Columbia May 2015

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K N I G H T S O F C O L U M BU S

M AY 2015

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KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS M AY 2 0 1 5 ♦ V O L U M E 9 5 ♦ N U M B E R 5

COLUMBIA

F E AT U R E S

8 ‘Join us!’

Star recruiters share their insights and enthusiasm about growing the Knights of Columbus.

BY COLUMBIA STAFF

12 The Love That Brings New Life Into the World The family, the single most humanizing institution in history, is crucial to the future of our civilization.

BY RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS

16 Brother Serving Brother During the American Civil War, Catholics from North and South displayed courage and compassion while striving to heal the nation.

BY JOHN BURGER

24 A Hidden Life for God The first beatification on American soil celebrates the Christian witness of a young religious sister from New Jersey.

BY MSGR. DAVID Q. LIPTAK

A Sister of Mercy is depicted tending to a wounded soldier in a tent hospital in Vicksburg, Miss., during the American Civil War.

D E PA RT M E N T S

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Mercy Heritage Center, Belmont North Carolina

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Building a better world Thanks to the faith and sacrifice of so many, Catholic institutions have served countless neighbors in need.

BY SUPREME KNIGHT CARL A. ANDERSON

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Learning the faith, living the faith Our work is a means of sanctification, allowing us to use our gifts and to provide for our families and others.

BY SUPREME CHAPLAIN ARCHBISHOP WILLIAM E. LORI

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Knights of Columbus News K of C Again Recognized as a World’s Most Ethical Company • Livelihood Project Continues to Help Fishermen in the Philippines • Order Mourns the Death of Cardinal Egan • Knights in Mexico Make Annual Pilgrimage to Sanctuary of Christ the King • Supreme Chaplain Releases New Book

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Building the Domestic Church Because God gave the commandments of work in the beginning of creation, we want to harmonize work and family life.

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Fathers for Good A Navy wife reflects on Memorial Day.

BY ASHLEY KEPPER

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Knights in Action

PLUS: Catholic Man of the Month

M AY 2015

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Growing in Unity IN 1908, an Episcopal priest named Father Paul Wattson instituted the Church Unity Octave — eight days of prayer and study to promote Christian unity Jan. 1825. The following year, Father Wattson and his entire community, the Society of Atonement in Garrison, N.Y., were received into the Catholic Church in what was then an unprecedented event. In 1916, Pope Benedict XV extended observance of the prayer octave, today known as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, to the universal Church.

Father Wattson later became a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus, which was founded less than 75 miles away several decades earlier. In their earliest days, the Knights professed a very simple motto — “Unity and Charity” — underscoring the fact that unity, the principle of the Second Degree, goes hand in hand with charity, the Order’s first principle. According to Faith and Fraternalism: The History of the Knights of Columbus 1882-1982 by Charles Kauffman, one of the earliest ceremonials declared, “Unity is the allpowerful ally of that God-given attribute implanted in the human heart, charity.”

The Order’s charitable mission is directly related to building up membership and standing together in unity of purpose (see page 8). More fundamentally, these founding principles define the Church herself. On the night before his Passion, Jesus raised his eyes to the Father and prayed for his followers, “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, … that the world may know that you sent me, and that

you loved them even as you loved me” (Jn 17:23-24). Ultimately, the origin of the Columbian virtues is to be found in the Trinitarian unity of God, who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). These virtues are likewise closely linked to the Eucharist, which the Second Vatican Council (echoing St. Augustine) called “a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity.”

Pope Francis reflected on these themes on the Solemnity of the Conversion of St. Paul Jan. 25, marking the close of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity: “By the working of the Holy Spirit, we have become one in Christ, sons in the Son, true worshipers of the Father. This mystery of love is the deepest ground of the unity that binds all Christians and is much greater than their historical divisions. To the extent that we humbly advance toward the Lord, then, we also draw nearer to one another.”

This month, as we observe the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War (by declaration) May 9, we remember that unity is a deeply cherished virtue not only for the Knights of Columbus and the Body of Christ, but also for nations. Moreover, as evidenced by the witness of many from both the North and the South, Christian charity plays an essential role in healing divisions in our society (see page 16). Thus, when faced with the many divisions of our own day, public and private, we remain committed to the virtues of charity and unity, seeking to “humbly advance toward the Lord.”♦ ALTON J. PELOWSKI EDITOR

Resource: The Beauty of Holiness THE BOOKLET The Beauty of Holiness: Sacred Art and the New Evangelization (#418) by Jem Sullivan is part of the New Evangelization Series published by the Order’s Catholic Information Service. It discusses how masterpieces of sacred art lead us from seeing to contemplation to adoration, allowing us to encounter the divine beauty of Trinitarian love revealed in the human face of Christ. To download this and other Catholic resources, visit kofc.org/cis.

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COLUMBIA PUBLISHER Knights of Columbus ________ SUPREME OFFICERS Carl A. Anderson SUPREME KNIGHT Most Rev. William E. Lori, S.T.D. SUPREME CHAPLAIN Logan T. Ludwig DEPUTY SUPREME KNIGHT Charles E. Maurer Jr. SUPREME SECRETARY Michael J. O’Connor SUPREME TREASURER John A. Marrella SUPREME ADVOCATE ________ EDITORIAL Alton J. Pelowski EDITOR Andrew J. Matt MANAGING EDITOR Patrick Scalisi SENIOR EDITOR ________

Venerable Michael McGivney (1852-90) Apostle to the Young, Protector of Christian Family Life and Founder of the Knights of Columbus, Intercede for Us. ________ HOW TO REACH US MAIL COLUMBIA 1 Columbus Plaza New Haven, CT 06510-3326 ADDRESS CHANGES 203-752-4210, option #3 PRAYER CARDS & SUPPLIES 203-752-4214 OTHER INQUIRIES 203-752-4398 FAX 203-752-4109 CUSTOMER SERVICE 1-800-380-9995 E-MAIL columbia@kofc.org INTERNET kofc.org/columbia ________ Membership in the Knights of Columbus is open to men 18 years of age or older who are practical (that is, practicing) Catholics in union with the Holy See. This means that an applicant or member accepts the teaching authority of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals, aspires to live in accord with the precepts of the Catholic Church, and is in good standing in the Catholic Church.

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Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved ________ ON THE COVER Father Thomas H. Mooney celebrates Sunday Mass for members of the New York State Militia during the American Civil War.

COVER: Library of Congress

E D I TO R I A L

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BUILDING A BETTER WORLD

Our Missionary Heritage Thanks to the faith and sacrifice of so many, Catholic institutions have served countless neighbors in need

by Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson IN HIS APOSTOLIC exhortation Pope Benedict XVI addressed this Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis called missionary spirit when he spoke at St. for a new missionary spirit among Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City Catholics. This challenge has particular during his 2008 visit to the United resonance for Knights of Columbus, es- States. On that occasion, he stated that to sustain the promise they represent. pecially throughout North America and “faith and a spirit of constant conver- Pope Benedict challenged us to be faiththe Philippines where we have benefited sion and self-sacrifice [was] the secret of ful to this great Catholic missionary herin so many ways from the devotion and the impressive growth of the Church in itage: “In the finest traditions of the sacrifice of countless missionaries. this country.”

Church in this country, may you also be The great Catholic institutions of Pope Benedict then went on to ob- the first friend of the poor, the homeless, these countries were built by men and serve: “We need but think of the re- the stranger, the sick and all who suffer.” women filled with a great missionary markable accomplishment of that We must preserve the free exercise of spirit. In the United States, religion, which allows us not though many of these misonly to make that promise, sionaries confronted the obbut also to keep it. The autonPope Francis challenges us today stacle of anti-Catholic bigotry, omy of our religious instituthey nonetheless seized an options is not extrinsic to the with even greater determination portunity offered by our namissionary nature of Christition’s commitment to the free anity; rather, it is essential. to be, in his words, “neighbors exercise of religion — an opToday, people too often who care for each other.” portunity offered nowhere else view our faith communities on earth. in a “legalistic” or “instituAnd with that opportunity tional” way that fails to unthey constructed an unprecedented net- exemplary American priest, the Vener- derstand their true spirit. In Father work of institutions to provide for the able Michael McGivney, whose vision McGivney’s day, people too often health, education and welfare of mil- and zeal led to the establishment of the viewed Catholics through the lens of lions — Catholics and non-Catholics Knights of Columbus, or of the legacy prejudice and bigotry. He had a simple alike — for whom the government did of the generations of religious and answer: Live the principles of charity, not provide an answer. priests who quietly devoted their lives unity and fraternity in ways people can These institutions, though, were not to serving the People of God in count- see so as to overcome self-centeredness, intended to simply fill a gap left by the less schools, hospitals and parishes.” greed and cynicism. limitation of government. They were These “missionaries” and the instituPope Francis similarly challenges us not, as Pope Francis has reminded us, tions they built offered something that today with even greater determination merely NGOs, that is, volunteer non- government could not — the promise to be, in his words, “neighbors who care governmental service organizations. of the Gospel of Life (Evangelium for each other.” This is truly the Their mission was greater. These Vitae). This was not a promise spoken Knights of Columbus way of life.

Catholic institutions gave witness to about on Sunday mornings; it was a As we prepare to welcome our pope the transcendent dignity of each promise lived out in the day-to-day life to the United States later this year, let human being they served, especially of the poor and suffering. us strive for a record of accomplishment those whose dignity the government You and I are called not only to sus- that we can all be proud of. often neglected. tain these Catholic institutions, but also Vivat Jesus!

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LEARNING THE FAITH, LIVING THE FAITH

Harmonizing Work and Family Life Our work is a means of sanctification, allowing us to use our gifts and to provide for our families and others

by Supreme Chaplain Archbishop William E. Lori EARLY ONE MORNING, while life’s basic necessities. In each case, serving as a bishop in Connecticut, I conscientious couples discover that boarded a commuter train bound for balancing the demands of work and Grand Central Station in New York homelife is no easy feat.

City. The train was very crowded with he thought with a human mind. He people heading to work. While some ‘THE CARPENTER’S SON’ acted with a human will, and with a were reading newspapers and checking As we grapple with the question of human heart he loved. Born of the Virtheir smartphones, I was among those how to harmonize work and family gin Mary, he has truly been made one just standing and holding on. A parish- life, we turn our thoughts to the Holy of us, like us in all things except sin” ioner spotted me and made his way Family. Each year, on May 1, the (Gaudium et Spes, 22). over to me. “Good morning, Bishop,” Church celebrates the feast of St. How consoling these words should he said. “You know, I do this every Joseph the Worker. Recalling that be as we go about our daily work that morning!” “God bless you!” I engages our hands, our minds replied. and our hearts. Jesus himself was In my 38 years as a priest, I Work, when properly understood, known as “the carpenter’s son” have known people who work and when he spoke in his homeincredibly hard. They are out taps into the wellspring of human town synagogue of Nazareth at the door first thing in the the beginning of his public mincreativity ... to create a better morning, and they don’t come istry, the congregation thought home until 7 or 8 p.m. Many of Jesus as a tradesman. Some world for our families. bring work home or go to the may have had his tables and office on the weekends, and chairs in their very homes. most are tethered to work electronically. every human being is called by God to An important key to getting the balAlthough it’s easy to become ob- engage in some kind of work, the ance right between work and homelife sessed about work, the well-being and Church singles out St. Joseph as a man is a more profound understanding of dignity of our families requires a level of diligence and honesty. We recall the true importance of human work. of adequate employment. After all, the that St. Joseph plied his trade as a car- As we go about our daily routine, we loss of a job can put enormous pressure penter to provide for his family. In the may lose sight of the importance of on a family. Unemployment makes liturgy, the Church refers to Joseph as what we do. Whether we work in an families feel insecure, worried about “a wise and faithful servant” and en- office or a factory, take care of children the future, as they risk losing their courages us to reflect on Joseph’s holi- at home or drive a truck for a living, home and have difficulty providing for ness, which is expressed in his care for we are not just doing a “job.” Instead, their children.

