Knights of Columbus and The Ku Klux Klan
Both American councils and mostly newly formed Mexican councils of the Knights of Columbus opposed the persecution by the Mexican state. To date, nine of those beatified or canonized were Knights. The American Knights collected more than a million dollars to assist exiles from Mexico, to continue the education of expelled seminarians, and to inform citizens of the U.S. about oppression. They circulated five million leaflets educating the U.S. about the war, held hundreds of lectures and spread the news via radio. In addition to fostering an informed public the order met with Calvin Coolidge to press for intervention in the oppression in Mexico.
In Mexico, according to Supreme Knight of Knights of Columbus Carl A. Anderson, two thirds of their Mexican Catholic councils were shut down by the Mexican government at the time. In response, the Knights of Columbus published posters and magazines placing the Cristero soldiers in positive light.
High-ranking members of the U.S. Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1920s offered Calles $10,000 to help fight the Church. The offer came when the Knights of Columbus secretly offered a group of Cristero rebels $1,000 of financial assistance for guns and ammunition. This was made after the fact that Calles also sent a private telegram to the Mexican Ambassador to France, Sr. Alberto José Pani Arteaga advising that the "...Catholic Church in Mexico is a political movement, and must be eliminated in order to proceed with a Socialist government free of religious hypnotism which fools the people... within one year without the sacraments, the people will forget the faith..."
Read more about this topic: Cristero War
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“A woman’s asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person’s demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.”
—Mary Daly (b. 1928)
“Here we have bishops, priests, and deacons, a Censorship Board, vigilant librarians, confraternities and sodalities, Duce Maria, Legions of Mary, Knights of this Christian order and Knights of that one, all surrounding the sinner’s free will in an embattled circle.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,
They are no wealthier than I;
But with as brave a core within
They rear their boughs to the October sky.
Poor knights they are which bravely wait
The charge of Winter’s cavalry,
Keeping a simple Roman state,
Discumbered of their Persian luxury.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A woman’s asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person’s demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.”
—Mary Daly (b. 1928)