Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying—we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city.

The Departed

The Knights of Columbus are a Catholic fraternal organization established in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, where the headquarters still resides at One Columbus Plaza, a forbidding skyscraper of dark brown brick and smoked glass. Founded for the relief of workingmen’s widows and orphans by a young Irish-American priest, Michael McGivney, the Knights became the largest, most powerful Catholic men’s group in the country. 

In the First World War, they provided hospital support and entertainment for troops on the front lines; during the Mexican Civil War, they funneled arms and money to the Cristero counterrevolutionaries; today, they underwrite churches, hospitals, and the pro-life movement. Numbered in their membership were Al Smith, Richard Daley, and John F. Kennedy. So were Conrad Hilton and Vince Lombardi. It’s fair to say that, in the 20th century (and even, to a degree, in our own less colorful era), a Catholic man of any public standing was expected to be an official devotee of the example of Fr. McGivney and the principles of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism, as exemplified in the secret ceremonials of the order. The funny hats, however, are optional.

There’s not much sinister going on here; if it’s a conspiracy, it’s one of the thousands of conspiracies that make up what we call civil society in a free republic. Freedoms of association and religion necessarily entail the freedom of religious associations. In America, where the live-and-let-live spirit is infectious and permeates everything from the top down, this has mostly worked out all right. The Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society are about as politically disruptive as the Elks or the Rotary; they have failed to establish Popish despotism by dint of not having tried.