Mary and Jesus. we are using gifts and skills as “co-creIn many households, both husband Even more so, Jesus, the Son of God ators” of the world. and wife step out each day into a com- made man, shows us the dignity of petitive, high-pressure workplace. human work. The Second Vatican SANCTIFYING WORK Some greatly enjoy their work and Council puts it this way: “For, by his God has invited us into a partnership have successful careers. Others work incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in in building up the world, not just to simply to keep food on the table or a certain way united himself with each make it more comfortable and proswork multiple low-paying jobs to meet person. He worked with human hands, perous, but also to build a civilization 4 ♦ COLUMBIA ♦

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POPE FRANCIS: CNS photo/Paul Haring – FATHER MARQUETTE: Pere Marquette and the Indians (detail) by Wilhelm Lamprecht (1838-1901), courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University

LEARNING THE FAITH, LIVING THE FAITH

that is just and peaceful. Among other things, this means striving to do our work to the best of our ability. It means behaving virtuously in the workplace and bearing witness by word and deed to our faith and the values that spring from faith and reason. Work, when properly understood, taps into the wellspring of human creativity. We work not merely to make money or to have possessions, but rather to create a better world for our families and loved ones.

Understood in this way, we should approach our daily work as the

HOLY FATHER’S PRAYER INTENTIONS

Offered in Solidarity with Pope Francis GENERAL: That, rejecting the culture of indifference, we may care for our neighbors who suffer, especially the sick and the poor.

MISSION: That Mary’s intercession may help Christians in secularized cultures be open to proclaiming Jesus.

“venue” where we will either grow in holiness or regress. How do I treat my coworkers? How do I receive someone with whom I have an appointment?

As a person full of hope in Jesus Christ, do I live differently or do I “go along to get along”? When we’ve spent the workday as one long opportunity for sanctification, we might be in a different frame of mind when we finally get home at night.

At the end of a workday, dinner has to be prepared; children may have homework and other school activities; there are stories to tell, pets to be

walked and fed, and bills to be paid.

There also needs to be a little time for unwinding and time for family prayer.

If the day has not gone well at work or at school, or if there is too little time to spend together as a family, tensions may arise. If work so predominates our lives that there is no time left for the family, there needs to be a reevaluation. But suppose this: If we really saw our work as a source of sanctification, and we came home each night just a speck holier, a speck more virtuous, a speck more in love with God — how would it go at home? Better, I’ll bet.♦

C AT H O L I C M A N O F T H E M O N T H

Father Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) THE YOUNGEST of six children, Jacques Marquette was born into a prominent family in Laon, France, June 10, 1637. From an early age, he longed to become a missionary like the recently canonized Jesuit priest, St. Francis Xavier.

Marquette joined the Jesuits at age 17, and after studies and teaching assignments he was ordained a priest 12 years later, in 1666. He was sent to labor among the Native Americans in Canada, and after arriving in Québec, he mastered the Algonquian language, eventually becoming fluent in six dialects.

With zealous faith and a deep devotion to Our Lady, Father Marquette soon ventured out to the peripheries of New France. In 1668, he evangelized the native peoples at the Sault Ste. Marie mission (now in Michigan) and later at the Jesuit mission at the western end of Lake Superior (now in Wisconsin).

From the Illinois peoples he encountered there, he learned about “a great river,” known today as the Mississippi.

Father Marquette then founded St. Ignace mission on the north shore of the Straits of Mackinac, where he welcomed the French Canadian explorer

Louis Joliet in 1672. Joliet had come with a royal commission to find the river of which the Illinois had spoken, and he asked Marquette to accompany him. The priest was elated, and in 1673 they became the first Europeans to canoe down what Marquette dubbed the “River of the Conception.”

After turning back at the mouth of the Arkansas River for fear of the Spanish, Father Marquette was intent on founding a mission among the Illinois.

Though extremely ill, he reached their village in 1675 and celebrated Easter Mass before thousands. While returning to St. Ignace mission, Father Marquette died near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on May 18, 1675.♦

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KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS NEWS

K of C Again Recognized as a World’s Most Ethical Company FOR THE SECOND YEAR in a row, the Knights of Columbus has been recognized by the Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, as a World’s Most Ethical Company®.

The designation acknowledges organizations that have had a material impact on the way business is conducted by fostering a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the company.

“For more than 130 years, the Knights of Columbus has been protecting the financial future of Catholic families and providing charity to those on the margins of society,” said Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson. “That founding principle of helping those in need is at work in every aspect of our business, guiding our corporate governance, our professional agency force, our investments, and our day-to-day business operations.”

The World’s Most Ethical Company assessment is based on the Ethisphere Institute’s Ethics Quotient™ (EQ) framework, which was developed over years of research to pro-

vide a means of assessing an organization’s performance in an objective, consistent and standardized way. The Knights of Columbus is one of only four companies honored in the “Life Insurance” category this year.

“Earning this recognition involves the collective action of a global workforce from the top down,” said Timothy Erblich, Ethisphere’s chief executive officer. “We congratulate everyone at Knights of Columbus for this extraordinary achievement.”♦

Livelihood Project Continues to Help Fishermen in the Philippines

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Bishop Crispin Varquez of Borongan blesses new fishing boats donated through the Order’s Livelihood Project, which supports fishermen who lost their vessels in Typhoon Haiyan. through the area promising all kinds of help, yet very little was done for the average villager.

“But the Knights delivered what they promised,” he said, calling the donation “a perfect example of a charity that evangelizes and of neighbor helping neighbor.”

Through the Livelihood Project,

local builders affected by Typhoon Haiyan were hired to construct boats for fishermen who had lost their vessels. More than 100 boats were delivered last year to victims in Tacloban and adjoining areas. The project was financed by donations of more than $800,000 from Knights and other donors to an emergency relief fund.♦

Photo by Roy Lagarde/CBCP News

THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS recently delivered 100 additional motorized boats to Filipino fishermen who lost their vessels during Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Part of the Supreme Council’s Livelihood Project, the delivery has brought the total number of donated boats to more than 200.

The newest boats were delivered to needy fishermen and their families March 14 in the city of Borongan, which was also the landfall point of another recent storm that killed 18 people and destroyed dozens of homes.

The boats, bearing the emblem of the Order, were lined up on the beach and blessed by Bishop Crispin Varquez of Borongan. Present for the distribution were Alonso Tan, supreme director for the Philippines, Visayas Deputy Rodrigo N. Sorongon and Luzon Deputy Arsenio G. Yap. Msgr. Pedro Quitorio, director of communications for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, explained that national and international relief agencies had come

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KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS NEWS

Order Mourns the Death of Cardinal Egan

CARDINAL EGAN: Photo by John Whitman

Cardinal Edward M. Egan speaks at the States Dinner during the 2008 Supreme Convention.

MEMBERS OF the Knights of Columbus were saddened to learn that Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the former archbishop of New York, died March 5 at age 82.

“The 1.8 million members of Knights of Columbus and I join Catholics in New York and throughout the world in mourning the death of Cardinal Edward Egan,” said Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson in a statement. “Cardinal Egan was always a friend of the Knights of Columbus. He was a brother Knight and a regular participant over the years at our annual Supreme Convention.”

Fourth Degree Knights were among those who provided the honor guard for the cardinal’s wake and funeral, which took place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York March 9-10.

Cardinal Egan joined the Knights of Columbus in 1992 as a member of St. Frances X. Cabrini Council 4096 in Bridgeport, Conn. Ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1957 and appointed bishop of Bridgeport in 1988, Cardinal Egan was named archbishop of New York in 2000 and became a cardinal in 2001.♦

Knights in Mexico Make Annual Pilgrimage to Sanctuary of Christ the King ON MARCH 12, more than 1,100 Knights and family members participated in the fourth annual national pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Christ the King in Guanajuato, Mexico, the geographical center of the country.

Three state deputies, and councils representing four different jurisdictions, were among the participants.

The pilgrimage included the recitation of the rosary and Mass celebrated

by Auxiliary Bishop Juan Frausto Pallares of the Archdiocese of Leon.

Located atop Cubilete Hill, also known as the mountain of Christ the King, the shrine was rebuilt in 1944 with financial support from the Order. At the foot of the hill, a chapel houses the relics of three Knights of Columbus martyrs who were killed nearby in 1927.♦

Supreme Chaplain Releases New Book SUPREME CHAPLAIN Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore has released a new book titled The Joy of Believing: A Practical Guide to the Catholic Faith. Published March 18

by Word Among Us Press, the book helps readers discover the beauty of Catholicism, while renewing their zeal to share the good news of Christ with others.

Ideal for prayer and study groups as well as personal spiritual growth, The Joy of Believing follows the structure of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and includes chapters on the Creed, the liturgy, the seven sacraments, the Ten Commandments,

prayer and family life. Each chapter concludes with questions for reflection and group discussion.

Compiling content drawn from a series of Columbia columns that Archbishop Lori wrote as supreme chaplain, the book explains what the Church believes and how to put those beliefs into practice.

“No explanation of the faith, in and of itself, leads to joy,” Archbishop Lori writes in the introduction.

“Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. My hope and prayer is that this book might help individuals and groups open their hearts to the Lord.”

The Joy of Believing is available on Amazon or at wau.org.♦

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‘JOIN US!’ Star recruiters share their insights and enthusiasm about growing the Knights of Columbus

by Columbia staff

S

ince its founding in the basement of a Connecticut church in 1882, the Knights of Columbus has grown to more than 1.8 million members in 14,000 councils. Inspired by the vision of its founder, Venerable Michael McGivney, and rooted in charity, unity and fraternity, the Order has become the largest lay Catholic fraternal organization in the world today.

The stronger the Knights of Columbus becomes, the more it can be “the strong right arm of the Church.” Motivated by love of God and neighbor, the Order aims to protect the financial future of Catholic families while serving those in need through countless charitable initiatives.

Growing the Order, however, is not just about numbers. Rather, membership allows individual men to experience the fraternal bond that Knights share while growing closer to Christ with their families.

The Supreme Council provides many tools to help with membership recruitment and growth, seeking to give every eligible Catholic man the opportunity to become a Knight of Columbus. Every council is likewise encouraged to implement personal strategies that attract new members, whether by organizing church drives, open houses or charitable events in collaboration with pastors and field agents.

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As important as recruitment plans are, the personal witness of individual Knights is even more important. Pope Francis is fond of quoting Pope Benedict XVI’s statement that the Church grows by “attraction” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 15). Evangelization, in other words, is primarily a matter of allowing the joy of the Gospel to radiate in one’s life. In a similar way, Knights are called to bear witness to their faith through charitable works and the Columbian virtues.

In many cases, recruiting a new member is as straightforward as inviting him to join. Innumerable qualified Catholic men have not joined the Knights simply because they have never been asked to do so. Effective recruiters act as ambassadors, sharing the benefits of membership and offering these men the opportunity to deepen their faith, grow closer to their family, and build up the Church and their communities through charitable service.

