not only dissent to flourish but to nearly fatally undermine the ability of the Church to provide a consistent voice of Christian morality in the public square. 

It is very telling that Supreme Knight Carl Andersen failed to mention the Right to Life or marriage in his 2010 address to the state conventions.   The simple fact of the matter is, by the Knight’s own Charter Constitution and Laws, state deputies can discipline or suspend the membership of any member who gives scandal to the Faith.  Voting for pro-abort or pro-gay marriage initiatives definitely counts as giving scandal.  The Knight’s upper leadership has essentially violated their own Constitution in order to continue giving cover to high profile members who also constitute the vanguard of the culture of death. 

Go read the e-mail.  It tells how high ranking leadership in the Knights have repeatedly blocked grass roots iniatives to have pro-abort/pro-gay marriage politicians removed from the ranks of the membership, and have denigrated those in the pro-life movement.  The Knight’s leadership refer to these politicians as “few” and “irrelevant…..” as the recent vote in New York shows, where two “Catholic Knights” provided the key margin of victory, even if they are relatively few, these politicians are far from irrelevant.

This is a scandal that continues to grow.  I will repeat, however: the Church is increasingly prostrate against the advance of the culture of death because of a refusal to enforce ecclesial discipline and the toleration, sometimes even seeming endorsement, of dissent, actually, apostasy, within the Church.  Until that changes, the Church will continue to fail in its opposition to the death enthralled pagan culture and will eventually face outright persecution – just as it did in AD 250.