The Knights of Columbus, founded in the U.S. in 1882, has become the largest Catholic fraternal and philanthropic organization. Something like two million Catholic men support Catholic education, provide community service of all kinds, promote blood donation, and lobby for laws that support Catholic ideals of public life. It’s possible that you might have different political views on this or that issue, but certainly they have the right to raise the Catholic voice as much as we have to raise the Mormon one, and K.C. philanthropic efforts are “virtuous, lovely, and of good report and praiseworthy.”

Catholics in general, and the Knights of Columbus sometimes in particular, have not always been treated well in the United States. I think we would have little trouble spotting historical parallels in the treatment – mistreatment – of Catholics and Mormons. In the 19teens, and continuing through much of the 20th century, one form of attack on the Knights of Columbus that we could easily identify with is the spurious “Fourth Degree Oath of the Knights of Columbus.”

Supposedly the revelations of former Catholics who had been privy to the secret oaths and practices of the Knights of Columbus – just as so many pretended Mormon oaths and practices were supposedly revealed by ex-Mormons who had once been privy to these fanciful ceremonies – was the text of an oath supposedly sworn by the Knights of Columbus who reached a certain status in that organization. Part of that oath supposedly ran thus –

I do further promise and declare that I will, when the opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth, and that I will spare neither age, sex, or condition and that I will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, he steel of the poniard, or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, ran, dignity, or authority of the persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I ta any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pipe or superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of Jesus.

Oath-taking Catholics, who supposedly signed this oath in their own blood, were further bound, the canard ran, to destroy “heretical governments” (including that of the United States), surrender individual will in all matters to that of their popish overlords, and go to the ends of the earth to carry out any barbarous order given by a superior.

Hate-mongers who create and spread such lies have so little imagination, don’t they? This “oath,” with few adjustments, parallels the spurious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” targeting the Jews, and the supposed oaths of Danites in works targeting the Mormons. The same tiresome lies – tiresome by repetition, but still with the power to provoke violent reactions among the unsophisticated who read and believe such things – appear over and over.

In 1923, a Mormon living in the desert near the Great Salt Lake sent a copy of a pamphlet containing the “Fourth Degree Oath of the Knights of Columbus” to apostle James E. Talmage. The sender doesn’t say where he found the pamphlet, or why he was sending it to Elder Talmage; he merely said that he had read it and was forwarding it.

For his part, Elder Talmage thanked the sender courteously for thinking of him. “It is, however, nothing new, as these alleged oaths have been published and distributed widely by the pronounced opponents of the Roman Catholic Church.”

We must bear in mind that our people have been grossly misrepresented by those opposed to them; and I think that of all people we should be the most careful against acceptance of what the enemies of any organization say as to that organization itself.

We live in a time when the world, individual nations, and the communities in which we live are divided in ways I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. Many of the divisions are promoted by those who cannot, or at least do not, make any positive case for their views – their views are couched in terms of what they are against.

Certainly there are ideas and practices and behaviors and philosophies that we should be against, if we are for the Kingdom of God. But we can be, and I fear are, too often led to condemn whole groups of people not because they are in fact our enemies, but merely because their enemies are spreading lies that are so loud and repeated so often that it seems reasonable to accept the lie with little to no resistance.

You have the Light of Christ. Virtually everyone reading this has received the gift of the Holy Ghost. Don’t treat them lightly. Don’t abandon them because it’s easier, especially because it’s politically easier, to accept the lies. You have the power to discern between truth and error.

“Of all people we should be the most careful against acceptance of what the enemies of any organization say as to that organization itself.”