Columbia editors recently spoke with three of these ambassadors, Knights who are among the most active recruiters in North America, to learn how membership in the Order has affected their lives and how they effectively invite others to become brother Knights.

More information about recruitment materials are available online at kofc.org/membership.

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Walter Streit A member of Father Bonner Council 7599 in Edmonton, Alberta, Walter “Wally” Streit has recruited more than 2,050 new members since the 1970s, receiving Orderwide “top recruiter” honors at several Supreme Conventions. A past state deputy of Alberta, Streit is currently president of the Alberta Knights of Columbus Charitable Foundation.

Photo by Brad Chisholm

RECRUITMENT: A PERSONAL ENCOUNTER There is nothing that beats one-on-one personal contact.

When I introduce myself, I show a special interest in the man and his family. I tell him the Knights of Columbus gives him a convenient opportunity to help the Church and the less fortunate. I explain the benefits of membership and the fact that being a Knight helps us keep closer to our faith.

A ‘CHARITY MULTIPLIER’ As a young man, I wanted to help the Church and the less fortunate, and membership in the Knights of Columbus provided that opportunity. Later, as a bank executive, I learned the importance of working effectively through others to achieve improved results. I have applied the same concept to recruiting. If each of the members I recruit gives hours of service as a Knight, the impact is considerably more than I could do on my own. It’s the charity “multiplier effect.”

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES The biggest challenge is recruiting family men between the ages of 25-40. These men are so busy. Both parents often

work, and any spare time is devoted to the children. When I address the time constraint issue, I tell these young men that it’s OK to attend meetings only when they can. I just ask them to volunteer on two occasions during the year, preferably with their families. I give them examples: pancake breakfasts, the parish picnic, delivering food hampers and other council family activities.

SPARKING ENTHUSIASM A few years ago, I spoke at a large parish and then went to the back of the church. A man approached me and asked, “How much does it cost?” I told him the council dues were $40, and he quickly left. I turned to my associate Max and told him I thought that man was interested, but I had missed an opportunity to talk to him. Ten minutes later, the man returned and put down $40, having just returned from a bank machine. That man became a Fourth Degree Knight in his first year. He then became grand knight of his council in the second year and is currently an effective district deputy.

THE IMPACT OF RECRUITING After recruiting more than 2,000 members and twice honored as a Circle of Honor State Deputy, I have seen the importance of K of C recruitment for the Order, the Church and the lives of Catholic men. While only God knows for sure, recruiting someone may very well be a factor in saving that man’s soul and, at the very least, it is a form of evangelization. The road of life is bumpy, and if being a Knight keeps him closer to his faith, that is profound.

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A member of General Shields Council 888 in Ottumwa, Iowa, J. Pablo Martinez has steadily recruited brother Knights, primarily among the Hispanic community, in the four years since he joined the Order. His zeal and effectiveness have not gone unnoticed. Martinez was named the 2012-13 Knight of the Year by the Iowa State Council.

RECRUITMENT AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE When God puts someone in my path, I talk to him and ask him if he’s Catholic. If I see him at church, I invite him to participate with us. I explain to prospective Knights the kind of things that we do and then invite them to join. God does the rest. Those who join are happy to be members and participate in the activities we do here in Ottumwa.

MOTIVATED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE I was invited to join the Knights of Columbus in 2011, when the council was looking for Hispanic members. In my case, I didn’t have to think about it at all. I just said, “Yes, what needs to be done?” and ever since then, I’ve been trying to make that small difference here in the community, inspired by faith and God’s love. As a Hispanic living in America, it is very rewarding when anyone thanks you for the work you do. It motivates me to do more.

WORKING WITH THE HISPANIC COMMUNITY The greatest challenge in our Hispanic community is that people often don’t understand what the Knights of Columbus 10 ♦ C O L U M B I A ♦

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does. I am always looking for Catholics in my community to invite. If they say, “Let me think about it,” I don’t lose faith but give them some time. Then I invite them again, because Father McGivney founded the Knights so that Catholic men can better serve our community and the Church.

Sometimes it’s simple; sometimes I explain more. I explain a little bit about the charitable work that we do and our activities. Prospects get interested when I tell them that we support the community and that most of all we help the Church.

CHANGING LIVES I have a Hispanic friend who is a policeman here in town.

One day I saw him outside of church dressed in his uniform, and I asked if I could take a moment of his time to talk about the Knights of Columbus. When I explained what we do, he said, “Yes, OK. Where do I sign?” He became an active member, and now he often shares with people how much joining the Knights of Columbus has changed his life.

I have another friend, who is older and who left the Church after his daughter died. I would often talk to him about the Knights of Columbus, until one day he told me, “All right.”

He returned to the Church and received his First Degree.

Thanks be to God, we now go to church together.

INVITING NEW RECRUITS Every Knight should make an effort to recruit at least one new member. Don’t be ashamed to invite someone — a friend, a family member or any Catholic man — to participate, so that he can experience the opportunity God gives us to make a difference in our communities.

Photo by Leslie Cook

Pablo Martinez

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Casey Kamery At age 21, Casey Kamery of Msgr.

Thomas P. Healy Council 6979 in San Marcos, Calif., serves as college coordinator for the Knights of Columbus San Diego Chapter.

He has encouraged young men at area colleges and universities to get excited both about the Order and their faith.

FOSTERING A WELCOMING ENVIRONMENT When you join a council — at least where I’m from — the council always says, “If you have any new ideas, bring them up.” One thing our Order is based on is fraternity.

I try to make it so that when new members join, they’re accepted. I think that’s something that a lot of people are afraid of when they join something — that they won’t know anybody. So I want them to feel that they’re welcomed right away.

Photo by Frank Rogozienski

SPEAKING TO MILLENNIALS It’s very important to recruit younger guys because in order to have a strong future, you need a strong foundation. That’s what the Order is going to be based on, not just in the next couple of years, but for the next 50 years. I think the Knights of Columbus is a great way to get young men excited about their faith at a time when many are falling away from it.

Speaking from my own personal experience, the Knights of Columbus has been the number-one way that I’ve served the Church since I turned 18, and it has definitely helped me to be more faithful.

OVERCOMING RECRUITMENT OBSTACLES The biggest obstacle for younger guys is that they have their studies, and many are also involved in a young adult or youth program. They don’t have a lot of time on their hands, and that’s a hard thing: to get them to want to put something else on their plate. To overcome that barrier, I tell them, “Just put in two to three hours a month. Do one or two activities a month. I know you’re going to be at the pro-life walk anyway, so why not wear your K of C shirt and represent your council?

You’re helping us grow the faith and grow the Order.”

THE ROLE OF COLLEGE KNIGHTS Recruiting for college councils is different than for other councils. You point out who else is joining, and the fact that this is a way to serve not only the parish, but also the college.

Prospects are attracted to the fact that it isn’t a regular council, like at their home parish. They like to be able to participate in sports events, barbecues and other events relatable to younger guys.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW RECRUITERS Recruiting new members doesn’t have to be stressful. Most of the members I’ve recruited have been on a person-to-person basis, outside of membership drives. I explain to them what we do, as well as the Order’s history and the importance of the faith in America.

Don’t be afraid to give a new member at your parish, or another prospective member, the opportunity of a lifetime to be a Knight of Columbus. Don’t be afraid to show your own faith. The best way to do this — especially for men — is through the Knights of Columbus and what we do.♦ M AY 2015

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The Love That Brings New Life Into the World The family, the single most humanizing institution in history, is crucial to the future of our civilization

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and a member of the House of Lords, was a keynote speaker at an international conference at the Vatican titled “The Complementarity of Man and Woman,” sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Nov. 17-19, 2014. This text is an abridged version of his Nov. 17 address and is reprinted with permission.

I

want to begin our conversation by telling the story of the most beautiful idea in the history of civilization: the idea of the love that brings new life into the world. There are, of course, many ways of telling the story, and this is just one. But to me it is a story of key moments, each of them surprising and unexpected.

The first, according to a report in the press on Oct. 20, 2014, took place in a lake in Scotland 385 million years ago.

It was then, according to this new discovery, that two fish came together to perform the first instance of sexual reproduction known to science. Until then, all life had propagated itself asexually, which is far simpler and more economical than the division of life into male and female, each with a different role in creating and sustaining life.

When we consider, even in the animal kingdom, how much effort and energy the coming together of male and female takes, in terms of displays, courtship rituals, rivalries and violence, it is astonishing that sexual reproduction ever happened at all. Biologists are still not quite sure why it did. Some say it offers protection against parasites or immunities against disease. Others say it is simply that the meeting of opposites generates diversity. But one way or another, the fish in Scotland discovered something new and beautiful that’s been copied ever since by virtually all advanced forms of life. Life begins when male and female meet and embrace.

MONOTHEISM, MONOGAMY & EQUALITY The second unexpected development was the unique challenge posed to Homo sapiens by two factors: Since we stood upright, which constricted the female pelvis, and we had bigger brains, which meant larger heads, human babies had to be born more prematurely, and so needed parental protection for much longer. This made parenting more demanding, the work of two 12 ♦ C O L U M B I A ♦

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people rather than one. Among most primates, fathers don’t even recognize their children, let alone care for them. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom motherhood is almost universal but fatherhood is rare.

So what emerged along with the human person was the union of the biological mother and father to care for their child.

Then came culture, and the third surprise.

The most obvious expression of power among alpha males, whether human or primate, is to dominate access to fertile women and thus maximize the passing on of your genes to the next generation. Hence polygamy, which exists in 95 percent of mammal species and 75 percent of cultures known to anthropology.

That is what makes the first chapter of Genesis so revolutionary with its statement that every human being, regardless of race, culture, creed or class is created in the image and likeness of God. We know that in the ancient world it was kings, emperors and pharaohs who were held to be in the image of God. So Genesis is saying that we are all royalty. We each have equal dignity in the kingdom of faith under the sovereignty of God. From this, it follows that the norm presupposed by the story of Adam and Eve is: one woman, one man. Monogamy, however, did not immediately become the norm, even within the world of the Bible. But many of its most famous stories, about the tension between Sarah and Hagar, or Leah and Rachel and their children, or David and Bathsheba, or Solomon’s many wives, are all critiques that point the way to monogamy.

And there is a deep connection between monotheism and monogamy, just as there is, in the opposite direction, between idolatry and adultery. Monotheism and monogamy are about the all-embracing relationship between I and Thou, myself and one other — be it a human, or the divine Other.

What makes the emergence of monogamy unusual is that it is normally the case that the values of a society are those imposed on it by the ruling class. And the ruling class in any hierarchical society stands to gain from promiscuity and polygamy, both of which multiply the chances of one’s genes being handed on to the next generation. So monogamy goes against the normal grain of social change and was a real triumph for the equal dignity of all.

Banque d’Images, ADAGP / Art Resource, NY — La branche (The Branch), Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

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THE MISSION OF MARRIAGE rized the difference between them in two sentences: “Science The next remarkable development was the way this transformed takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things the moral life. What was new and remarkable in the Hebrew together to see what they mean.” And that’s a way of thinking Bible was the idea that love, not just fairness, is the driving prin- about culture as well. Does culture put things together or take ciple of the moral life. Three loves. “Love the Lord your God things apart? with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.” “Love your What made the traditional family remarkable, a work of neighbor as yourself.” And, repeated no less than 36 times in high religious art, is what it brought together: sexual drive, the Mosaic books, “Love the stranger because you know what it physical desire, friendship, companionship, emotional kinship feels like to be a stranger.” Or to put it another way: just as God and love, the begetting of children and their protection and created the natural world in love and forgiveness, so we are care, their early education and induction into an identity and charged with creating the social world in love and forgiveness. a history. Seldom has any institution woven together so many And that love is a flame lit in marriage and the family. Morality different drives and desires, roles and responsibilities. It made is the love between husband and wife, parent and child, ex- sense of the world and gave it a human face, the face of love. tended outward to the world.

