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Michael
Joseph McGivney and the Knights of Columbus
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
Stories about John Paul II inevitably seem to include the fact that he
canonized 480 saints. That fact is then compared to the combined total
of 302 saints proclaimed by all predecessors between 1594 and 1978. Why
1594 is chosen as a goal post is a mystery to me. Up to the 10th
century, however, canonizations were made by public acclamation,
predominately martyrs. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the process
came under the regulation of Church law. (Here’s a bit of trivia. St.
Ulrich of Augsburg, in 993, was the first formally canonized saint. John
XV was pope.)
Two Hoosiers are on the canonization track. Anne-Therese Guerin (Mother
Theodore) was beatified by John Paul II in 1998. She was the foundress
of the Sisters of Providence in Terre Haute. The interesting thing about
Theodore Guerin is that the miracles worked through her intercession
(one for beatification and a second for her pending canonization)
involved people from our Local Church, Attica and Anderson. Now the
cause of the first Hoosier bishop (Simon Guillaume Gabriel Brute) has
been introduced. Bishop Brute was the leading theologian in the United
States in his day and spiritual director of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
before being named Bishop of Vincennes in 1834. He died just five years
later. His life is a story of exceptional dedication and heroic virtue.
Many people have a favorite saint or those they are hoping will be
declared saints. A favorite of the Knights of Columbus is Father Michael
Joseph McGivney, the priest who founded the Knights in 1882.
Born Aug. 12, 1852, Michael McGivney was the oldest of 12 children born
to his Irish immigrant parents. Only six of his siblings survived
infancy, a somewhat common reality among Irish immigrants in those
times. Two of his younger brothers followed him to the priesthood,
although he died before they were ordained. An intelligent man, Michael
McGivney was accelerated three years ahead of his peers in public
school. Having finished that schooling at the age of 13, he took a
factory job. However, by age 16 he was certain God wanted him to be a
priest. In September 1868, he entered seminary formation which stretched
through nine years over a patchwork of four schools, two here in the
United States and two in Canada. He eventually was ordained for the
Diocese of Hartford, Conn., on Dec. 22, 1877. He died two days after his
38th birthday on Aug. 14, 1890. A priest a bit less than 13 years, if
canonized, Michael Joseph McGivney will be the first American-born
parish priest to be recognized as a saint.
The year before the ordination of Father McGivney, Archbishop James
Gibbons of Baltimore reflected on the state of American Catholicism. “We
count 67 bishops, upwards of 5,000 priests, 6,500 churches, 1,700 parish
schools with an aggregate attendance of nearly half a million pupils,
and a Catholic population exceeding six million.”
However, it was a time of fierce bigotry toward Catholics. The jacket on
a recently published book on the life of Father McGivney (Parish
Priest by Douglas Brinkley and Julie Fenester) captures the context
of Father McGivney’s life as a priest: “In the late 1800s,
discrimination against American Catholics was widespread. Many Catholics
struggled to find work and ended up in inferno-like mills. An injury or
the death of the wage earner would leave a family penniless. The grim
threat of chronic homelessness and even starvation could fast become
realities. Called to action in 1882 by sympathy for these suffering
people, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, an organization
that has helped to save countless families from the indignity of
destitution.”
There was such a thing as insurance in the 1880s, but working-class
peoples steered clear of the insurance industry. Repeated financial
scandals frightened prospective customers. Moreover, according to the
Brinkley-Fenster book, “commercial life insurance policies were
typically designed for people with substantial assets. Most working men,
white collar or blue, looked to benevolent societies to share the risk
of being alive.”
Father McGivney was inspired to found the Knights of Columbus for two
reasons. It was to prevent people from entering secret societies by
offering the same, if not better, advantages to Catholic men. It was
also founded to provide aid to its members and their families in times
of sickness, to provide for decent burial, and to “render pecuniary
assistance to the families of deceased members.” Father McGivney managed
to organize the insurance offered by the Knights of Columbus so that
nearly anyone could afford coverage. The Knights of Columbus initial
sick benefit of $5 per week was equivalent to about 63 percent of the
average weekly wages for a man in his 30s or 40s. The top level death
pay-out, $1,500, was equal to about four years’ earnings. That was about
$200 more than an average price for a home in the 1880s.
It wasn’t an easy beginning. The effort almost failed. The vision,
however, prevailed. The Knights of Columbus would become a weapon
against the threat of sudden poverty for families already bereaved by
the loss of their wage earners. Widows would no longer have to struggle
in a hopeless endeavor to properly support themselves and their
children.
Once off the ground, the growth was phenomenal. By 1888, the Knights of
Columbus counted 402 members and 43 councils.
Today, there are 1.7 million Knights of Columbus in the United States,
Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,
Panama, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Guatemala, Guam, Saipan and,
most recently, Poland.
Insurance continues to be part of the Knights of Columbus. The order
paid $145 million in death benefits to the families of deceased Knights
in 2005 and $329 million in dividends to insured members. More than $60
billion of life insurance is in force. Based on total value of assets,
the Knights of Columbus is ranked in the top 5 percent of life insurance
companies doing business in North America. But it is the charitable work
of the Knights that is its modern-day glory. In 2004, Indiana Knights
contributed $1.8 million toward charitable causes, raised $235,965
through various funding efforts to assist programs for the mentally
challenged and nearly $70,000 for the benefit of the state’s seminarians
between 2003 and 2005. Since 1990, nationally the Knights have provided
$8.8 million to the U.S. bishops’ pro-life educational campaign and
presented a new mobile television production unit to the Vatican
Television Center at a cost of $600,000. It was Knights of Columbus
money that recently paid for the restoration of the façade of St.
Peter’s Basilica.
The Knights of Columbus is the largest Catholic men’s fraternal
organization in the world. Currently they have a membership drive under
way. Information about the Knights of Columbus is available on the Web
site www.kofc.org.
During his lifetime, Michael McGivney was recognized as a holy man, a
beloved parish priest. Although founder of the Knights of Columbus, his
holiness was rooted in a daily life of dedication to his parishioners.
His cause for canonization was introduced in 1997 by the then-Archbishop
of Hartford, Daniel A. Cronin. Time will tell if he is to be honored as
a saint of the American Church. |
