On Slandering Catholics

In 1942 the Catholic apologist Ronald Knox was able to remark: “A quite new hatred of the Catholic religion is growing up within my own lifetime – a hatred of its strict principles on certain points, which our neighbors … dislike as being a criticism of their own conduct, and a criticism which in their heart of hearts they know to be just.” Accordingly, as if to turn the table on Catholics, the critics of the Church have often invented great lies about Catholics and stirred up hatred against them, as the following account shows.

A phony Knights of Columbus oath for new members was circulated (possibly by the KKK) in the early 1900s as anti-Catholic propaganda designed to inflame anti-Catholic sentiment. The oath was supposed to read in part: "I do promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex, nor condition, and that I will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive those infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their infants' heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race...."

Although investigated and branded as a fake oath by a U.S. Congressional Committee in 1913, the bogus oath was later used to discredit two famous Knights of Columbus: Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith in the 1928 presidential campaign, and John F. Kennedy in the 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary. But an aspect of this story that interests us concerns the Knights of Columbus Council in Lubbock, Texas.

In 1948 the newly found Knights of Columbus Council No. 3008 took its first fire from a West Texas critic. A nearby small town newspaper, The Ralls Banner, reprinted the bogus oath with the following editorial comment: “Readers may think ‘it can’t happen here,’ but it does – and right here in Texas. The following excerpt from the Congressional Record of February 15, 1913 proves it. It is part of the oath taken by the Knights of Columbus ... to be signed in the member'’ own blood drawn with a dagger. It is recommended reading for those following the Banner’s frequent articles on ‘Who are the Un-American?’”

Lubbock’s Knights of Columbus flew into action and sent the editor the full text of the Congressional Record with the following remarks: “… in view of the fact that you have, by printing this scurrilous and libelous attack upon the Knights of Columbus and all Catholics, circulated falsehood and wounded the feelings of 25,000,000 loyal Americans, we, the undersigned … demand a full and detailed explanation of this matter to your readers and a public apology to the Knights of Columbus.” The explanation and the apology never came. Instead the editor served up some pious pabulum about the right of free speech, with no admission whatever that the article was false and libelous. (The Ralls incident is well documented in The Knights of Columbus in Texas, pp. 136-37).

As thinking Catholics we should not assume the authentic truth of any published slander against the Church, no matter how powerful or impressive its source. We need to demand truth in documentation, and very specific truth at that. Failing to do so, we can easily be dismayed by the lies told for centuries about the Catholic Church. As Bishop Fulton Sheen put it: "There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing.”

None of the above is to excuse or mitigate the wrongdoing revealed in recent years by individual Catholic clergy. But what individuals do is no part of Catholic policy, and only proves that Christ was prophetic when he warned his lambs that wolves would appear among them hungry to devour. (Matthew 10:16)