For a whole variety of reasons — some to do with medical In ancient Israel, an originally secular form of agreement, developments like birth control, in vitro fertilization and other called a covenant, was transformed into a new way of thinking genetic interventions; some to do with moral change like the about the relationship between God and humanity and between idea that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does God and a people. A covenant is like a marriage. It is a mutual not harm others; some to do with a transfer of responsibilities pledge of loyalty and trust between two or more people, each from the individual to the state; and other and more profound respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, to work to- changes in the culture of the West — almost everything that gether to achieve together what neither can achieve alone. And marriage once brought together has now been split apart. Sex there is one thing even God cannot has been divorced from love, love from achieve alone, which is to live within the commitment, marriage from having human heart. That needs us. children, and having children from reWhat covenant did, and we see this in sponsibility for their care.

HE FAMILY — MAN, almost all the prophets, was to underThe result is that in Britain in 2012, stand the relationship between us and 47.5 percent of children were born outWOMAN, AND CHILD — IS God in terms of the relationship beside of marriage, and that statistic is exNOT ONE LIFESTYLE CHOICE tween bride and groom, wife and huspected to become a majority in 2016. band. Love thus became not only the Fewer people are marrying, those who AMONG MANY. IT IS THE basis of morality, but also of theology. are, are marrying later, and 42 percent All this led to the home and the famof marriages end in divorce. Nor is coBEST MEANS FOR CHILDREN ily becoming the central setting of the habitation a substitute for marriage. life of faith. In the only verse in the HeThe average length of cohabitation in TO GROW IN A MATRIX OF brew Bible to explain why God chose Britain and the United States is less STABILITY AND LOVE.” Abraham, God says: “I have known him than two years. And who pays the price so that he will instruct his children and for this? The children. The result is a his household after him to keep the way sharp increase among young people of of the Lord by doing what is right and eating disorders, drug and alcohol just” (Gen 18:19). Abraham was chosen not to rule an empire, abuse, stress-related syndromes, depression, and actual and atcommand an army, perform miracles or deliver prophecies, but tempted suicides. The collapse of marriage has created a new simply to be a parent. In one of the most famous lines in Ju- form of poverty concentrated among single-parent families, daism, which we say every day and night, Moses commands, and in most of these — 92 percent in 2011 — women bear “You shall teach these things repeatedly to your children, speak- the burden. In Britain today more than a million children will ing of them when you sit in your house or when you walk on grow up with no contact whatsoever with their fathers. the way, when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deut 6:7, This is creating a divide within societies the like of which has 11:19). Parents are to be educators, education is the conversation not been seen since Disraeli spoke of “two nations” a century between the generations, and the first school is the home. and a half ago. Those who are privileged to grow up in stable Marriage and the family are where faith finds its home and loving association with the two people who brought them into where the Divine Presence lives in the love between husband being will, on average, be healthier physically and emotionally. and wife, parent and child.

They will do better at school and at work. They will have more successful relationships, be happier and live longer.

THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY And, yes, there are many exceptions. But the injustice of it What, then, has changed? Here’s one way of putting it. I wrote all cries out to heaven. The Western abandonment of marriage a book a few years ago about religion and science and I summa- will go down in history as one of the tragic instances of what

“T

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Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY — God creating Eve from Adam’s rib, late 12th-century Souvigny Bible

Friedrich Hayek called “the fatal conceit” that somehow we know better than the wisdom of the ages, and can defy the lessons of biology and history.

No one surely wants to go back to the prejudices of the past.

But our compassion for those who choose to live differently should not inhibit us from being advocates for the single most humanizing institution in history. The family — man, woman, and child — is not one lifestyle choice among many. It is the best means we have yet discovered for nurturing future generations and enabling children to grow in a matrix of stability and love. It is where we learn the delicate choreography of relationship and how to handle the inevitable conflicts within any human group. It is where we first take the risk of giving and receiving love. It is where one generation passes on its values to the next, ensuring the continuity of a civilization. For any society, the family is the crucible of its future, and for the sake of our children’s future, we must be its defenders.

‘REDEEMING THE DARKNESS’ The story of the first family, the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden, ends with three verses that seem to have no connection with one another. No sequence. No logic. In Genesis 3:19, God says to the man: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Then in the next verse we read: “The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all life.” And in the next, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

What is the connection here? Why did God telling Adam that he was mortal lead the man to give his wife a new name?

And why did that act seem to change God’s attitude to both of them, so that God performed an act of tenderness, by making them clothes, almost as if He had partially forgiven them?

Let me also add that the Hebrew word for “skin” is almost indistinguishable from the Hebrew word for “light,” so that Rabbi Meir, the great sage of the early second century, read the text as saying that God made for them “garments of light.”

What did he mean?

If we read the text carefully, we see that until now the first man had given his wife a purely generic name. He called her ishah, woman. Recall what he said when he first saw her: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman for she was taken from man” (Gen 2:23). For him she was a type, not a person. He gave her a noun, not a name. What is more, he defines her as a derivative of himself: something taken from man. She is not yet for him someone other, a person in her own right; she is merely a kind of reflection of himself.

As long as the man thought he was immortal, he ultimately needed no one else. But now he knew he was mortal. He would one day die and return to dust. There was only one way in which something of him would live on after his death. That would be if he had a child. But he could not have a child on his own. For that he needed his wife. She alone could give

birth. She alone could mitigate his mortality. And not because she was like him, but precisely because she was unlike him. At that moment she ceased to be, for him, a type, and became a person in her own right. And a person has a proper name. That is what he gave her: the name Chavah, “Eve,” meaning, “giver of life.”

At that moment, as they were about to leave Eden and face the world as we know it, a place of darkness, Adam gave his wife the first gift of love, a personal name. And at that moment, God responded to them both in love, and made them garments to clothe their nakedness, or as Rabbi Meir put it, “garments of light.”

And so it has been ever since, that when a man and woman turn to one another in a bond of faithfulness, God robes them in garments of light, and we come as close as we will ever get to God himself, bringing new life into being, turning the prose of biology into the poetry of the human spirit, redeeming the darkness of the world by the radiance of love.♦ RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS, a member of the British House of Lords, is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. The Becket Fund’s 2014 Canterbury Medalist for his role in the defense of religious liberty in the public square, Rabbi Sacks currently teaches at New York University, Yeshiva University and King’s College London.

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During the American Civil War, Catholics from North and South displayed courage and compassion while striving to heal the nation

by John Burger

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In this 1891 painting by University of Notre Dame student Paul Wood, Father William E. Corby offers a general absolution to the Irish Brigade before the Battle of Gettysburg on the morning of July 2, 1863.

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ew men who served in the Civil War had experiences quite like those of Father Peter Whelan.

Born in Ireland, Whelan came to America and studied for the priesthood in Charleston, S.C. Ordained in 1830, he ministered throughout the South, eventually settling in Savannah, Ga. At the outbreak of the “War Between the States” in 1861, Father Whelan volunteered to become chaplain for an IrishAmerican unit at Fort Pulaski, which guarded the port of Savannah. And at the end of the war four years later, he was able to claim the unique status of having ministered to prisoners from both the Union and Confederate armies.

As the United States commemorates the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War this spring, the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Conn., is featuring stories like Father Whelan’s in a new exhibit titled “Answering the Call: Service & Charity in the Civil War.” The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 20, centers on wartime struggles and hardships, as well as acts of bravery and compassion.

On both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, priests, commissioned as chaplains, offered Mass in the field, heard the confessions of men about to do battle, and administered last rites to the fallen, even under fire. Meanwhile, hundreds of religious sisters used their training as nurses to ease the pain and suffering of the wounded in battlefield hospitals and prisons, while sharing in the adversities of those in uniform.

CHAPLAINS OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH More than 70 Catholic priests officially served as chaplains for the North and South during the war, while some others served unofficially as part-time chaplains. Still, Catholic chaplains were spread thin compared to their Protestant counterparts, and some Catholic regiments were without the ministry of a priest.

One notable exception was the 88th New York Infantry, a regiment within the Irish Brigade that fought in the Battle of Gettysburg. On the morning of July 2, 1863, their chaplain, Father William E. Corby, climbed onto a rock to give general absolution to the men kneeling before him. They then marched into the infamous Wheatfield, where 202 Union soldiers died.

After the war, Father Corby, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, wrote about his experiences on the battlefield and later served as the third president of the University of Notre Dame.

Not all chaplains served on the Union side, of course. According to Benedictine Father Peter J. Meaney, writing in the Georgia Historical Quarterly in 1987, people of all faiths in the South were secessionists, and thus it was not unusual to find Catholics sympathetic to the Confederate cause. But the mission of bringing souls to Christ impelled priests like Father Whelan beyond any political motivation.

For Father Whelan, it was natural to sign up for chaplain duty, even if it meant marching off to war at 60 years of age.

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bardment, the Confederate troops finally were taken captive and transported north to a prison on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor.

Father Whelan accompanied his men and served them amid miserable conditions. The prison lacked latrines, adequate ventilation and sufficient heating, and many men suffered from pneumonia, typhoid and measles. In addition to ministering to the prisoners’ spiritual needs, Father Whelan set about obtaining food and clothing for them. When local New York priests caught wind of his heroic efforts, they successfully petitioned for Father Whelan’s parole.

But the Irish priest from the South chose to stay with his men. He applied for the post of chaplain and offered Mass on Governor’s Island twice a week.

Noticing that his clothes had suffered severe wear, Confederate officers bought him a new suit, but Father Whelan noticed a newly arrived prisoner who needed clothing even more than he did. When an officer asked why he hadn’t given the prisoner his old clothes, Father Whelan simply said, “When I give for Christ’s sake, I give the best.”

After his service on Governor’s Island, Father Whelan returned to his priestly duties in Savannah. However, his service to soldiers was not yet over. When a priest reported that there was a significant number of Catholics held in the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Ga., the bishop sent Father Whelan to minister to Union prisoners of war.

“Father Whelan was the longest-serving chaplain there — he stayed four months,” said Bethany Sheffer, curator of the Knights of Columbus Museum. “Ultimately he got sick there, and it shortened his life.”

Sheffer recounted another story about Father Whelan’s generosity. When malnourished prisoners were being transferred out of Andersonville, the priest managed to obtain a loan of about $16,000 in Confederate money to buy 10,000 pounds of flour.

“It was then given to the prisoners, and they called it ‘Whelan’s Bread,’” said Sheffer. “Later, he reached out to the federal government to get reimbursed, but was refused. He paid the loan off with money people had given him to take care of himself.”

‘ANGELS OF MERCY’ The man who turned down Father Whelan’s request, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, may not have supported a heroic chaplain, but he did support the work of Catholic religious sisters who served during the war.

“The sisters were esteemed as nurses, so they were highly sought after,” Sheffer said, noting that Stanton asked them to administer hospitals in Washington, D.C. “They worked in Stanton Hospital, which is named after him, as well as Douglas Hospital. The sisters didn’t take any pay — they did what was needed out of charity, to assist both sides.”

