Knights Of Columbus, Justification?

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All of you Catholics know something about the Knights of Columbus. I have seen them pray before Mass, raise money for Seminaries and to offer various services.

Please give some reasons for the justification for the existance of the Knights of Columbus. Negative comments are welcome.
 
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Exporter:
All of you Catholics know something about the Knights of Columbus. I have seen them pray before Mass, raise money for Seminaries and to offer various services.

Please give some reasons for the justification for the existance of the Knights of Columbus. Negative comments are welcome.
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Why do the KCs have to justify their existence? Do the Elks or the Lions or any other fraternal organization?

Why not visit their website?

kofc.org/un/about/index.cfm
 
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1ke:
Why do the KCs have to justify their existence? Do the Elks or the Lions or any other fraternal organization?

Why not visit their website?

kofc.org/un/about/index.cfm
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Or better yet, just come out and state your objections to the group, back it up with some examples and conclude?

Scott
 
Hello,

I am a proud 1st degree Knight in the K of C. I just joined them this month. The K of C does a lot of good. They help the community and the Church. They also help one another out and offer life insurance for their members. It was started in New Haven, Conneticut by a group of mostly Irish immigrant men and their pastor Fr. Mcgivney (now servant of God). It was established to provide assisstance to needy Catholic families, provide fraternity, strengthen faith, and help out the Church and community. It is now the biggest lay order in the world.
 
What’s with the “justification”? Do you think it’s an evil organization or something?
 
Peace be with you!

The only thing I don’t like about the KoC is the name. Christopher Columbus was a terrible person and doesn’t deserve to have anything named after him.
But the KoC is a great organization and has done a lot to help the Church.

In Christ,
Rand
 
Rand Al'Thor:
Peace be with you!

The only thing I don’t like about the KoC is the name. Christopher Columbus was a terrible person and doesn’t deserve to have anything named after him.
But the KoC is a great organization and has done a lot to help the Church.

In Christ,
Rand
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Please explain why you dislike Columbus so.

Maranatha,
Hans
 
Isn’t Oregon dangerously close to British Columbia? I suppose you might hate the folks who work in the District of Columbia, but: Sheesh!

tee
 
Rand Al'Thor:
Peace be with you!

The only thing I don’t like about the KoC is the name. Christopher Columbus was a terrible person and doesn’t deserve to have anything named after him.
But the KoC is a great organization and has done a lot to help the Church.

In Christ,
Rand
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**The name stands for Catholics being the first in the Americas. The man Columbus may have been a bad guy, but remember he was the first one to discover America and he and his crew were Catholic. He was also always viewed as a heroe. **
Mainly, they chose that because durring the time Catholics were being persecuted and seen as unpatriotic and a threat (as if the Pope was conquering) so they wanted to remind people about America’s Catholic roots and that Catholics can be good Americans.
 
Be sure to read this article by Father John Hardon S.J.

Talk # 3
In Defense of Christopher Columbus the Catholic

therealpresence.org/archives/Christopher_Columbus.htm

Thanks

Read all six talks at :

Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives
Christopher Columbus Index

therealpresence.org/archives/archives.htm#nav

Transcript of Talk on Christopher Columbus - #1

Our purpose in these lectures is to develop our basic theme, which I call “The Catholic Discovery of America.” Our focus will not be on the discovery of America, which is obvious. It will be on the Catholic discovery of America which, I assure you, is not obvious.

Christopher Columbus, The Catholic - #2

This, then, is our focus in this chapter. It is to see how God used a very human, human being, whose faith enabled him to achieve what most writers on Columbus do not recognize. It is one thing to say that Columbus discovered America. It is something else to realize that he opened the door to the most phenomenal spread of Christianity since the time of St. Paul.

In Defense of Christopher Columbus the Catholic - #3

There are few great men in history who do not have both their ardent admirers and their virulent traducers. Christopher Columbus is no exception. But there is one main difference in the case of Columbus. We can identify his critics by their religious affiliation or ideology.

The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Catholic Discovery of America - #4

If there was one thing that stood out in the Catholic Spain of Columbus’ day, it was the people’s great devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It was a devotion that took almost eight centuries to mature… I wish to speak to you about “The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Catholic Evangelization of America.”

The Popes and the Catholic Discovery of America - #5

This must be the strangest title for a lecture, “The Popes and the Catholic Discovery of America.” What makes it strange is that for many people, the last terms they would associate are “Popes” and “America.” Not only that, but the last ideas they even want to conceive is the “papacy” having anything to do with “independent” nations like the United States of America. Yet the facts of history show that the Bishops of Rome had far more to do with the New World discovered by Columbus than most people realize.

