The Knights of Columbus is being accused of inflating its numbers to appear more profitable to insurance companies — and some of its members say they’re paying the price.
Greg McAtee first joined the Knights of Columbus 16 years ago, when he was 55.
He was joining a formidable club, the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world with alumni like Babe Ruth and John F. Kennedy, and it continues to have powerful political allies in 2019. He was also, though he didn't realize it at the time, becoming a pawn in an alleged scheme to inflate membership numbers for a multibillion-dollar life insurance company.
But to him, the Knights were mostly just a group of nice men from his parish in Mobile, Alabama, who wore matching shirts with shield insignias. They raised money for charity, had Christmas parties for good causes, and fried fish for its friends and family in the local community center.
Today, however, McAtee is a witness for the plaintiffs in a massive new lawsuitthat could shake one of America’s most powerful socially conservative groups to its core. The case is accusing the Knights of Columbus of “racketeering, fraud, deception, theft, and broken promises,” a complaint in the US District Court for Colorado, which will begin hearing the case Monday, reads.
Edit: the Schadenfreude is strong!
AMDG
22 comments:
I have no sympathy for the Knights of Columbus. They have a well earned reputation of being a good, solidly Catholic mens organization.....in the past.
But since the election of Pope Francis, and his radical liberal, dissident and even heretical agenda and direction for the Catholic Church, the Knights have become "Francis Robots", brainwashed with the Francis agenda and genuflect to everything he says and does.
They have discarded their traditional ceremonial uniforms with capes and plumed hats and swords in keeping with the "humble and poor" "church" Pope Francis wants.
Therefore, because of this direction....in the same mold as the Knights of Malta have taken since the election of Francis, I have no sympathy for the Knights of Columbus.
Typical of all once traditional Orders, societies and organizations in the Catholic Church which turned radically progressive and turned their back on their own heritage and tradition, the Knights of Columbus are an aging body of men hard pressed to find any new recruits. Before Vatican II there were plenty. Now.....practically zero. With aged membership and same leadership. Median age....approaching 70. Before 1962, median age, 35-40.
Damian Malliapalli
I have to question an organization that has Freemasonry as its reason for existence. I suspect it’s been fatally flawed from the beginning and marinated in rank Americanism and Gnosticism.
How has it had freemasonry for its existence? I am not criticizing, just asking. I guess you refer to the fact it is designed to be a Catholic secret society or brotherhood - whatever. -Dirk
It was formed to offer ambitious and financially successful American Catholic men an alternative to Masonic societies. Archbishop Ireland had already spat in the face of the Papal Nuncio by blessing Catholics who wanted to join the masonic Knights of Pythias at the time of their founding.
Pray tell more about Archbishop Ireland and the Knights of Pythias. Sounds like an interesting story. -Dirk
Damian Thanks for sharing the good news about the demise of the KOC. They ceased to resemble anything Catholic decades ago at least anything our great grandparents would have recognized as Catholic.
What would Undead Chronic say? What he say?
Not Catholic, toker, sleeps around Tindering
but is what he say, TRUE?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPPGPifizs
Nobody told the Knights that Christendom is over.
The knights never really believed Christendom mattered.
How would you know?
Half-a century of direct observation and encounter.
It is completely false, utterly absurd and patently defamatory to say that the Knights of Columbus was "formed to offer ambitious and financially successful American Catholic men an alternative to Masonic societies." The Knights were founded in 1882 by Father Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, to defend and protect Catholics from vicious anti-Catholic bigotry, discrimination, and intolerance.
As a fraternal benefits society, the Knights also render financial and mutual aid to members and their families. In its beginnings, most of its members were mostly poor and working class Catholic Irish and Italian immigrants! It's named in honor of Catholic explorer Christopher Columbus to reaffirm America's Catholic roots.
That the order's top brass today kowtows to the Modernists currently in control of the Vatican is true. But the top brass acts and maneuvers against the desires and express will of many of its better members who are on record as firmly opposing the corruption and apostasy so violently plaguing the Church since Vatican Council II.
Those who defame, slander and belittle the Knights of Columbus do Christ, the Church and Christendom no favor. Rather they play straight into the hands of the enemies of Christ, Christendom and the Church. Regardless of any lawsuit, many good and faithful Catholic men serve the Church and their fellow man in the order. The Knights have many faults, but having "Freemasonry as its reason for existence" is not one of them.
Judy, I don’t even know where we substantially disagree, although your comment that the Knights were
founded to combat “bigotry and intolerance” sounds pretty Masonic, whiggish, gay and Jewish anyway. I always thought the Knights were initially more concerned with error than “bigotry” and that the Knights were also founded to provide an outlet for ambitious Catholic men who could provide assistance to families who were experiencing hardship. It’s true that there were many immigrant Catholics, but that doesn’t mean they were collectively helpless, lacking in ambition and exclusively poor. (My great great grandfather was already wealthy when he arrived in the US). Because of their industry and ambition, many Catholic immigrants were wealthy and the signs of this wealth is still in evidence in the old ethnic neighborhoods where the numerous churches they built still exist, albeit not a few have been turned to other purposes than what they were intended thanks to the collusion and indifference of many, including the Knights. Many Catholic Masons, urrr, Knights of Columbus, were such successful, ambitious, if not wealthy, men. There’s actually nothing wrong with being successful and ambitious any more than there is being poor. Sorry I gave that impresssion.
It’s also not far off to state that Masonry was a motivation or a “reason” and concern surrounding the founding of the Society. Even the Knight’s website cites the reason for the founding as being a concern to provide Catholic men with an alternative to Freemasonry. I don’t see anything about combating bigotry, oy veh!
“Late-19th century Connecticut was marked by the growing prevalence of fraternal benefit societies, hostility toward Catholic immigrants and dangerous working conditions in factories that left many families fatherless. Recognizing a vital, practical need in his community, Father Michael J. McGivney, the 29-year-old assistant pastor of St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, Conn., gathered a group of men at his parish on Oct. 2, 1881. He proposed establishing a lay organization, the goal of which would be to *prevent Catholic men from entering secret societies whose membership was antithetical to Church teaching*, to unite men of Catholic faith and to provide for the families of deceased members.”
You go on to agree with me that the society’s chief members are corrupt, but insist that the rank and file is still pretty good. Many good members I know of have simply left the organization. How good are those remaining if they can’t take it back?
http://www.kofc.org/en/todays-knights/history/1882-1899.html
The old Pravda would love the spectacular editorial revisionism Tancred. Splendid performance, hubris at its very best.
I guess this and that are reasons why I never joined the K of C!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48laJC8wYl4
Ted Kennedies and his ilk are the defining features of the modern organization.
The non sequitur reigns supreme.
It’s one of the principal problems of the organization is that worldly aims and principles define it more than the immemorial foundations of the faith and men who not only do not lead Catholic lives, but publicly contradict Catholic teaching are in leadership positions.
Let's not paint with too broad a brush. Some Knights of Columbus are promoting the Traditional Latin Mass and the restoration of Catholic Tradition in general. They even organized the consecration of a city to the Sacred & Immaculate Hearts:
https://knightsofcolumbuslatinmass.blogspot.com/2016/06/report-solemn-consecration-of-city-of.html
Some Nazis were fighting to defend Catholic institutions in the face of the Red Army. Not all those chaps were bad. Leon Degrelle was a decent chap.
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