After a visit to Stanton Hospital, run by the Sisters of Mercy from Pittsburgh, President Abraham Lincoln observed, “Of all the forms of charity and benevolence seen in the crowded wards

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CNS photo/Bob Roller

A monument dedicated to the women religious who ministered to wounded and dying soldiers from both the North and South during the American Civil War is seen across the street from the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. of the hospitals, those of some Catholic sisters were among the most efficient. … As they went from cot to cot, distributing the medicines prescribed … they were veritable angels of mercy.”

Many of the more than 600 sisters who offered aid to wounded soldiers came from religious orders that had founded hospitals. Thus, many already had extensive training as nurses.

Several had also served during the Crimean War (1853-1856) and shared their knowledge with fellow sisters to develop wellorganized nursing wards. Through their example, war hospitals became more efficient, and future standards for the treatment of the wounded in battlefields were established.

These sisters did far more than bandage wounds and assist surgeons in operating rooms. They washed and mended soiled clothing, bandages and linens, ensured as sanitary an environment in the wards as possible, and made sure that those under their charge were fed, often going without food themselves. In addition, they provided moral support, wrote letters home dictated by soldiers, and in some cases entertained the wounded with musical recitals.

Though the women religious did not serve in the line of fire, like the chaplains who frequently ministered on or near battlefields, their lives were still at risk.

“When diseases such as smallpox broke out, even doctors refused to help patients,” wrote journalist Renee Standera in a 2013 article about Civil War nurses. “Some sisters sacrificed their lives to nurse soldiers suffering from contagious diseases.

Others died from exhaustion.”

After the Battle of Shiloh, Tenn., where some 25,000 men fell in battle, Sister Anthony O’Connell, a Cincinnati-based Sister of Charity, recalled trials the sisters experienced attending the wounded.

“What we endured on the field of battle while gathering up the wounded is beyond description,” Sister O’Connell wrote.

“Day would often dawn on us only to renew the work of the preceding day without a moment’s rest.”

One soldier later immortalized Sister O’Connell with these words: “Amid this sea of blood, she performed the most revolting duties for those poor soldiers. She seemed like a ministering angel and many a young soldier owes his life to her care and charity. Happy was the soldier who, wounded and bleeding, had her near to whisper words of consolation. … She was reverenced

by Blue and Gray, Protestant and Catholic, and we conferred upon her the title of Florence Nightingale of America.”

BINDING THE WOUNDS OF A NATION While the many battlefields of America’s bloodiest conflict are frequently visited by reenactors and history buffs, other places related to the conflict have become like pilgrimage destinations.

The Knights of Columbus Museum exhibit contains an artifact from one such location: an ornate 19th-century wooden missal stand, carved from a pew in St. Francis Xavier Church in Gettysburg, Pa. It tells a chilling story.

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This chromolithograph circa 1877 depicts Holy Cross Father P. P. Cooney celebrating a field Mass on Easter Sunday in 1864 for the Army of the Cumberland during the Atlanta Campaign. In the four corners of the illustration are (clockwise from top left): a portrait of Father Cooney, soldiers receiving holy Communion, a religious sister caring for a wounded soldier and a battle scene.

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE ORIGINS OF THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS FOUNDED LESS than 17 years after the close of the Civil War, the Knights of Columbus counted many Civil War veterans among its initial members. Among them was the Order’s first supreme knight, James T. Mullen, who enlisted Sept. 11, 1861, to serve in the Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.

Known as the “Irish Regiment” because it consisted mostly of Irish-American soldiers, the Ninth deployed from New Haven, Conn., with 845 volunteers. The men traveled to Mississippi to begin work on what eventually became known as Grant’s Canal — an effort to redirect the Mississippi River and cut off the Confederate forces at Vicksburg.

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“The Ninth Irish Regiment was not treated terribly well at the beginning of the war,” explained Matthew Warshauer, professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, during a lecture at the Knights of Columbus Museum March 21. “When they arrived at Ship Island on the Gulf Coast, they didn’t have weapons, they weren’t properly uniformed, and they got stuck trying to dig a new channel for the Mississippi River.”

Though some historians suggest that the successful completion of Grant’s Canal might have prevented the eventual Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, the undertaking proved more costly than

any of its perceived benefits. As work on the canal progressed in 1862 with soldiers from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Wisconsin and Michigan, disease began to spread through the ranks like wildfire, and hundreds of soldiers died. Many took ill with dysentery, diarrhea, heatstroke and malaria — including Mullen. His sickness prompted an honorable discharge on Dec. 27, 1862, and the future supreme knight returned home to Connecticut.

At the end of the war, Connecticut invited Catholics to reestablish militia units that would be incorporated into the state’s National Guard. One of these

Copyright Louis Kurz, via the Library of Congress

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TOP RIGHT: Library of Congress

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During the Battle of Gettysburg and for several weeks thereafter, St. Francis Xavier Church was used as a field hospital.

The vestibule served as an operating room, with the outside doors opened to provide ventilation and light. More than 200 injured men were brought to the church and laid on the pews and upon the floor, where some died from their wounds. The inscription of a relief work at the church today honors the Sisters of Charity from nearby Emmitsburg, Md., who tended the Union and Confederate soldiers with equal care.

One of the sisters serving the wounded later wrote about the first soldier who entered the sanctuary. Upon seeing the Stations of the Cross and a large painting of St. Francis Xavier holding a crucifix, he was converted and received baptism. “His pain was excruciating,” she wrote, “and when sympathy was offered to him he said, ‘Oh! What are these pains I suffer in comparison with those my Redeemer suffered for me.’ In these sentiments he died.”

After that horrific month, the church had to be reconsecrated because so many soldiers had died there, and the bloodstained pews could not be used again.

In 1925, together with a new memorial façade for St. Francis Xavier Church, the Pennsylvania State Council of the Knights of Columbus funded the creation of two bronze reliefs to honor the Catholic men and women who served in the war. The first represents Father Corby’s general absolution, while the second depicts the nursing service provided by the Sisters of Charity.

While sisters bound up physical wounds and priests sought to heal spiritual ones, Catholics as a whole contributed to the wider effort of healing a nation split apart.

The conflict between the Union and the Confederacy was not the only cause of social unrest at the time. Many Catholics, especially recent immigrants, struggled to gain acceptance in

James T. Mullen, the Order’s first supreme knight and an American Civil War veteran, is depicted in a colorized portrait in the 1860s.

In this 1863 Harper’s Weekly illustration by Theodore R. Davis, Sisters of the Holy Cross are seen tending to wounded soldiers on the USS Red Rover, a Confederate steamboat hospital that operated on the Mississippi River. the New World. As the men who gathered around Father Michael J. McGivney to form the Knights of Columbus just a few decades later understood so well, nativists of various stripes were none too eager to accept these new Americans.

While sharing in these difficulties, the dedicated Catholics who served during the war, including priests and sisters, often challenged negative stereotypes. Like Father Whelan, Father Corby and Sister O’Connell, they offered their best for the sake of Christ and their countrymen.♦ JOHN BURGER is a news editor for Aleteia.org.

Catholic units was the Sarsfield Guards, an all-Irish unit from New Haven.

In 1874, at Mullen’s suggestion, a social organization called the Red Knights was created. The name originated from the red blankets from the Sarsfield knapsacks that were used at the first initiation. The Red Knights offered members an opportunity for self-improvement, respectability and mutual assistance in times of crisis for the Irish-Catholic community in New Haven, but the group disbanded in 1880 because of low membership and the relatively weak death benefit for members.

When Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus two years later, all of the Order’s original members, with the exception of the priests, had

been members of the Red Knights. In fact, the name “Knights” was used at the insistence of Mullen and others in order to emphasize the ritualistic nature of the Order.

Another Civil War connection to the Knights of Columbus was Bishop Lawrence McMahon of Hartford. Selfless and untiring, he had served as a chaplain during some of the fiercest and bloodiest battles in the war. In 1879, he was appointed to head the Diocese of Hartford, and he served in that capacity until his death in 1893.

It was Bishop McMahon who, after discussions with Father McGivney, gave approval to the founding of the Knights of Columbus. — Reported by Patrick Scalisi and John Burger.

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BU I L D I N G T H E D O M E S T I C C H U RC H

May Because God gave the commandments of work in the beginning of creation, we want to harmonize work and family life.

THROUGH WORK, parents help to meet their needs and the needs of their children. They fulfill their roles as guardians and providers. While the need to work does take away from time spent as a family, it also offers the opportunity for parents to set an example of commitment in support of family and of working together to get a job accomplished.

Children can also learn valuable lessons of work by performing chores: keeping their room clean, taking out the garbage, washing dishes, etc. Through simple responsibilities, they learn that they are accountable for their own actions, how to work together, and the satisfaction that comes with labor well done.

Psalm of the Month (Psalm 127) Pray the Psalm of the Month during every Sunday of the month at your family prayer space. On the last Sunday of the month, discuss as a family which verse stood out most for each member.

Unless the LORD build the house, they labor in vain who build.

Unless the LORD guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch.

It is vain for you to rise early and put off your rest at night, To eat bread earned by hard toil — all this God gives to his beloved in sleep.

Certainly sons are a gift from the LORD, the fruit of the womb, a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man who has filled his quiver with them.

He will never be shamed for he will destroy his foes at the gate.

Family Project

Council-Wide Event: Movie Night April’s movie recommendation is Monsters, Inc. Before the movie begins, ask your families to share photos of their family project and their experiences of working on it.

Bring Song Into Your Home Immaculate Mary Immaculate Mary, your praises we sing.

You reign now in Heaven, with Jesus our King.

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.

In Heaven the blessed your glory proclaim; On Earth we your children invoke your sweet name.

Ave, Ave, Ave Maria. Ave, Ave, Ave Maria.

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Develop teamwork among your family members by working together to complete a project in your parish or community.

Create a garden for Mary or a special statue location, or visit a local cemetery in spring to assist with a clean up.

Also, schedule a time to pray the rosary together as a family.

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BU I L D I N G T H E D O M E S T I C C H U RC H

Volunteering Together Project: Parish Spring Cleaning Just as individuals form a family, families form a parish. Support your council’s parish family by organizing interested parishioners and K of C families to help clean up your church buildings. Contact your pastor and ask what needs to be done in the way of: • Sweeping out the church, parish hall and office • Painting interior walls • Simple roof repairs • Landscaping and planting • Painting exterior walls • Other minor repairs After the work is done, gather everyone together for a cookout or potluck dinner.

Right: Members of Bozeman (Mont.) Council 1413 lay out new doors that the council offered to install during renovations at Holy Rosary Church.

Meditation Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. The Gospel specifies the kind of work Joseph did in order to support his family: he was a carpenter. This simple word sums up Joseph’s entire life. For Jesus, these were hidden years, the years to which Luke refers after recounting the episode that occurred in the Temple: “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” This “submission” or obedience of Jesus in the house of Nazareth should be understood as a sharing in the work of Joseph. Having learned the work of his presumed father, he was known as “the carpenter’s son.”

If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human fami-

lies, in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus’ work at the side of Joseph the carpenter. …

What is crucially important here is the sanctification of daily life, a sanctification which each person must acquire according to his or her own state, and one which can be promoted according to a model accessible to all people: “St. Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up to great destinies; he is the proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things — it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic.”

— St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos, 22,24

Questions for Reflection 1. How is work — whether breadwinning employment, chores or care — a “daily expression of love” in our family? Give an example.

2. Why do I work or do things for our family? How can I work more lovingly?

3. What are some “common, simple and human virtues”? What makes them “true and authentic,” or false and inauthentic?

4. Are there ways that work is a source of tension for our family?

How can I resolve the tension and make my work more a source of joy and love for the rest of the family?