Five Hundred Years Since Columbus: Lessons of the Church’s History - #6

We hope to see what have been the outstanding features of the Church’s history in the New World in the past half millennium. Even more pertinently, we will ask ourselves: What lessons does the Church’s experience teach us today, as we begin the next five hundred years of Catholic history in the New World.
 
Rand Al'Thor:
Peace be with you!

The only thing I don’t like about the KoC is the name. Christopher Columbus was a terrible person and doesn’t deserve to have anything named after him.
But the KoC is a great organization and has done a lot to help the Church.

In Christ,
Rand
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I’m not so sure Columbus was a “terrible person.” I’m sure he had his faults; but I think that he has been villified a lot by revisionist historians and that propaganda is now being taught in our schools.
I know of people–in fact, an African American friend of mine–who consider Martin Luther King to be a terrible person, but of course you never hear about his faults because it’s politically incorrect (plus, we admire him for the GOOD things he did). Bashing Columbus and other figures of history, such as Washington and Jefferson, is now the IN thing to do.
 
Peace be with you!

Columbus was not a “good Catholic”. His first thought, in his own journals, after meeting a group of natives (after thinking how easily converted they would be) was that they would make “great servants.” Then he talks about “taking six of them back to Spain” to “learn the language” but later he talks about how he thought they lied about inhabitants of San Salvador having gold bracelets as a means to escape. Well, if he thinks these natives were planning on trying to escape, they obviously didn’t come with him of their own will. Columbus didn’t want to pass by any island without “possessing it” so that it would be theirs from then on. He killed and enslaved natives because he believed it would be “profitable”.
Also from his journals: “It appeared to them that we were honest people, and that the man who had escaped from us had done us some injury, for which we kept him in custody. It was in order to favor this notion that I ordered the canoe to be set adrift, and gave the man the presents above mentioned, that when your Highnesses send another expedition to these parts it may meet with a friendly reception.” So he makes it look like they didn’t take someone against his will so that they can do it again when they come back.
I used to think Columbus was a good person, back in elementary and high school (the things they selectively teach us here in the US) but after I started doing more reading on him in college, the worse my impression of him got.

In Christ,
Rand
 
Last Columbus Day, I heard a Protestant preacher on the radio extoll the virtues of Christopher Columbus. He said he had done extensive research on him and, despite the modern-day campaign to slur him and everything Christian and European, he discovered how thoroughgoing Christian the man was. He even strongly suggested that Columbus was such an obvious lover of Scripture and of the Lord, that he must have been some kind of proto-Protestant!

That’s pretty bad when we Catholics can’t embrace our own, but the Protestants will do it for us. :rolleyes:
 
Anima Christi:
I’m not so sure Columbus was a “terrible person.” I’m sure he had his faults; but I think that he has been villified a lot by revisionist historians and that propaganda is now being taught in our schools.
I know of people–in fact, an African American friend of mine–who consider Martin Luther King to be a terrible person, but of course you never hear about his faults because it’s politically incorrect (plus, we admire him for the GOOD things he did). Bashing Columbus and other figures of history, such as Washington and Jefferson, is now the IN thing to do.
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I don’t “bash” people without having a good reason to (certainly not because it’s the “in” thing to do; if that was the case I’d be a democrat). I like Washington, but Jefferson refused to free his slaves after writing that “all men are created equal”. I was always taught in school that Columbus was a great guy and it wasn’t until I took real history classes in college that I got to learn more about him. That’s what I base my opinion of him on, plus I’ve read about him on my own as well.

In Christ,
Rand
 
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Fidelis:
Last Columbus Day, I heard a Protestant preacher on the radio extoll the virtues of Christopher Columbus. He said he had done extensive research on him and, despite the modern-day campaign to slur him and everything Christian and European, he discovered how thoroughgoing Christian the man was. He even strongly suggested that Columbus was such an obvious lover of Scripture and of the Lord, that he must have been some kind of proto-Protestant!

That’s pretty bad when we Catholics can’t embrace our own, but the Protestants will do it for us. :rolleyes:
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Historians disagree–that’s what we do. A lot of English historians love Elizabeth…I hate her along with every Irish historian. Protestant historians love Martin Luther…I’ve read some of his letters and other writings and I think he was a bad person. That’s what happens in the study of history. I don’t consider Columbus to be a “good Christian” and I’m certainly not going to base my decision simply on the fact that he was a Catholic. John Kerry and Ted Kulungaski (sp?)–the gov. of Oregon–claim to be Catholic too. That doesn’t mean I have to “embrace” them as “our own”.