5. Modeling Jesus’ working with Joseph, how can I help others in our family with the ways they contribute, or let them know that what they do matters?

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF MONTHLY THEMES AND MEDITATIONS, VISIT KOFC.ORG/DOMESTICCHURCH. M AY 2015

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Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich (1901-1927), a Sister of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, recently became the first U.S. citizen to be beatified on native soil.

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A Hidden Life for God The first beatification on American soil celebrates the Christian witness of a young religious sister from New Jersey

by Msgr. David Q. Liptak

Photo courtesy of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth

I

magine a young secondary school teacher from New Jersey being raised by the Church to the honors of the altar with the title Blessed. Imagine a woman, born to immigrants from Slovakia at the turn of the 20th century, who died almost unnoticed at the age of 26. Imagine a woman whose religious affiliation bridged both the Latin and Ruthenian-Byzantine rites of the Catholic Church. It all seems so unlikely, yet I, for one, had long awaited this woman’s beatification, which took place last October. Her name is Sister Miriam Teresa Demjanovich.

My good father, a native of northern New Jersey, was a student at Seton Hall College (now University) when Sister Miriam Teresa’s brother, Charles, was also there. Hence I began learning about her from my earliest days. It was my father who introduced me to Msgr. Charles Demjanovich, thenpastor at St. Mary’s Church in Rutherford, N.J., when we drove down for my aunt’s funeral Mass in the mid-1970s. I still vividly recall the experience — being introduced to the brother of a woman whose cause for canonization had already been opened. Our conversation before and after Mass was ineffable, and we exchanged Christmas greetings for several years afterward. Since that time, my interest in Sister Miriam Teresa never waned.

In one of my earliest books, More Saints for Our Time, Sister Miriam Teresa has a place in the section titled “Saints Without a St.” She is there alongside many who have since been recognized as saints by the Church, such as Dr. Giuseppe Moscati and Father Damien de Veuster. At the time, I included a prayer for Sister Miriam Teresa’s cause composed by Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, who served as apostolic delegate to the United States under three popes: “Please God, this girl who was born and lived and died in the twentieth century, within the shadows of the world’s greatest metropolis, who tried to live only for God, in God, and with God, may some day be raised to the altars.”

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Sister Miriam Teresa’s long-awaited beatification Mass was celebrated Oct. 4, 2014, at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. Joined by bishops from New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C., Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, read the Church’s beatification decree before an overflow crowd of more than 2,000 people.

Reading from a letter sent by Pope Francis, the cardinal declared the Sister Miriam Teresa “blessed” by virtue of her “ardent adoration of the Most Holy Trinity” and “strenuous witness [that] is evidence of her evangelical love.”

In his homily, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., Blessed Miriam Teresa’s home diocese, said that the graces that God gave to Sister Miriam Teresa are not reserved for a select few, but are available to all people.

“She herself once wrote, ‘Union with God is the spiritual height God calls everyone to achieve — anyone, not only religious but anyone who says “yes” constantly to God,’” Bishop Serratelli said.

“By God’s grace, she knew and understood, she spoke and lived, the universal call to holiness, later to be formally taught by the Second Vatican Council.”

Also present at the beatification Mass was Michael Mercer, 58, who miraculously recovered his vision at age 8 through the intercession of Sister Miriam Teresa. He carried a relic of Blessed Miriam Teresa to a place of honor during the ceremony.

Born Teresa Demjanovich, the youngest of seven children, in Bayonne, N.J., March 26, 1901, Blessed Miriam Teresa could never have anticipated her own beatification. The family had originally settled in New York City after emigrating from northeastern Slovakia, and the children were baptized and confirmed in the Ruthenian-Byzantine Catholic Church.

Teresa excelled at her studies and enjoyed music, poetry, theater and dance, while also nurturing a life of prayer. After caring for her ill mother who died of influenza in 1919, Teresa followed the advice of her family and enrolled in the College of Saint Elizabeth at Convent Station, founded in the tradition of the first native-born U.S. citizen-saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Majoring in English literature, she graduated summa cum laude in 1923 and began teaching English and Latin at the Academy of St. Aloysius in Jersey City. Having already discerned a religious vocation, Teresa delayed her entrance to religious life due to her father’s brief illness and subsequent death.

She entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth on Feb. 11, 1925 — the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. She soon received her novice’s habit and took the name Sister Miriam Teresa in honor of the Blessed Mother and St. Teresa of Ávila. She also had a deep devotion to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who was canonized that same day. As a postulant and novice, Sister Miriam Teresa taught at the Academy of Saint M AY 2015

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Elizabeth in Convent Station. Over the next two years, she wrote prolifically: short plays, poems, meditations, letters and even part of her autobiography.

Early in 1927, Sister Miriam Teresa’s health failed and she was hospitalized several times. In April, with her brother Msgr.

Charles by her side, she received permission to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience at St. Elizabeth Hospital. There, after complications following a burst appendix, Sister Miriam Teresa died on May 8. She was buried at Convent Station.

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A Fourth Degree honor guard participates in the procession following the beatification Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark Oct. 4, 2014. every moment of the years allotted her, she was acutely aware that serving the Lord in her neighbor had to be her mission also, whether it involved dusting corridors, peacemaking in her community or teaching.

We live for the Lord, despite the trials or obstacles of life.

“Do what you are doing,” an ageless norm stressed in my seminary days, which means just this: Live according to God’s will every day. Such is the ultimate goal of a saint, and it is a goal that Blessed Miriam Teresa never forgot.

Her humble and radiant witness teaches us that if only we were to take advantage of the countless “ordinary duties” that God asks of us daily, we could all become saints.

In her own words: “The saints did but one thing — the will of God. But they did it with all their might. We have only to do the same thing.”♦ MSGR. DAVID Q. LIPTAK is executive editor of The Catholic Transcript, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford, where he has worked for more than 60 years. He is a member of Cathedral of St. Joseph Council 11405 in Hartford, Conn.

Photo courtesy of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth

‘EXTRAORDINARY LIGHTS’ Following Sister Miriam Teresa’s death, the convent’s bulletin board displayed a note signed by Benedictine Father Benedict Bradley, her spiritual director and confessor. Therein he humbly acknowledged that the conferences he had been giving to the novices were actually composed by Sister Miriam Teresa — brilliant, deeply theological talks, clearly reflecting the beauty of a special soul.

“I believed that she enjoyed extraordinary lights, and I knew that she was living an exemplary life,” Father Bradley later said. “I thought that one day she would be ranked among the saints of God, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to utilize whatever might contribute to an appreciation of her merits after death.”

These 26 conferences were collected in a book titled Greater Perfection, edited by Msgr. Charles Demjanovich. The book also included Sister Miriam Teresa’s own “Litany of Love” and a prayer to the “Most Holy and Blessed Trinity” — both components of her personal devotions.

Though the meditations in Greater Perfection are principally addressed to those in religious life, they are readily adaptable to anyone who is on a quest for spiritual maturity. Her words were often challenging: “If, then, you wish to acquire a strong, devoted, pure love for Jesus Christ — and this is essential, if you wish to follow in his footsteps, by putting on the new man who ‘is created in justice and holiness of truth’ (Eph 4:24) — you must first be resolved to do his will in all things, even the most trivial, and unseen by men.”

She added, “Strive to act always from a motive of pure love; that is, do all just to please him alone. This is not an easy matter, for though one may very easily say this with his lips, God judges the heart. Do you know when you do all from pure love of God? When in all things, those you like and especially those you dislike, you attend to the least details with the greatest possible care.”

Essentially, the meaning of this young woman’s hidden, glorious and brief life is that real joy can be found simply in conforming oneself to what God asks of us day by day. It is the same lesson taught by Dante in the Divine Comedy: When Dante eventually saw the beatific vision, he exclaimed, “And in your will is our peace!”

Whenever I reflect upon the life of Sister Miriam Teresa, I recall her yearning to go unnoticed in our bustling, noisy and crisis-weary world. Though she sought to be alone with Christ

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FAT H E R S F O R G O O D

Service and Sacrifice A Navy wife reflects on Memorial Day

by Ashley Kepper

E

ach day, brave men and women voluntarily make more blessed than I deserve to have married a man who sacrifices to defend our liberty and way of life. knows the true value of sacrifice. This carries into his voDeath, the ultimate sacrifice, naturally comes to mind cation as a husband and father. Jimmy also recently joined as we reflect on Memorial Day in late May. But even the Knights of Columbus, and we both have learned how those who return alive, many suffering from physical or the Order supports military personnel and their families, psychological wounds, deserve our thanks. We are in- as well as all people in need. credibly blessed to have military men and women who God is stretching and purifying me through Navy life. willingly respond to the call to serve their country, in- While marriage is a means of sanctification for all couples, cluding periods of separation a military marriage comes with that can be filled with pain, distinct trials that can put stress, exhaustion and even retremendous strain on a relationsentment. As a Navy wife, I ship and family. When unexhave felt this range of emotions, pected challenges arise, I pray but I always come back to a and meditate on Romans 8:28: feeling of gratitude for my hus“All things work together for the band’s service and for the good of those who love the Lord Catholic faith that binds us toand are called according to his gether and guides us through purpose.” thick and thin.

One of the greatest challenges Jimmy first contacted me is the lack of control. Our culthrough a Catholic dating webture values independence and site while he was stationed in autonomy. Yet servicemen and Hawaii and I was working in Attheir families often have little or lanta. After reading his profile no control over significant life and learning of his Navy life, I events. Deployments occur reThe author and her husband are pictured at their home responded to his email and gardless of pregnancies and in St. Marys, Ga. thanked him for his service and births, illnesses and deaths, holsacrifice. Although I appreciated idays, birthdays, graduations, his desire to protect and defend baby milestones, school events America, I never could have imagined the daily sacrifices or dance recitals. You receive orders and move accordmade by service personnel and their families until we were ingly, putting aside personal plans for the greater good. married.

Critical to our national security, these sacrifices can be inWith time and God’s grace, I grew to accept, then un- credibly painful to our servicemen and their loved ones. derstand, and ultimately embrace the fact that he is called Therefore, a word of appreciation and encouragement to military service. I now know that for my husband it’s goes a long way. Our men and women in uniform desmore than a career; it’s a vocation. While I cannot com- perately need the support of not only friends and family, pletely comprehend what this call is like, any more than but of our country as a whole.

I can completely comprehend a calling to the priesthood As we celebrate Memorial Day, let us find ways to serve or religious life, I am confident that it is part of God’s those who serve, and say to our brave men and women, plan for his life, and for mine, too. and the families who wait and pray for their safe return, The discipline required by the military fosters virtues “Thank you for your service and sacrifice.”♦ such as selflessness, humility, obedience, love of neighbor, temperance, prudence and forgiveness. These same char- ASHLEY KEPPER writes from St. Marys, Ga., where her husacter traits draw Jimmy and me closer to Christ. I am band, Jimmy, is a member of St. Marys Council 11058.

FIND ADDITIONAL ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FOR CATHOLIC MEN AND THEIR FAMILIES AT FATHERSFORGOOD. ORG .

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KNIGHTS IN ACTION

REPORTS FROM COUNCILS, ASSEMBLIES AND COLUMBIAN SQUIRES CIRCLES fast that raised more than $1,400 for the Oregon/ Brooklyn Food Pantry. In addition to the funds raised, breakfast attendees also brought with them a large quantity of packaged food items for the pantry.

MISSION CHALICES

Golf carts line up at the start of the Lenny Navickas Memorial Golf Tournament, hosted by St. Scholastica Council 14485 in Lecanto, Fla., in honor of a council member who died suddenly at age 49, leaving behind his wife and two daughters. More than 120 golfers participated in the tournament, which raised $20,000 for Navickas’ family.

TRANSPLANT ASSISTANCE

Angelo Roncalli Council 5584 in Rochester, Ind., held a spaghetti dinner to benefit Stephanie Evans, a 19-yearold local resident who needs a kidney and liver transplant.

Proceeds from the dinner were forwarded to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association to help pay down some of the $50,000 in medical fees that are not covered by health insurance.

the chapel doors, clean and polish pews, restore the floor, and clean the grounds. With the restored worship space, chaplains will have more time to prepare for services and host more services overall.

RECTORY REFRESH

Knights from New York District #8 in Suffolk County teamed with the Police Holy Name Society of Nassau

TEXAS HOLD ‘EM

St. Henry Council 12012 in Nashville raised $5,000 through a series of nine Texas Hold ‘Em poker tournaments to benefit Mur-Ci Homes, a residential agency serving people with intellectual disabilities.

CHAPEL RESTORED

Members of Padre Marco D’Aviano Council 14538 at Aviano Air Base in Italy joined community volunteers to help restore a 102-year-old chapel that is operated by Air Force chaplains across from the base. Knights helped sand 28 ♦ C O L U M B I A ♦

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County to paint the rectory at St. Martin of Tours Church in Amityville. Father Gerard Gordon was assigned as the new pastor of the church, and Knights and the Holy Name Society decided to refresh the rectory’s living area.

Children from Banal na Sakramento Parish receive complimentary haircuts as part of a project sponsored by Banal na Sakramento Council 8753 in Quezon City, Luzon. The project ensures that parish children are properly groomed for both church and school.

INCREASED STORAGE

The Pope John Paul II Round Table in Yerington, Nev., which is sponsored by Hawthorne Council 6688, designed and built a new storage facility and covered barbecue pavilion for the St. John the Baptist Mission in Smith Valley. Leveraging member experience, the round table designed the facility, prepared the foundation, installed underground utilities and painted the 480square-foot structure. By doing the work themselves, Knights saved the mission approximately $12,000.

BREAKFAST AND FOOD COLLECTION

Holy Mother of Consolation Council 13480 in Oregon, Wis., held a pancake break-

Bishop William J. Hafey Assembly in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., donated four chalices and patens to the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. Bequeathed in the memory of deceased Knights, the chalices were sent to missions in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica.

SENIOR BREAKFAST

Coxsackie (N.Y.) Council 548 and its ladies’ auxiliary hosted a breakfast for residents of Bethany Village Apartments, a low-income senior housing facility.

Knights and their wives served scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, French toast and juices.

Members of Manresa Council 2147 on Staten Island, N.Y., load a pickup truck full of donated goods for the food pantry at St. Margaret Mary Church in South Beach and the Newark YMCA. The council and its ladies’ auxiliary conducted a food drive in coordination with local supermarkets that netted 120 cases of food for the pantry and 30 cases for the YMCA.

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KNIGHTS IN ACTION

Dominican Sisters of Houston valued at approximately $10,000. Knights upgraded the residential bathrooms at the sisters’ facility, added exterior security lighting, constructed a storage shed and performed extensive landscaping work.

PRO-LIFE ESSAYS

Pat Dougherty of Mary Our Queen Council 11700 in Omaha, Neb., prepares dumplings for a pork dinner that the council co-sponsored with the Notre Dame Sisters. Drawing on the Czech heritage of the sisters’ foundress, Mother Mary Qualberta, the charity dinner featured traditional Czech fare and music. More than 800 people attended the event, which raised $11,500 for the sisters’ retirement fund.

STAYING MOBILE

Bishop Robert Clune Council 11535 in Vaughan, Ontario, took a lead role in organizing a charity barbecue and carnival day to benefit Selina Oung, a local girl who was paralyzed by a stroke.

Oung, who is in grade 12, was quite active before her stroke and hopes to complete her high school education.

The barbecue raised $8,000, while community partners raised an additional $4,000 toward the purchase of a wheelchair-accessible van for Oung’s family.

WORK FOR SISTERS

St. Michael the Archangel Council 14700 in Houston embarked on a series of improvement projects for the

Holy Redeemer Council 12899 in Vancouver, Wash., presented awards to 10 students in grades six through eight for the students’ pro-life essays. Each student picked one mystery of the rosary and wrote about what that mystery teaches about respect for life. Winners received gift certificates to a local Catholic bookstore.

POVERELLO HOUSE

Mother Teresa Council 12696 in Tucson served lunch to residents at the Poverello House, a facility that feeds and shelters homeless men Wednesday thru Sunday. Knights served hot dogs, potato salad, macaroni salad, baked beans, cake, ice cream and soda.

VETERANS DINNERDANCE

Father Vincent R. Capodanno Assembly in Georgetown, Del., hosted a veterans dinner-dance to celebrate local wounded warriors and members of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

More than 170 guests attended the event, which recognized several honorees from World War II to present-day conflicts.

Members of Gabino Chavez Council 3337 in Irapuato, Mexico Central, march through the city’s downtown streets with a pro-life banner during a diocesan march for life organized by the council. Groups, parishes and schools from throughout Irapuato participated in the event, swelling attendance to 1,500 people.

sembly’s namesake at the Cape Croker (Neyaashiinigmiing) First Nation reserve.

Father Cadot was affectionately referred to as Waiasseshkang (one who brings light to the heart and soul) for his ministry to the First Nation people for nearly 30 years between 1904 and 1931. More than 100 people attended the event, which was officiated

by Bishop David D. Crosby of Hamilton.

for helping to mobilize the local Vietnamese community in support of the Knights’ initiatives. Vietnamese Catholics in the area have been instrumental in making the council’s fund drives and other charitable activities a success.

OUR DAILY RICE

In partnership with the Colorado County Rice Mill in Eagle Lake, Texas, and the Rice Belt Warehouse in El Campo, Holy Family Council 9088 in Victoria donated 8,000 pounds of rice to the Victorian Christian Assistance Ministry for distribution to the needy.

MEMORIAL CAIRN

THANK-YOU VESTMENTS

Jesuit Father Joseph C. Cadot Assembly in Kincardine, Ontario, organized a commemorative Mass and rededication of a cairn erected in honor of the as-

Our Lady, Queen of the Foothills Council 11612 in Claremont, Calif., purchased three sets of handmade liturgical vestments for Father Dominic Tran as a thank-you

Mark Kimble of Our Lady of the Highway Council 3835 in Little Falls, N.J., accepts a donation during the council’s annual fund drive for people with intellectual disabilities.

The drive netted more than $10,700 for the Department for Persons with Disabilities, the Department for Exceptional Children in North Haledon and St. Mary’s Parish in Pompton Lakes.

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KNIGHTS IN ACTION NEW SIGN

the station to raise more than $17,000 for the television service it provides to the San Francisco Bay area.

Our Lady of La Salette Council 9000 in Golden Meadow, La., erected a new sign for Our Lady of Prompt Succor Church that is more visible from a local highway.

Knights formed a committee to raise funds for the sign and secured all local and state permits for its placement. The sign lists the location of the church and Mass times.

MILITARY OPEN HOUSE

BELL TOWER SUPPORT

Sacred Heart Council 14423 in Shelby, Neb., repaired the supports holding the bells in the bell tower at Sacred Heart Church. The council also rewired the lighting system and speakers so that music can be heard through the sound system.

GROTTO BUILT

Blessed Mother Mary Council 15238 in Dawsonville, Ga., helped establish a grotto in memory of Kevin Sinnott

Roger Boros and Harold Clement of Father Hugh Deeny Council 7342 in Prescott, Wis., put up a new roadside sign for St. Joseph Church that lists the church’s Mass times.

When a local resident called the church to comment that the road signs for the church were unreadable, Knights set out to have new signs fabricated and installed.

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Members of Father Peter J. J. Juba Council 4922 in Orange, Calif., hold parts of a new pergola in place while building the structure at Holy Family Cathedral. After termites had ravaged the previous pergola at the church, Knights were asked to replace it. The council went a step further by clearing vegetation from the area and replacing the old cement foundation with brick pavers, in addition to building a new pergola.

By doing the work themselves, Knights saved the church approximately $30,000.

at Christ the Redeemer Church. Sinnott was a citizen of Ireland who was attending college in the United States when he died in a drowning accident. With funds raised by Sinnott’s classmates as a foundation, Knights were brought in to assist with the project.

Specifically, the council sold memorial pavers to raise additional funds needed to build the grotto and volunteered during the construction process. The finished grotto includes a shrine to Mary, a memorial to the unborn and a statue of St. Peregrine, patron saint of cancer patients.

ices, USA, students enlisted the aid of Pope John Paul II Assembly in Charles Town, W.Va., to cook a meal for the dinner theater portion of the event. Knights prepared supper for all those in attendance and donated funds to the students to help them meet their fundraising goal.

STEAK DINNER

Father John F. O’Neill Council 10722 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, hosted a steak dinner that was attended by nearly 200 people. The event raised $1,675 for Gabriel’s Corner, a pregnancy resource center, and Micah House, an emergency family shelter.

USO SHOW

HELPING PBS

When the choir and drama camp at St. James the Greater Church decided to put on a World War II-era USO show to raise money for the Archdiocese for the Military Serv-

Father Vilarrasa Council 7268 in Benicia, Calif., helped its local PBS station with a fundraising drive.

Knights answered phones for a three-hour shift, helping

St. John Vianney Council 7525 in South Burlington, Vt., served lunch to members of both the Vermont Air and Army National Guard.

As part of a Vermont Air Guard open house weekend, more than 840 guard members from the 158th Fighter Wing Command and their families were present for the festivities. Council volunteers served hamburgers, hot dogs and other summer grill fare for those at the base open house.

Marquette Province Eastern District Master Roland Ransom II addresses those assembled to witness the dedication of three new flagpoles and a “One Nation Under God” brick walk at the Harbor Park Christopher Columbus Fountain in Kenosha, Wis. St. John Neumann Council 973 and Archbishop Messmer Assembly raised nearly $15,000 to undertake the project, which was initiated to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the addition of the words “under God” to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. Also pictured is Kenosha City Administrator Frank Pacetti.

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KNIGHTS IN ACTION

Church, the event allowed guests to mingle with Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa, local clergy and those studying for the priesthood. The event raised $2,500 to support diocesan men studying for the priesthood.

Vincent D’Souza of St. Thomas More Council 13987 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, puts a bag of trash and debris into his van during a cleanup project sponsored by the council. Knights clean their adopted stretch of highway twice yearly, most recently removing 16 bags of garbage.

CARS PARKED

Manchester (N.H.) Council 92, with assistance from Queen of Peace Council 6725 in Merrimack, raised $1,000 by parking cars at a NASCAR event at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The funds are used for the councils’ charitable programming throughout the year.

HOMELESS INTERVENTION

SEMINARIAN MEET-AND-GREET

St. Henry Council 14248 in Owasso, Okla., co-sponsored a seminarian meet-and-greet fundraiser at the home of a council member and his wife.

With assistance from the men’s club at St. Henry

Robert E. McNeil Council 211 in Norwich, N.Y., donated $1,000 to help Catholic Charities of Chenango County develop a Homelessness Intervention and Rapid Rehousing Program. The initiative will help 80-90 vulnerable households stabilize their housing situations.