In Christ,
Rand
 
Judging people from very different times and cultures according to modern standards of behavior and our present culture has become quite the fashion. As well as taking things they said and did out of the context of their times.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow defense of Columbus here, but he’s not as bad as your college professors painted him, nor as good as your elementary teachers claimed, either. He was a man of his times who lived his life according to what he understood and what was expected of him by others, especially those who funded his expedition, namely the King and Queen of Spain.

Besides all this, why the KCs should be cast in a baleful light now, based on modern interpretation of times many centuries ago and with very different forms of government and modes of thinking is hardly fair, don’t you think? Honestly now.
 
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Della:
Judging people from very different times and cultures according to modern standards of behavior and our present culture has become quite the fashion. As well as taking things they said and did out of the context of their times.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow defense of Columbus here, but he’s not as bad as your college professors painted him, nor as good as your elementary teachers claimed, either. He was a man of his times who lived his life according to what he understood and what was expected of him by others, especially those who funded his expedition, namely the King and Queen of Spain.

Besides all this, why the KCs should be cast in a baleful light now, based on modern interpretation of times many centuries ago and with very different forms of government and modes of thinking is hardly fair, don’t you think? Honestly now.
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I NEVER SAID THAT!!! If you read my original post, I said the ONLY thing I don’t like is the name. Then I said they are a great organization!!!
It wasn’t even my professors that gave a bad impression of him, it is my own reading…of his own journals as part of it.

In Christ,
Rand
 
My experience in college has taught me to take almost everything learned in these liberal brain-washing mills with a grain of (you can get it by the block at livestock supply stores if need be…) salt. Be it learned from the professors themselves or books written by their revisionist partners in crime-one must always be wary. Aside from this, I must however thank all of those professors and writters who haven’t fallen into error and actually still do seek and teach Truth. They are rare, but they are certainly still out there! 👍

Many folks love to bash on Columbus because it is of course his fault that the Europeans took over the New World, etc. blah, blah, blah-but his finding of the New World (at least the first one that really meant anything) saved millions upon millions by their conversion to our Holy Mother Church.

BTW, I’m a 3rd Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
 
This thread is getting off topic. It’s supposed to be about the Knights of Columbus, not Christopher Columbus.
 
I’ve only been with the knights since '94 but I’ve been Treasurer for the last 3 years and I’m a past grand knight.

Let me count the ways,
EACH YEAR:

1.), the KC gives over 100 MILLION dollars to various charities, including 5 million dollars to the Popes for any charity that the popes decides to give it too.

2.) the KC volunteers over 150 million manhours working in the parish, community, with families, the homeless, the handicapped etc.

My council alone:

3.) gave over 25,000 to charity last year,

4.) we(my council alone) supports 16 kids with tuition scholarships to about 7 or 8 Catholic high schools,

5.) we gave three $500 stipends to one novice and 2 seminarians (bascially to assist with tuition or to use as they please) (and we have done this for each and every year that I know of - I’ve been knight since 1995).

6.) For the past 15 years we have held an annual Teachers Appreciation Program for the Catholic school teachers from our 6 parish schools.

7.) We make donations ranging from $50 to 200 or 300 to about 60 local, nation wide or global charities.
  1. ) we run family programs and youth programs every year including a chess tournament, soccer shootout, writing contest, art contest, basketball free throw contests. We have had low or minimal cost dance lessons, computer classes.
9.) We hold memorial masses, pro-life events, communion breakfasts, socials such at Ocktoberfests, New Years Eve parties,

10.) we lobby local politicians to uphold Catholic interests including pro-life and pro-Catholic schools issues. We march in the annual pro-life rally by the mall. We set up memorials to the unborn at the parishes.

11.) we usher at all the parishes and the National Shrine of Our Lady in DC.

12.) We are eucharistic ministers, members of the pastoral council, members of the choirs, decons, priests (there over 25,000 priests in the KC, many bishops and cardinals including Cardinal McCarrick of DC and Cardinal Keeler)

13.) Our district raised over 65,000 last year for the local mentally handicapped through our annual Tootsie Roll program.

Basically we do anything and everything Catholics are supposed to do, but we are ever vigiliant to avoid doing things that may reflect poorly on our faith.

The Pope (JPII) called us “defenders of the faith”. We are at his service.

Other than the above, we don’t do much of anything and probably should be disbanded…

The real question is: " Why are YOU (and every other Catholic gentleman) NOT a knight ???"
 
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