DREAMS REEVALUATED

A work crew from Weyburn (Saskatchewan) Council 1731 stands in front of a mobile home that they helped to dismantle in preparation for transporting it to a scrap yard.

A fire gutted the home while the owner, a parishioner at St. Vincent de Paul Church, was at Sunday Mass. Insurance would not pay for the damages until the home was removed from the site.

For many years, Cardinal Albert G. Meyer Council 6646 in Milwaukee maintained a building fund that was intended to finance the construction or purchase of a council hall. Deeming the prospects of doing so to be unrealistic, the council decided to redeploy the funds and make substantial donations to several worthy causes.

Recipients included the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s seminary ($20,000), Special Olympics ($10,000), and a neighboring council to assist in the purchase of an ultrasound machine ($5,000). The council also reallocated $15,000 to its charitable fund to provide more substantial fi-

Members of Siquijor Island (Visayas) Council 6129 remove trash and debris from a local beach as part of a coastal cleanup activity. Knights are helping to preserve the ocean ecosystem by removing 10 tons of debris that impairs water quality, wildlife, people, tourism and the local economy.

nancial support over the course of time to institutions it has regularly assisted and others that might be deemed worthy of support.

BIBLES SHIPPED

Ojeda Council 33 in Naugatuck, Conn., purchased and shipped 100 hardcover Bibles in English and Spanish to a mission school in Belize.

The project came about after the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity contacted council chaplain Father John Mariano for help with obtaining Bibles for use by students and adults at the mission.

PEWS REMOVED

Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Council 13596 in Albuquerque, N.M., removed 50 19-foot pews from its church in preparation for a renovation project. The pews had not been replaced in 60 years. Knights removed

the pews over three hours and worked with the community to either donate or dispose of them. Three were given to a group of nuns in Texas, and 25 were donated to a Baptist church.

Squires from Pope John Paul II Circle 5188 in Virginia Beach, Va., wash a car while collecting donations for the state’s Culture of Life Fund.

Squires, who were joined by members of St. Benedict Council 9056, volunteered 50 hours washing cars, helping to raise $470 for pro-life causes in Virginia.

M AY 2015

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P RO M OT I O NA L & G I F T I T E M S

VALUATION EXHIBIT OF

THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS

In compliance with the requirements of the laws of the various states, we publish below a Valuation Exhibit of the Knights of Columbus as of Dec. 31, 2014. The law requires that this publication shall be made of the results of the valuation with explanation as filed with the insurance departments.

ASSETS — Actual and Contingent 1. Admitted Assets of the General Account Fund, item 26, page 2 of Annual Statement: $21,461,707,706

LIABILITIES — Actual and Contingent 2. Old System Reserve — including additional reserve: $ 385,226 3. New System Reserve — including D.I. and Dis. W. (net of reins): $ 12,124,816,096 4. Reserve for accident and health certificates: $ 339,517,439 5. Total per item 1 and 2, page 3 of Annual Statement: $ 12,464,718,761 6. Deduct liens and interest thereon, not included in Admitted Assets, and not in excess of required reserves on the corresponding individual certificates: None 7. Balance — Item 5 less item 6 above: $ 12,464,718,761 8. Liabilities of the General Account Fund, except reserve (items 3 to 22 incl. page 3 of Annual Statement): $ 7,099,684,267 9. Liabilities — Actual and Contingent — sum of items 7 and 8 above: $19,564,403,028 10. Ratio percent of Dec. 31, 2014 — 109.70% Assets — Actual and Dec. 31, 2013 — 110.25% Contingent (Item 1) Dec. 31, 2012 — 110.45% to liabilities — Actual Dec. 31, 2011 — 110.52% and Contingent (Item 9) Dec. 31, 2010 — 111.43%

A.

EXPLANATION The above valuation indicates that, on a basis of the A.E., A.M. (5), 1941 C.S.O., 1958 C.S.O., 1980 C.S.O., 2001 C.S.O., 1937 S.A., 1971 Individual Annuity Table, Annuity 2000 Table and 1983 “a” Tables of Mortality with interest at 9%, 8.75%, 8%, 7%, 6%, 5%, 4.5%, 4%, 3.75%, 3.5%, 3%, 2.5%, the future assessments of the society, at the net rate now being collected, together with the now invested assets of the General Account Fund are sufficient to meet all certificates as they mature by their terms, with a margin of safety of $1,897,304,678 (or 9.70%) over the above statutory standards.

STATE OF: Connecticut COUNTY OF: New Haven The officers of this reporting entity, being duly sworn, each depose and say that they are the described officers of the said reporting entity, and that on the reporting period stated above, all of the herein described assets were the absolute property of the said reporting entity, free and clear from any liens or claims thereon, except as herein stated, and that this statement, together with related exhibits, schedules and explanations therein contained, annexed or referred to, is a full and true statement of all the assets and liabilities and of the condition and affairs of the said reporting entity as of the reporting period stated above, and of its income and deductions therefrom for the period ended, and have been completed in accordance with the NAIC annual statement instructions and accounting practices and procedure manual except to the extent that: (1) state law may differ; or, (2) that state rules or regulations require differences in reporting not related to accounting practices and procedures, according to the best of their information, knowledge and belief, respectively. Furthermore, the scope of this attestation by the described officers also includes the related corresponding electronic filing with the NAIC, when required, that is an exact copy (except for formatting differences due to electronic filing) of the enclosed statement. The electronic filing may be requested by various regulators in lieu of or in addition to the enclosed statement.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 18th day of February 2015.

MARYANN LUCZAK, Notary Public CARL A. ANDERSON, President CHARLES E. MAURER JR., Secretary MICHAEL J. O’CONNOR, Treasurer SEAL

Also available

A. Navy Sandwich Cap (personalized). This mid-profile hat is made of 100% cotton twill and has a white sandwich bill that complements the embroidery, in white, of either the emblem of the Order or the Fourth Degree emblem. The cap is personalized with your council or assembly name on the front and your name embroidered on the back. One size fits most. — $18

B. B. Golf Tournament Gift Set. Clip this handy set onto your golf bag, and everything you need is at your fingertips. The black insulated can cooler contains three (3) Top-Flite XL golf balls printed with the full-color emblem of the Order. You’ll also get a stash of 10 tees printed with “Knights of Columbus.” (Soda can not included.) — $13

OFFICIAL MAY 1, 2015: To owners of Knights of Columbus insurance policies and persons responsible for payment of premiums on such policies: Notice is hereby given that in accordance with the provisions of Section 84 of the Laws of the Order, payment of insurance premiums due on a monthly basis to the Knights of Columbus by check made payable to Knights of Columbus and mailed to same at PO Box 1492, NEW HAVEN, CT 06506-1492, before the expiration of the grace period set forth in the policy. In Canada: Knights of Columbus, Place d’Armes Station, P.O. Box 220, Montreal, QC H2Y 3G7 ALL MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOS, ARTWORK, EDITORIAL MATTER, AND ADVERTISING INQUIRIES SHOULD BE MAILED TO: COLUMBIA, PO BOX 1670, NEW HAVEN, CT 06507-0901. REJECTED MATERIAL WILL BE RETURNED IF ACCOMPANIED BY A SELF-ADDRESSED ENVELOPE AND RETURN POSTAGE. PURCHASED MATERIAL WILL NOT BE RETURNED. OPINIONS BY WRITERS ARE THEIR OWN AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS. SUBSCRIPTION RATES — IN THE U.S.: 1 YEAR, $6; 2 YEARS, $11; 3 YEARS, $15. FOR OTHER COUNTRIES ADD $2 PER YEAR. EXCEPT FOR CANADIAN SUBSCRIPTIONS, PAYMENT IN U.S. CURRENCY ONLY. SEND ORDERS AND CHECKS TO: ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT, PO BOX 1670, NEW HAVEN, CT 06507-0901.

COLUMBIA (ISSN 0010-1869/USPS #123-740) IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS, 1 COLUMBUS PLAZA, NEW HAVEN, CT 06510-3326. PHONE: 203-752-4000, www.kofc.org. PRODUCED IN USA. COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT NEW HAVEN, CT AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO COLUMBIA, MEMBERSHIP DEPARTMENT, PO BOX 1670, NEW HAVEN, CT 06507-0901.

CANADIAN POSTMASTER — PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 1473549. RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS, 50 MACINTOSH BOULEVARD, CONCORD, ONTARIO L4K 4P3 PHILIPPINES — FOR PHILIPPINES SECOND-CLASS MAIL AT THE MANILA CENTRAL POST OFFICE. SEND RETURN COPIES TO KCFAPI, FRATERNAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT, PO BOX 1511, MANILA.

32 ♦ C O L U M B I A ♦

M AY 2015

C.

B. Patriotic Wicking T-Shirt. Lightweight, roomy and highly breathable, this moisturewicking T-shirt is made of 100% polyester interlock. The navy fabric provides a nice background for the patriotic red and white imprint that reads “Knights of Columbus.” The text has a distressed look, making it look like you’ve had this shirt for years. — S-XL: $18 each; 2X: $20 each; 3X: $21 each; 4X: $22 each

Order these and other items online at:

knightsgear.com Questions? Call: 1-855-GEAR-KOC (855-432-7562)

May 15 COVERS E 4_13_Layout 1 4/14/15 3:55 PM Page 33

K N I G H T S O F C O LU M B U S

Building a better world one council at a time Every day, Knights all over the world are given opportunities to make a difference — whether through community service, raising money or prayer.

We celebrate each and every Knight for his strength, his compassion and his dedication to building a better world.

TO

BE FEATURED HERE , SEND YOUR COUNCIL’ S

C OLUMBIA , 1 C OLUMBUS P LAZA , N EW

Members of Bishop Albert LeMénager of Amiraults Hill Council 8988 in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, stand dwarfed beside the enormous amount of food that the council collected for a local food bank.

Knights partnered with the community to collect 1,500 pounds of food, as well as monetary donations, to help individuals and families facing food insecurity.

“K NIGHTS IN A CTION ” H AVEN , CT 06510-3326

PHOTO AS WELL AS ITS DESCRIPTION TO : OR E - MAIL : COLUMBIA @ KOFC . ORG .

M AY 2015

♦ C O L U M B I A ♦ 33

May 15 COVERS E 4_13_Layout 1 4/14/15 3:55 PM Page 34

PLEASE, DO ALL YOU CAN TO ENCOURAGE PRIESTLY AND RELIGIOUS VOCATIONS. YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

K E E P T H E F A IT H A L I V E

‘CHRIST IS ENOUGH FOR ME IN EVERYTHING.’

BROTHER EMMANUEL ORRINO St. Benedict’s Abbey Atchison, Kan.

Photo by Jason Dailey

The first time a vocation seemed like a possibility for me was in high school, when a priest invited me to check out the seminary. I didn’t take him up on the offer, but the idea stayed with me. When I came to Benedictine College a few years later, I accepted an invitation to a discernment retreat. But I wasn’t terribly invested; I even left the retreat one evening to go on a date!

Though St. Benedict’s Abbey attracted me, I continued on another path and found myself in law school. I loved studying law, but the “Hound of Heaven” did what he does — he hounded me.

Toward the end of my first year in law school, I began discerning again. A priest encouraged me to ask, “Is Christ enough for me in everything?” That’s a difficult question we all have to face, and it stayed with me.

After a year of prayer, I found myself again at St. Benedict’s Abbey. This time, I was more certain that I loved Christ, and that he is enough for me. I couldn’t follow anything else.